Sentience is meaningless. Sapience is what matters.

[Sapientist]

Tiredness is not its associated behaviors, it is a state of mind and can give way to different sets of behaviors.

Sure, but when we look at very simple animals, we can only judge externally. Tell me, what si the difference between a tired fruitfly, and a tired roomba?

Does it have a neural network (artificial or not) or does it just build a map or something?

Neural network.

Also, though it isn't really relevant to the discussion: high price =/= high quality

No, but in this case it sure is an indication.

Actually, like I cited before the dictionary definition is literally:

responsive to or conscious of sense impressions

which is literally not:

Enough of a mind to use senses.

Except it is. I'm literally paraphrasing the dictionary definition without adding anything on top of it. Exactly how do you think my paraphrasing differs?

Could you link it?

I mean, just search roomba and look the most advanced model. In any case, it's getting kind of away from the point. Do we really want to derail and discuss roomba features, or can you just accept the point behind argument being made?

I don't really care about insects to be honest, even if they meet standards for moral consideration, they do so barely and with proportional consideration. Do you think that most animals are worthy of moral consideration?

I think all animals are worthy of consideration to some extent, at the least that they should not needlessly feel pain or fear. I don't think all animals are worth of moral consideration to the point it's wrong to take their life.

You said:

Our self-awareness may be dulled and drowned out by the physical pain and instinctual reaction, but 'we' are still there, observing, watching and making decisions....reacting in a way that a simple sentient being is incapable of.

You listed (1) observing (2) watching and (3) making decisions as the reactions which differentiate us from non-self-aware beings, even in lapses of non-self-awareness. Yet you have described the apparently sentient (but not self-aware) roomba as still (1) observing, (2) watching, and (3) making decisions

You'll note I didn't use the same terms to describe the roomba as I did a humans drowned out consciousness, rather that's you mapping them, so I don't see any contradiction. Still, allow me to clarify. In the passage you quote, I am referring to our consciousness being drowned out by and overpowered by instinct, but still present, doing the things I list. My point was that sapience is baked into our very fabric, and even if we are overcome by emotion or instinct, our self-awarene mind is still there and present, observing what is happening and thinking about what to do, in a purely mental sense.

This is rather different from what I mean when I talk about sentient but not self-aware beings following their pre-programmed responses using their senses to navigate the world, as their is no self-awareness that can be drowned out in the first place.

It has senses (it can react tot hings, e.g. bumping into a table and (3) making a decision based on that), and (1&2)it has consciousness as you use it (awareness of input..it is aware if it has bumped into something).

Therefore, you have said that what distinguishes us from the merely sentient in lapses of self-unawareness are observing, watching, and making decisions and also stated that the merely sentient also possess these capabilities (which means it is not unique or distinguishing).

I think I've been pretty clear in how I consider sapient minds different from simple sentient minds. That both can make decisions and use their senses to navigate the world is not contradictory, indeed that's pretty much the definition of sentience given above.

My point was that we don't lapse in self-awareness, ever, but it can be 'drowned out'. Our minds are still their analyzing and working away, in a fundamentally different way from a fruitfly or roomba would ever be capable of.

Right now, both of us are observing, watching and making decisions using metacognition, which is different from a fruitfly making decisions responding to stimuli. I guess, actually, metacognition is the differentiator, at least for humans, and perhaps a few other animals.

I do understand it can be hard to get these ideas across, especially when using so many of the same words in different contexts. I do feel I've explained my point fairly clearly, but if my point is still not clear, please let me know and I will try and write more to clarify it further.

[brimstoneSalad]

@brimstoneSalad, would it be better if we just said that capacity for preferences was the condition for moral consideration so people don’t have to make the inference from sentience? It seems much easier just to explain why preferences matter than to explain why sentience implies preferences and preferences matter.

Possibly, @JacyReese recently wrote this article which was more or less to that point:
https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/blog ... -sentience

Worth a read.

