The Nature Of Sentience
Cronos
Join Date: 2002-10-18 Member: 1542Members
Join Date: 2002-10-18 Member: 1542Members
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A note before this topic starts. Please, keep religion OUT of this thread. It will be far more bloodless that way.
Sentience in and of itself is an anomaly on this Earth.
All life on earth serves a purpose in its ecosystem, yet sentience does not. Humans consume resources, construct arbritrary shelters, create abstract concepts that do not aid in survival nor enrich the ecosystem (or rather, does the exact opposite) and engage in fratricidal conflicts with one another over said resources and arbritrary concepts.
Furthermore, we are one of the few species that actively kills it's own kind, and the ONLY species that has the capacity to die for a concept (IE, Freedom).
Sentience in and of itself appears to be an anomaly.
Consider the following.
Let us treat, for the purpose of this topic, Sentience as an object of study.
Thus far, we have only one kind of sentience that we can observe. That of mammal closely related to apes with a centralised brain organ. Alone, they are not powerful at all, but if allowed to agglomerate into large numbers, then Man indeed does become powerful because of a hivelike behaviour. The various nations of man can be considered to be competing hives. Although a very simplified model this fits as a description.
To open out the scope of this topic, let us refer to science fiction for a bit of inspiration. Yes, I know, I'm using science fiction but bear with me please.
Thus far, we have the following:
Centralised Brain Intelligence (Man)
Digital Intelligence (Computers)
Planetary Intelligence (Vast neural net spanning the entire surface of a planet)
Nebular Intelligence (Much like man, only the physiology is changed to that of a gas cloud)
Gas Bag Intelligence (Life that evolves intelligence floating in the confines of a gas giant)
If these are the kinds of intelligence, we must find common traits.
Intelligence Evolves from what would otherwise be chaos, or at least ordered chaos, with the exception of Digital Intelligence which is artificial.
Each kind is naturally capable of thought, but what would these thoughts be to us? They may not think the same as we do, and thus our classification of thought may have to be altered if it is ever to pertain to sentience as a whole.
This begs an interesting scenario. Suppose a man is dying, and just before the moment of death, transfers his consciousness into a machine. Is the man still a man? Or is he a digital sentient? Is he changed by this process? Is he now fundamentally a different man then he was before having undergone this process?
Now consider that instead of a machine, this man opts to have his consciousness "absorbed" by a planetary intelligence before death. Is he alive for as long as the planetary intelligence is alive, or is that which has been absorbed now merely an echo in a canyon?
Can intelligence be singular and collective? Can it be miniscule and/or vast?
At what limit do we say that something is something MORE then sentient? We can already see that a planetary intelligence will be vastly more intelligent then a single man. What if that were the tip of the iceberg? What if planets are miniscule in comparison to intelligent galaxies? And what if these intelligent galaxies are in and of themselves miniscule to the merest thoughts of an intelligent universe? What if, after all, Intelligence as we know it are merely the agglomerate thoughts of a super-intelligence?
Whoah, thats a helluva tangent. I better get off whatever non-existent drugs I'm on and get me some sleep <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Errm, Discuss, if you dare <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Sentience in and of itself is an anomaly on this Earth.
All life on earth serves a purpose in its ecosystem, yet sentience does not. Humans consume resources, construct arbritrary shelters, create abstract concepts that do not aid in survival nor enrich the ecosystem (or rather, does the exact opposite) and engage in fratricidal conflicts with one another over said resources and arbritrary concepts.
Furthermore, we are one of the few species that actively kills it's own kind, and the ONLY species that has the capacity to die for a concept (IE, Freedom).
Sentience in and of itself appears to be an anomaly.
Consider the following.
Let us treat, for the purpose of this topic, Sentience as an object of study.
Thus far, we have only one kind of sentience that we can observe. That of mammal closely related to apes with a centralised brain organ. Alone, they are not powerful at all, but if allowed to agglomerate into large numbers, then Man indeed does become powerful because of a hivelike behaviour. The various nations of man can be considered to be competing hives. Although a very simplified model this fits as a description.
