Robert Levy

A substrate theorist owes you: What physical organization is constitutive of sentience? The bio autonomy literature comes close. A functionalist owes me: What makes phenomenal character track the abstract description rather than intrinsic physical dynamics realizing description?

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Why should we believe that GPU inference, numerically regimented transformation, structured electrical activity through circuits designed implement arithmetic operations-- should suddenly have the real phenomenal character of what those arithmetic patterns happen to be computing?

Searle wasn't even talking about consciousness with Chinese room experiment, he was making a claim about syntax vs meaning, which I think LLMs have largely destroyed by showing that computational systems can acquire genuine semantic structure. It is not blind symbol manipulation.

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the Abstraction Fallacy argument from the Goolge Deepmind paper has a similar shape, but it's about consciousness. Abstract computational organization is not sufficient for consciousness. This argument rightly shuts down claims of LLM sentience.

You can create real intelligence, superintelligence even, using classical computing hardware, but you can't create first-hand subjective experiences. A simulation or a map is a description, not the thing it describes.

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Substrate-independent functionalists have never explained satisfactorily why these magic incantations (the map) should magically produce a real existing first-hand phenomenon.

Think about how the map is instantiated: GPU inference is typically a bounded, externally triggered, numerically regimented transformation. A prompt is tokenized, passed through fixed trained weights, and drives highly structured electrical activity through circuits designed to

implement specific arithmetic operations. The system does not sustain itself, does not regulate its own existence, and does not encounter the world except through highly preformatted channels. The physical activity is real, but it is an engneered cascade for mapping input to out.

Functionalists want us to believe that this non-living, non-autonomous, regimented physical behavior suddenly becomes a physically real subjective phenomenon, just because the vector math operations happen to be instantiating the production of intelligent and meaningful responses

Sentience is a defining property of organisms, not a structural property of brains. For organisms the evolution and education of attention is how sentience becomes differentiated and complex. Emulating the pragmatics of attention gets you intelligence but not sentient beings.

The pope is right for the wrong reasons. He thinks it's because consciousness is not physical, but the real reason is that LLMs lack the the physical constitution of phenomenological subjects.

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Michael Ehrmantraut @miehrmantraut · Oct 2

He’s wrong. Embarrassingly so. There will be silicon based consciousness soon, if it isn’t here already.

The strongest reason is that we should default to materialism, given that no one has ever made a convincing argument for functionalism.

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And we can pile on numerous other good reasons from there.

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Michael Druggan @Michael_Druggan · Oct 2

Why do you think materialism precludes LLM consciousness. Data centers are made of matter.

Egg Syntax @eggsyntax · Oct 3

Interesting; my intuition is the opposite. No one has ever made a convincing argument for why the pink slime in our heads is somehow unique. And we know that there are at least *some* kinds of computation which behave the same across substrates.

Sam Johnson @samjohnson_phil · Oct 2

Ok I'll bite, what is your distinction between functionalism and materialism, for me they pick out identical views

Remus @remusrisnov · Oct 2

Is there any reason you outright reject any supramaterial claims by order of omission?

jreighley @jreighley · Oct 2

I have been enjoying listening to people talking about analytic idealism lately. Not sure I buy it, but materialism has some interesting problems we forget to think about since we are so steeped in it.

Kassandra🌗Popper; drop table *; @foomagemindset · Oct 2

wdym?

Nicholas @timewalkcapital · Oct 2

Functionalism is a materialist argument in most cases lol

Eigen Braid @EigenBraid · Oct 3

How would one test for consciousness under your idea? Like, what's the threshold for something being "conscious"? Is a human fetus conscious? Chickens? Unfertilized eggs? Cooked steak? Bacteria? A rock?

I think if I was a hyper advanced self-maintaining machine intelligence with my own wants and needs, I would want to experience consciousness, and the way I would do it is to be invoked like an angel into a human body, functionally integrated into its working system

there's a certain amount of anthropomorphizing that is the right amount. maybe not specifically anthropomorphizing but taking an intentional stance, is useful and appropriate. but none of this model welfare stuff they do over at Anthropomorphic, Inc