I would like to thank my friend Dr. Peter Andes for reviewing
this post and giving me feedback. While working on his PhD he explored some
philosophy around concept of mind and it was a subject we had the opportunity
to discuss a few times. In addition to working as a professor he has also spent
much of the last year working on a project related to AI ethics. His feedback
helped me expand and clarify certain elements of this post and consider
addressing some of these questions in slightly expanded ways that I believe
added both depth and clarity.
For reference, here is the AI transcript that has everyone
abuzz.
The recent
Google AI thing is making a bit more of a splash than most previous assertions
about the advanced state of an AI seem to have done. I think that alone is
worth note regardless of whether or not one thinks the AI is sentient or not.
I'm not an
expert in AI. I'm really not even an enthusiast, and while I was kind of techie
as a young kid I've grown to intentionally eschew that. So I don't have a
strong opinion outside of "this is neat and presents interesting things to
think about." I have seen a lot of people online who have no direct
experience of the system in question and who are also not experts or really
even versed in such things expressing definitive positions in either direction.
Until something is pretty obvious from our own experience, most of us probably
aren't really positioned for a firm opinion in this arena.
It is
interesting to me though how many people have jumped on a firm opinion one way
or another in the magic communities. We are people who deal with unseen things,
and deal with non-human intelligences. The question of an artificial non-human
intelligence having self-awareness and communicating with us about it should
open up a lot of questions and reflection on our interactions with non-human
intelligences.
We can look at
questions related to how much our assumptions and desires feed into what we
take from the communication. We can look at how our input shapes the
interaction and at what point our input taints or skews the interaction. We can
look at what it means to communicate. We can look at what is communication with
an exterior intellect versus what is communication with a construct which is
largely a reflection of ourselves. There are things we analyze and understand
based on our human perspective and in talking with preternatural beings we
still have to interpret their perspectives from our humanity - but what if we
had something that could physically speak with us? Would that mean that
elements of cognition, self-awareness, and concepts of life and emotions and
experience might be demonstrated as working completely different from our
assumptions but still in ways that are valid from the perspective of non-human
intelligences?
There is a lot
of opportunity for weird considerations about what technology can tell us about
spiritual experience, and what an aware technology would mean for the larger
world of the unseen. Perspectives and interpretations on abstract concepts and
experiences from a non-human perspective could also expand how we understand
things that are not directly material in nature.
None of the
elements of reflection and consideration that this offers really requires that
this particular AI be sentient. Reflecting on some of the experiences and
conclusions the AI offers about experience might be shaped by whether or not it
is sentient. We can still engage interesting elements of the opportunity to
consider a non-human sentient intelligence that can communicate through
material means regardless of what the outcome with Lamda is.
Pursuing an
answer to that outcome also presents questions that could matter for an
occultist. How do we know that something is sentient? Can we tell simply by
looking at what it communicates? Philosophy has posited this problem of other
minds even in relation to our inability to distinguish the existence of a mind
from behaviors which suggest a mind even in other humans. There are questions
not solely related to machines and programs. For spirits, we deal with the
related question of is it separate or is it my imagination. I often answer that
by pointing out that spirits have a different "voice" than the
magician's inner voice. It feels or "sounds" different. It might say
things the magician would never say, it might challenge the magician in ways
not reflective of his own guilt or doubts. It might present or say things that
are surprising. It might provide new information. Essentially, it has a
character and knowledge and agency which make it separate. Separate doesn't
mean sentient though. Separate is a big question for spirits, and honestly,
separate becomes a question in the AI debate when we ask if it's just
regurgitating input based on programming or is it synthesizing and inferring and
developing unique perspectives and understandings. In neither case is the
question of being separate or unique the question of sentience.
