I was thinking of the problem is the most simple way in mathematics. Usually our models are mathematical, so the simple model would be y=f(x) where the function, the algorithm, here is the thing that explains the change, right? — ssu

Well, I can't tell. It's too general. Even after your elaboration of it, it's too theoretical for me. I love Math but not so muach on a theoretical level.

The problem is that when the aggregate of economics decisions of all players in the economy make is affected by the model itself that tries to explain there actions, where then is objectivity? — ssu

Right. I have taken a two-semester course of Economics in college and I loved it. Everything was very clear to me. Everything made sense. A few years later, I couldn't explain anything regarding economic situations, like relationships between unemployment and inflation, inflation and bank interest rates, the effects os stock markets and all that stuff. Nothing made sense to me anymore! :smile:

Only in some situations you can find a solution. But if the feedback loop is self-referrential and negative, there is no answer. — ssu

Of course.

And lastly, I think it's obvious that self-reference plays a crucial part in consciousness. — ssu

If you mean self-consciousness, or better self-awareness, I believe yes, it plays a crucial role. Esp. in distiguishing humans from other beings.

What about a ball? Or a pencil? :smile:
"Stone" was just an example, Patterner. Any object would do. And surely you must have heard about matter having consciousness in a panpsychist context. — Alkis Piskas

Of course, the specific object is not important. I have not heard any panpsychist say any inanimate object has a minds. Although I guess the exact definition of "mind" might need to be agreed upon.

But I would like better to hear about your own ideas and position on the subject. — Alkis Piskas

You can get a pretty good idea of my own ideas and position on the subject in the last post I made before that one, looks like eleven posts before it.

Thanks for your overview_summary of Incomplete Nature.

The Big Bang theory didn't answer The Ultimate Question, but it did give us a model of how the physical world evolves, with novel "emergent-yet-dependent" properties that did not exist in previous stages. That's why Emergence is an essential concept for us to think about how Generic Information (EnFormAction ; directed Energy) could eventually produce such non-physical non-things as organic Life & sentient Mind. — Gnomon

In the above quote do you express a binary view of physical/non-physical, which is to ask, do you see them as discrete polarities?

I haven't made any systematic attempt to describe Enformationism in terms of his "three stage hierarchy" but I do occasionally refer to those aspects of Nature in other contexts. — Gnomon

Above I asked about you possibly owning a binary physical/non-physical view because I suspect Deacon is propounding a view that might be characterized as absential-materialism, or absential-existentialism. As such, his theory is, in my understanding, non-binary materialism.

Enformationism is coming from a different direction, but seeking answers to similar questions. — Gnomon

Your overview of Incomplete Nature is instructive and useful. Can you contrast Incomplete Nature and Enformationism?

Why, is there an "Unconscious Experience"? :smile:
Yes, I know about panpsychism. And I'm totally against it. Simply, I cannot imagine how a stone can have a "mind". Of course, it depends how one defines "mind". Some even define it in QM terms. I have heard a lot of such a stuff and they are just unreal for me. I 'm, closer to Science view that the mind is a product of the brain or even is identified with the brain --something that is already unreal to me-- than matter having a mind. — Alkis Piskas

"Conscious Experience" is a form of repetition of a concept in different words, for emphasis.

I'm not emotionally "against" Panpsychism ; it serves a purpose. I just consider it a primitive way of understanding how immaterial Life/ Consciousness*1 could exist in a material world. The other ancient worldview, Materialism (Atomism), had no answer for that metaphysical question. Panpsychism (all sentient) is similar to Spiritualism (all divine), in that it assumes that matter emerged from a mind-like or life-like progenitor, instead of the other way around. Enformationism updates all of those pre-scientific postulations, with inputs from Quantum & Information Theories.The material world is still built upon an immaterial foundation of novelty-creating (surprise) power-to-enform, which is no more Spiritual than Mathematics ; except that some kind of Great Mathematician may be implicit in Wheeler's "It from Bit" conjecture*2. :smile:


*1. Both are "functions" of material organisms, but functions themselves are mental/mathematical.