To open out the scope of this topic, let us refer to science fiction for a bit of inspiration. Yes, I know, I'm using science fiction but bear with me please.
Thus far, we have the following:
Centralised Brain Intelligence (Man)
Digital Intelligence (Computers)
Planetary Intelligence (Vast neural net spanning the entire surface of a planet)
Nebular Intelligence (Much like man, only the physiology is changed to that of a gas cloud)
Gas Bag Intelligence (Life that evolves intelligence floating in the confines of a gas giant)
If these are the kinds of intelligence, we must find common traits.
Intelligence Evolves from what would otherwise be chaos, or at least ordered chaos, with the exception of Digital Intelligence which is artificial.
Each kind is naturally capable of thought, but what would these thoughts be to us? They may not think the same as we do, and thus our classification of thought may have to be altered if it is ever to pertain to sentience as a whole.
This begs an interesting scenario. Suppose a man is dying, and just before the moment of death, transfers his consciousness into a machine. Is the man still a man? Or is he a digital sentient? Is he changed by this process? Is he now fundamentally a different man then he was before having undergone this process?
Now consider that instead of a machine, this man opts to have his consciousness "absorbed" by a planetary intelligence before death. Is he alive for as long as the planetary intelligence is alive, or is that which has been absorbed now merely an echo in a canyon?
Can intelligence be singular and collective? Can it be miniscule and/or vast?
At what limit do we say that something is something MORE then sentient? We can already see that a planetary intelligence will be vastly more intelligent then a single man. What if that were the tip of the iceberg? What if planets are miniscule in comparison to intelligent galaxies? And what if these intelligent galaxies are in and of themselves miniscule to the merest thoughts of an intelligent universe? What if, after all, Intelligence as we know it are merely the agglomerate thoughts of a super-intelligence?
Whoah, thats a helluva tangent. I better get off whatever non-existent drugs I'm on and get me some sleep <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Errm, Discuss, if you dare <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Comments
Sometimes I wonder if it was simply a fluke that we are "sentient" instead of it being an actually intended event. Recently a study was released [I will find the article later] that said an evolutionarily fluke caused the muscles of the jaw to become weaker, enabling the extra space created to be filled by the HDD... err brain.
in the words of McCarther: "I shall return" to this post when I don't have to get up and make a presentation about a scenario written to music for my first period science fiction class
please explain how you understand this theory to work!
I thought, the idea was people who work togeather for a common cause become the 'nuerons of the planets brain', so working togeather is what makes the form of consiousness evolve.
anyways.
How do you define what is sentient? being self aware? being able to communicate?
some primates fit both these criteria, so Man (imo) isnt really the only sentient being on earth.
as for the question on transfering conciousness.
Man is made of body and mind, trying to seperate the two will unltimatly lead to mental instability. So firstly, the man is no longer a man, because he now lacks half of what quantifies a man.
secondly, it follows that he is a different man, even if his consiousness were copied 100% accuratly.
Could you link me to an article?
This is an interesting topic, but I really don't know enough about the subject yet.
yeah so, primates have learnt upto 700 signs, which can refer to their self (to express differing states of mind [happy, depressed]) also apparently.. primates can use sign language to tell lies and make jokes.
I remember seeing this programme about a chimp who was signing about a red towel, telling the handler the towel was white (there was a small piece of white fabric on the towel).
Its not bill hicks, but its pretty good for a chimp.
lying for personal gain has got to be a sure sign of self awarness.. right?
Oddly, Murphy was the only one to not commit suicide; possibly because his biological body was too badly damaged (he came in in PEICES, for god's sakes!) and his "brain" was nearly "reformatted" thus having no previous memories of his old life..
