Conditional on invertibrates being sentient, I would upgrade my probability of other things being sentient. So maybe bivales are sentient, some existing robots, maybe even plants. I would take the case for hidden qualia in humans seriously as well. Do you agree, and if so, would this have any impact on good policies to pursue?
There are different possible scenarios in which invertebrates turn out to be sentient. It might be the case, for instance, that panpsychism is true. So if one comes to believe that invertebrates are sentient because panpsychism is true, one should also come to believe that robots and plants are sentient. Or it could be that some form of information integration theory is true, and invertebrates instantiate enough integration for sentience. In that case, the probability that you assign to the sentience of plants and robots will depend on your assessment of their relevant level of integration.
For what it’s worth, here’s how I think about the issue: sentience, like other biological properties, has an evolutionary function. I take it as a datum that mammals are sentient. If we can discern the role that sentience is playing in mammals, and it appears there is analogous behavior in other taxa, then, in the absence of defeaters, we are licensed to infer that individuals of those taxa are sentient. In the past few years I’ve updated toward thinking that arthropods and (coleoid) cephalopods are sentient, but the majority of these updates have been based on learning new empirical information about these animals. (Basically, arthropods and cephalopods engage in way more complex behaviors than I realized.) When we constructed our invertebrate sentience table, we also looked at plants, prokaryotes, protists, and, in an early version of the table, robots and AIs of various sorts. The individuals in these categories did not engage in the sort of behaviors that I take to be evidence of sentience, so I don’t feel licensed to infer that they are sentient.
Conditional on invertibrates being sentient, I would upgrade my probability of other things being sentient. So maybe bivales are sentient, some existing robots, maybe even plants. I would take the case for hidden qualia in humans seriously as well. Do you agree, and if so, would this have any impact on good policies to pursue?
Hi Roger,
There are different possible scenarios in which invertebrates turn out to be sentient. It might be the case, for instance, that panpsychism is true. So if one comes to believe that invertebrates are sentient because panpsychism is true, one should also come to believe that robots and plants are sentient. Or it could be that some form of information integration theory is true, and invertebrates instantiate enough integration for sentience. In that case, the probability that you assign to the sentience of plants and robots will depend on your assessment of their relevant level of integration.
For what it’s worth, here’s how I think about the issue: sentience, like other biological properties, has an evolutionary function. I take it as a datum that mammals are sentient. If we can discern the role that sentience is playing in mammals, and it appears there is analogous behavior in other taxa, then, in the absence of defeaters, we are licensed to infer that individuals of those taxa are sentient. In the past few years I’ve updated toward thinking that arthropods and (coleoid) cephalopods are sentient, but the majority of these updates have been based on learning new empirical information about these animals. (Basically, arthropods and cephalopods engage in way more complex behaviors than I realized.) When we constructed our invertebrate sentience table, we also looked at plants, prokaryotes, protists, and, in an early version of the table, robots and AIs of various sorts. The individuals in these categories did not engage in the sort of behaviors that I take to be evidence of sentience, so I don’t feel licensed to infer that they are sentient.
Thank you. That is rather different from my view of sentience in some ways, I appreciate the clarification.