*2. It from Bit :
Wheeler categorised his long and productive life in physics into three periods: "Everything is Particles", "Everything is Fields", and "Everything is Information".
https://plus.maths.org/content/it-bit

Gnomon, I have an idea: Tell me about or give me a link to your thesis. I will be glad to read it, on the condition that there are no references to external sources in it that I will have to read in order to undestand or confirm your points. — Alkis Piskas

Sorry. I can't satisfy your request for "no references". If you want a bare bones summary of the Enformationism, look at Wheeler's scientific thesis*3.

But, if you are willing to slog through an amateur philosophical thesis, which is intended to broaden the application of Wheeler's quantum physics inference to a more general approach toward understanding "God, the Universe, and Everything", have a go at my own plodding exploration of the topic*4. It has lots of footnotes & references, but only for those who are genuinely interested in the immaterial subject matter. :nerd:


*3. John Archibald Wheeler :
In 1990, Wheeler suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. According to this "it from bit" doctrine, all things physical are information-theoretic in origin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler

*4. Enformationism :
A worldview or belief system grounded on the assumption that Information, rather than Matter, is the basic substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be an update to the 17th century paradigm of Materialism, and to the ancient ideologies of Spiritualism. It's a "substance" in the sense of Aristotle's definition as Essence.
https://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/

In the above quote do you express a binary view of physical/non-physical, which is to ask, do you see them as discrete polarities? — ucarr

Yes, my thesis accepts that our world appears to be Dualistic in that Mind & Matter are polar opposites : like something & nothing. Yet, we only know about Matter by use of the Mind. Hence, the thesis is ultimately Monistic, in the sense of Spinoza's "Single Substance". :smile:

Substance Monism. The most distinctive aspect of Spinoza's system is his substance monism; that is, his claim that one infinite substance—God or Nature—is the only substance that exists. His argument for this monism is his first argument in Part I of the Ethics.
https://iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/

Above I asked about you possibly owning a binary physical/non-physical view because I suspect Deacon is propounding a view that might be characterized as absential-materialism, or absential-existentialism. As such, his theory is, in my understanding, non-binary materialism. — ucarr

I can't speak for Deacon, but I'd interpret his Mind/Matter ; Presence/Absence ; Potential/Actual ; Real/Ideal duality as merely the appearance to our physical senses and pondering minds. Yet philosophically, I suspect that he would accept a "non-binary" fundamentally Monistic view, but I can't see it as a form of Materialism in any sense. :cool:

Incomplete Nature :
Starting with substance monism, we see that as a result of the three levels of dynamics, namely thermodynamics, morphodynamics, and teleodynamics that ...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24761945

Your overview of Incomplete Nature is instructive and useful. Can you contrast Incomplete Nature and Enformationism? — ucarr

I have already compared & contrasted bits & pieces of his Incompleteness theorem in my blog, as noted in posts above. But, while similar, they are not really parallel concepts. His is professional & scientific and mine is amateur & philosophical. I have merely adopted some of his evocative terminology --- Absence & Aboutness --- for my own purposes. :nerd:

Deacon outlines an ambitious goal: understanding the emergence of consciousness from insensate matter https://axispraxis.wordpress.com/2020/08/25/intrinsic-incompleteness-deacon-on-ententional-processes/

Have you ever considered that your subconscious mind has solved the problem of consciousness better than what you do in attempting to define it formally? Maybe your neural network is better at solving this problem through trial and error over time than you are at attempting a formal definition.

I think that's the case. And the natural solution is better than the contrived solution of a formal definition.

Have you ever considered that your subconscious mind has solved the problem of consciousness better than what you do in attempting to define it formally? Maybe your neural network is better at solving this problem through trial and error over time than you are at attempting a formal definition.

I think that's the case. And the natural solution is better than the contrived solution of a formal definition. — Mark Nyquist

Do you consider Philosophy --- "contrived solutions" --- a waste of time? Should we all just accept our personal intuition, without making any attempt to resolve differences of opinion on such questions? Should we all just play video games instead of posting on opinion-swapping forums? :smile:

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
― E.M. Forster

The problem with information theories that seek to universalize the concept of information is that they confuse the causal origin of information with the iterability of information (that is, there is something, some meaning, that remains through signs or signifiers). . This is an erroneous causal inversion where what is produced and is an effect is taken as something that was before the process of "interpretation" or "decoding."


