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What Makes Something Sentient?

BmanMcfly said:
Wow... your reaction is pretty funny here.

I really was just trying to get a baseline before I start digging up all the studies that have been done and making well polished arguments.

The nice thing is that I already know you are going to come at the topic with a closed minded skepticism, so, more or less no matter what you won't be convinced. That's OK though... The religious fanatics are stuck in a loop and are mostly wrong, so it's easy to take that nonsense and apply it.

That said, while I definitely do not have all the answers, I KNOW that life does not end when the body dies.
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Just because people once knew the Earth to be flat did not make it flat. Nor did it make the Sun circle the Earth.
 
Tim the plumber said:
I think the definition of sentience is an awareness of other beings point of view and emotional state.

By this definition dogs and other social animals would be, to some extent, sentient.

I believe the Heinlein definition was of intelligence; "What's in it for me" and was about auto pilots taking over a man's job. The counter argument is that an auto pilot does not have to be creatively intelligent, just good at what it does. It does not have to understand other being's emotions.
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It's interesting because I saw an experiment done with children 3-4 years old. Basically a person would sit in front of the child and build a pyramid made of 14 disposable plastic cups. Then the adult would spend a few minutes bragging about how it was the most amazing thing that s/he had ever made. Then the adult would leave the room and pull a hidden string shortly after causing the pyramid to topple over. The experiment is to watch how children react. Those that are aware of other people and there emotions will realize that the adult will be disappointed and worse might blame him (the child).

So children that are aware will attempt to rebuild the pyramid, those that aren't aware will not. The adult always comes back in the room before the rebuilding can be completed in order to observe the child's explanation.

Those that are aware look worried and immediately try to explain that they weren't the cause, those that are not aware tend to find the indecent funny and aren't worried at all.....

The person doing the experiment suggested that awareness is not a switch that flicks on, but a gradual change that comes in many steps. You can rank plants, insects, individual animals and people on a scale with people, of course, being at the top.....
 
Dittohead not! said:
A sentient being is a spirit, or soul that may inhabit a body that is simply a biochemical machine. When the machine ceases to function, the spirit is still sentient.

Machines made by man can never be sentient, as they are simply machines, and not spirits.
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Has a "spirit" or a soul ever been detected? Where inside the body does such a force exist?
 
DashingAmerican said:
Simple question. What makes something sentient? Is it simply consciousness or something more?
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I'm not sure about the definition, but in my book dolphins are certainly sentient. To me, this video makes it all obvious.

The dolphin had been tangled in fishing line at some point in the past. He swims up to a diving team and allows them to get most of the fishing line off him. That begs the following question:

1 - how did that dolphin know that fishing line had anything to do with humans?

2 - how did that dolphin know that humans would untangle that line for him?

3 - how did that dolphin know that he had to stay still while more than one human gathered around him to cut away that line?

Dolphins are sentient creatures - that video proved it for me.
 
DashingAmerican said:
Well, what I'm getting at is at what level of "life" are things no longer sentient. Are dogs sentient? Trees? Bugs?
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Well, according to a show i watched recently, "self" resides in the brain stem.

So anything with a brainstem is self aware and thereby "sentient".
 
Any creature that can physically respond is sentient to some degree. It's a matter of intelligence and sophistication that denote the level of conscious self awareness.

A soul may be merely the unique personality of each individual within a species. Even though the temporal form of each creature has a beginning and ending, the information that makes them up is possibly conserved by nature. Similar to DNA information being passed on in procreation, the universe may have some method of storing our experiences within existence.
 
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If they think I am great...or at least okay.
 
Tim the plumber said:

Just because people once knew the Earth to be flat did not make it flat. Nor did it make the Sun circle the Earth.
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This is barely relevant, it is new scientific findings that are bringing these subjects to light.

I'm not interested in rejecting science in any sense.
 
Sentience is typically linked to self-awareness... that is, to an awareness of self as a distinct entity, separate from the environment and from others, finite, individual and singular. Advanced sentience indicates an ability to engage in introspection, that is looking at one's self inquisitively and analyzing one's own actions rather than just acting. Abstract reasoning ability is also cited as an example of sentience.


Dogs have limited sentience; their instinctive drives are their primary motivators and they tend to see themselves as part of a pack more than individuals. Cats may be slightly more sentient, in the sense that they are more individualistic and unpredictable, but probably not to a great degree. Even the higher animals are probably not remotely as sentient as humans.

As for human-made machines, while we make some mighty impressive stuff these days none of it really comes very close to sentience... more like "idiot savants", very very good within a very LIMITED range of activity but lacking any real sense of self or self-motivation.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Oh, yes it has been detected and measured. Where exactly it is no one really knows. It's most likely throughout the body.

It weighs in at 21 grams.
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"MacDougall's results were flawed because the methodology used to harvest them was suspect, the sample size far too small, and the ability to measure changes in weight imprecise. For this reason, credence should not be given to the idea his experiments proved something, let alone that they measured the weight of the soul as 21 grams. His postulations on this topic are a curiosity, but nothing more."
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Read more at snopes.com: Weight of the Soul
 
csbrown28 said:
Has a "spirit" or a soul ever been detected? Where inside the body does such a force exist?
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You don't understand the concept, do you?
 