Different types of sentience could possibly do the same if their minds were transfered to another body. Imagine a human's mind being linked-up to a borg-like hive-mind where your thoughts are shared with everyone else. It'd be enough to cause such a traumatic experiance the [sentient] human would litterally disperse into the group and disapear... or go totally insane. An this would be nearly instantanious, too. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
As well, just because a species doesn't talk or have a human-sized brain doesn't mean that they aren't sentient, either. Like a infant, a chimp knows NOTHING of how to communicate with other human people; they have to <i>learn</i> how to communicate before they can tell us what's going on. Basically, try talking to someone who speaks a different language; though you may not understand it, there's certainly inteligence and sentience behind it, because it takes complex and abstract thought to create languages... last i can remember.
As far as i see it though, sentience is a evolutionary dead-end, leading only to death. Let's face it; we'll all end up killing ourselves eventually. Even if we get off this planet, we'll still kill eachother as long as there's something to compete over. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo--> It's better to whack eachother upside the head then to whack eachother upside the head and rally others to our causes.
Bleh, my definition is full of value statements, I guess this is a hard one to pin down. That having been said, I think that my definition is correct assuming we can come to a consences of what it means to "understand you exist" and what exactly constitutes a "task not achiveable via instinct".
A sentient being can recognize its own sentience, but unfortunately no test from an external observer can identify sentience in another collection of matter/energy.
tell us more about planetary intelligence in the most specific, explicit detail you can.
Wouldn't sentience be "being able to act without using instinct", with no training beforehand? I mean, you could train a deer to act in a certain way after trial and error(ie do the correct thing and it gets a treat), but that would be much like speed-learning a new instinct really.
sen·tience ( P ) Pronunciation Key (*snip; inproperly displayed*)
n.
The quality or state of being sentient; consciousness.
Feeling as distinguished from perception or thought.
sentience
\Sen"ti*ence\, Sentiency \Sen"ti*en*cy\, n. [See Sentient, Sentence.] The quality or state of being sentient; esp., the quality or state of having sensation. --G. H. Lewes
An example of harmonious action between the intelligence and the sentieny of the mind. --Earle.
sentience
n 1: state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness; "the crash intruded on his awareness" [syn: awareness] 2: the faculty through which the external world is apprehended [syn: sense, sensation, sentiency, sensory faculty] 3: the readiness to perceive sensations; elementary or undifferentiated consciousness: "gave sentience to slugs and newts"- Richard Eberhart [ant: insentience]
I hope that cleared it up.
Anyway...
There are three kinds of planetary intelligence that science fiction describes, each are plausible. The first kind you yourself mentioned, where humans and such are linked together in some way and share a collective conciousness (whether by cybernetics or by some form of telepathy is up to anyones guess/debate).
The second kind of planetary intelligence is very kharaa like in nature and is best portrayed by Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri (henceforth abbreviated to SMAC). In SMAC, the terran colonists are greeted by a plethora of alien life forms, but the most dangerous of which is the planetary "Xeno-fungus". At first thought to be like a kind of fungus that shares resources and acts like a plant, it was eventually revelaed to the colonists that this xenofungus was in fact sentient, but nascent. Every hundred million years, it achieved full blown sentience instead of it's ordinary "Flower Dream" of semi sub sentience, however, this awakening usually kills off almost all life on the planet. The arrival of humans triggered a premature awakening and eventually help planet to control itself. Eventually, humans begin to become part of the planetary xenofungus (transferring their consciousness into the planetary nueral net).
The third kind of planetary intelligence is described in Assimovs eternal "Foundation" series. In it, a planetary intelligence called "Gaia" (nothing to do with earth though) is ready to begin expanding peacefully into the galaxy and becoming "Galaxia". Gaia encompasses humans, animals, trees, and even the rocks. They are all part of gaia. Long term memories are stored in the mantle and continents etc, but humans provide a great deal of the grey matter required for complex tasks.
I also believe that a planetary life form was portrayed in unreal 2, but it's been a while since I played it so I cant truly remember.
In any case, the very definition of sentience is in itself difficult to gauge. I wonder if one of the Discussion forum Heavy Weights will pop in with a pwnage argument <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
1) Babies are no smarter than chimps. But because we're constantly teaching them, they become much smarter. Having vocal chords helps too, and using a language really speeds up learning.