If someone comes across a set of marks in the most fortuitous way and intuits that these marks contain a message or information, they cannot validate that intuition a priori. And a posteriori the information that he has obtained has only emerged from translation processes. That is to say, the information that appears is not contained in the marks, but is born from the relationship between a system of signs (the language of the receiver) and another system of signs (the language of an issuer).


If the information is born from the a posteriori relationship, it must always be assumed a priori that there is a moment of uninformed reality (in the sense that there is no message hidden or stored somewhere). This would be a kind of refutation of information Platonism, according to which information is something fundamental and the essence of everything that exists.



____________________________


On the other hand, I don't quite understand the reasoning that leads to saying that an inanimate object, like a rock, can have consciousness or some degree of it. Unless you work with an ad-hoc and invented definition of what consciousness is. Consciousness, however, in the most general way, implies an immediate act of reflection in perception, intentionality and expressivity – thus self-consciousness is involved in every act of consciousness. How do you discover an act of reflection, intentionality and expressiveness in a rock? And someone will ask: Why intentionality, expressiveness and immediate reflection of perception? Well, we have no other evidence than what we ourselves verify in our self-consciousness. That is why an ad-hoc definition of consciousness contrary to the evidence cannot be adapted to fit, say, the physical processes that make up a rock. Therefore, what some people call "panpsychism" can only be a belief based on an ad-hoc definition of consciousness, but one that contradicts the only evidence we have for consciousness.

If the information is born from the a posteriori relationship, it must always be assumed a priori that there is a moment of uninformed reality (in the sense that there is no message hidden or stored somewhere). — JuanZu

I'm a bit confused by this. I've often made the point that one can take an item of information - say a recipe, formula, or even an anecdote - and translate it between (1) different languages; (2) different media (e.g. magnetic media, pencil and paper, engraving on metal) and (3) different symbolic systems (i.e. language, binary code, morse code). But in each case if the information is received and interpreted correctly, the result will be a correct representation of the original information in a different form.

So my question is, what is different, and what stays the same?

I don't quite understand the reasoning that leads to saying that an inanimate object, like a rock, can have consciousness or some degree of it. — JuanZu

I quite agree with that. I've always believed that the crude panpsychist approach to the mind-body problem attempts to solve the dilemma by declaring that physical objects have mental attributes (see this post.

Of course I like to know what you say. I keep coming back. Things turn up here that I wouldn't think up on my own.

I would suggest that information works the way it does because brain state is the common denominator. If you remove brains from the relevant environment information doesn't exist.
Can you refute that?

If you remove brains from the relevant environment information doesn't exist.
Can you refute that? — Mark Nyquist

Well, information archicture first manifests in extremely simple organisms, without brains. But leaving that aside, (1) the nature of meaning is not a question for brain science at all. And (2) the same general observation can be made concerning the multiple realizability of information in brain states. This means that the same meaning (1+1=2) can be replicated across an enormous variety of brain states. Only the meaning remain constant, whilst the states themselves change all the time. Furthermore, whatever the brain state is, it always must culminate in the semantic fact of 1 + 1 equalling 2, any other output is false. So it can't really be understood in respect of 'brain states', which is just a hand-waving way of referring everything back to physical science.

That's completely off base. Without brains any meaning would not even exist. Just physical matter existing as physical matter. Why should I take you seriously?

Without brains any meaning would not even exist. Just physical matter existing as physical matter. Why should I take you seriously? — Mark Nyquist

Living organisms without brains exist, but they embody information in the form of DNA, which is what differentiates organism from inorganic matter.

Your brain is projecting "information" on DNA.
It's not real.

Review what the chemistry of DNA is.

You can blame it on public education if you like. They promote every lame version of information there is. Step up to the information booth...you know...mindless.

Not being too critical of the people in public education, but they don't have the guidance to do it right and the population has the idea that information is something that it isn't. It's an issue.