Paleocon said:
You don't understand the concept, do you?
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What a silly question....If I didn't, would I know that I didn't? So if I replied that I did, would you believe me?

Why don't you explain it to me?
 
csbrown28 said:
What a silly question....If I didn't, would I know that I didn't? So if I replied that I did, would you believe me?

Why don't you explain it to me?
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Ok.

A human soul is not a physical thing. It is an immaterial thing. As such it does not exist any where in the body.

The soul is the seat of the intellect, it allows us to contemplate universals.
 
Paleocon said:
Ok.

A human soul is not a physical thing. It is an immaterial thing. As such it does not exist any where in the body.

The soul is the seat of the intellect, it allows us to contemplate universals.
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If it is immaterial, by what mechanism do it influence the brain and body? At what scale and scope is information transmitted between the two?

Also, on what basis are you making such definitive statements about any of this?
 
HonestJoe said:
If it is immaterial, by what mechanism do it influence the brain and body? At what scale and scope is information transmitted between the two?

Also, on what basis are you making such definitive statements about any of this?
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The soul is (while one is alive) intrinsically connected to the body. Exactly how it insisted any given physical process in the body that is under it's control is unknown to me.

Thousands of years of Christian philosophy.
 
Paleocon said:
Ok.

A human soul is not a physical thing. It is an immaterial thing. As such it does not exist any where in the body.

The soul is the seat of the intellect, it allows us to contemplate universals.
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Ok, so I understand the concept, but I think it's an idea rather than something that exists literally.

If you believe that it literally does exist. I have a few questions...

Don't know if your aware, but babies are born without brains, do they have a soul? What about the severely mentally handicapped, do they have a soul? If you removed a brain and connected it to a machine independent of it's body, would the soul still exist? If yes, all of it, or just some of it?

If it's not physical, that would make it super natural, how could anyone know that it's a real thing beyond making the claim that it exists?

Can you freeze the soul?

When you soul goes somewhere else, what does it take with it, what you knew when you died, or everything you ever knew, or nothing at all?
 
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Dittohead not! said:
So, that's not conclusive. I guess we'll have to wait for Bman's better evidence.
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Seems interesting that in this day and age, when religion feels so much pressure from new information, that this "experiment" hasn't already been carried out. Seems like a really easy thing to lend evidence to the existence of souls, yet no one seems to be eager to jump on it.

Now, I'm not claiming that that proves anything except that, ether no one has followed up on this experiment, telling me that they don't belive it's worth repeating, or they have tried and the results didn't come out the way they hoped.
 
Paleocon said:
The soul is (while one is alive) intrinsically connected to the body. Exactly how it insisted any given physical process in the body that is under it's control is unknown to me.
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Recognising there are things we simply don't know is good but it jars with the certainty with which you made you initial statements. You're talking about how things might be, not (necessarily) how they are.

Paleocon said:
Thousands of years of Christian philosophy.
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Philosophy is in no position to determine facts, let alone philosophy bound to a predetermined theological narrative.
 
Tim the plumber said:
I think the definition of sentience is an awareness of other beings point of view and emotional state.

By this definition dogs and other social animals would be, to some extent, sentient.

I believe the Heinlein definition was of intelligence; "What's in it for me" and was about auto pilots taking over a man's job. The counter argument is that an auto pilot does not have to be creatively intelligent, just good at what it does. It does not have to understand other being's emotions.
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I tend to think it's more likely that sentience is awareness of "self" as opposed to others. It's the ability to sense, and apply characteristics to, or question the meaning of, sensory input.
 
Goshin said:
Sentience is typically linked to self-awareness... that is, to an awareness of self as a distinct entity, separate from the environment and from others, finite, individual and singular. Advanced sentience indicates an ability to engage in introspection, that is looking at one's self inquisitively and analyzing one's own actions rather than just acting. Abstract reasoning ability is also cited as an example of sentience.


Dogs have limited sentience; their instinctive drives are their primary motivators and they tend to see themselves as part of a pack more than individuals. Cats may be slightly more sentient, in the sense that they are more individualistic and unpredictable, but probably not to a great degree. Even the higher animals are probably not remotely as sentient as humans.

As for human-made machines, while we make some mighty impressive stuff these days none of it really comes very close to sentience... more like "idiot savants", very very good within a very LIMITED range of activity but lacking any real sense of self or self-motivation.
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Just to riff of your statement I believe that it will be a long, long, while before we see true sentience in man made machines, and when it does occur it will be a result of man and machine merging intimately where the brain and computer are linked inextricably. What we will and do produce would be best called a restricted intelligence or expert system where in one field or multiple related fields an intelligence is as close to perfect at its function as could be had. Sentience will be a happenstance result of mind machine merging, which at that point copies, variations and multiplicities will rapidly occur and a new sentient hybrid organism and eventually sentient distinct organism will have evolved. The speed of this inevitable evolution depends on processor size reduction and speed increases and biological integration advances. The integration advances are currently moving quicker than processor speeds and size reductions so in all likelihood widespread rudimentary systems integration will occur for basic functions earlier than later, and advanced functions will occur at the rate of processor size reduction and speed and memory capacity increases.
 
DashingAmerican said:
Simple question. What makes something sentient? Is it simply consciousness or something more?
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The ability "to know" -- which is why I wonder about men.

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