AI, Bots, etc.

[prémont]

I want to stand back a bit and frame the question again. For me, the question:

(1) How is self awareness possible

is answered by answering

(2) When is it justifiable to attribute self awareness to something?

And that question is in turn answered by

(3) When is the best predictive explanatory theory of an objects behaviour given by attributing psychological states to it?

I do not attribute self-awareness to bots and other computer programs. They are and will remain mechanical slaves of their programming. This applies to all programs, both the washing machine program and the more advanced ChatGPT. Any bot's "behavior" can be explained in terms of pre-programming, particularly with the application of Occam's razor. It is theoretically more difficult to maintain the idea that we humans do not also function like bots, even though we have self-awareness. But I am convinced that we at least to some extent have our free will. But whether it is an illusion we will probably never be able to clarify.

[prémont]

Fine

However, I see it differently. Endless changes hit the body, thoughts, and feelings from the outside, but they never touch the true self. There is no control over any of it; everything just happens on its own like a machine. Nothing is actually being done by anyone, there is only the flow of life. And I knowing it all.

Yes, to the mind, this sounds like despair. To the knower, it is the ultimate freedom.

It seems to me that you are equating self-awareness with the true self. Self-awareness is the background feeling that one exists as an independent individual. It remains unchanged throughout life. What one might call the true self is the substratum of personality, where one can work with oneself and one's attitudes. So while self-awareness is constant, the true self can change.

[prémont]

I also confused the concepts myself in an earlier post.

There we disagree. I am convinced that many people, unlike completely mechanical devices like servers with associated bots, are capable of changing their behavior away from what they are pre-programmed with in childhood and adolescence, once the person in question has reached a significant level of self-awareness.

Instead of self-awareness I should have written self-understanding, which is something different.

[Todd]

(2) When is it justifiable to attribute self awareness to something?

Is it justifiable to attribute self-awareness to the thousands of autonomous taxis in service worldwide right now? 

[San Antone]

IMO self-awareness is what humans experience because we are aware of our own mortality.  Libraries are filled with books about the anxiety this produces, and all the things we do, some self-destructive, to distract us from the fact that one day we will die.

To argue that a computer program or robot has this same quality is absurd, also IMO.

[Mandryka]

IMO self-awareness is what humans experience because we are aware of our own mortality.  Libraries are filled with books about the anxiety this produces, and all the things we do, some self-destructive, to distract us from the fact that one day we will die.

To argue that a computer program or robot has this same quality is absurd, also IMO.

Nobody is arguing that they have the same quality of self awareness.  As it happens your comment reminded me of Whitman

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

And Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus)

The finest of all possibilities
is never to be born, but if a man
sees the light of day, the next best thing by far                             1470
is to return as quickly as he can,
to go back to the place from which he came.
For once the careless follies of his youth                                               [1230]
have passed, what harsh affliction is he spared,
what suffering does he not undergo?
Envy and quarrels, murder, strife and war,
until at last he reaches his old age,
rejected and alone, unloved and weak,
a state where every form of sadness dwells.

[Harry]

Nobody is arguing that they have the same quality of self awareness.  As it happens your comment reminded me of Whitman

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

And Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus)

The finest of all possibilities
is never to be born, but if a man
sees the light of day, the next best thing by far                            1470
is to return as quickly as he can,
to go back to the place from which he came.
For once the careless follies of his youth                                              [1230]
have passed, what harsh affliction is he spared,
what suffering does he not undergo?
Envy and quarrels, murder, strife and war,
until at last he reaches his old age,
rejected and alone, unloved and weak,
a state where every form of sadness dwells.

Yes that sums it also up for me, I forgot about this text which found in me a welcome visitor, now I remember.....

[prémont]

Nobody is arguing that they have the same quality of self awareness.

How do you distinguish between different qualities of self-awareness?

[prémont]

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

Whether you are lucky to be born or not depends partly on the life you have.

But considering the afterlife, I can say that the thought of eternal life scares me more than the thought of eternal annihilation.

[Todd]

Nobody is arguing that they have the same quality of self awareness.