I differ with him in that I think these things can be (and have been) defined pretty rigorously already, but it does require dismissing a lot of non-rigorous definitions and it can be a bit of a needle-in-haystack issue.
Whether it's worth fighting for rigorous usage to use the cultural capital these things have or better to abandon discussion of them isn't clear. I err on the side of the former because I think people's connection to these terms is much harder to break than it is so explain what they mean in a scientifically comprehensible way.
To compare: it seems a lot earlier to get people to accept a scientific kind of pantheistic-deist definition of god (sexed up atheism) than abandon the word entirely. I don't know if attachment to notions like sentience and consciousness is that strong, so that would be a question for the surveys.

[brimstoneSalad]

I'm sorry, but that's just wrong, or you are using your own definitions of these words.

Not at all; I explained why one implies the other.

You cannot be self-aware without being sentient, but you can certainly be sentient without being self-aware.

I disagree. Precisely the opposite is true.

Somebody who is mentally "locked in" and insensate can still be self aware of his or her own mind and being in that state without ANY sense input at all. Obviously that is a very limited self-awareness (no sense of location or anything like that) which probably doesn't last long, but it's something.

However, sentience requires some rudimentary self-awareness to comprehend the relation between self and environment and meaningfully comprehend that sense input. Otherwise it's all just pure thoughtless reflex, which is not sentience. Mere reaction to something isn't indication of sentience. An oyster or leaf can snap shut; doesn't mean it's sentient. Just pure cause and effect chemical reaction. An even more obvious example: baking soda can fizz when exposed to vinegar, doesn't mean it's sentient or is sensing the presence of the vinegar, understand it, and deciding to respond that way.

Sentience requires rudimentary intelligence which requires some rudimentary awareness of something like a "self" manifest through needs and a distinction between what it does and doesn't control in the environment.

The key there is the processing of the sense input: what are they processing it with respect to?

See my roomba example.

I looked into Roomba a bit. It looks like the earlier models aren't sentient, but more recent ones may be employing actual neural networks to engage in learning (hard to make sense of the hype, I don't trust everything I read about it). They may be sentient, and IF SO, then they also possess some rudimentary self awareness; they must to comprehend the meaning of their position relative to the environment and its goals to engage in learning.

For a Darwinian creature, they're processing it relative to their selves; their place in the environment, and to determine what they should do.

That doesn't require self-awareness.

That IS self awareness, at least the most rudimentary form of it.

You're holding self-awareness to some arbitrarily high standard of abstract understanding, but again, the right arbitrary understanding also excludes Christians from being self aware.

Having an awareness of ones body is not the same as having a sense of self the way it is being used in this discussion. A roomba can know the dimensions if oitself, and yet is not self-aware.

Awareness of ones body and position is the most rudimentary form we often see; you admitted this is a spectrum earlier, why can't this be the basic level?
I have no problem believing roomba have rudimentary self awareness, perhaps in the way of a fruit fly if they are engaging in true learning.

Most in what sense? If you're talking worms and plankton (which probably outnumber the rest of us) then that may be true.
But if you're talking macrofauna then you are certainly wrong.

Most as in most, the majority of animals.

Again, unclear. Majority of individuals? Of species? Excluding or including plankton and microfauna?

Experiments have shown basic conditioning, sure, but this doesn't require self-awareness as a prerequisite.

Operant conditioning shows true learning, and yes it requires rudimentary self awareness to use your body to do something intentionally. The simplest is awareness of self relative to environment, and navigating that environment intelligently to reach a goal.

Imagine you see somebody using a computer; the person is moving the mouse around on the screen to click on icons (with clear intent and competence and not just randomly). Clearly that person has some mouse awareness. Even if the person doesn't know that the computer runs on electricity or the mouse is an image file that's displayed in a position that's changed when the computer gets inputs from the ball/trackpad/whatever, there is a least a minimal level of mouse awareness there required just to perform those basic tasks. It doesn't have to be existentially DEEP to be real awareness.

