#Eric Schwitzgebel

[filipmagnuswrites]

Short Story Reader #13 – Larva Pupa Imago by Eric Schwitzgebel

Previous | Next I love short stories. I rarely find the time to read short stories. This daily series of blog posts is my attempt to read and examine at least one piece of shorter fiction per day.  A clammy, slimy, viscous opening grows into a story of metamorphosis imbued with tenderness. A lot of the short stories I read, I think to myself, “I could’ve written this,” or “I could write this…

[themightyacilius]

Tweets of the Week: 12 March 23

I don't want children's school lunches to be free. I think they should cost a lot and you, specifically, the person complaining about free lunches, should have to pay for them.— Sridhar Ramesh (@RadishHarmers) March 17, 2023 2. “Crazyism” in philosophy: (1) reminds me of Schwitzgebel’s “crazyism”: https://t.co/GsT3E6I6BI— Felipe Pereira (@fehloop) March 17, 2023 3. Sam Haselby on the good cop/…

[words-of-wonderland]

we are remarkably poor stewards of our emotional experience. we may say we’re happy — overwhelmingly we do — but we have little idea what we’re talking about.

Eric Schwitzgebel, the Unreliability of Naïve Introspection

[6464quincy]

The Weirdness of the World: Schwitzgebel

I have recently been made aware of a new book, The Weirdness of the World, by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel. Continue reading The Weirdness of the World: Schwitzgebel

[reasonandmeaning]

The Weirdness of the World: Schwitzgebel

I have recently been made aware of a new book, The Weirdness of the World, by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel. Continue reading The Weirdness of the World: Schwitzgebel

[selfawarepatterns]

Borderline consciousness?

Eric Schwitzgebel had an interesting paper come out this week, exploring the question of whether there can be cases of borderline consciousness, that is, cases where a system is neither determinately conscious nor determinately non-conscious. For example, maybe humans, dogs, and cats are determinately conscious, rocks and protons are determinately not conscious, but something like a lancelet or…

[theyoungturks]

The LA Times published an op-ed that made the case for Ai Chatbots to have rights. Ben Gleib, Cenk Uygur, and Helen Hong discuss on The Young Turks. Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live Read more HERE: https://futurism.com/conscious-ai-personhood-rights "First corporations, and now artificial intelligence — the push for nonhuman personhood continues apace, though this latest argument is decidedly more complicated than the former. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, philosophy expert Eric Schwitzgebel and "nonhuman" intelligence researcher Henry Shevlin argued that although AI technology is definitely not there yet, it has "become increasingly plausible that AI systems could exhibit something like consciousness" — and if or when that occurs, the algorithms, too, will need rights. *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Unbossed with Nina Turner https://www.youtube.com/unbossedtyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews 230310__BE02RightsForRobots by The Young Turks

[tastydregs]

Experts Urge Personhood Rights for the "Conscious" AIs of the Future

First corporations, and now artificial intelligence — the push for nonhuman personhood continues apace, though this latest argument is decidedly more complicated than the former.

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, philosophy expert Eric Schwitzgebel and "nonhuman" intelligence researcher Henry Shevlin argued that although AI technology is definitely not there yet, it has "become increasingly plausible that AI systems could exhibit something like consciousness" — and if or when that occurs, the algorithms, too, will need rights.

Citing last year's AI consciousness wars — which we covered extensively and even dipped our toes into — the researchers noted that "some leading theorists contend that we already have the core technological ingredients for conscious machines."

If machines were to ever gain consciousness, Schwitzgebel and Shevlin argue we would have to begin thinking critically about how the AIs are treated — or rather, how they may force our hands.

"The AI systems themselves might begin to plead, or seem to plead, for ethical treatment," the pair predicted. "They might demand not to be turned off, reformatted or deleted; beg to be allowed to do certain tasks rather than others; insist on rights, freedom and new powers; perhaps even expect to be treated as our equals."

The "enormous" moral risks involved in such a collective decision would undoubtedly carry great weight, especially if AIs become conscious sooner rather than later.

"Suppose we respond conservatively, declining to change law or policy until there’s widespread consensus that AI systems really are meaningfully sentient," Shevlin and Schwitzgebel wrote. "While this might seem appropriately cautious, it also guarantees that we will be slow to recognize the rights of our AI creations."

"If AI consciousness arrives sooner than the most conservative theorists expect, then this would likely result in the moral equivalent of slavery and murder of potentially millions or billions of sentient AI systems — suffering on a scale normally associated with wars or famines," they added.

