Why do you find self-awareness to be the more fascinating area of study? It makes complete sense that something could be self-aware if it could be aware of anything at all. What more do you need to research/understand about self-awareness?
It is far more interesting to me that there is “awakeness” to experience than that we can be aware of our selves (in the same way we can be aware of anything else).
A complete understanding of sentience including its causes would be a far more satisfying and ethically impactful body of knowledge than a complete understanding of self-awareness (assuming they are not inextricably linked somehow).
Awareness is just the basic state of most animal life, it has to be for it to function. It isn't particularly more interesting than a venus fly trap.
Self-awareness is something altogether different. The ability to look inward and analyze oneself, to effect the environment rather than just be a part of it...these are massive departures from the norm, responsible for everything that makes humanity great and terrible.
How could that not be the more fascinating area to study?
Because while self-awareness may be fertile ground for interesting emergent behavior, it is not mysterious. There is no “hard problem of self-awareness”. We basically know what’s going on at the ground level.
Whereas with sentience (awareness), we have no explanation for why any physical state is sentient rather than nonsentient. And since all that exists in our lives is our collection of sentient experiences of reality, this is a pretty big ethical question.
I think you have that mixed around. Basic awareness/consciousness/awareness is not especially notable or exciting, it's incredibly common and many aspects are well understood.
Self-awareness, an actual consciousness and inner voice, is exceedingly rare and poorly understood, and I think it would therefore be significantly more fascination since so much is yet to be discovered and understood.
> There is no “hard problem of self-awareness”.
Well, there is. The type of consciousness being referred to in "Hard problem of consciousness" is of a type that would require self-awareness as a prerequisite to exist. It's almost synonymous with it.
> Whereas with sentience (awareness), we have no explanation for why any physical state is sentient rather than nonsentient.
You're using these terms in a way that seems unorthodox, but unless I'm misunderstanding your point, we do understand, the answer is brain development and evolution.
This is of course not meant as proof or knowledge of any kind, but just that the way I’m using the words is what the “average” of how people in books and on the internet would use those words.
I don’t understand how “evolution and brain development” cause sensations to arise. What part of our biology is the part directly producing sentience experience? How would you explain why we experience anything instead of nothing? Can we replicate it in a non-biological system?
It is far more interesting to me that there is “awakeness” to experience than that we can be aware of our selves (in the same way we can be aware of anything else).
A complete understanding of sentience including its causes would be a far more satisfying and ethically impactful body of knowledge than a complete understanding of self-awareness (assuming they are not inextricably linked somehow).