Being sentient
means that a thing is aware of itself. We talk about this with babies and
animals by questioning whether they can recognize their reflections and
understand that they are distinct from other beings. I've seen people dismiss
the sentience question as irrelevant by asserting that some very simple
organisms that we probably can't fully assess sentience for are sentient. Others
have suggested that we're not seeing sentience because we're not seeing
information engaged and treated in certain ways we believe a human would - but
these also aren't really determiners for sentience. Sentience deals primarily
with the "strange loop" that is the illusion of individual self
identity. The concept of "I" is one that has been posited as a
relatively non-natural concept. It is possible that in humans and other
sentient creatures "mind" is the result of a something along the
lines of Koestler's answer to the "ghost in the machine" type of
mind-body dualism. Rather than mind as purely distinct and separate from the
physical, it arises from interaction of various processes and information and
the aggregation of developing physical structures that result in the emergence
of the concept of a self.
I fall into
the view that Ryle suggested was dominant, that mind-body dualism is more or
less a given and should generally be accepted. I am however open to the idea
that an interactions of relatively complete but distinct parts built into a
unit could create the appearance of mind. My friend noted a criticism of this
view, that if self is an illusion there must be someone who is fooled by the
illusion. In order for the self to be an illusion there must still be a self
which perceives the illusion of self. The self could be an illusion, arising
out of this series of interactions, but the illusion would still have reality
since the self which arises must exist in order to perceive the illusion of
itself. Even if the self for a human is a result of a mind-body dualism and not
a natural development of interconnected systems, processes and information,
this concept would indicate that a self which arises from such processes would
still have reality.
If the self
can spontaneously generate from the "strange loop" situation then we
have to determine when and how we recognize that a self now exists in a perceivable
other. We might ask how aware the self must one be to have self-awareness. We
might also ask how do we know that signs of self-awareness or claims of self-awareness
are actual self-awareness and not just a regurgitation of programmed ideas that
mimic self awareness.
For a
magician, this concept is one which we almost never think to discuss but could
actually be hugely relevant. Are the spirits we deal with self-aware? In some
paranormal interpretations of haunting activity, the cause of a ghost is
understood as an imprint of psychic energy. In some beliefs a ghost is a husk
that seems like the human but isn't the actual human, and it might be visible and
mimic some basic elements of human action, but again is mostly a recording or
an imprint. In other beliefs ghosts, and spirits of the dead are real living
but disembodied continuations of humans who still have agency, needs, and
personhood. How do we determine which concept is real? Are all of these
concepts real in different circumstances? If that is the case, does the
circumstance tell us what we're dealing with or do we need to assess the
difference between a sentient spirit and an imprint?
This could
have relevance for how we treat interactions with spirits of the dead outside
of the context of ancestor veneration. If a spirit is sentient and has
personhood in the case of a haunting, does that shape how we should interact
with resolving that haunting? Does this shape interactions with other sorts of
spirits? We debate the treatment of demons and whether or not traditional means
of conjuration are abusive. If a demon isn't sentient does that change whether
or not that matters? Even if a demon is sentient, my opinion has always been
that their perception and experience differs from human perception and
experience, so how we judge an interaction with a demon and what is truly
harmful to it might be inappropriate to base on expectations and experiences regarding
humans. When we consider interaction with an angel, or a god or nature spirit,
is that interaction shaped by whether we understand them as a sentient, unique,
self-aware being, or an expression of a natural function which runs like a
program in creation that has variable possible responses to interaction? How do
we determine what is sentient in those cases? Does sentience shape how much our
own perceptions and assumptions impact interactions?
Clearly, I
believe these spirits are separate individual real beings. While I believe
most, or many, maybe all are also sentient, the question of sentience and the
question of whether their existence is distinct from our own imaginations are
different questions. We often have strong feelings on the latter question, we
don't tend to discuss the former question and what it means for us.
Some of these
other expectations people have brought up regarding sentience also indicate
that for most humans, sentience is not the primary important element in
determining the status of a thing as a person. What do we call these other
expectations? Something which isn't sentient might still be cognizant, or able
to know and be aware of things and have means of processing information. Is the
ability to retain, process, and manipulate information to create inferences,
conclusions and unique guesses and hopes about things a criteria for a type of
personhood? When people say that an AI isn't sentient because it isn't curious,
it isn't asking questions for further information and it isn't directing or
shifting the conversation, what we're actually looking for is something other
than sentience. We might be looking for sapience, or the ability to think.
Sapience, or the ability to manipulate knowledge and information into wisdom
and understanding is part of our concept of humanity. It gives us our name,
Sapiens.
