How to demonstrate sentience?

| | No comment yet

In this short piece, Manu Herrán sumarizes two sets of proposals to address the problem of sentience, three mechanisms to show if an individual feels (the resemblance, the best possible explanation and Phenomenal Puzzles) and two ways to check if a theory of sentience is correct or not.

“It is common to ask: how can sentience (the ability to feel) be demonstrated? The question has several interpretations and nuances. On the one hand, whoever asks this question may be pointing out the difficulty of making predictions and obtaining evidence; In short, the difficulty of using the scientific method in the matter of sentience. But, as this article explains, there are many things we can do to address the issue of sentience in the most scientific way possible.

The question can also refer to a specific individual: how to know if an individual feels or not ?; Or it can refer to theories about sentience: what is the correct theory? How can we prove it?”

Read more

Biases on The Horror of Suffering

| | No comment yet

One person suggests that past experience with suffering is “a reason to avoid fighting suffering. Your own experiences have biased you about how bad suffering is. It’s like someone who keeps a year of food in his basement because he had to go without food at times when he was a kid, or checking where your keys are 20 times a day because you once forgot your keys.” I replied: “Some of the life experiences that make us unique we choose to keep as intrinsic moral values, while others we disregard. If we didn’t keep any of the ‘biases’ that our development instilled in us, we might be paperclip maximizers instead. My moral biases are what make me me.”

Read more