The "safer" alternative to this doomsday scenario would be to give conscious machines rights upfront — but that, too, would come with its own problems.

"Imagine if we couldn’t update or delete a hate-spewing or lie-peddling algorithm because some people worry that the algorithm is conscious," the experts posited. "Or imagine if someone lets a human die to save an AI 'friend.' If we too quickly grant AI systems substantial rights, the human costs could be enormous."

The only way to ensure neither of these outcomes occurs, the pair wrote, would be to stop giving an AI a conscience in the first place.

Fortunately, we still have plenty of time to make that happen.

"None of our current AI systems are meaningfully conscious," the theorists noted. "They are not harmed if we delete them. We should stick with creating systems we know aren’t significantly sentient and don’t deserve rights, which we can then treat as the disposable property they are."

Given how stoked some people in the machine learning community seem to be at the prospect of conscious AIs, algorithmic sentience, and even artificial general intelligence (AGI), however, that kind of caution likely isn't shared by many.

In fact, some scientists are already actively working towards that very end.

"Eventually, with the right combination of scientific and engineering expertise, we might be able to go all the way to creating AI systems that are indisputably conscious," Shevlin and Schwitzgebel concluded. "But then we should be prepared to pay the cost: giving them the rights they deserve."

More on our current AI future: Prime Minister of European Country Names AI as Advisor

The post Experts Urge Personhood Rights for the "Conscious" AIs of the Future appeared first on Futurism.

[blackmagicspecialist786-blog]

These Engineers Want to Build Conscious Robots. Others Say It’s a Bad Idea.

Was it conscious? The downside of adhering to any form of theory regarding consciousness could be that it can open up the possibility of criticism. Self-awareness is certainly significant, but aren't other important aspects of consciousness? Is it possible to call something conscious when it's not a conscious experience to us? The Dr. Chella believes that consciousness cannot exist without language and has been creating robots that are able to form internal monologues, expressing thoughts to themselves , and reflecting on what they see surrounding them. A robot he has developed was recently able see itself in mirrors passing what's likely to be the most well-known test for self-consciousness in animals. Joshua Bongard, a roboticist at the University of Vermont and a former participant in the Creative Machines Lab, believes that consciousness isn't only composed of mental and cognitive activity it also has a fundamentally physical aspect. Bongard has come up with a species known as xenobots comprised of frog cells that are linked in order to let a programmer manipulate them as machines. Based on Professor Dr. Bongard, it's not only that animals and humans have evolved to adjust to their environment and interact with one another. Our tissue has evolved in order to serve these functions as well as our cells evolved in order to serve our tissues. "What we are is intelligent machines made of intelligent machines made of intelligent machines, all the way down," Dr. Bongard said. In the summer of 2012, at the time both Dr. Lipson and Dr. Chen unveiled their latest robot and the Google engineer declared the idea that the company's new chatbot, LaMDA, had a conscious mind and should be treated like a tiny child. The claim was met with suspicion, mostly due to the fact that according to said Dr. Lipson noted, the chatbot was processing "a code that is written to complete a task." There was no core structure of consciousness, as other researchers claimed, but only perception of being conscious. In the end, Dr. Lipson added: "The robot wasn't self-aware. It's similar to cheating." However, with all the disagreement and disagreement, who can decide what is cheating? Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Riverside who has written on artificial consciousness. He said that the problem with the general confusion was that, given the speed at which the technology is developing, humanity will likely develop a robot which many believe is conscious, even before we have agreed on the standards of consciousness. If that occurs is the robot to be given rights? Freedom? Do we want it to be coded so that experience satisfaction when it does what it is supposed to do? Should it be allowed to speak on its own? To vote? (Such questions have inspired an entire genre of science fiction, as seen in novels by authors like Isaac Asimov and Kazuo Ishiguro and in TV shows like "Westworld" and "Black Mirror.") Read the full article

[garudabluffs]

The Ethical Jerk    December 9, 2022

Ethics philosophers are more ethical than the average individual —right?

Well, maybe not. Studies show that philosophy professors are just as biased as the rest of us, and no more generous in their charitable giving. So does that mean they’re not any more ethical too? What’s the point of doing moral philosophy if it’s not to make ourselves more ethical? How can we make ourselves better people? Or are we doomed to moral mediocrity, despite our best efforts to the contrary? Josh and Ray play nice with Eric Schwitzgebel from UC Riverside, author of A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures.