Not so - DNA encodes and conveys information. That was one of the major scientific discoveries of the 20th century. reference

Alright, if that is your position..
Mine is that a carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus atom, etc is just that and nothing more as it exists in DNA. To call them genetic instructions is just an educational tool. Again, not real.

Focus, these are physical forces at play in controlled sequence. Not the information of our brains.

I reviewed DNA theory and it's more complex than I remember. Maybe I got the easy version in school. Some of the current graphics are much better than I had years ago. It looks like just atoms and geometry to me.

Alright, if that is your position.. — Mark Nyquist

That is not 'my position'. It is a fact. There is nothing like the ability of DNA to store and transmit in information outside the realm of organic life, and for that reason, it is a matter of dispute whether and in what sense organic life is only or wholly physical, or whether biology really can be reduced to physics. Put it this way - if you were presented with everything known about physics, there would be no way to infer from that the complex relationships that govern organic interactions.

This is one of the motivations behind biosemiotics (something I've learned a bit about from this forum.) Biosemiotics 'is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm.

Biosemiotics integrates the findings of biology and semiotics and proposes a paradigmatic shift in the scientific view of life, in which semiosis (sign process, including meaning and interpretation) is one of its immanent and intrinsic features. (Wiki)'

A key point about biosemiotics is the shift from the metaphor of 'mechanism' to that of 'language' or 'signs'.

You're simply advocating what is called 'brain-mind identity theory'. This is the philosophy of mind that the mind and the brain are one and the same, and that knowledge, reason, affective states, and so on, are 'brain states'. I know some of the philosophers that argue for that view, but I also know that it has generally fallen out of favour as being too simplistic. Even those who still propose such a view argue for a form of 'non-reductive physicalism' which accepts that while mental states are physical in nature, they cannot be fully reduced to brain states, due to the conceptual issues of trying to equate brain-states with affective states or propostional knowledge. This allows for a physicalist view of the mind without the strict identity claims of the earlier theory, but at the cost of having a very open definition of 'physical' (like, 'whatever it is, it must be physical'.)

I'm a bit confused by this. I've often made the point that one can take an item of information - say a recipe, formula, or even an anecdote - and translate it between (1) different languages; (2) different media (e.g. magnetic media, pencil and paper, engraving on metal) and (3) different symbolic systems (i.e. language, binary code, morse code). But in each case if the information is received and interpreted correctly, the result will be a correct representation of the original information in a different form. — Wayfarer

I would say, following Deleuze a bit: If the same meaning endures through different incarnations it is because there is a common and potential (but not determined) upon which they gravitate. That is, if we take translation between different languages as an example, it can be said that the output language internalizes the input language and vice versa. There is a communication, but what is communicated (insofar as it is something that transcends all its incarnations) seems more like a potential that cannot be reduced to the identical. That is, when we say that one language internalizes another, we are saying that the identity of one language extends to corrupt the identity of another language. This means that meaning is an external relationship where each term of the relationship is idealized, or virtualized, losing its particular identity. In this sense it must be said that both languages communicate through potential otherness. But the point is that the meaning that appears does not precede the relationship that actualizes it.

:up: At least you're seeing the problem, which I think few do! My argument is that it is because of the ability of the (rational) mind to grasp abstractions and signs, that the meaning of an item can be preserved whilst the form and media changes. I think it mitigates against materialist theories of mind, because the meaning (in the sense of the conveyed information) transcends or can be separated from the forms in which it can be encoded.

I don't quite understand the reasoning that leads to saying that an inanimate object, like a rock, can have consciousness or some degree of it. — JuanZu

The reasoning is this... Physical properties do not explain how a clump of matter can have things like subjective experience and self-awareness. We can see how physical properties, like mass and charge, build atoms. We can see how atoms build molecules. We can see how molecules build physical objects. We can see how physical objects interact, giving us physical processes, like flight and metabolism. We can deconstruct flight and metabolism, down further and further, until we get to physical properties like mass and charge.

Starting with physical properties, we can build up and up until we have things like perceptions; signals of damage to the skin traveling to the brain, and signals traveling from the brain to the muscles, moving the part of the body being damaged away from the cause; patterns stored in the brain; on and on. But we don't arrive at the subjective experience of those things. And we can't go in the other direction, either.
Subjective experience of things and events is not the same thing as those things and events. So we don't get to say we are breaking consciousness down to impulses traveling along nerves when we break muscle movement down to impulses traveling along nerves. They are different things, so one explanation doesn't satisfy both.

