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From what I can tell, it seems that the qualifiers for something to be considered living are based on biological criteria, with the limits of observation, being entirely based on spatial order of magnitude,a subject of observation presents itself to be governing it's own motion and behavior with it's environment, and has the implied purpose of reproducing others of it's likeness. So the first part of my question regarding is something alive or dead, is how do we as what we have self declared to be living things, consider our determination of being alive or dead when observing something surrounding us to be an empirically certain conclusion?

If you want suggest well, our definition is trivial and simply for reference sake, doesn't that exclude our observations that are based on experiments we do, that are limited by our senses?

And with regard to the sentience of a subject of observation, we would consider a spider that writes messages on it's web for and equally magical talking pig to read to both be sentient, yet how do we cast the judgement that an ordinary every day spider making a web to be devoid of sentience?

The demonstrated ability in applied mathematics of the average arachnid is exceeding superior to the demonstrated ability of such a thing by the average human being, so we may as well throw out first order logic or any mathematical basis to declare something to be sentient, otherwise, everything we don't consciously decide has to be excluded as evidence of sentience, like my my motivations for deciding to write this question in the first place for example.

Let me combine both parts of the question into one example, suppose you, as a self declared living sentient being, have an indefinite life time, and are observing an inanimate lead box.

How do you know that you will not at some point in the future, be deprived of the capacity to observe this box?

And if you concede that this is impossible for you to know, then you must concede that at a time after which you cease observing the box,it is just as likely as it is to remain the way you had observed, to unfold and awaken something much like yourself, capable of observation and supposed free will.

Adam Ledger
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  • "The demonstrated ability in applied mathematics of the average arachnid is exceeding superior" What makes you think spiders use mathematics when they spin their webs? Do infant children need to use mechanics before they can learn to walk? – D. Halsey Nov 28 '22 at 22:29
  • not on a conscious level no, but indeed some kind of learning process occurs out of necessity – Adam Ledger Nov 29 '22 at 10:41
  • They most definitely are using mathematics to make their, web, so my question is more do we consider something sentient only when it is capable of communicating an understanding of the abilities it has demonstrated? – Adam Ledger Nov 29 '22 at 10:47
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    If they don't use mathematics on a conscious level, I don't think you can say they use mathematics at all. You yourself might use math in describing what they have done , but that's not the same thing. – D. Halsey Nov 29 '22 at 12:58
  • Spiders made webs instinctively, so web making is not a sign of sentience. They figure out where to make them, and learn how to make better webs, the learning is a sign of sentience. Instinctive web making is not based on knowing mathematics. Neither is learning how to make better ones. – Dcleve Nov 29 '22 at 16:19
  • So what would you consider "using" mathematics with no conscious thought to be? If you are to disregard instinct as a qualifier for sentience, then I personally fail this definition.

    In the vast majority of my questions in the mathematics community, I found the answer then worked backwards and presented it as a question in my posts in order for it to be accepted. But the truth is most of my learning has an intuitive foundation. I knew this to be something that isn't considered real, so i framed my questions in a way that mimics normal logic

     – Adam Ledger Nov 29 '22 at 17:30
  • i spend hours looking at number patterns, and at some point come across one i find interesting, then arrive at an equality that defines the observation.

    I then go about the task of framing this as if it were a logical conclusion, to deepen my understanding foremost, but as far as my sharing of it in the stack exchange community, i attempt to present a farce that my conclusions came from an educated well defined thought process, i know this is false, but my conclusions factual. sure it was deceptive to do so, but it seems the world prefers deception to honesty, as far as i have experienced

     – Adam Ledger Nov 29 '22 at 17:41
  • @AdamLedger -- What you are describing is how our analog/neural-net processing works, which is intuitive and often based on analogies and which is often unconscious, or at least not either rational/explicit. There are excellent neurologically based books that describe how our neural net processing works, a good one is Churchland's The Engine of Reason. We have basically TWO methods of problem solving, the second is slower, and explicitly stepwise logical. This is called System 2, in Thinking Fast and Slow. You have a very well trained neural net to solve math problems, but it IS intuitive – Dcleve Dec 06 '22 at 20:19

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You appear to be looking for definitive analytic criteria. This is not available, as spelled out in the answers to this prior closely related question: Philosophy and the question 'When is a robot considered alive and thinking?'

As the answers all note, there IS no agreed explicit criteria for either life, or sentience.

This is symptomatic of the general issue of how to do empiricism, and the ongoing effort by the analytic tradition in philosophy to fit empiricism into an analytic framework. Kant, in The Critique of Pure Reason, spelled out how our universe is contingent, and CANNOT be characterized analytically. The disentanglement of empiricism from analytics has slowly been progressing further since.

A major step was when mathematics was shown not to be analytically "necessary", when non Euclidean geometries were discovered, and then worse, when our universe was shown to be non-Euclidean. Math is now considered to be an infinite set of potential systems, and part of empiricism is to determine if one of them seems to fit an aspect of our universe. Note "seems" is key here -- we never can be certain whether a math fits our universe or not.

