plants are sentient (they feel, they react to their environment) and have readily observable behavior that we would call "intelligent". they also communicate with each other. eating plants means maiming or killing sentient, intelligent beings. we are animals, this is our naturehttps://twitter.com/crawland1000/status/1040344247977865219 …
I do think your roomba has a subjective experience, albeit a very limited and primitive one. it is sentient (barely) but not sapient.
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I am extremely dubious of ~epiphenomenal subjectivity
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why? how else would you define it?
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the subjectivity* I experience is significantly causally linked to the world (e.g. I can tweet about it). and it makes sense that this sort of experience would only arise because affects fitness. *normally I just use "sentience" to mean the concept I am referring to here
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the sensations that arise within a roomba are significantly causally linked to the world too. it has sensors and it makes decisions based on the facts about the world reported by those sensors. is this different than how you do it? how is being able to tweet about it relevant?
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remember the distinction between sentience and sapience. your reflection, introspection, and conceptual model of yourself are attributes of sapient cognition. sentience is just the fact of having feelings and sensations. subjectivity is a first consequence of having sensations.
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you changed a word, and that change is important. the roomba's behavior is causally linked with what registers on its sensors, but that is not the same as being causally linked to the fact of its own subjective experience (in the sense discussed).
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I don't at all see how that disqualifies a roomba from having a subjectivity or being sentient or how the human equivalent of this is not also behavior causally linked with what registers on sensors.
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a roomba is explainable without subjectivity. I am not explainable without subjectivity. occam's razor.
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