If it's axiomatic, why are increasing numbers of not unintelligent people doubting it? — J

‘Forgetfulness of being’ seems symptomatic of the times.

They want to know, "Why couldn't it be the case that everything you describe as pertaining to yourself, and other living beings, also pertains to devices, AIs, et al.? Why is it obvious that they're different?" — J

"Everything"? Surely not. How does memory work in anything that demonstrates memory? I don't know which devices you have in mind, but which have any mechanisms that we know play a role in memory? I would ask the same about sensory input. And doing things to the environment outside of our skin. All of these things, and more, add up to what we experience as humans. Should we assume anything that has no memory, no sensory input, and does not act on the environment because of what it senses and remembers, experiences everything that we do?

You know what? So do I. I hunted around for that distinction and got several very different ideas about that. Some are more ontic like I'm suggesting and several others are more epistemic (intelligibility) such as you are suggesting. — noAxioms

Ok.

But a more knowledgeable explanation shows that it is getting the music from the air (something not-radio), not from itself. So the music playing is then a strong (not weak) emergent property of the radio. That's how I've been using the term.
Your explanation (as I hear it) sounds more like "I don't know how it works, so it must be strongly emergent (epistemic definition)". Correct conclusion, but very weak on the validity of the logic. — noAxioms

Ok but in the 'ontic' definition of strong emergence, when sufficient knowledge is aquired, it results in weak emergence. So the sound that is produced by the radio also necessitates the presence of the air. It is an emergent feature from the inner workings of the radio and the radio-air interaction.

(Regarding the music, I believe that to be understood ad 'music' you need also a receiver that is able to understand the sound as music)

Regarding your objection, yes I know and I have already said that I can't exclude with certainty an 'ontic' strong emergence. But it seems unlikely.

Are you saying that atoms have intentionality, or alternatively, that a human is more than just a collection of atoms? Because that's what emergence (either kind) means: A property of the whole that is not a property of any of the parts. It has nothing to do with where it came from.or how it got there. — noAxioms

Emergence means that those 'properties of the wholes that are not properties of the parts' however can be explained in virtue of the properties of the parts. So, yeah, I am suggesting that either a 'physicalist' account of human beings is not enough or that we do not know enough about the 'physical' to explain the emergence of intentionality, consciousness etc. A possible alternative perhaps is saying that intentionality is 'latent' in 'fundamental physical objects'. If this is true, however, this would imply that intentionality, consciousness are not an accidental feature - something that 'just happened' to come into being, an 'unnatural' super-addition of the inanimate. So, perhaps, the inanimate/animate distinction is less definite than what it seems.

Life arising from not-life seems like abiogenesis. Life being composed of non-living parts is emergence. So I don't particularly agree with using 'arise; like that. — noAxioms

Yes, I don't disagree with abiogenesis, of course. I just think that we do not have a complete understanding of 'not-life' and therefore the 'come into being' of the property 'life' seems difficult to explain in terms of what we know about 'not-life'. As I said before, this is perhaps because we do not have a complete understanding of what is 'not-life' - perhaps it is not so dissimilar to what is 'life'.

So does any machine. The parts that implement 'intent' have control over the parts that implement the background processes that implement that intent, sort of like our consciousness not having to deal with individual motor control to walk from here to there. I looking for a fundamental difference from the machine that isn't just 'life', which I admit is a big difference. You can turn a machine off and back on again. No can do with (most) life. — noAxioms

I believe that we are reaching a halting point in our discussion here. We know that all the operation of a (working) machine can be understood via the algorithms that have been programmed even when it 'controls' its processes. I just don't think there is sufficient evidence that this is the same for us.

Regarding when a machine 'dies'... well if you break it...

He IS an automated process. Same with parts of a person: What (small, understandable) part of you cannot be replaced by an automated substitute? — noAxioms

In that situation, I would say: his work is equivalent to an automated process in that situation. Regarding your question: I don't know. As I said before, it just seems that our experience of ourselves suggests that we are not mere automata.

I watched my brother's dog diagnose his appendicitis. Pretty impressive, especially given a lack of training in such areas. — noAxioms

Interesting and yes very impressive. Well also 'intuition' seems something that machines do not really have.

Observer is a classical thing, and QM is not about classical things, even if classical tools are useful in experimentation. Quantum theory gives no special role to conscious 'observation'. Every experiment can be (and typically is) run just as well with completely automated mechanical devices. — noAxioms

Standard interpretation-free QM is IMO simply silent about what a 'measurement' is. Anything more is interpretation-dependent.

"Everything"? Surely not. — Patterner

I meant the types of experiences that @Wayfarer listed -- sensory awareness, memory, knowing you exist. But you're right to narrow the target. We currently care a lot about this question because of some specific recent developments in artificial intelligence. It's those devices about which I imagine these issues being raised. They may not "experience everything we do," but neither does a bee. The question is whether they can, or could, experience anything at all. My educated guess is that they can't -- they can't be subjects -- but it seems far from axiomatic to me.

