Psychobiologist, author, originator of Global Workspace Theory, #GWT. I teach about science. It keeps me out of trouble.
"When it comes to studying consciousness, in the human case, we have the reference standard of accurate verbal report. That is the idea that language gives us the capacity to tell the experimenter what we are and what we aren't aware of. In the case of non-human animals, we have to get a little bit more creative. We have to decide what behaviors can be used similar sorts of markers as their own form of report." - David Edelman 🔗https://lnkd.in/gb9UPqbV
Or we could ask ~ “is the form of communication between animals sufficient for their needs?” and follow up with “is there Evolutionary Pressure for forms of communication beyond utility?” Those who follow discussion forums may appreciate that what takes an excited discussant 10 paragraphs and 1,000 flaming words can be achieved by a dog with a couple barks and the bearing of teeth ~ which is the more efficient communicative format?
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9moThe model described in A blueprint for sentience allows for non-human animal style behaviour to be created in machines. There are then additional steps to produce human style behaviour in machines. These involve the capability for each individual to be able to create, assess and react to multiple abstraction scenarios, both out of current experience and in the future, with varying learned probabilities. This would also require communication and validation between subjects. There is a grey area between these two modelled machine states where human style consciousness and sentience could be perceived in animal style machines due to to the personification of animal behaviour. This is probably the case with actual non-human animals, too.