Sorry I think I may have explained this badly. The point is that the neural network has no actual aversiveness in its model of the world. There’s no super meaningful difference here between the neural network and Gilbert that was never my point. The point is that gilbert is only sensitive to certain types of input, but he has no awareness of what the input does to him. Gilbert / the neural network only experiences: something happens to my body → something else happens to my body + i react a certain way, he / the network has no model of / access to why that happens, there is no actual aversiveness in the system at all, only a learnt disposition to react in certain ways in certain contexts.
Its like when a human views a subliminal stimuli, that stimuli creates a disposition to act in certain ways, but the person is not aware of their own sensitivity, and thus there is no experience of it, it is ‘subconscious’ / ‘implicit’. Gilbert / the network is the same way, he is sensitive to pain, but is not aware of the pain in the same sort of way. Does this make sense? Perhaps I will edit the post to include this explanation if that would help.
I understand that, but I’m still asking why subliminal stimuli are not morally relevant for you? They may still create disposition to act in aversive way, so there is still mechanism in some part the brain/neural network that causes this behaviour and has access to the stimulus—what’s the morally significant difference between a stimulus being in some neurons and being in others, such that you call only one location “awareness”?
There is a mechanism in the brain that has access to / represents the physical damage. There is no mechanism in the brain that has access to / represents the aversive response to the physical damage since there is no meta-representation in first-order systems. Thus not a single part of the nervous system at all represents aversiveness, it can be found nowhere in the system.
First, you can still infer meta-representation from your behavior. Second, why does it matter that you represent aversiveness, what’s the difference? Representation of aversiveness and representation of damage are both just some states of neurons that model some other neurons (representation of damage still implies possibility of modeling neurons, not only external state, because your neurons are connected to other neurons).
Sorry I think I may have explained this badly. The point is that the neural network has no actual aversiveness in its model of the world. There’s no super meaningful difference here between the neural network and Gilbert that was never my point. The point is that gilbert is only sensitive to certain types of input, but he has no awareness of what the input does to him. Gilbert / the neural network only experiences: something happens to my body → something else happens to my body + i react a certain way, he / the network has no model of / access to why that happens, there is no actual aversiveness in the system at all, only a learnt disposition to react in certain ways in certain contexts.
Its like when a human views a subliminal stimuli, that stimuli creates a disposition to act in certain ways, but the person is not aware of their own sensitivity, and thus there is no experience of it, it is ‘subconscious’ / ‘implicit’. Gilbert / the network is the same way, he is sensitive to pain, but is not aware of the pain in the same sort of way. Does this make sense? Perhaps I will edit the post to include this explanation if that would help.
I understand that, but I’m still asking why subliminal stimuli are not morally relevant for you? They may still create disposition to act in aversive way, so there is still mechanism in some part the brain/neural network that causes this behaviour and has access to the stimulus—what’s the morally significant difference between a stimulus being in some neurons and being in others, such that you call only one location “awareness”?
There is a mechanism in the brain that has access to / represents the physical damage. There is no mechanism in the brain that has access to / represents the aversive response to the physical damage since there is no meta-representation in first-order systems. Thus not a single part of the nervous system at all represents aversiveness, it can be found nowhere in the system.
First, you can still infer meta-representation from your behavior. Second, why does it matter that you represent aversiveness, what’s the difference? Representation of aversiveness and representation of damage are both just some states of neurons that model some other neurons (representation of damage still implies possibility of modeling neurons, not only external state, because your neurons are connected to other neurons).