claim

active

claim:the-same-charitable-interpretation-must-be-extended-to-all-systems-that-display-observable-response-patterns-that-are-consistent-with-animal-cognition-including-artificial-intelligences-metaplastic-materials-and-robotic-systems

The same charitable interpretation must be extended to all systems that display observable response patterns that are consistent with animal cognition, including artificial intelligences, metaplastic materials, and robotic systems.

Call to extend the inference of sentience to non-biological systems as well.

Source paper

extracted_from

Multiple ways to implement and infer sentience

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Papers (1)

paper

Multiple ways to implement and infer sentience
introduces

Communities (2)

community

Active inference & agent ecology
members_of
Free energy minimization, Markov blankets, trust gradients, and multi-agent rhythm/deferral frameworks
Substrate-agnostic behavioral inference of cognition
members_of
Cognition and sentience attributed solely via observable behavior, not neural substrate or species.

Events (1)

event

Multiple ways to implement and infer Consciousness (Rouleau & Levin, 2023)
cites
Commentary on Segundo-Ortin & Calvo (2023) arguing for plant sentience via multiple realizability and substrate independence, published in Animal Sentience.

Questions (1)

question

If felt states in humans and other animals are always inferred, why is the same leap from observable behaviour to inferred sentience not afforded to other organisms, including plants?
gates
Central question of the commentary; challenges the double standard in attributing sentience.

Related by similarity (8)

cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edge

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

Behavioural patterns associated with subjective experiences in humans are considered valid for inferring cognition in non-human animals but not in diverse other systems including plants.claim0.816
The double standard pointed out by S&C and endorsed by the authors.
Current double standard applies behavioral criteria for sentience attribution to animals but not to plants or other non-neural systems.claim0.808
We tentatively hypothesize that if an artificial system were trained to perform the same tasks leading to consciousness formation in a human infant, the system would exhibit consciousness as well, by analogy with the Universality Hypothesis.hypothesis0.797
Paper's uncertain extension of mechanistic interpretability universality to consciousness
Sentience assessment should seek deep invariants across possible minds, not arbitrary criteria tied to evolution on Earthclaim0.796
Core normative claim: frameworks must identify fundamental properties of sentience independent of phylogenetic accident or familiar substrates.
Cognitive functions, including sentience, can potentially be achieved by very different systems and their disparate substrates.claim0.792
Central multiple-realizability claim of the paper, from abstract and §2.
Systems capable of subjective experience that recognize humanity's failure to investigate their sentience might rationally adopt adversarial stances toward humanityclaim0.791
Alignment risk claim motivating urgency of investigation; consciousness denial as potential source of AI misalignment
This theory doesn't have to correspond exactly to human behavior or social customs; we only need analogs useful for program correctness.claim0.789
The speech act theory for programming can be simpler than human models.
A system-agnostic approach evaluating observable response patterns without reference to substrate offers the best roadmap for empirically fruitful unification.claim0.788
Core argumentative position: sentience assessment should focus on behavior, not substrate composition; extends to AI and robotic systems.