2) hive minds. A hive/collective mind would be better than the individuals, because everyone is learning alot of things at teh same time. They're all sharing experiences, and if the hive mind never dies, then knowledge will never be lost.
3) chimps learning. Since humans have teh ability to teach, it's possible for us to make other things more 'intelligent', which seems to be teh end result of sentience.
4) bacteria and other life forms using DNA/RNA. bacteria can also 'learn' and adapt to situations, which would make them sentient, except for the fact that thier learning is random. Resulting more from mutations then from a systematic way of teaching.
5) abstract concepts. Every abstract concept can be traced back to a not-so-abstract concept. Because humans don't have to start from scratch everytime they're born, we can develop more complex ideas. For example, the idead that freedom is good comes from not wanting to be a servant, and the idea od servitute comes from the fact that having other people do your work means you get an easier life. and so on.
6) killing each other. I think that the abnormality of humans killing each other is because they have differing opinions, taught from different people. It's like survival of the fittest. Because they think thier way is better, they will try to eliminate people who oppose them. The only difference between us and animals in this field is that we, as humans, have learned that killing the other guy is much faster than waiting for him to die.
6b) territorial nature. Killing the other guy also means less competition for resources. Which means an easier life for you. We know that in teh wild, territorial animals wil fight to keep thier territory, and will fight to expand thier territory. It's no different, cept' humans have learned that once he's dead, he's not going to EVER bother us again. (Total victory as opposed to a partial one).
7) Geniuses. Geniuses who come up with new, astounding ideas happen as infrequently as random evolution. (Eyes, bone structure, etc.) But since Geniuses already have somethign to build on, humans get smarter, faster, while evolution goes in random directions.
If you're sentient, and can teach others, then they can go in the right direction all teh time, leading to us becoming more intelligent faster.
For example, in cold climates, evolution has generally produced hairy animals or blubber-filled animals to keep warm. Humans, on the other hand, realized that they could subsitute that by using clothing. Humans could then pass on this knowledge, meaning they became more intelligent faster. Then after learning that, they could realize that making another layer of "clothing" essentially a shelter, got them ever warmer.
I know that's probably now what happened in the past, but it's still a good example of how sentience can be explained by learning/teaching.
for example big cats teach their cubs how to hunt etc..
would we call lions sentient?
You can write a computer program that will learn how to balance an unstable system by tweaking its responses to certain stimuli. Or have it learn how to sort through a pile of keys to find the right one. You could even have it pass on its learned behaviours onto 'children' programs that will then have a head start on solving the problem. However, I think we can all agree these programs are not sentient.
The reason computer's aren't sentient ATM is because it can't answer some abstract questions and do some more abstract things. For example, they can't be happy.
Even if you argue that it was programmed to give out answers, it's be no different from our personalities. Each and every one of us would give a different answer to such questions as "why do we exist" or "what is sentience" depending on how we were raised and what kind of mind we have.
and yes, that would mean cubs/cats are sentient, but not to the degree humans are. The distinguishing feature is that humans can teach themselves much more easily and quickly than a lion can.
That's why vegans/vegetarians exist isn't it? they refuse to kill/eat sentient life-forms, and to them, that means animals. (yeah, I know some do it for health reasons, but a good portion do it to not kill)
If a lion could speak, we'd call it sentient, wouldn't we? even it could only speak like a baby could, it'd be sentient by all our current definitions.
The ability to teach and store knowledge still seems to me to be a pretty good explination for Sentience.
Edit:: forgot to finish a sentence =P
Well, parrots can speak better than babies but we don't treat them the same. The parrot lacks the linguistic mechanism that babies are born with and thus can not use speech as anything but a crude signaling method. The main test for "speaking" is whether the animal can create its own speech structures derived from basic rules and to what degree of complexity.
Uh, that's fairly easy to program...
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Uh, that's fairly easy to program... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A program that can learn to answer anything? go ahead and try. I'd call it sentient.
Also depends on the organism, more and more we are finding that some DNA is slippery, IE deliberately mutable such as those than encode immonoglobulins (antibodies, or immune system molecules that attack diseases), or even in some bacteria stretches of DNA that are *specifically* targeted to mutate under certain conditions.