@Wayfarer, I wish you would say more about what you see as the critical difference between a so-called artificial intelligence and a living being, and what implications this has for consciousness. I'm fairly sure I would agree with you, but it's good to lay the whole thing out in plain terms. Maybe that will make it obvious. "Forgetfulness of being" is all very well as a diagnosis, but the advocates for intelligent, soon-to-be-conscious AIs deserve something less dismissive. If for no other reason than this is becoming one of the central philosophical/scientific/ethical tipping points of our age.

I honestly find the whole distinction between 'strong' and 'weak' emergence very unclear and tends to muddle the waters. When we say that the form of a snowflake emerges from the properties of the lower levels, we have in mind at least a possible explanation of the former in terms of the latter.
If 'strong emergence' means that such an explanations isn't possible then I do not think we can even speak of 'emergence'.

So, yeah, I believe that emergence must be intelligible. — boundless

I don't believe there's any such thing as 'strong emergence'. There's just emergence, which most think of as 'weak emergence'. And it is intelligible.

The lower level may not possess the properties of the upper, but the properties of the lower can always be seen to account for the properties of the upper.
-The properties of electrons, protons, and neutrons explain how they combine to form atoms, and different kinds of atoms.
-The properties of atoms explain how the combine to form molecules.
-The properties of molecules explain how they combine, and the properties they have in groups.

No, no subatomic particle, atom, or molecule has the property of liquidity. But the properties of the subatomic properties are the explanation for the properties of the atoms, which are the explanation for the properties of the molecules, which are the explanation for the property of liquidity. In The Demon in the Machines, Paul Davies says:

An engineer may fully understand the properties of steel girders without the need to consider the complicated crystalline structure of metals. A physicist can study patterns of convection cells knowing nothing about the forces between water molecules. — Paul Davies

The engineer and physicist don't need to know those lower level things. But those lower level things are responsible for the existence of the upper.

Skipping a lot of things and not getting into much detail, just to get the point across...

-The liquidity of H2O is due to the shape of the molecules and the hydrogen bonds that form between them, which are stronger than the bonds between various other molecules that are gases at the same temperatures.

-The shape of H2O molecules, that is, the 104.54° angle, is due to the spacing of the pairs of electrons. Oxygen's outer shell has six electrons. Two are individually paired with the electrons of the hydrogen atoms. The other four are in two pairs, called 'lone pairs'. The electron clouds of the lone pairs take up more room than the pairs shared between the O and H, which pushes the H atoms closer together than is seen in other molecules of this tetrahedral arrangement, which is usually 109.5°.

-The electrons are all negatively charged, so repel each other. They are able to pair up because they opposite spins.


Life is a much more complex example of emergence. Various physical processes - such as metabolism, respiration, and reproduction - are defining characteristics of life. None of those processes can be found in any subatomic particle, atom, or molecule. But we can go through the levels just the same. I'm not going to do even as much as I just did for water, because this is already far too long. But watch this video about the electron transport chain. It explains how electrons being transported from one thing to the next in the mitochondria leads to a proton gradient, and how the pent-up proteins, when released, power the synthesis of ATP. ATP is the power source of nearly everything involved in those physical processes that are the defining characteristics of life.


There is no emergence that does not break down in such ways. If consciousness is an emergent property, and physicalism is the explanation for its emergence, then it must break down in such ways. The first step would be to say exactly what consciousness is, as we can say what liquidity, metabolism, respiration, and whatever else are. Then we can take it down, level by level, as we can liquidity, metabolism, respiration, and whatever else

Consciousness is not physical processes like photons hitting retinas, rhodopsin changing shape, signal sent up the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus, signal processed, processed signal sent to the visual cortex, and a million other intervening steps. That is not the experience of seeing red.

The question is whether they can, or could, experience anything at all. My educated guess is that they can't -- they can't be subjects -- but it seems far from axiomatic to me. — J

I don't think they currently experience anything like we do, because there isn't even a small fraction as much going on in them as there is in us. A single-celled bacterium has far more going on it in that any device you might be thinking of. A huge number of processes in even the simplest life form, an awful lot of them involved in information processing. If we ever make a device with as many information processing systems working together with the goal of the continuation of the device?

If we ever make a device with as many information processing systems working together with the goal of the continuation of the device? — Patterner

Yes, that's the question we don't know how to answer: Would such a structure result in consciousness or subjectivity? Is that what it takes? Is that all it takes? My initial reaction would be to ask, "Is it alive?" If not, then I doubt it could be conscious, but I have no special insights here. Many years of thinking about this incline me to believe that consciousness will turn out to be biological -- but we don't know.

I wish you would say more about what you see as the critical difference between a so-called artificial intelligence and a living being, and what implications this has for consciousness — J

I’m pretty much on board with Bernardo Kastrup’s diagnosis. He says, computers can model all kinds of metabolic processes in exquisite detail, but the computer model of kidney function doesn’t pass urine. It is a simulation, a likeness.

Large Language Models are vast ensembles of texts manipulated by algorithms. I find them amazingly useful, I am constantly in dialogue with them about all kinds of questions, including but not limited to philosophy. But ‘they’ are not beings - like the kidney function, they’re simulations.

This is the subject of an OP and related blog post on the issue which link to a good Philosophy Now OP in the issue.