The problem is we do not have an explanation for consciousness. To repeat a lot of a post I made a few months ago, neurophysiologist Christopher Koch, the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and someone's who believes consciousness can be explained in physical terms, paid off his bet to Chalmers, because, if it is, they haven't figured out how.

Brian Greene wrote:

We have yet to articulate a robust scientific explanation of conscious experience. We lack a conclusive account of how consciousness manifests a private world of sights and sounds and sensations. We cannot yet respond, or at least not with full force, to assertions that consciousness stands outside conventional science. The gap is unlikely to be filled anytime soon. Most everyone who has thought about thinking realizes that cracking consciousness, explaining our inner worlds in purely scientific terms, poses one of our most formidable challenges.

and

And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings?

So serious scientific minds that are dedicated to the idea that it is explainable in physical terms say we cannot do so. While that is not evidence that it is not explainable in physical terms, it is certainly not evidence that it is. The Hard Problem is hard, and unsolved, according to the experts on opposite sides of the fence.

In addition, what's going on physically doesn't suggest consciousness. As Chalmers says:

Why should there be conscious experience at all? It is central to a subjective viewpoint, but from an objective viewpoint it is utterly unexpected. Taking the objective view, we can tell a story about how fields, waves, and particles in the spatiotemporal manifold interact in subtle ways, leading to the development of complex systems such as brains. In principle, there is no deep philosophical mystery in the fact that these systems can process information in complex ways, react to stimuli with sophisticated behavior, and even exhibit such complex capacities as learning, memory, and language. All this is impressive, but it is not metaphysically baffling. In contrast, the existence of conscious experience seems to be a new feature from this viewpoint. It is not something that one would have predicted from the other features alone.

That is, consciousness is surprising. If all we knew about were the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems, there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of conscious experience. — The Conscious Mind

and

You could explain all the behavior, all the structure, all the function you like, in the vicinity of consciousness.  The things I do, the things I say, the amazing dynamics of the human brain. And it will still leave this further open question: Why is all that accompanied by first person, subjective experience of the mind in the world? — https://youtu.be/PI-cESvGlKc?si=AzE5wvKURbif6rcE

:up:

The reasoning is this.. — Patterner

Totally agree with what you’re saying, but it seems to miss the point that it was intended to address, i.e. whether it makes any sense to say that ‘rocks have consciousness’. I for one think it doesn’t.

Isn't the concept of other-minds reducible to the concept of empathy? In which case, the sentence " a rock doesn't have consciousness" isn't a proposition about the rock. Instead, it has the same meaning as "I cannot relate to a rock", implying that if the rock ever began to act like a human, then I would change my mind about the rock , and that my new opinion about the rock would not be in contradiction with my old opinion or with other people's contrary opinions.

(If the public disagrees as to whether a chatbot is conscious, are they really disagreeing over facts about the chatbot?

if the rock ever began to act like a human, then I would change my mind about the rock — sime

That would cause me to change my mind about many things, including my sanity.

Chatbots are a different matter, though. I asked a chatbot.



Oddly enough, I believe it's correct.

I have not heard any panpsychist say any inanimate object has a minds. — Patterner

But I just gave you a reference about that, the definition of "Panpsychism". Do you reject it, as well as all references with a similar description, on the ground that you have not heard any panpsychist say that any inanimate object has a mind? Or do you have another definition of P according to which objects are not conscious or do not have consciousness?

Although I guess the exact definition of "mind" might need to be agreed upon. — Patterner

Yes, we already talked about that.

You can get a pretty good idea of my own ideas and position on the subject in the last post I made before that one, looks like eleven posts before it. — Patterner

You make my life difficult, Patterner. :smile: Couldn't you give me just the link of that post?
Anyway, I guess is https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/859760, in which you responded to @AmadeusD, right? But you are bringing up extrenal referenses there too (Skrbina, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, "Journey of the Mind" book).
Anyway #2, I have "filtered" that post, keeping only what you youself are stating.

