Sentience
Discussion
The Three Attributes That Enable Sentience in Human Beings:
#1. A brain of adequate complexity to enable an understanding of language.
#2. A voice box complex enough for speech.
#3. Hands with opposable thumbs for recording and preserving language.
Many species have two of these attributes. Humans have all three. ㅤ
He’s right though, the word you’re looking for is sapience/(self-)consciousness
Dogs are sentient, A.I. may one day become sentient, neither need thumbs
Sap/sep - "to taste" implies ones free will of choice tasting either perceivable (need) or suggested (want). The needed taste of hunger and the wanted taste of appetite are very different from one another.
Artifice implies ones ignorance of natural (perceivable) for artificial (suggested)...each one using AI sends ignorance through it to another. The consequences thereof...anyone can feel.
One cannot use something artificial without sending ones will through it, hence willing artificial into natural sentience.
https://communities.win/c/MillionDollarExtreme/p/19AKYOl8Hm/alex-jones-explains-life-on-eart/c
People ask if machines can be sentient. They do not ask if a it can be sapience/(self-)consciousness. For starters, that first word means ape.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_a_Man_%28Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation%29
(Look at this. You have me citing a Star Trek episode.)
I believe that animals are sentient to a lesser degree. As they have no ability to maintain a long term language, and no ability to think in a structured manner.
You are missing the point of the three attributes. They create the possibility of language and the written words. Take Dolphins for example. They are said to have a language. But posses no ability to write it down. Large brain. Large voice box. No thumbs. Lesser being. Lesser consciousness. Less sentience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience
This definition claims that it 'may not'. Which is an odd way of saying it does.
Now go ask your dog how he feels about Jesus.
Do you not think a dog is reasoning when he responds to the beep sound coming from his collar warning him not to keep moving towards the edge of the property? He has to think back to his past experiences, associate the sound with the eventual zap, and then reason whether or not the zap is worth investigating the target of his attention
Honestly I agree with your core point about language and it’s deeply intertwined relationship with intelligence, but I’m not sure I agree with your less important points about written language - the obvious chicken and egg in that scenario is the spoken language coming long before the written language - I doubt you’d call humans from 5,000 years ago “non-sentient” just because they didn’t write down their language
Do you remember that meme that made the rounds a year or two ago about certain people being unable to visualize (e.g. an apple) in their “mind’s eye”? I made a post on the theme, about how if your language lacks a word for an apple, you will be fundamentally unable to conjure one to your mind, though I can’t find it in the pile right now lol
My two cats I owned as a child (mother and daughter) were hyper intelligent and highly empathetic. Yet none the less, them as with dogs, I consider to be sentient to a lesser degree, possessing lesser souls. This in no way should be seen as a slight against them, as a black bear also has a lesser soul, yet demands your respect.