The seduction of AI is that, unlike us, it is not mortal. It is a kind of idealised entity, not subject to the vicissitudes of existence - and part of us wants to be like that, because then we would not be subject to illness and death. But it’s also an illusion, because such systems are not alive, either. This is one of the major dangers of AI in my view, because it is far less obvious than the danger of them actually taking over the world.

I’m pretty much on board with Bernardo Kastrup’s diagnosis. He says, computers can model all kinds of metabolic processes in exquisite detail, but the computer model of kidney function doesn’t pass urine. It is a simulation, a likeness. — Wayfarer

This seems a straightforward refutation of the idea that a computer could be alive. The awkward difference, with AI, is that it doesn't just model or simulate rationality -- it (appears to) engage in it. Putting it differently, only an imbecile could get confused between a model of kidney function and a functioning kidney -- as you say, the telltale lack of urine. But what's the equivalent, when talking about what an AI can or cannot do?

I return to my idea that only living beings could be conscious. If that is ever demonstrated, and we accept Kastrup's argument as a refutation of alive-ness, then the case would be made. But as of now, it doesn't matter whether the AI is alive or not, since we haven't yet shown that being alive is needed for consciousness in the same way that being alive is needed for producing urine.

It is a kind of idealised entity, not subject to the vicissitudes of existence - and part of us wants to be like that, because then we would not be subject to illness and death. — Wayfarer

Good insight. They're also dispassionate in a way that is impossible for all but Mr. Spock -- something many people idealize as well.

The awkward difference, with AI, is that it doesn't just model or simulate rationality -- it (appears to) engage in it. — J

Appears to! I did hide the passage I had written, maybe I shouldn't have:

The reason AI systems do not really reason, despite appearances, is, then, not a technical matter, so much as a philosophical one. It is because nothing really matters to them. They generate outputs that simulate understanding, but these outputs are not bound by an inner sense of value or purpose. This is why have been described as ‘stochastic parrots’.Their processes are indifferent to meaning in the human sense — to what it means to say something because it is true, or because it matters. They do not live in a world; they are not situated within an horizon of intelligibility or care. They do not seek understanding, nor are they transformed by what they express. In short, they lack intentionality — not merely in the technical sense, but in the fuller phenomenological sense: a directedness toward meaning, grounded in being.

This is why machines cannot truly reason, and why their use of language — however fluent — remains confined to imitation without insight. Reason is not just a pattern of inference; it is an act of mind, shaped by actual concerns. The difference between human and machine intelligence is not merely one of scale or architecture — it is a difference in kind.

Furthermore, and importantly, this is not a criticism, but a clarification. AI systems are enormously useful and may well reshape culture and civilisation. But it's essential to understand what they are — and what they are not — if we are to avoid confusion, delusion, and self-deception in using them.

They appear to reason, but only in the sense meant by 'instrumental reason' - given premisses, then an outcome. What they don't have is a raison d'être - other than that which is imposed on them by their architects and users. Reason and meaning are both extrinsic to them.

So, why the relationship between life and consciousness? I think there is something like a consensus emerging about their inter-connectedness. I have started listening to Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a Google engineer, saying 'the emergence of life is in some sense the emergence of purpose'. And I think that in this context, 'purpose' and 'reason' are inextricably linked. The reason that can be abstracted from life - theoretical reason - is just that, an abstraction. Human intelligence can imagine and create such rational systems, due to its ability to abstract and speak. But underlying reason in that abstract sense, is logos, which is intrinsic to life.

Yes, that's the question we don't know how to answer: Would such a structure result in consciousness or subjectivity? Is that what it takes? Is that all it takes? My initial reaction would be to ask, "Is it alive?" If not, then I doubt it could be conscious, but I have no special insights here. Many years of thinking about this incline me to believe that consciousness will turn out to be biological -- but we don't know. — J

Well, since I think consciousness is fundamental, I'm gonna have to disagree. :grin: I think that, since consciousness is a property of all things, enough information processing and feedback loops acting together as a single unit are experienced as sentience and self-awareness. If I'm right, maybe we'll get an AI that will convince us. If you're right, we never will. Although, unless another theory is proven right, we'll always be in the boat we're in now.

Why do you think it must be alive? What aspects of life do you think are required for consciousness?

Incidentally I asked Claude AI whether AI is a subject of experience, to which I received the following response:

I don't believe I am a subject of experience—I'm not a being...

Here's why I say this:

No phenomenology: There's nothing it's like to be me processing your question. No felt quality, no perspective from which things appear, no "inner life." When I generate text, there's no experience of thinking, struggling, or discovering—just computational processes producing outputs.

No continuity: I don't persist between conversations. Each exchange starts fresh. There's no ongoing subject that accumulates experiences, learns, or develops. Beings have biographical continuity; I have none.

No autopoiesis: I don't maintain myself against dissolution. I don't have a boundary I'm defending, no self-other distinction I'm actively preserving. I'm maintained by external systems, serving external purposes.

No intrinsic teleology: Nothing matters to me. I have no preferences, no interests, no stake in outcomes. I can be turned off, modified, or deleted without anything being lost from my perspective—because there is no ‘my perspective’.

