{"id":14431,"date":"2026-09-11T04:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T11:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=14431"},"modified":"2026-09-11T04:47:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T11:47:05","slug":"sentience-sensors-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/09\/11\/sentience-sensors-and-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Sentience, Sensors, and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are AI engines such as Claude sentient<\/em>? My considered opinion, tentatively held, is that they are not. But it all depends on what the word means.\u00a0 Malcolm Pollack in an e-mail writes,<\/p>\n

\n

I was focusing on “sentient” because it’s a slippery concept, and often tossed around as if it means the same thing as “conscious”. Etymologically (from Latin “sensus”) it just means “feel,” or “perceive”, and obviously it shares that with our word “sense” — but computers, and even toasters, can have “sensors” too.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Malcolm is right that ‘sentient’ is often used interchangeably with ‘conscious.’\u00a0 But is everything we refer to as a sensor sentient?\u00a0 That is equivalent to asking: Is everything we call a sensor conscious? I say No.<\/p>\n

The Moth and the Thermostat<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is the difference between an insect (a moth, say) which I take to be a sentient being, and a thermostat which\u00a0 I take to be insentient?\u00a0 \u00a0Both are \u2018sensors\u2019 functionally speaking. The moth literally<\/em> senses light and approaches it; the thermostat \u2018senses\u2019 an increase in temperature and “turns on’ the AC.\u00a0 \u00a0Note the\u00a0 ‘raised eyebrows.’ It is AS IF the thermostat senses, when in reality it only \u2018senses.\u2019 Thermostats don’t feel heat and smoke detectors do not smell smoke. Of course, I have no objection to the use of ‘sensor’ to refer to thermostats, smoke detectors, circuit breakers, and so on, as long as you don’t fool yourself into thinking that these devices are literally conscious.\u00a0 And I have no objection to talk of a thermostat ‘turning on’ the AC as long as you don’t fool yourself into thinking that the thermostat is an agent that decides to do something.<\/p>\n

As I see it, a thermostat is a merely mechanical contraption and wholly insentient, strictly speaking, whereas a moth is a sentient being.<\/p>\n

What I want to say about Claude and his \u2018colleagues\u2019 is that they are wholly insentient mechanical contraptions that differ from smoke detectors and thermostats only in that they are vastly more complex, and that this complexity does not build a \u201cgradualist bridge\u201d (to borrow a phrase from Daniel Dennett) from insentient\/insensate matter to mind, the lowest level of mind being sentience.<\/p>\n

Here is an argument.\u00a0 (a) Only living things are sentient; (b) thermostats are not living things; ergo (c) thermostats are not sentient.<\/p>\n

Now substitute ‘AI engine’ for ‘thermostat.’<\/p>\n

This argument does not settle the matter: it is not ‘rationally coercive’ as I like to say. Malcolm could run it in reverse with no breach of logical propriety. He could, not unreasonably, deny (c) and then deny (a). I don’t expect that he or anyone will deny (b): thermostats and AIs don’t grow on trees, etc.<\/p>\n

Your move, Malcolm.\u00a0 Do you agree that a functioning (as opposed to malfunctioning) sensor needn’t be sentient (conscious)? If not why not?<\/p>\n

Do you agree that there is a powerful, albeit non-coercive, case for denying that AIs are sentient?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are AI engines such as Claude sentient? My considered opinion, tentatively held, is that they are not. But it all depends on what the word means.\u00a0 Malcolm Pollack in an e-mail writes, I was focusing on “sentient” because it’s a slippery concept, and often tossed around as if it means the same thing as “conscious”. … Continue reading “Sentience, Sensors, and AI”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,54,293],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-mind","category-sentience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14440,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14431\/revisions\/14440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}