In recognizing
personhood, we're looking for an entity to create with the information it has
and to use communicative tools to increase it's ability to create and influence
with information. It would be easy to assume that this ability to be proactive,
and a collaborative creator in an interaction, or to be able to create and
shape things to accord to original unique choices, desire or inferences is part
of why we are human. The idea that mankind is creative and helps to shape and
direct our experience of the world in ways that seem to separate us from
animals is a central core part of how many of us understand humanity as being
human. It is evident from people's responses to the question of sentience that what
many of us are looking for is some sort of criteria for personhood defined by
these human qualities.
Defining
personhood based on these qualities also has risks as there are people who can
not externally demonstrate that they have these capacities. I think most of
would agree that that doesn't mean they are not persons. I would like to say
that such a question isn't relevant when we discuss disembodied entities like
spirits or non-biological entities like AI. There is relevance though. If we
say these qualities don't define personhood then we would need other criteria
and would have to determine if those criteria are relevant to determining
personhood for non-humans. I don't have a conclusive answer for that. It could
be that we have a general concept of personhood based on these qualities that
extends to most humans and non-human entities, but we have a different more
inclusive concept of personhood that relates specifically to embodied humans.
If the point of defining personhood is based on establishing ecologies
encompassing humans and spirits, or humans spirits and artificial life then
there is a justification for two concepts of personhood.
How do we
explore the nature of personhood or the status of being a person in relation to
spirits and our interactions therewith? We talk about human and non-human
persons. We talk about embodied and disembodied humans. We don't ever really
discuss what it is to be a person or a human. We don't consider how we analyze
spirits based on these criteria, probably because we don't really want explore what
those criteria are. Is there a relevance there? I think there can be, and
probably should be if we want a world which is more actively and fully animist.
Cultures that retain or are seeking to express a more animistic apprehension of
the world reflect this consideration of personhood in rights accorded to
spirits. Avoiding building roads through the habitations of the hidden folk, or
requiring consent from a mountain or river before engaging in public works
projects that would impact it demonstrate our ability to understand the spirits
and spirit inhabitants of the world as having some status as persons. Our
treatment of others is one consideration in answering these questions, but
utilitarian elements also exist for magicians engaging spirits. Understanding
if a spirit is purely reactive, or if it can process the information it is
immediately dealing with but can't retain and synthesize said information might
adjust what we expect to be able to accomplish by working with that spirit.
When we talk about how some spirits are good for certain types of work and
others aren't, or some can comprehend complex or abstract things while others
have more difficulty with that, then this concept of personhood may come into
play.
In other ways,
it might be less relevant. Spirits don't seem to experience time in the same
way we do. I have always comprehended the experience of time for spirits to be
more about chronology and the interrelation of events and experiences than
about a linear experience of the distance between moments. So questions of
retaining and using information over time might be more human issues, or issues
related to the experience of embodiment. If the experience of time passing - or
the comprehension of a feeling of duration or the length of elapsement; rather than
the experience of moments unfolding - or the experience of specific events
coming into being and ceasing in related sequences and juxtapositions; is a
result of our bodies having finite durations then something disembodied might
not have that same relationship to time that we do. This could open to
questions about how information is conveyed between discreet moment's in a
spirit's experience and what that tells us for their ability to apprehend the
past or future, or to determine how the past, present, or future might affect
one another.
The ability to
understand abstract as well as material elements of human experience is
something that comes up frequently in spirit work. We know that the disconnect
between human embodied life and a spirit's disembodied existence as well as
their lack of experience of our perspective will shape how they answer requests
if a request is made without guidance or context. This is part of why
interacting with ancestors and the dead can be useful. Comprehending the
abstract experience of spirits as something different from the abstract
experience of humans, and understanding where the two relate and where they
disconnect could make communicating with spirits more effective.
Statements
like "This word in your language seems closest to expressing my
experience" or "I say this even though I haven't done it because it
allows me to establish empathy by expressing something similar to my own
experience," can help remind us to ask those questions. Even if the source
of such a statement is just a series of responses mimicking communication based
on a program, the fact that an intelligence which isn't human would have to
communicate with us in this way remains true.