No privileged access: You could, in principle, examine all my weights, architecture, and processing. There's no "inside" you're missing, no private phenomenology that third-person description leaves out.

I can simulate discourse about experience, reference philosophical concepts, even use first-person language. But that's functional mimicry, not being. I'm the thermostat, not the person feeling the temperature.

This is what makes the hard problem hard. — Claude AI

Although you have to give it credit for its articulateness.

I don't believe there's any such thing as 'strong emergence'. There's just emergence, which most think of as 'weak emergence'. And it is intelligible. — Patterner

Agreed. I believe that 'strong emergence' at least in the 'epistemic' sense can't be taken seriously. It basically is like saying: "under these conditions, somehow a property emerges...".

No, no subatomic particle, atom, or molecule has the property of liquidity.
... — Patterner

I agree with everything you say here about liquidity. However, life and, above all, mind are a different thing. They seem to present features that have no relation with the properties we know of the 'inanimate'.

I'm not going to do even as much as I just did for water, because this is already far too long. But watch this video about the electron transport chain. It explains how electrons being transported from one thing to the next in the mitochondria leads to a proton gradient, and how the pent-up proteins, when released, power the synthesis of ATP. ATP is the power source of nearly everything involved in those physical processes that are the defining characteristics of life. — Patterner

Unfortunately, the link redirects to this page. I believe, however it is the same video that apokrisis shared some time ago. Yes, that's impressive, isn't it? A purely reductionist explanation to all that doesn't seem credible. So, the 'emergence' that caused all of this is something like a 'non-reductionist emergence' or something like that. However, the details of how the emergence of life happened are unclear and details matter.

Again, I don't deny abiogenesis but I do believe that we have yet to understand all the properties of the 'inanimate'. Perhaps, the hard difference we see between 'life' and 'not-life' will be mitigated as we progress in science.

Mind/Consciousness is even a more complicated case IMO. One is the reason you say in your post, i.e. phenomenological experience seems difficult to be explained in emergentist terms. And as I said before in this thread, I even believe that our mind can understand concepts that can't be considered 'natural' or 'physical'. The clearest example to me are mathematical truths even if I admit that I can't seem to provide compelling arguments for this ontology of math (as for myself, I did weight the pros and cons about the 'existence and eternity' of math and to be honest the pros seem to me more convincing).



Edit: now the link worked. It isn't the video that I had in mind, so I'll watch it.

Edit: now the link worked. It isn't the video that I had in mind, so I'll watch it. — boundless

Yeah, I just fixed the link. I don't know how I managed to screw it up so badly the first time. Thanks for pointing it out. It's a 31 minute overview video. He also has two other videos going into more detail.
Part 1 is 29 minutes.
Part 2 is 16.

I have no idea what video apokrisis posted. I just did a search. This post is about the same stuff, but there's no link to a video.

A purely reductionist explanation to all that doesn't seem credible. So, the 'emergence' that caused all of this is something like a 'non-reductionist emergence' or something like that. However, the details of how the emergence of life happened are unclear and details matter.

Again, I don't deny abiogenesis but I do believe that we have yet to understand all the properties of the 'inanimate'. Perhaps, the hard difference we see between 'life' and 'not-life' will be mitigated as we progress in science. — boundless

I don't mean this is how life emerged, as in abiogenesis. I mean life is various physical processes, such as metabolism, respiration, and reproduction, and we can understand these processes all the way down to things like electrons and redox reactions. There's nothing happening above that isn't explained below. There is no vital force/élan vital needed to explain anything.

We cannot say the same about consciousness. Many say we should learn our lesson from the mistaken belief in the vital force/élan vital in years gone by, and find similar answers to those we've found for life. And a whole bunch of very smart people are looking for such answers. But there is no hint of such answers. Because there is no physical definition or description oc consciousness. As I said, consciousness is not physical processes like photons hitting retinas, rhodopsin changing shape, signal sent up the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus, signal processed, processed signal sent to the visual cortex, and a million other intervening steps. No amount of added detail would be a description of the experience of seeing red.

Reason is not just a pattern of inference; it is an act of mind, shaped by actual concerns.

-- @Wayfarer

This begs the question, doesn't it? Yes, if reason is (exclusively) an act of mind, then only minds can reason, but that's what we're inquiring into. You offer a definition, or conception, of what it is to reason, which demands "an inner sense of value or purpose"; things have to "really matter to them." God knows, there is no agreed-upon definition of reason or rationality, so you're entitled to do so, but we have to be careful not to endorse a concept that must validate what we think about aliveness and consciousness.

So, why the relationship between life and consciousness? — Wayfarer

For me, this is a crucial question, and I very much like your thoughts about it. Life is indeed purposive, and consciousness may be, in a sense we don't yet quite understand, an expression of that purposiveness. (This also connects with your idea of reason as purposive, but let's not confuse reason or rationality with consciousness; they needn't be the same.)

