Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

>They start with a conclusion that they want, such as dual-ism, or philosophy souls, or all sorts of things, and then they wrap themselves in obfuscating circles

This is false; if you believe in a proposition, it entirely makes sense for you to argue for it. Whether those arguments are of quality is another matter, but the simple fact of arguing for a position you already hold does not make bad work.

>When the philosophers start making testable predictions

Philosophy isn't in the business of making testable predictions, just as logic or history isn't in the business of making testable predictions. Why must an argument make a testable prediction for you to take it seriously? Does this argument we're having now result in a testable prediction? If it doesn't, why did you reply? Or if it does, doesn't that show there's more to rational argumentation than testable predictions?

You assume that philosophy is like religion. Not so. I'm moderately well read on metaethics and none of your statements ring true to me, except in the case of poorly argued or shoddy philosophy, which I'm more than happy to admit does exist.

Ok, so you are saying a cat isn't sentient?

And yet, most would agree that a cat can feel pain, but a machine can't. I think most people would object if the Google engineer said "I think this AI is every bit as sentient as a cat." They'd still say he's crazy.

I also wonder what would happen if that particular AI actually had logic to "observe its own thought processes and integrate them back into consciousness". Would we then just spin on the semantics, such as by arguing that this isn't really "observing" and it certainly isn't "consciousness"? (how can you define words like "consciousness" without using words or concepts like "sentience", bringing us back to square one?)

So I don't think meta-cognition is the answer either.

Ok, well since I got downvoted I may as well offer this: If you're looking for something to add to your reading list I strongly recommend Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. The thing that makes that book brilliant is how effectively it captures the futility of any attempt to understand non-human sentience.

The two movies don't do justice to that theme, or at best they do it only in the most glancing of ways before rushing back to a standard deus-ex-machina in the end. In each case, the film makers seem to have lost their nerve, as if the idea of presenting that enigma to the audience in a more direct and accessible way is just too hard of a problem.

But for me personally, it's on the short list of science fiction works that still stick with me in a personal way, and that I like to return to every few years. And, yes, it is an arrogant viewpoint to say that all we ever do as humans is look for mirrors of ourselves. But I think Lem got at a pretty deep truth about the human condition when he did that.

>and then they want to say that the universe proves them right, even though it has zero connection to the real world.

That's a failure of the argument, not a failure of philosophy. Everything from ethics to epistemology has philosophers arguing against unjustified assumptions. One could say the whole of philosophy is picking out unjustified assumptions. It's perfectly fine to start with a conclusion, so long as you can also argue your way there. If you don't think the argument is valid, then say so. What do you think philosophers do all day, just agree with eachother on every statement?

>is that mathematicians don't use their self referential axioms (in a situation which does not connect to the real world)

Yes, they do. Plenty of abstract mathematical concepts have zero connection to anything in nature or in the physical world. Some philosophers of mathematics even argue that mathematics has no root in the physical world. Besides that, the position you're arguing for is known in philosophy as 'pragmatism' - so don't pretend it's not philosophy. You're assuming your own axioms here.

>then claim that they are the experts on literally everything, because well "truth" and "ethics", by definition are everything.

That's not true; moral philosophers confine themselves to the world of moral philosophy. Epistemologists confine themselves to the world of epistemology. They don't claim knowledge about, say, physics or biology.

>a mathmatician isn't going to say that they are, by definition, the experts on truth and morals, and therefore I should do what they say anyway.

The definition of morality is literally 'what you should do'. If you disagree with that, then talk to a philosopher or just post an argument somewhere. If you don't think morality exists, then congratulations, there are philosophers who argue that too!

I'm not impressed that your argument rests upon the simple fact of calling their arguments circular (i) without specifying why and which arguments are circular in particular (ii) and saying that there are no goals to be acheived by even talking about, say, epistemology.

Nobody said you "have to listen" to anyone. You don't have to listen to scientists, mathematicians, logicians, historians, or anyone, really. But if faced with an argument you can't counter it ought to be to your embarrassment that you refuse the conclusion without considering the argument itself. All of your arguments, all of them quite philosophical in themselves(!) could equally apply to any other discipline with 'circular' axioms, such as physics (the principle of universal uniformity; the reliance on fallible observation and testimony) or logic (the axiom of non-contradiction).

That's not what I mean. I mean the concept of addition. Sure they can't add large numbers but they can to some level understand the ballpark of what adding two large quantities (not even necessarily numbers) together looks like.