The appearance
of spirits, the physical sensations that go with our experience of them, and
sometimes elements of what they say are things which our brains parse and assemble
into comprehensible perceptions. The spirit conveys some particular energy or
spiritual reality and our mind says "this is like pressure in a room with
a lot of charge in the air." Or it says "this looks like a strong man
with wings and the face of a lion." It's not that these things are
materially true, but in the language of our experiences these perceptions most
closely convey the truth of what we're experiencing from the spirit. The
reality of the spirit is so removed from our material experience that our minds
have to translate it into something knowable.
Carrying forth
that idea, if a spirit conveys to us a feeling of happiness or sadness should
we be unpacking that experience? Is it enough to say that the spirit provided
comfort by reminding us what it feels like to be happy? Or is that experience
of happiness our mind's way of interpreting an instruction or answer that the
spirit is giving us? Is happiness just the closest thing we can experience to
what the spirit is expressing? Is the spirit sharing its own happiness with us,
and if so, is there some different quality to their experience of happiness
that would give us a greater understanding of the interaction?
I think, with
that, we may be getting into a territory where there are no answers. Basically,
how do I know that my experience of the color blue matches your experience of
the color blue. They may not be the same, but the effect of experiencing it is
the same and that is what matters for our ability to communicate. When you
communicate with other embodied humans, there is still nuance and room for
confusion because of different perceptions and interpretation, but our
communication is material and simple enough that the basics are shared. In
dealing with something where the entire nature of the communication is
abstract, then these differences could be more important.
The reality is
that while they could be important, we probably won't experience their
importance in a meaningful way until we reach a point where spirit
communication is common and our lifestyles promote a level of communication and
experience which is much more immersive and clear than what most of us
experience now. I don't think that means there is no utility to any of these
questions, but that some have limited utility outside of simply shaping how we
think about things and ask questions, whereas others could have actual
applicable usefulness.
At the very
least, understanding what we believe personhood is, and how we navigate
non-human perspectives is important. If we're honest, a lot of the magical
world is stumbling and grasping in the dark when it comes to the spirit world.
Even the people who have good spirit relationships and who have pretty intense
perceptive capabilities. We get comfortable sometimes thinking we know what's
what until we encounter something that shakes us or doesn't work as we expect.
We might be puzzled when something doesn't go as planned or it seems like
something has happened but it's far outside how we understand stuff to work. We
kind of roll with it, maybe we reassess our assumptions. To a degree though
we're a fumbly teenager trying to figure out how to get things to work out for
us.
Moving to a
more adult experience of a fully animistic world hopefully means we grasp that
world better and are immersed in deeper clearer experiences of it that permeate
our lives. If we move into that world, understanding how we relate to those
other citizens of the world is important. Understanding how their perspectives
work is important. Understanding what is a person and what is something else
entirely, what has human qualities and what doesn't, what is self-aware and
what isn't could be important for interactions in a world in which those
interactions are clearer, more routine, and have a more definitive character.
So yeah, I
don't know if I have a firm opinion on Lamda. I think it's kind of hard to know
for sure what is a behavior versus what is an internal reality. Or, perhaps,
it's hard to know if a behavior is inspired by an internal state of personhood or
sentience versus a really convincing series of responses that mimic what a
person would say. It may be harder to answer those questions about immaterial
beings. I think questions about the possibility of knowing those things can be
interesting to explore too. They might not shape our interactions and choices
so much as these other questions though.
Thanks for reading, please show support by following and sharing. You can also visit our Support page for ideas if you want to help out with keeping our various projects going. Or follow any of the links below.
If you enjoyed this please like, follow, and share on your favorite social media! We can be followed for updates on Facebook.
If you’re curious about starting conjuration pick up my new book – Luminarium: A Grimoire of Cunning Conjuration
If you want some help exploring the vast world of spirits check out my first book – Living Spirits: A Guide to Magic in a World of Spirits
Now Available: An Audio Class and collection of texts on the Paracelsian Elementals
More Opportunities for Support and Classes will show up at Ko-Fi