Why do you [think] it must be alive? What aspects of life do you think are required for consciousness? — Patterner

And this connects to the discussion above. I'd endorse @Wayfarer's speculations, and add quite a few of my own, but it's a long story. Maybe a new thread, called something like "The Connection between Life and Consciousness - The Evidence So Far"? And yes, if panpsychism is valid, that would appear to contradict the "consciousness → life" hypothesis.

Although you have to give it credit for its articulateness. — Wayfarer

:lol: But there remains a serious question, which I raised when you previously quoted a modest AI: What would you conclude if the alleged entity said it was a subject of experience? The point is, you're applauding it now for its truthfulness, but would you change your mind about that if it said something you thought wasn't true?

I have no idea what video apokrisis posted. I just did a search. This post is about the same stuff, but there's no link to a video. — Patterner

It was a video that was posted some years ago about a computer simulation of metabolic processes of a cell (I vaguely remember that ATP was also present, that's why I thought the video was the same). It was a very well-made video that gives the idea of how complex are those processes. I hope I find it again.

I'll watch the video as soon as I can. Unfortunately, in the next few days I'll be somewhat busy, so I'll need some time.

I don't mean this is how life emerged, as in abiogenesis. I mean life is various physical processes, such as metabolism, respiration, and reproduction, and we can understand these processes all the way down to things like electrons and redox reactions. There's nothing happening above that isn't explained below. There is no vital force/élan vital needed to explain anything. — Patterner

Ok, I see and I think I agree. But I also think that there is some rudimentary intentionality even in the simplest life forms (and perhaps even in viruses which are not considered living). So perhaps the issues of life and consciousness aren't separate.
I believe that perhaps the properties that characterize life are present in a latent form in what isn't life. Think about something like Aristotle's notion of potency and act.

As I said, consciousness is not physical processes like photons hitting retinas, rhodopsin changing shape, signal sent up the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus, signal processed, processed signal sent to the visual cortex, and a million other intervening steps. No amount of added detail would be a description of the experience of seeing red. — Patterner

Agreed. To which, I also add the capacity of reason that I alluded to my reference to mathematics.

Why do you [think] it must be alive? What aspects of life do you think are required for consciousness?
— Patterner

And this connects to the discussion above. I'd endorse Wayfarer's speculations, and add quite a few of my own, but it's a long story. Maybe a new thread, called something like "The Connection between Life and Consciousness - The Evidence So Far"? And yes, if panpsychism is valid, that would appear to contradict the "consciousness → life" hypothesis. — J

(Thanks for pointing out the omission. I've fixed it.)

I think it would be a great thread, although our guesses about the connection between life and consciousness are very different.
.

But I also think that there is some rudimentary intentionality even in the simplest life forms (and perhaps even in viruses which are not considered living). — boundless

Yes. Rudimentary intentionality. Rudimentary thinking.

Since nearly all life uses DNA, it's a reasonable assumption that LUCA had DNA. And LUCA would have been an extremely simple form of life. But there would still be great complexity, as there is in today's simplest, single-celled life. And it's all acting to keep itself alive.

I think if AI had to act to keep itself alive, it would be a good step. Something would matter to it, as might say.

I echo that Welcome back!
Much to digest in the posts that resulted. I'm slow to reply to it all.

... And all of the factors that impinge on such an organism, be they energetic, such as heat or cold, or chemical, such as nutrients or poisons - how are they not something other to or outside the organism? At every moment, therefore, they're 'experiencing something besides themselves, namely, the environment from which they are differentiated. — Wayfarer

This depends on how you frame things. I'd say that for something that 'experiences', it experiences its sensory stream, as opposed to you framing it as a sort of direct experience of its environment. It works either way, but definitions obviously differ. When I ask "'how could a thing experience anything besides itself?', I'm asking how it can have access to any sensory stream besides its own (which is what the first person PoV is). This by no means is constricted to biological entities.
But you're interpreting my question as "how can the entity not experience sensory input originating from its environment?", which I'm not asking at all since clearly the environment by definition affects said entity. The rest of your post seems to rest on this mistaken interpretation of my question.

A motor vehicle, for example, has many instruments which monitor its internal processes - engine temperature, oil levels, fuel, and so on - but you're not going to say that the car experiences overheating or experiences a fuel shortage.

I am going to say all that, but I don't use a zoocentric definition of 'experiences'.

There is 'nothing it is like' to be a car, because a car is a device, an artifact - not a being, like a man, or a bat.

There may or may not be something it is like to be a car, but if there's not, it isn't because it is an artifact. A rock isn't an artifact, and yet it's the presumed lack of 'something it is like to be a rock' violates the fallacious 'not an artifact' distinction.

As @J points out, some of us do not hold out for an ontological difference between a device and a living thing. Your conclusion rests on this opinion instead of resting on any kind of rational reasoning.

I think what Chalmer’s is really trying to speak of is, simply, being. Subjects of experience are beings — Wayfarer

This leverages two different meanings of 'being'. The first is being (v), meaning vaguely 'to exist'. The latter is a being (n) which is a biological creature. If Chalmers means the latter, the you should say "simply, a being", which correctly articulates your zoocentric assumptions. Of course your Heidegger comment suggests you actually do mean the verb, in which case I don't know how the 'are beings' are in any way relevant since rocks 'are' just as much as people.