So, let's see ...

Re "Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that there is a property of matter called proto-consciousness. A mental property, rather than a physical.":
OK, but how can something physical have a property that is not physical, call it "mind" or whatever else?
I believe you start with a hypothesis that cannot stand, it's not grounded. You are trying to build a theory on the air or from air. Anyway.

Re "A particle with proto-consciousness (if there is such a thing) would be indistinguishable from one without it (if there is such a thing). It’s just a building block.":
Now, you doubt about your basic assumption, i.e. the existence of something you have initially postulated as existing. And what do you mean by a "building block"? Is that something physical or non-physical? Is the particle with proto-consciousness such "building block"?

Re "A rock has... quite a few particles. All of which are experiencing their instantaneous memory-less moments.":
What do you mean by "memory-less moments"? I suppose you are implicitly, silently adding another hypothesis or postulate, which is the existence of something called "memory-less moments" and which is experienced by particles. That is, you postulate that particles have a memory but there are moments that this is absent. Like a person who suffers from amnesia after a hard blow on the head. Right?

Re "all in all, there's not enough going on to raise "instantaneous memory-less moments" up to something more.":
How is "instantaneous memory-less moments" raised?

I believe, the whole scheme lacks something very basic: A definition or description of "memory" in the context or level of a particle. That is, what does memotry mean for a particle? What kind of "memory" do particles have? Do you see what I mean?

I have to discontinue my reading of your theory here. I can't follow it. Too many links are missing from the chain.

A final question: Is all this an attempt of solving the HPofC, which is the subject of this topic?

Thanks anyway for responding to my request of your own position on the subject.

Oddly enough, I believe it's correct. — Wayfarer

But presumably human cognition, emotion, awareness, and behavior are equally describable in terms of adaptive algorithms , data, environmental feed-back and pattern-matching.

In which case, how can disagreements over the sentience of chatbots, robots , non-human animals, and even disagreements regarding the sentience of other human beings, be regarded as disagreements over matters-of-fact?

But presumably human cognition, emotion, awareness, and behavior are equally describable in terms of adaptive algorithms , data, environmental feed-back and pattern-matching. — sime

A description is not the thing described.

So serious scientific minds that are dedicated to the idea that it is explainable in physical terms say we cannot do so. While that is not evidence that it is not explainable in physical terms, it is certainly not evidence that it is. The Hard Problem is hard, and unsolved, according to the experts on opposite sides of the fence. — Patterner

But we fools rush in...

I asked a chatbot. — Wayfarer

I asked the ice, it would not say
But only cracked or moved away,
I thought I knew me yesterday
Whoever sings this song. — The Incredible String Band

Ducks on a Pond.

But this fool will declare, if anyone cares to attend, that just as marriage is not to be found in a man or a woman, but in a relationship, which is an ongoing process of dance, back and forth, so consciousness is a relation between an organism and an environment. ChatGPT is a materialist's teddy; a comfort-blanket/imaginary friend.

...meaning that appears does not precede the relationship that actualizes it. — JuanZu

Footprints mean feet, dinosaur footprints mean dinosaur feet. The Earth holds memory of the past as much as any brain. the information is there just as this post is here, but it is first in the writing, and later across the world in the reading that it becomes conscious. Or rather, a post is firstly a product of consciousness, and secondly an object of consciousness, or a content of consciousness. And to the extent that something of this is understood by another, we are 'of one mind'. This is called communication. There is a sameness produced when you see what I mean or I see what you mean. And, "where is this sameness or when is it?" are misleading, foolish questions.

I thought I knew me yesterday, because all knowledge is memory, but whoever writes this post is conscious, and that is not knowable, because it is presence, not the past.

A description is not the thing described. — Wayfarer

True, but the distinction is easily lost in communication.

To see a robot as a mind is not to infer that the robot has a mind. By contrast, to see that the robot has sensors relaying information to Machine Learning algorithms is not to see the robot as having sensors and ML algorithms.

The word "other" in "other-minds" is where the confusion lies, for insinuating indirect-realism with respect to the mental qualities that we directly project onto others.