Feeling pain is equivalent to being in a state that represents feeling pain (among other things). This means:
- whoever is in such a state must necessarily feel pain.
- it is impossible to feel pain without being in such a state
From this ist follows…
The sensation of pain is completely equivalent to the physical state of pain itself. Pain is not the perception of this state. Pain IS the state. Otherwise I could be in a state of pain without perceiving it, which is not possible from the above.
When you talk about existing pain, you describe your state of pain. But it is an illusion to believe that you could feel this state again inside. The state itself is the sensation.
When you report on an inner state, you report the semantics, the meaning of the state. The pain is therefore reflected in the semantics of the pain states. You feel pain because the state you are in means feeling pain.
The meaning of feeling pain and being in a pain state are the same. both are the semantics of the “Feeling Pain” states.
Similarely the meaning of “subjective experience of color red” and being in a red perception state are the same. the semantics of subjective red experience and the of state that represents red perception are identical
It follows from the above: Phenomena of consciousness arise automatically when inner states exist in perceptions that not only represent perceived phenomena, but also represent the subjective sensation of perceiving these phenomena.
A simple computer program that reads in a word on a console and then outputs it again, perceives the word, has an inner state for the perceived word. But unlike an LLM, it does not have a state that means that the system knows(!) that it has received this word.
Since LLMs are able to reflect extensively on their inputs and outputs, we can be sure that they have states that represent this self-reflection. And it is precisely these states that give the LLM its inherent consciousness.