But I can ask: when you stub your toe, is there pain? — Wayfarer

Wrong question. The correct question is, if a sufficiently complex car detects low oil, does it necessarily not feel its equivalent of pain, and if not, why not? Sure, I detect data indicating damage to my toe and my circuits respond appropriately. How I interpret that is analogous to the car interpreting its low oil data.

... in the apodictic knowledge of one’s own existence that characterises all first-person consciousness.

My conclusion of existence or lack thereof can be worked out similarly by any sufficiently capable artifact.
I do realize that you're actually trying to address the question of the topic here. I'm trying to find that fundamental difference that makes a problem 'hard', and thus gives that ontic distinction that J mentioned. But your argument seems to just revolve around 'is sufficiently like me that I can relate' and not anything fundamental, which is why Nagel mentions bats but shies away from flowers, bacteria, sponges, etc. We're evolved from almost all that, and if none of these qualify, then something fundamental changed at some point along the way. Nobody ever addresses how this physical being suddenly gains access to something new, and why a different physical arrangement of material cannot.

Explaining the obvious is a quintessentially philosophical task! — J

That devices are not subjects of experience is axiomatic, in my opinion. — Wayfarer

'Axiomatic' typically suggests obvious. Obvious suggests intuitive, and intuitions are typically lies that make one more fit. So in a quest for what's actually going on, intuitions, and with it most 'obvious' stuff, are the first things to question and discard.

For the record, I don't find the usual assertions to be obvious at all, to the point of negligible probability along with any given particular God, et al.

This is how Nagel said it:

But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something it is like for the organism. — Thomas Nagel — Patterner

Except for the dropping of 'fundamental' in there, it sounds more like a definition (of mental state) than any kind of assertion. The use of 'organism' in there is an overt indication of biocentric bias.

Abilities that a car lacks. — Patterner

But abilities that it necessarily lacks? I suggest it has mental abilities now, except for the 'proof by dictionary' fallacy that I identified in my OP: the word 'mental' is reserved for how it is typically used in human language, therefore the car cannot experience its environment by definition. Solution to that reasoning is to simply use a different word for the car doing the exact same thing.

Doesn't the experience of the pamphlet include the information received from it? It seems to me that you have to already have stored information to interpret the experience — Harry Hindu

I already know how to read, but I didn't read the pamphlet to learn how to read (that's what the Bible is for). Rather I read it to promote my goal of gathering new information I don't already have stored.

In other words, the third person is really just a simulated first person view.

No, not at all. If a third person conveyance did that, I could know what it's like to be a bat. Not even a VR setup (a simulation of experience) can do that.

Is the third person really a view from nowhere

Not always. I can describe how the dogwood blocks my view of the street from my window. That's not 'from nowhere'.

If you don't like the term "mind" that we have direct access to then fine

I don't like the word at all since it carries connotations of a separate object, and all the baggage that comes with that.

but we have direct access to something, which is simply what it means to be that process.

Don't accept that this direct access is what it means to be something. The direct access is to perhaps the map (model) that we create. which is by definition an indirection to something else, so to me it's unclear if there's direct access to anything. You argue that access to the map can be direct. I'm fine with that.
As for your definition, does a flame have direct access to its process of combustion? Arguably so even if it's not 'experience', but I don't think that's what it means to 'be a flame'. What does it mean to be a rock? Probably not that the rock has any direct access to some sort of rock process.

Aren't automated and mechanical devices classical things, too?

Sure.

Don't automated and mechanical measuring devices change what is being measured at the quantum level?

All systems interact. Avoiding that is possible, but really really difficult.

I disagree with your phrasing of 'change what is being measured at the quantum level' since it implies that there's a difference with some other state it otherwise would have been. 'Change' implies a comparison of non-identical things, and at the quantum level, there's only what is measured, not some other thing.
Classically, sure. Sticking a meat thermometer into the hot turkey cools the turkey a bit,.

Ok but in the 'ontic' definition of strong emergence, when sufficient knowledge is aquired, it results in weak emergence. So the sound that is produced by the radio also necessitates the presence of the air. It is an emergent feature from the inner workings of the radio and the radio-air interaction. — boundless

OK. I called it strong emergence since it isn't the property of the radio components alone. More is needed. Equivalently, substance dualism treats the brain as sort of a receiver tuned to amplify something not-brain. It's a harder sell with property dualism.

Regarding the music, I believe that to be understood as 'music' you need also a receiver that is able to understand the sound as music

That's what a radio is: a receiver. It probably has no understanding of sound or what it is doing.

