Even to imagine subjectivity as a subset of objectivity may, in the end, be an exercise in self-limitation.
İstanbul, Türkiye
Joined May 2015
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I think I may have got it. I have been trying to work out the evolutionary FUNCTİON of consciousness (given its many disadvantages for individuals in terms of life-threatening anxiety/mental health issues)
So the philosophers who have been banging on about embodiment were on the right track, but the function of basic consciousness was to ring-fence the immediate sensorium of embodiment from the immensely useful (and potentially catastrophic) power of imaginative cognition.
Even the most mundane manifestation of Light is sacred in that it carries the ancient intuition of its central role in the constitution of the universe, an intuition merely confirmed by the modern realisation it signifies the constant that gives spacetime its very structure.
Tim Davis retweeted
Crows are incredibly clever. This one figured out how to turn a tap on to get water and even remembered to turn it off afterwards. Their ability to learn, remember, and repeat useful behaviours is amazing
Tim Davis retweeted
2.a) Biological naturalism looks to sentience of primitive organisms for origins of consciousness, whereas the arguments for artificial consciousness are nearly always modelled on higher human capacities (LLMs, agentic AI interacting with humans). Which is more anthropomorphic?!
There is a tendency for people in AI to pour scorn on anyone who argues for a biological definition of consciousness, as if it were narrow-minded, anthropocentric, or even ethically unambitious.
Debatable :)
But this may be where cyber animism nods at heretical christianity
@Philip_Goff !!
3. Expanding the definition of consciousness is to weaken its ethical significance. The ethical issue is that we already have a category so broad and inclusive (namely, biological) that we knowingly mistreat and slaughter billions of entities that most agree are conscious.