This is the same kind of minimal self-awareness that creatures have to have to engage in basic operant conditioning.

Asserting anything to the contrary isn't very meaningful. I explained WHY it requires basic self awareness, you just deny that this level is a form of rudimentary self awareness because you've set an arbitrary abstract threshold for "self awareness". You haven't made any real argument to deny that or explained where your threshold is or what substantiates it.

The thing is that I'm not arbitrarily excluding anything. Sense of your position with the ability to change it intentionally toward a goal is a form of awareness of self, since place is a part of self (ANYTHING that describes you and distinguishes you from others is a part of self).

I think you're just assuming too much about the "magic" of what self is beyond a series of facts that distinguish you from others. Understanding of ANY of those facts is a rudimentary sense of self.

But they literally aren't fully self-aware, they're mistaken. If you want some complete self-awareness they lack it. They're "aware" of something that doesn't even exist. They aren't aware that they are primates evolved from simpler life forms with minds running on wetware that will vanish when they die. There's no self-awareness to any of that.

I don't think you understand the point that was made above. What you are saying literally does not make sense. To even consider any religious argument as in your example, requires self-awareness. That is indisputable.

To even engage in operant conditioning requires self-awareness. That is indisputable. Glad we can all go home now!

Seriously, re-read what I've said. I'm talking about complete self-awareness.

1. You can recognize that self-awareness is a spectrum (understanding SOME things about self, but not all), with insects at one end and highly self-aware atheistic philosophers at the other (Christians are probably closer to the high end, but fall short due to incomplete comprehension of self and mortality).
This would force you to accept that some human beings have less moral value than others due to their beliefs.

2. You can go extreme and accept only COMPLETE self-awareness, in which case Christians (and most maybe even all humans) fail because they have incorrectly understood the nature of their beings and mortality on some level.
This would basically mean no, or virtually no, humans have any moral value either.

3. You can be intellectually dishonest and set some arbitrary threshold, but that's something anybody can do and in that case Christians can be just as easily excluded as included. That's just moral relativism where anybody can arbitrarily dismiss the moral value of anybody or anything slightly below them in self-awareness by saying that's not really self aware. Or even just pick and choose different kinds of self awareness that are important while dismissing other kinds of self awareness as unimportant (like you seem to be doing).

Or, you know, option 4:

4. Self awareness isn't really that important, maybe having interests which can be realized or foiled is more important, and you just need to be aware of your interests without anything critical for moral value hinging on some unrelated (and likely unfalsifiable) awareness of the self which doesn't affect the interest.

I'm really not. Your example is absurd on it's face. You're trying to argue that someone doesn't have a trait because of a certain action, when that action is only possible if they possess that trait in the first place.

Not an action, a belief or state of awareness (or lack thereof). You need to engage with my arguments instead of dismissing them.

Then please, define it. Explain how a Christian is fully and equally self aware when that person doesn't really know what he or she is.

See my previous point.

I addressed that. Please answer the question. Don't just brush off my arguments and call them absurd. I don't argue that Christians have less moral value, I'm showing where your own arguments lead. Obviously I'm making an argument to show how your beliefs are wrong because of their absurd conclusions -- ones that logically follow from your claims.

Basic learning and conditioning is not evidence of self-awareness, at least to the extent I am talking about,

An arbitrary one that dismisses some qualities of self awareness as unimportant or unrelated while exalting others (particularly ones that you believe you and your favored class possess).

that would allow someone to be aware of their own life and value it.

Again, Christians are not necessarily "aware" of their lives, and can not explicitly value them.
They're aware of themselves as souls, not living creatures, and they value a gift given to them by god, not a material life.
What they value and believe is at odds with reality. There's no way to give them the right to what they think they have or value with respect to existential self because it doesn't exist.