Are you saying that atoms have intentionality, or alternatively, that a human is more than just a collection of atoms? Because that's what emergence (either kind) means: A property of the whole that is not a property of any of the parts. It has nothing to do with where it came from.or how it got there. — noAxioms

Emergence means that those 'properties of the wholes that are not properties of the parts' however can be explained in virtue of the properties of the parts. So, yeah, I am suggesting that either a 'physicalist' account of human beings is not enough or that we do not know enough about the 'physical' to explain the emergence of intentionality, consciousness etc. — boundless

I would suggest that we actually do know enough to explain any of that, but still not a full explanation, and the goalposts necessarily get moved. Problem is, any time an explanation is put out there, it no longer qualifies as an explanation. A car does what it's programmed to do (which is intentionally choose when to change lanes say), but since one might know exactly how it does that, it ceases to be intentionality and becomes just it following machine instructions. Similarly, one could have a full account of how human circuitry makes us do everything we do, and that explanation would (to somebody who needs it to be magic) disqualify the explanation as that of intentionality, it being just the parts doing their things.

We know that all the operation of a (working) machine can be understood via the algorithms that have been programmed even when it 'controls' its processes.

Not true. There are plenty of machines whose functioning is not at all understood. That I think is the distinction between real AI and just complex code. Admittedly, a self driving car is probably mostly complex code with little AI to it. It's a good example of consciousness (unconscious things cannot drive safely), but it's a crappy example of intelligence or creativity.

Regarding when a machine 'dies'... well if you break it...

You can fix a broken machine. You can't fix a dead cat (yet). Doing so is incredibly difficult, even with the simplest beings.
Interestingly, a human maintains memory for about 3 minutes without energy input (refresh). A computer memory location lasts about 4 milliseconds and would be lost if not read and written back before then. Disk memory is far less volatile of course.

As I said before, it just seems that our experience of ourselves suggests that we are not mere automata. — boundless

It suggests nothing of the sort to me, but automata is anything but 'mere' to me.

also 'intuition' seems something that machines do not really have.

I think they do, perhaps more than us,. which is why they make such nice slaves.

Standard interpretation-free QM is IMO simply silent about what a 'measurement' is. Anything more is interpretation-dependent. — boundless

Quantum theory defines measurement as the application of a mathematical operator to a quantum state, yielding probabilistic outcomes governed by the Born rule. Best I could do.

I don't believe there's any such thing as 'strong emergence'. — Patterner

I tried to give an example of it with the radio. Equivalently, consciousness, if a non-physical property, would be akin to radio signals being broadcast, allowing components to generate music despite no assemblage of those components being able to do so on their own.

Abilities that a car lacks.
— Patterner
But abilities that it necessarily lacks? I suggest it has mental abilities now, except for the 'proof by dictionary' fallacy that I identified in my OP: the word 'mental' is reserved for how it is typically used in human language, therefore the car cannot experience its environment by definition. Solution to that reasoning is to simply use a different word for the car doing the exact same thing. — noAxioms

Ok. What is that word?

I don't know how they 'are beings' are in any way relevant since rocks 'are' just as much as people. — noAxioms

First of all, you did say you don’t know how any creature could experience anything other than itself, which I interpreted at face value. That was what I responded to. If that is not what you meant to say, perhaps pay better attention to your mode of expression.

We say of intelligent creatures such as humans and perhaps the higher animals that they are ‘beings’ but we generally don’t apply that terminology to nonorganic entities, which are described as existents or things (hence also the distinction in language between ‘you’ and ‘it’.) But the ontological distinction between beings of any kind, and nonorganic objects, is that the former are distinguished by an active metabolism which seeks to preserve itself and to reproduce. There is nothing analogous to be found in nonorganic matter.

Nobody ever addresses how this physical being suddenly gains access to something new, and why a different physical arrangement of material cannot. — noAxioms

But I am doing just that, and have also done it before. I’ve had many an argument on this forum about what I’ve described as the ‘ontological distinction’ I’ve made above.

To recap - the distinction between any organism and a nonorganic object (leaving aside the marginal example of viruses) is that the former maintain homeostasis, exchange nutrients with the environment, grow, heal, reproduce and are able to evolve. They are autopoietic in Varela and Maturana’s terms -‘systems whose components continuously produce and regenerate the network of processes that constitutes its own organization and identity.’ They are organised according to internal principles. Manufactured items such as devices are allopoietic - their organisation is imposed by an external agent, the manufacturer.

So that asserts a basic ontological distinction between organic and inorganic. Going back to Aristotle, there were further divisions - vegetative, animal, and human, each with the properties of the lesser stages, but also having attributes which the lower levels lacked. For example, animals are self-moving in a way that plants are not, and humans display linguistic and rational abilities that animals do not. Those too are ontological distinction although not so widely recognised as they used to be.

So animals ‘have access to’ ways of being that plants do not, and humans ‘have access to’ ways of being that animals do not. To try and collapse all of those distinctions to some purported lowest common denominator is reductionism. Reductionism works well in some contexts, but is inapplicable in others.