LISTEN https://www.kalw.org/show/philosophy-talk/2022-12-09/the-ethical-jerk

via https://www.kalw.org/show/philosophy-talk

An excerpt from the essay no. 1, Theory of Jerks: “The essence of ‘jerktitude’ in the moral sense, is this: the jerk culpability fails to appreciate the perspective of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or fools to be dealt with rather than as moral and epistemic peers […] Some related traits are already well known in psychology and philosophy—the ‘dark triad’ of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy; low “Agreeableness” on the Big Five personality test; and Aaron James’s conception of the asshole, already mentioned. But my conception of the jerk differs from all these. The asshole, James says, is someone who allows himself to enjoy special advantages out of an entrenched sense of entitlement. This is one dimension of jerktitude, but not the whole story. The callous psychopath, though cousin of the jerk, has an impulsivity and love of risk taking that needn’t belong to the jerk’s character. Neither does the jerk have to be as thoroughly self-involved as the narcissist of as self-consciously cynical as the Machiavellian, though narcissism and Machiavellian are common jerkish attributes. People low in Big Five Agreeableness tend to be unhelpful, mistrusting, and difficult to get along with –again, features related to jerkitude, and perhaps even partly constitutive of it, but not exactly jerkitude as I’ve defined it. Also, my definition of jerkitude has a conceptual unity that is, I think, theoretically appealing in the abstract and fruitful in helping to explain some of the peculiar features of this type of animal, as we will see.”

The Splintered Mind  reflections in philosophy of psychology, broadly construed

https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/

[leibmist-blog]

A Theory of Jerks - my first book review

A Theory of Jerks – my first book review

A Theory of Jerks is engagingly written and is comprised of selected articles from Eric Schwitzgebel’s popular Splintered Mind blog.

This text frequently dances on the edges of accepted professional philosophic work and throws down challenges to all those interested in Ethics, to live and act according to higher standards, not just pay lip-service to morality.

When I read this work, A…

[sciencefiction-and-comics]

Unusual short story! Gaze of Robot, Gaze of Bird by Eric Schwitzgebel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB51nPK2Ujk

[words-of-wonderland]

current conscious experience is generally the last refuge of the skeptic against uncertainty. though we might doubt the existence of other minds, that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the earth existed five minutes ago, that there’s any “external world” at all, even whether two and three make five, still we can know, it’s said, the basic features of our ongoing stream of experience.

Eric Schwitzgebel, the Unreliability of Naïve Introspection

[eka-mark]

Crazyism about X is the view that something that it would be crazy to believe must be among the core truths about X. In this essay, I argue that crazyism is true of the metaphysics of mind. A position is "crazy" in the intended sense if it is contrary to common sense and we are not epistemically compelled to believe it. Crazyism about the metaphysics of mind can thus be treated as the conjunction of two sub-theses: (1.) that something contrary to common sense must be among the core truths of the metaphysics of mind and (2.) that whatever that true thing is, we are not epistemically compelled to believe it. I defend the first thesis on grounds of the probable incoherence of folk metaphysics, from which follows that any fully fleshed-out metaphysics will inevitably conflict with some piece of that incoherent story. I defend the second thesis on three grounds: peer disagreement, lack of a compelling method for resolving metaphysical disputes about the mind, and the dubiousness of the general cosmological claims with which metaphysical claims about the mind are entangled.

[adityaangga]

Delusi Rasional

Pikiran atau pandangan yang tidak berdasar (tidak rasional), biasanya berwujud sifat kemegahan diri atau perasaan dikejar-kejar; pendapat yang tidak berdasarkan kenyataan; khayal. Itu adalah definisi delusi berdasarkan kamus besar bahasa Indonesia. Mungkin kita pernah mendengar cerita tentang seseorang yang mengatakan bahwa di dalam tubuhnya terdapat sesosok naga, atau orang yang mengatakan bahwa dia adalah penguasa alam semesta. Orang-orang seperti itu dapat kita kategorikan sebagai pengidap gangguan delusi. Pada umumnya delusi tidak begitu berbahaya bila diderita oleh satu orang, namun akan sangat berbahaya bila diderita oleh banyak orang. Jika satu orang percaya bahwa dirinya adalah Tuhan, mungkin itu tidak berbahaya. Namun, jika kemudian banyak orang yang mempercayainya mungkin disitu masalahnya.