They have a slight upgrade to the same operating system insects are running on, which allows means they have more complicated if-then-else conditionals. They still rely on pre-programmed instinct, and are still essentially machines.

No, animals that exhibit operant conditioning (and synthetic intelligence that does as well) are not merely pre-programmed. They are learning and programming themselves as they go. This just indicates how little you know about what learning is and does. We're not talking about the fixed action patterns (that's automatic pre-programmed instinct); we're talking about the learned deviations from those -- that's what operant conditioning tests.

I don't really care about 'interests'. You could say bacteria have interests also.

No, you could not say that bacteria have interests. They do not respond to operant conditioning. Moving toward a food source or light etc. is completely automatic, following chemical gradients based on simple cause and effect mechanisms, it's not a calculated decision to fulfill an interest.
Automatic actions aren't interests. If they were, then a rock has an interest in falling.

If you don't care about interests, it's probably because you don't understand what interests are. They're inherently related to sentience and sense of self.

I care about self-awareness. If a being is not self-aware enough to be conscious of it's own life, then it has no right to it. Interests or not.

You're talking complete nonsense; I understand how you think you've defined these things and they mean something to you, but being "conscious of... life" is undefined. You've just decided which beings are and are not conscious, and you're using circular arguments to justify killing the ones you don't prefer.

I've made far better arguments against Christians being conscious in the way you want than you've made against insects.
You need to engage with this discussion, and stop dismissing it as something that's supposed to be obvious.

Explain how Christians are conscious of their lives despite believing they're actually magical immortal souls inside a temporary flesh husk for the purpose of some kind of test or cosmic plan by their creator.

With respect, you are still not understanding the argument. Every single human is self-aware in the way that term is being used in this discussion

I understand that you have ad hoc DEFINED them as such, and are using circular argument to point at that as self-awareness despite not having actually substantiated any of these claims.

and their beliefs have literally no bearing on that level of self-awareness.

False, they have everything to do with their concepts of self and what they are aware of being.

The self-awareness that is innate to humans manifests at a lower level than whatever beliefs or ideas they use that self-awareness to come up with.

Wow, if you can't make an argument, just appeal to some psychobabble and go back to your question begging premise?

Seriously, you need to engage my argument and stop dismissing it. This is a potentially interesting discussion IF you'll engage with it. No more of this unfalsifiable run around, provide an explanation and clear and falsifiable scientifically rigorous definition, not a vague assertion. What you are making right now is not an argument. You came here to be challenged, right? You need to put up.

Consciousness can be a hard topic to discuss, you need to stop brushing challenging notions and requests for more rigorous definitions under the rug. A circular definition of (more or less)'consciousness is what humans have at some lower level' is not going to cut it.

[esquizofrenico]

I think your argument that "Only beings that value life have a right to being alive" is pretty ridiculous. Even if you don't worry about the problems that is going to give you with the large amount of mentally ill people that do not have either a concept of time or a level of abstraction to understand what "life" is, you can clearly that is pure sophistry. It's like me breaking in half your swimming pool member card and then asking you why are you so mad about a piece of paper. Of course you don't mind the piece of paper in itself at all, if the staff at the swimming pool decided that from now on identification will be done with IDs and ask you to return your card, you wouldn't mind. What you mind is not the card, but the benefits that entail having that card. In the same way, even if animals cannot understand what life is and therefore do not value "life" in itself, it's enough for them to enjoy the experiences that entail being alive for you to say that you have committed a harm to them by taking their life. I think even you realize this, because you have moved from your original position that "non human animals don't enjoy life" to one that appears to be "non human animals cannot enjoy anything", with your Roomba comparison.

Not that I want to deal in that whole mess, but the philosophical zombies argument is fundamental to this discussion. Taking from this comment:

It's really not. Basic learning and conditioning is not evidence of self-awareness, at least to the extent I am talking about, that would allow someone to be aware of their own life and value it. They have a slight upgrade to the same operating system insects are running on, which allows means they have more complicated if-then-else conditionals. They still rely on pre-programmed instinct, and are still essentially machines.