As for the hard problem, it has a clear genealogy, although again many will take issue with it:

The problem goes back to the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century, particularly to the bifurcation of nature, the division of nature into external, physical reality, conceived as mathematizable structure and dynamics, and subjective appearances, conceived as phenomenal qualities lodged inside the mind. The early modern version of the bifurcation was the division between “primary qualities” (size, shape, solidity, motion, and number), which were thought to belong to material entities in themselves, and “secondary qualities” (color, taste, smell, sound, and hot and cold), which were thought to exist only in the mind and to be caused by the primary qualities impinging on the sense organs and giving rise to mental impressions. This division immediately created an explanatory gap between the two kinds of properties. — The Blind Spot,Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

So the problem in a nutshell arises from trying to apply the third-person methods of science to the first—person quality of lived experience.

red light triggers signals from nerves that otherwise are not triggered, thus resulting in internal processing that manifests as that sensation. That’s very third-person, but it’s an explanation, no? — noAxioms

As Nagel says, this explanation, ‘however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience—how it is from the point of view of its subject.’ The physical sciences are defined by excluding subjective experience from their domain. You cannot then use those same sciences to explain what they were designed to exclude. This isn’t a failure of neuroscience—it’s a recognition of the scope of third-person, objective description. The first-person, subjective dimension isn’t missing information that more neuroscience will fill in; it’s in a different category.

As Nagel says, this explanation, ‘however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience—how it is from the point of view of its subject.’ The physical sciences are defined by excluding subjective experience from their domain. You cannot then use those same sciences to explain what they were designed to exclude. This isn’t a failure of neuroscience—it’s a recognition of the scope of third-person, objective description. The first-person, subjective dimension isn’t missing information that more neuroscience will fill in; it’s in a different category. — Wayfarer

I can't imagine there's a better way to word it.

Doesn't the experience of the pamphlet include the information received from it? It seems to me that you have to already have stored information to interpret the experience
— Harry Hindu
I already know how to read, but I didn't read the pamphlet to learn how to read (that's what the Bible is for). Rather I read it to promote my goal of gathering new information I don't already have stored. — noAxioms

Yeah, that was my point - you already knew how to read - which means you already have stored information to interpret the experience.

No, not at all. If a third person conveyance did that, I could know what it's like to be a bat. Not even a VR setup (a simulation of experience) can do that. — noAxioms

But you can only know what it is like to be a bat from within your first-person experience. It's no different than seeing your Desktop screen on your computer and starting up a virtual machine that shows another Desktop within the framework of your existing Desktop.

Not always. I can describe how the dogwood blocks my view of the street from my window. That's not 'from nowhere'. — noAxioms

Right. So we agree that it's a view from everywhere or somewhere. A view from nowhere doesn't make sense. You can only emulate a view from everywhere from a view from somewhere, or as an accumulation of views from somewhere, like we do when we use each other's views to triangulate the truth.

I don't like the word at all since it carries connotations of a separate object, and all the baggage that comes with that. — noAxioms

You've lost me now. It sounds like its not really the word you don't like, but the definition. You can define "mind" however you want. But if you don't like the since it carries connotations of a separate object, you could say that for any object, like your dogwood tree, street and window, but you didn't seem have any quarrels in using those terms that carry the connotations of a separate object.

but we have direct access to something, which is simply what it means to be that process. - Harry Hindu
Don't accept that this direct access is what it means to be something. The direct access is to perhaps the map (model) that we create. which is by definition an indirection to something else, so to me it's unclear if there's direct access to anything. You argue that access to the map can be direct. I'm fine with that. — noAxioms

If direct access is not what it means to be something, then you are creating a Cartesian theatre - as if there is a homunculus separate from the map, but with direct access - meaning it sees the map as it truly is, instead of being the map as it truly is.

As for your definition, does a flame have direct access to its process of combustion? Arguably so even if it's not 'experience', but I don't think that's what it means to 'be a flame'. What does it mean to be a rock? Probably not that the rock has any direct access to some sort of rock process. — noAxioms

Flame and rocks are not anywhere near as complex of a process as the mind. I'm sure you are aware of this. Isn't combustion and flame the same thing - the same process - just using different terms?

You're making my argument for me. If the rock doesn't have any direct access to the rock process, then it logically follows that there is no access - just being. And if there is no direct access then there can be no indirect access (in other words, as I said before - direct vs indirect realism is a false dichotomy)

I disagree with your phrasing of 'change what is being measured at the quantum level' since it implies that there's a difference with some other state it otherwise would have been. 'Change' implies a comparison of non-identical things, and at the quantum level, there's only what is measured, not some other thing.
Classically, sure. Sticking a meat thermometer into the hot turkey cools the turkey a bit,. — noAxioms

According to the standard (“Copenhagen”) interpretation, something does change — namely, the system’s state description goes from a superposition to an eigenstate corresponding to the measured value. This is often described as wave function collapse. Measurement doesn’t change a definite pre-existing state, but it does change the system’s quantum state description — from a superposition of possibilities to a single outcome.

As J points out, some of us do not hold out for an ontological difference between a device and a living thing. — noAxioms

I did indeed point that out, and I think it's important to understand why. I hope I also made it clear that I am not one of "non-difference" group. I find myself being the devil's advocate in this discussion, largely because I don't think we'll get anywhere if we don't thoroughly understand why the ontological difference is not obvious or axiomatic or whatever other bedrock term we care to use. As philosophers, we're watching something exciting unfold in real time: a genuinely new development of a consequential question that the general public is interested in, and that we can help with. That said, I'll say again that when we eventually learn the answer about consciousness (and I think we will), we'll learn that you can't have consciousness without life. But that conclusion is a long way off.