What is your definition of an "internal experience"?
The videogame Pong has an in-memory simulation of the playfield. Is it "experiencing" the game?
The videogame Pong has an in-memory simulation of the playfield. Is it "experiencing" the game?
Some people do claim that the concept is meaningless, that none of this exists, because it’s so hard to talk about. I think that’s a map-territory confusion. It seems clear to me that the fact that I have an internal experience is the only thing I have direct personal evidence of; everything I observe beyond that is in part an inference from the observed phenomena of qualia. I can’t prove them to anyone else, but other people talk as if they’re experiencing them too, so that’s at least something.
The fact that this is so difficult to define and discuss is exactly the problem. To your question, what happens to my physical brain has a profound effect on my internal experience, and it seems that my ability to reason about my experiences is somehow integrated in the experiences themselves. So it seems very unlikely that a game of pong has any experience, or if it does, it seems likely that it’s so extremely poorly glued together that it might as well not be an experience. You could ask the same question about an insect.
I find it really troubling that we have so little idea where this comes from, but I find it more troubling that people are so quick to dismiss it, simply because the subject is difficult to pin down.
Well, yes. I'm not sure about Pong specifically, but in many games with computer controlled entities, the game AI for each entity simulates what the entity "knows" about the world, which is different from the simulated world state itself.
(Also, at least according to Wikipedia, sentience is distinct from self-awareness. The former only requires the existence of a subjective experience, not necessarily self-reflection.)
I'm not sure I buy the "sentience without self-awareness" concept. First, defining it as "subjective experience" seems circular, and second, reflex actions like e.g. plants moving towards the light or reacting against a parasite would count as subjective experience; in the extreme, even a blind chemical reaction like fire could fall under that definition.
Honest question -- what do you think is going on inside of babies and children? Self-awareness as a developmental process is complex and relational, and takes many years. Our senses though are more or less put together by puberty, built up by simple interactions with the world.
Simpler animals like wasps and worms don't seem to have those, or have really simple versions; their behaviours look more like following hardwired programs reacting to specific conditions, not influenced by some inner "mind state".
On the other hand, it is not a knowledge of precision. You cannot predict exactly what thoughts you will have in the future or what ideas you will have before you have them.