Popper's approach to science emphasizes this embrace of uncertainty, and that all of science is tentative. Note that in Popper's model of science, which is to do a) exploration of a subject area, b) then directed exploration to study interesting features, c) development of speculations that one then explores further, d) hypotheses that one then tests, then revise based on testing, and e) theory development and testing -- definitions are one of the LAST things we end up with, basically only when hypotheses are solid enough to begin turning into theories. Analyticity needs definitions to be nailed down, and science does not get close to there until the end of step d.

Quantifying science confidence has been an ongoing goal even of Popperian science, but one with a very unsuccessful history. Popper was challenged in his assumption that science is gradually getting better insights about the world by Kuhn, and Popper proposed a method to measure this "versimilitude". His standard, and ANY standard for versimilitude, were shown to be analytically invalid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude.

Popper's falsification was also challenged, and is best refinement is Lakatos' model of Research Programmes. https://1library.net/article/lakatos-conception-research-programs-lenoir-thesis.yr64rwjy While Lakatos' thinking is seen as a "better" (IE more verisimilitude -- LOL) match to scientific practice than either Popper or Kuhn, Lakatos then faced a challenge of characterizing when a Programme is Regressive vs. Progressive. He proposed a method of measuring this, but his methodology faced the same fate of being analytically invalid in some limiting cases as Popper's measure of Verisimilitude.

A similar fate has been encountered in scientific measures of statistical confidence. Critics of frequentist statistical methodologies point out that statistics uses a lot of "judgement" criteria that cannot be justified analytically. Bayesian statistics seeks to correct the subjective "judgement" aspect of frequentist statistics, BUT both the "prior" probabilities, and the applicability of the new data in changing degree of confidence involve judgement calls in Bayesian statistics as well.

A general principle one can draw from the history of repeated failures of analytics to characterize empiricism analytically, is that empiricism is NOT an analytically justifiable activity -- it is instead justified pragmatically. And pragmatism ultimately references subjective judgement, rather than reason, as the foundation for truth.

So can we spell out a set of standards and degrees of confidence whether something is living, or sentient? Yes, we can. BUT -- those standards themselves are not justified analytically, but as pragmatic judgements. And for both life and sentience, we don't have anything close to an expert consensus to even reference pragmatically.

Dcleve
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  • It's not that I was seeking an answer that's deterministic or analytical, i knew that to not exist, just an answer with a well informed opinion with regards to the subject of the question. I don't think such questions deserve to be closed. I realize that it is against stack exchange policy to permit the exchange of OPINION, but applying this restriction is a little dubious, especially for philosophy – Adam Ledger Dec 02 '22 at 11:14
  • @AdamLedger There are various proposed pragmatic models. One answer on life listed the Biology definition -- with its set of criteria. That is useful. Another useful one is that Freeman Dyson proposed is purely functional -- Organized systems that use entropy to create information. Neither capture the full concept, but both are useful. For sentience -- one approximation is to infer by analogy that any adult mammal will have a similar enough neural stricter to reasonably infer sentience. A functional approach is to look at apparent agency, or at learning, and both include even bacteria. – Dcleve Dec 02 '22 at 23:33
  • Well that addition certainly strikes a chord in me, thank you for taking the time to converse with me on such a "touchy" subject.

    Particularly the part regarding organized systems using entropy to gather more information. For a very personal example, I have a problem with alcohol. So I decided that only on my birthday I will allow myself to completely indulge this addiction, and the night commences with me buying an $100 bottle of french absinthe, 24 hours later I woke with at least one broken rib this year, more later I'm still in pain.

     – Adam Ledger Dec 06 '22 at 17:03
  • I guess my point is, I came to a point that I knew subconsciously that disassociating myself like this is pointless and harmful, but I never really reconciled this with any real conscious agency, So something in me decide to limit such an activity to once per year, and it was clearly just as dangerous as it always was, and again very little memory of what happened exists, but the painful physiological reminder, coupled with my decision to only do such a thing on my birthday, has left enough of an imprint to think about never drinking to such excess. – Adam Ledger Dec 06 '22 at 17:10
  • I just feel like perhaps at least sentience, is something far less tangible than we allow ourselves to consider, It's human nature to consider the universe revolves around us, rather than us listlessly orbiting within it – Adam Ledger Dec 06 '22 at 17:13
  • @AdamLedger You are getting into personal philosophy, something modern philosophy tends to be bad at. I do not drink , or use drugs, as I consider myself to be a sentient being, and I do not want to destroy my seflhood. Yes, focussing on sentience can be useful for that. I also think that Virtue Ethics gives far better life goals than utilitarianisms pursuit of "pleasure". I want to create a character for myself I will admire/respect, not pursue shallow pleasures. – Dcleve Dec 06 '22 at 23:00
  • I can assure you my self-hood is far from ever being capable of destruction, albeit my inevitable death as we all face upon realization of our own mortality.

    Personal philosophy? Well, with all of the world governments currently acknowledging publicly their military have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena, yet these phenomena remain silent, I most certainly agree that our personal experiences will be increasingly insignificant, assuming it is not a globally orchestrated hoax spanning several decades....

     – Adam Ledger Dec 07 '22 at 04:36