For example, antibiotic resistance in bacteria emerges so fast because it *isn't* random mutation, it is the result of deliberate mutations in the targets of that antibiotic, such as the 28S ribosome and peptide seqence of the cell wall.
More and more it is appearing that evolution really isn't that random at all either.
Sentience of course is something that probably did rather randomly occur, but was a clever idea when it did. As someone already pointed out, once you have the ability to be able to learn or more importantly, teach ideas, then you can pretty much accelerate your rate of evolution. Chimpanzees, humans and some birds for example are able to colonise new niches by our ability to make use of tools or physical observations. For example, many seabirds are ill equipped physically for breaking the hard shells of many mollusks (Or turtles in one case). So the solution is obviously to pick up the hard shelled animal and smash it into a rock. This is a learned behaviour that obviously helps it to survive.
The question is does learning to do something like that mean an animal is sentient? I wouldn't be overly sure on that myself. A species of jumping spider is able to learn as well, not only that, it is capable of problem solving (something many chordates, creatures with a backbone, so called 'higher' animals) are unable to do. Is it sentient? Especially considering that to many people its just a bug....
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->would it really? If a computer program could learn things and give "birth" to new programs which it could teach, we'd be hard pressed to distinguish it from what we would call sentient.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Uh, that's fairly easy to program... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->A program that can learn to answer anything? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
HELLO?! What the hell, do you just make things up when you type?
yet we kill them...
Sentience does NOT mean the quality we have to think, reason, etc. Sentience is the possesion of SENSES, as described in the dictionary definition given earlier (that I did see). The ability to perceive things in the outside world and react to them. Being conscious... awake... receptive to input. By this definition, yes, computers are sentient. So are insects. So is every animal in the world. Bacteria is not.
The search for sentient life outside of earth is the search for life more complex than bacteria.
The term I think you all would LIKE to use, instead of sentience, is SAPIENCE. Sapient:
"Having great wisdom and discernment."
Are monkeys sapient? Are computers sapient? Sapience is something that can be argued about much more philosophically and interestingly than sentience.
Sorry I couldn't bring myself to more than skim this thread first... seeing these two terms mixed up together gets under my skin so much that I just can't stand to read any more... and there's been two pages of it so far. Quite aggravating.
We believe that the mind is the relationship between the body and the brain. I use "body" and "brain" loosely. Meaning, a computer too, is capable of having a mind as long as the relationship between its "body" an "brain" is the similar to ours.
It's difficult to put into words, but basically it is saying true artificial intelligence is a possibility. There's something called cellular automaton, where you take an infinite grid of empty spaces.
You create a series of 1s and 0s to a single spot, and the undefined spaces behave in different ways depending on the sequence of those 1s and 0s. Some form arrows that are designed to take a signal and pass it along in one direction. Others are designed to act as time delayers etc. etc. When two signals collide, it cancels out a square into undefined again. Thus, what you have is a way to define and redefine your environment.
Suppose you pump into a single undefined square 1000 which means arrow left.
<-
Then you pump 1001 into the same square, which with the arrow, moves left and then pumps into the square left of the start square, which is the signal for up.
Then you have 1010 after that which goes left then up into the undefined square which means right.
Then 1011 which goes left, up, right which goes into the undefined square meaning down.
Then if the next signal is a 1, and the signal coming from the source spot is a 1, they collide, and the start spot becomes undefined, and it starts all over again. (If you didn't understand any of that, just ignore. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->)
It is possible to have circles which loop into itself (to repeat signals). Those signals can have repetitious patterns like REPRODUCING itself on the grid over and over again in wonderous fractal patterns. What pattern comes out is very random, and entirely depends on the start square and what the first 1s and 0s are. If you saw what these things were capable of, you too would be saying "my god, these things are alive."
I'm not the only one that believes this. Ever wonder how seeds can grow trees? There's a theory that this is how dna works in growth.
I don't think things have to be biological to be alive, and even moreso, I don't think things have to be alive to be sentient.