Are you saying humans are not essentially machines? Are you a dualist or a epiphenomenalist? (I know epiphenomenalism is a type of dualism, but I'm referring to classical Dualism, the one that Descartes and religious people have).

We have examples of animals lying for all kinds of mammals and birds: you can see videos of dogs trying to hide from their owners the outcome of their last mischief and it has been observed that weak cocks perform the mating dance in silence, so they don't alarm the alpha male of the colony, but still get to mate with the females that see them. This strongly suggest that at least they primitively understand the concept of "consequence" and only a self-aware being can understand something.

Does this imply they actually understand consequence? No, in general there can be no definite proof of any internal state. All behaviour can be transformed into a tabular set of rules of ifs and thens. However, given that we know that we share a common evolutionary past with these animals and that in a human we would interpret this kind of behaviour as obvious proof that the child/mentally ill person is self-aware I think this is strong proof of something more than automatic instinctual responses.

Another point worth considering is that your Roomba argument has a flaw. Considering that flies have are self-aware, the fact that Roombas can do everything a fly can do does not necessarily mean that Roombas are self-aware. Now you will say that I am making the same argument I was criticizing before, but there is a small difference. Roombas and flies do not have a common evolutionary history. It is possible that sentience has appeared in animals because it the easiest way to arrive to self-learning beings through a random mutation progressive evolution process, but that a highly intelligent and technological being as the man can achieve the same through another mechanism, simpler but that cannot be reached through small evolutionary steps. I have no opinion in this topic because I simply don't know that much about neurobiology of flies and neural networks to know how similar of different their working is.

And most obviously, you are not coherent with your thinking. If what you say it's true, if all animal behaviour but except that of humans is based in simple "if/then" automatic responses (the kettle whistling Descartes argument), why should we give a "humane death" to animals? Why worry about them "suffering" (what does that even mean according to your position?) in industrial farms? We can torture them all day long and wouldn't matter at all. This is in my opinion the strongest vegan argument and as far as I know is widely accepted in the philosophical community. Either you say animals have no rights at all, or you agree that you cannot kill them for arbitrary reasons. The only argument you could make for torturing animals being cruel is if doing it would make people more likely to be cruel to humans, but as a Christian philosopher pointed out in a very good article defending current farming industry, that would only be true for some people, not all since clearly there are some killing floor workers that live for the rest pretty normal lives. We should (as we currently do) not expose fragile people to this kind of behaviour, but not ban it altogether.

[brimstoneSalad]

Another point worth considering is that your Roomba argument has a flaw. Considering that flies have are self-aware, the fact that Roombas can do everything a fly can do does not necessarily mean that Roombas are self-aware.

Yes, but I think it's fair to inductively surmise that Roombas are self-aware as much as a fly is if they have all the same behavioral indications.

However, what I think he misunderstands is what those indications are.
Operant conditioning presents a scenario that *wouldn't* be pre-programmed (traditionally operating some kind of unnatural switch, but also moving antenna in a particular pattern etc.), these involve acting/moving in a way that would never conceivably yield a reward in nature. For a roomba, that would just be giving it what it *wants* (if it really is intelligent and has desires with a neural network that's free to learn how to satisfy them) only if it does behavior that wouldn't conceivably achieve that ends and see if it can be trained to do that.

So, the kind of thing that indicates real self-awareness is contextually relevant and the tests are designed with some knowledge of their "natural" functions. This makes them about as much a smoking gun as you can get because they avoid any conceivable use of those pre-programmed tables.
We could also talk about informatics and the probability of the solution to whatever you're offering being in a table (eventually it becomes astronomically improbable given the amount of memory available); though hard to work out, this can even provide us confidence intervals that make that certainty as real as anything else in science... so unless we reject all scientific methodology, we couldn't help but accept that.