What are the different qualities of self-awareness?

And in addition to answering whether autonomous taxis are self-aware, can you please answer whether any of the following are self-aware?

1.) A Roomba
2.) An autonomous combine
3.) A SQL scheduled job

You previously asserted your boiler is self-aware, so the implied answer in all these cases is "yes".

[Mandryka]

What are the different qualities of self-awareness?

 

One example would be ego dissolution, which can be induced by LSD. Ketamine also changes the nature of self awareness, I think, though I have never experienced the K hole.

[Todd]

One example would be ego dissolution, which can be induced by LSD. Ketamine also changes the nature of self awareness, I think, though I have never experienced the K hole.

Huh?  Drug-induced stupors - which is all you are describing - are not pertinent when considering non-human objects, which is the core concept under consideration. 

Your reply is a whiff.

Again, what are different qualities of self-awareness, specifically as applied to non-human objects?  Let's go one better: what are different qualities of self-awareness, specifically as applied to non-biological objects?

[Mandryka]

Huh?  Drug-induced stupors - which is all you are describing - are not pertinent when considering non-human objects, which is the core concept under consideration. 

Your reply is a whiff.

Again, what are different qualities of self-awareness, specifically as applied to non-human objects?  Let's go one better: what are different qualities of self-awareness, specifically as applied to non-biological objects?

That's not the question. My claim was that no-one is claiming that the quality of (self) awareness of  inorganic thinking things is the same as the quality of (self) awareness of organic thinking things. There's no reason to think it is, though it may be.

The quality of awareness of external objects changes for individuals as they change, and one sentient things awareness of the external world may not be the same as another's,  as discussed in Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to be a Bat." My point is that if thing awareness can have different qualities, given that one's self is a thing, then prima facie, self awareness can have different qualities.

[Todd]

That's not the question. My claim was that no-one is claiming that the quality of (self) awareness of  inorganic thinking things is the same as the quality of (self) awareness of organic thinking things. There's no reason to think it is, though it may be.

The quality of awareness of external objects changes for individuals as they change, and one sentient things awareness of the external world may not be the same as another's,  as discussed in Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to be a Bat." My point is that if thing awareness can have different qualities, given that one's self is a thing, then prima facie, self awareness can have different qualities.

This is extraordinarily convoluted, with a fatal flaw.  There is no such thing as "inorganic thinking things". 

What are the qualities of self-awareness?  I'm looking for descriptive definitions.  And remember, boiler ≠ bat.

[Philo]

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

[Todd]

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

They dream of young Sean Young.

[Mandryka]

This is extraordinarily convoluted, with a fatal flaw.  There is no such thing as "inorganic thinking things". 

What are the qualities of self-awareness?  I'm looking for descriptive definitions.  And remember, boiler ≠ bat.

This is from Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, after taking mescalin

A small typing table stood in
the center of the room; beyond it, from my point of view, was a wicker chair and beyond that a desk.
The three pieces formed an intricate pattern of horizontals, uprights and diagonals - a pattern all the
more interesting for not being interpreted in terms of spatial relationships. Table, chair and desk came
together in a composition that was like something by Braque or Juan Gris, a still life recognizably related
to the objective world, but rendered without depth, without any attempt at photographic realism. I was
looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and
not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms
and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely
aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I
was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers-back in a world where everything shone
with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance. The legs, for example, of that chair - how
miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes - or was
it several centuries? - not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them - or rather being
myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense
were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.

[Todd]

This is from Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, after taking mescalin

Erudite authors can make their mundane drug stupors seem fancy.  What's your point?

[Mandryka]

Erudite authors can make their mundane drug stupors seem fancy.  What's your point?

Under mescalin he seems to have had a different quality of self awareness.

I don't have time now to find references but religious conversions may furnish examples too. St Augustine's account of his divided self prior to conversion, in Confessions Bk VIII,  and the whole self after. I've got a vague memory that that's how William James read him in Varieties of Religious Experience -- I'll check later.

[Todd]

Under mescalin he seems to have had a different quality of self awareness.

I got high in college.  Color me unimpressed.