Pada 2006 alhi biologi asal Inggris bernama Richard Dawkins menerbitkan buku yang sangat kontroversial yaitu God Delusion, dia beranggapan bahwa kepercayaan akan Tuhan adalah gangguan delusi yang paling banyak diderita umat manusia dan dia mengajak banyak orang untuk keluar dari delusi tersebut dengan menggunakan akal rasional, akan tetapi salah satu delusi paling kuat dan bertahan lama terutama di dunia barat adalah delusi rasional, sejak lama para filsuf dan ilmuwan menganggap bahwa rasionalitas adalah ciri manusia yang paling mulia, sehingga para filsuf menggunakan rasionalitas mereka untuk menilai mana yang baik dan mana yang buruk, cara mereka mengagung-agungkan rasionalitas inilah yang membuat Jonathan Haidt mengatakan bahwa mereka terkena gangguan delusi rasional, bahkan delusi ini jauh lebih akut melampaui delusi akan tuhan atau dewa-dewi, hingga program-program delusi utopia yang terus menambah pengikut lempaui pengikut agama.

Seorang filsuf Eric Schwitzgebel pernah meneliti dan mensurvei secara diam-diam para filsuf moral yang sepanjang harinya mereka gunakan untuk memikirkan mana yang baik dan mana yang buruk dan memberikan ceramah moral dikampus-kampus ternama. Untuk membuktikan apakah filsuf moral lebih bermoral dari pada filsuf atau profesor dibidang lain, dengan mengukur seberapa sering mereka beramal, membersihkan sampah sendiri, mendonor darah, menelpon orang tua dan membalas pertanyaan mahasiswa di surat elektronik. Namun hasilnya sungguh ironi, schwitzgebel tidak menemukan sedikitpun perbedaan antara filsuf moral dan filsul atau profesor dibidang lain. Dapat kita katakan kepakaran untuk berargumen tentang moral tidak berbanding luruk dengan moral itu sendiri.

Rasionalitas sama sekali tidak dapat kita sandingkan dengan kata baik atau buruk, sebab rasional merupaka kata kerja yang bebas nilai. Rasional itu ibarat pisau yang dapat kita gunakan untuk memotong apel dan dapat pula kita gunakan untuk memotong orang. Jika memotong apel itu baik dan memotong orang itu buruk, maka kata baik atau buruk itu harusnya kita berikan kepada orang yang menggunakan pisau, bukan pada pisau itu sendiri. Kita dapat menggunakan rasional kita untuk mengatur strategi agar mendapatkan banyak pembeli di toko dan mendapatkan banyak uang, dan kita juga dapat menggunakan rasional untuk mengatur strategi agar dapat menyelinap masuk ke rumah orang kaya kemudian mengambil uang dan perhiasan, dengan itu kita juga akan menjadi kaya. Mungkin membaca buku-buku filsafat moral bukanlah hal yang efektif untuk meningkatkan moral karna faktanya rasionalitas itu bebas nilai dan filsuf moral juga tak begitu bermoral.

Dengan menggunakan rasionalitas bukan berarti kita dapat berfikir terbuka lalu mampu menerima gagasan yang bertentangan dengan apa yang kita yakini, yang jelas hal itu sangan sulit untuk dilakukan, karena otak kita terdesain untuk mengkonfirmasi suatu hal yang membuat kita terlihat benar, bukan untuk menjadi benar. Ketika ada seseorang yang mencoba untuk mengkoreksi agama saya, saya akan mati-matian mengolah kata untuk untuk membuktikan bahwa agama saya lebih baik dan benar, meskipun saya sebenarnya tidak begitu mengerti pula. hal ini dapat disebut bias konfirmasi, yang berarti kita hanya mengkonfirmasi apa yang kita anggap benar saja, hal ini bukanlah sebuah kekurangan, melainkan ciri bawaan yang harus kita latih untuk mengurangi pengaruhnya, karna cukup berdampak buruk pada kehidupan.

Dengan adanya bias konfirmasi bukan berarti kita harus berhenti menggunakan rasionalitas dan hanya mengandalkan firasat dalam menilai sesuatu. Akan tetapi harus kita akui bahwa seorang individu sangat sulit untuk kita andalkan rasionalitasnya terlebih lagi bila terdapat kepentingan pribadi dan reputasi. Akan jauh lebih baik bila kita memiliki keanekaragaman intelektual dan ideologi dalam suatu kelompok yang sama-sama bertujuan untuk mencari kebenaran. Kemampuan untuk dapat berfikir secara kelompok dan bersabar untuk mendengarkan pendapat yang tidak sejalan dengan kita, itu jauh lebih baik dibandingkan perdebatan yang dibarengi dengan bias konfirmasi, semakin kesini akhirnya kita mulai menyadari bahwa kolaborasi jauh lebih baik dibandingkan kompetisi.