Artificial-intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) can exhibit behaviour that seems strikingly intelligent. This has led many people, including some experts, to wonder whether these systems could have some form of consciousness — the capacity for subjective experience. However, we think that existing AI systems are not conscious, and that, along current trajectories of development, they are not likely to become conscious. Greater clarity about whether AI could become consciousness will be crucial as society grapples with the challenges posed by this increasingly powerful technology.
You insist that words derive their meaning from social usage, then declare “what it’s like” meaningless by dissecting its individual words into “similar being.” That’s not a serious linguistic argument. You’re contradicting your own account of how language works.
Likewise, a rock “experiencing erosion” and a person experiencing pain involve two different meanings of “experience.” One means undergoing a physical change; the other involves feeling something. You’re equivocating between them. And a camera has a vantage point, too. That doesn’t mean it has subjective experience.
Nothing I’ve argued requires consciousness to be nonphysical or inexplicable. A physical explanation of pain doesn’t negate the existence of felt pain. The question is what produces that experience and how we can reliably identify it in other systems.
I incorrectly attributed someone else’s quantum-collapse proposal to you, I retract that. I see that was from the original commenter, not you.
But here’s the fundamental issue: Do you actually deny there’s a distinction between a nervous system detecting harmful stimuli and someone consciously feeling pain?
Because if you recognize that distinction, you already understand what phenomenon we’re investigating. Disputing the terminology doesn’t make it disappear.
That is literally not what I said at all.
Maybe for you it is, but then you’d need to explain why it is different, other than the subjects and objects being different.
So… this “consciousness” is not monphysical… but feelings aren’t physical changes… right.
Why would a physical explanation negate the existence of a physical event?
Reality is not something “produced.” It just is what it is.
If the nervous system in question is a person, and the harmful stimuli is pain, it is one and the same.
In your earlier reply, during the banana analogy:
You followed that with:
That’s the basis for my characterization.
The contradiction is in your subsequent argument, where you reject the expression “what it is like” by interpreting its individual words literally:
Youre treating an established philosophical expression as meaningless because its individual words don’t yield the intended meaning under their preferred literal interpretation.
Yet you previously acknowledged that meaning emerges from how language is used socially, rather than strictly from dictionary definitions.
Okay. Glad we found the dilemma. I disagree, but I’m also too tired right now. That will be all, then.
You are just delusional, literally hallucinating things I never wrote. Nowhere in anything I wrote did I claim that I am rejecting it as meaningless “because its individual words don’t yield the intended meaning under their preferred literal interpretation.”. I never said that, I never implied that, I never gave the impression of implying that, and I never had the air of the impression of implying that.
You are literally just hallucinating things never written.
Calling me “delusional” doesn’t erase what you wrote. Let’s review the evidence you’re so determined to ignore.
You declared the expression meaningless, then dissected its constituent words to argue that its literal interpretation makes no sense. That’s a characterization of your reasoning, not a fabricated quotation. I never claimed it was your only objection.
In that very same comment, you wrote:
I identified the inconsistency between your appeal to social usage and your literal dissection of an established expression. You haven’t explained that inconsistency, let alone resolved it.
Instead, after being presented with direct quotations, you’ve resorted to categorical denials and personal insults. Repeating that an interpretation was “hallucinated” doesn’t demonstrate that it’s false. You need to show where the inference fails. You’ve done nothing of the sort.
If you can’t distinguish between quoting someone’s words and critically examining their implications, you have no business lecturing anyone about language or reasoning.
I’ve provided the evidence twice. I’m not wasting a third explanation on someone whose entire rebuttal amounts to “I never said that” and “you’re delusional.” Get your shit together.
Yes, so I analyzed both its social use, and its literal word meaning, and found no meaning in either… so I concluded it has no meaning.
That doesn’t establish your claim that I conclude it has no meaning only because the literal definitions of the words have no meaning. You just hallucinated something that never happened and was never said.
Again, a complete hallucination of something I objectively did not say. You are just inventing idiotic straw men argument and doubling and tripling-down on them.
You laughably say I claim X, then quote me literally saying ¬X, and then claim I’m “contradicting” myself, when your delusional ass invented that I said X to begin with!
Because you’re a subhuman bug who cannot have a meaningful conversation and just wants to deflect to idiotic hallucinations.
Now, you want to say I need to prove I didn’t say X! What a laughable shift of the burden of proof! How on earth do I prove I never wrote something? Just copy/paste everything I have ever typed in my entire life into one giant document? How does that even work?
If you want to claim I said something, you need to show evidence that I said it.
Ah yes, you cannot quote me saying X, but you can “critically examine” my words to derive that I must’ve been secretly thinking X despite never having written it… right.
You have never provided a shred of evidence.
Your claim is X: that I claimed that the phrase has no meaning only because its literal definition has no meaning.
You quote me saying two things:
You then, after quoting me saying Y and ¬X, claim I’m “contradicting” myself because your “critical examination” allows you to read my mind and conclude I intended to write X!
You’re just a fucking idiot, and I cannot believe I have allowed such a monkey to waste this much of time to begin with.
The contradiction claim was wrong. You can examine literal meaning and social usage without contradicting yourself. I withdrew that objection.
Regardless
You attributed that position to me immediately after quoting my explicit statement that nothing I’d argued required consciousness to be nonphysical. Distinguishing a rock undergoing erosion from someone feeling pain does not place either event outside physics. My point was that undergoing a physical change is not, by itself, the same as feeling something. You turned that into a denial that feelings are physical, then mocked the position you’d supplied.
Your earlier “Experience is not subjective. It is contextual” doesn’t establish an incompatibility, either. I’m using “subjective” to describe experience as felt by the subject—not a supernatural property. Explaining how perception depends on someone’s body, memories and circumstances is compatible with that description. Rejecting a nonphysical explanation doesn’t rebut a position that never required one.
Your answer stipulated a person and described the harmful stimulus as pain. But building pain into the premise doesn’t establish when detecting harmful input amounts to feeling pain. The International Association for the Study of Pain explicitly states:
Nociception is the nervous system’s encoding of potentially damaging stimuli. Distinguishing that from pain doesn’t disprove a physical account of consciousness, but it shows that the distinction I raised has a concrete scientific use. Saying both are physical does not make them interchangeable; saying pain is physical does not identify which physical processes constitute it.
Then there’s your claim that I said:
That was your characterization of my question about whether a verbal-report test actually identifies experience. The passage you quoted asks whether that connection is established—not whether establishing it is impossible. Asking how to validate a proposed test is not backpedalling from a definition. Nor does saying something isn’t directly observable rule out indirect evidence. You inserted permanent impossibility into an open question, then ridiculed me for it.
Your valid criticism deserved a concession, and got one. It does not make those other attributions accurate. Calling me a “subhuman bug” isn’t what makes them wrong; the passages above are.
For all the lectures about straw men, you’ve supplied several of your own: for two, a nonphysical position I expressly rejected and an impossibility claim I never made. I’ve corrected my bad argument. Your contempt is not a substitute for correcting yours.
Shame, I don’t seem to mind.
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