THE WORLD WE INFER
What is this world?
There is experiencing
The rest is inference
There is experiencing
Right now,
something is being experienced
The light of this screen. A thought crossing the mind. A sensation somewhere in the body. Different things appear, each in its own way, right now.
I cannot be certain who experiences them, where they come from, or what lies outside. Yet experiencing itself is unmistakable. Even the doubt that this might be a dream is experienced.
Experiencing also has a quality to it. Some experiences feel good; others feel bad. We are drawn toward some things and pushed away from others.
What comes before the “I”
Experiencing comes first. From there, we can ask who experiences it and how.
What the subject called “I” is, and how experiencing arises, remain questions for later.
The rest is inference
Everything beyond it
is an inference
What is the “I” experiencing right now? How is yesterday's self connected to today's? Is there an external world? Do other beings experience anything? Like Zhuangzi's butterfly dream, we can question what kind of world this is.
Different inferences carry different degrees of confidence. Patterns and regularities appear within experiencing. We can give greater weight to explanations that account for more phenomena and predict them better.
Science makes such comparisons systematic. Mathematics describes relationships and regularities among phenomena. Through these methods, we can try to understand a little more of the world.
The weight of certainty
“There is experiencing” is directly given. The external world and the experiencing of another human are separate questions. The possibility that this world is a simulation calls for further assumptions.
What grounds our confidence, and how much can we claim?
The first aquarium
Could there be a world
beyond this experiencing?
The first aquarium marks the boundary of experiencing. It is difficult to know whether a world exists independently of it.
Zhuangzi's butterfly dream comes to mind. A butterfly in a dream does not know it is dreaming. I, too, cannot look directly beyond the experiencing taking place now.
Suppose a world exists independently of experiencing. We can then explore its rules and ask whether other beings within it also experience anything.
The external world and other experiencing are separate questions
Does an external world exist? Do other beings in that world experience anything? These are the two questions of the first aquarium.
The first aquarium marks the boundary of experiencing; the second marks the boundary of the world inferred from it.
I, too, am part of the world's processes
Choice is
a response that passes through more of me
Experiencing is certain. What the “I” that experiences it actually is remains an open question.
If we suppose a world exists independently of experiencing, I, too, may be explained as a process within it. I tentatively understand consciousness and selfhood as arising from physical processes in the brain and body.
A jellyfish moves and responds to stimuli. A tap on the knee makes the leg jerk. When memory, emotion, belief and prediction are involved, we feel that we are choosing. Choice is a response that passes through more of “me.”
Because there are causes, things can change
What we hear, the relationships we form and the environments we change can alter our next responses. Memory, belief, expectation and deliberation all play a part.
The physical laws of this world may themselves operate within a larger structure. That possibility leads to the second aquarium.
What experiences?
Could something
be experienced in there, too?
Once we suppose an external world exists, another question arises: do other beings within it actually experience anything?
Humans? Dogs? Plants? Jellyfish? Future AI?
Science looks for clues in nervous systems and behavior. Yet the boundaries of which beings experience anything remain open to investigation.
People respond, believe and choose differently. The 4-Layer Theory is one attempt to explain these differences.
The boundary of experiencing beings
A jellyfish moves and responds. Whether anything is experienced in that movement remains an open question. Studying the nervous systems and behavior of other animals may offer clues.
If an AI speaks, plans and describes itself, does that establish that it experiences anything? We can ask both biological beings and AI the same question: is anything actually experienced?
The second aquarium
Beyond the aquarium,
there may be another aquarium
The second aquarium marks the boundary of the world we have inferred. Even if an external world and other experiencers exist, we cannot know whether that entire world is the final layer of reality.
A simulation is a useful way to consider this boundary. Gravity inside a game operates within the game. Its rules do not disappear simply because the game is implemented within a larger system.
If this world is a simulation, something may exist beyond it. There may be further layers beyond that.
Simulation as a way to ask a question
Bostrom's argument involves premises about advanced civilizations, their motives for creating simulations, and whether consciousness can exist within them. Here, simulation helps us ask whether this world is the final layer.
We cannot assume that the laws of physics or resource constraints familiar inside this world also hold outside it. Nor can we simply picture the unknown outside as a larger version of our world.
The knower may change, too
The limits of cognition
may also change
If a goldfish had all the time in the world, could it understand quantum mechanics? Knowledge might not be the only thing it lacks. Its senses, memory and very way of thinking may set limits.
There may be questions humans today cannot even think to ask. Yet technologies that expand intelligence and perception are advancing.
AI, neuroscience, brain–computer interfaces, and future mathematics and science may extend what we can investigate. They may give us new clues about both aquariums.
The questions so far
There is experiencing. The rest is inference. Inferences have different degrees of certainty. We provisionally suppose an external world and investigate its beings and workings. Whether this whole world has an outside remains an open question.
If a future AI actually experiences anything, a new experiencer will have appeared. The question “What experiences?” will change HOW's question: “Whose experience should count?”
what
There is experiencing
The rest is inference
Beginning with this experiencing,
we consider the world and what may lie beyond it