5 ms·

One, then, is left to wonder where the seat of organizational sentience really resides, if it resides in any of the independent organisms at all. Ants surely s

One, then, is left to wonder where the seat of organizational sentience really resides, if it resides in any of the independent organisms at all. Ants surely seem sentient, even if still lower-order animals. Is it just an emergent detail of aggregate reflexive behavior across all members? How (and why) would soldiers know to build a bridge with their bodies, to cross a water barrier, seemingly from birth? Maybe the level of recognition and internal modelling, on a per-organism basis is a clue to self awareness and emotional involvement in individual perception and experience. With all ants, maybe this quality is low, and mostly instinctual, embedded in gene expression.

mikeash 9y ago
Which cell of your brain is the seat of sentience? I know little about ants and maybe that analogy sucks, but it seems like it could easily not be anything more specific than the colony as a whole.
- pavement 9y ago
  Well, we have clues that it exists above the chemical layer, and above the cellular layer, since any individual person is capable of sensory processing at a fidelity measurable to auditory sample rates beyond tens of thousands of cycles per second, and visual frame rates above 30 before we notice flicker. That tells you that a continuous signal is captured and integrated across the organ (the brain) in real time.
  - gumby 9y ago
    > That tells you that a continuous signal is captured and integrated across the organ (the brain) in real time. Not only does it not tell you any such thing but there is pretty good evidence that that is not what's happening. Look at the amount of data collected via the fovea during a single saccade and tell me one collects "frame" data in any way comparable to one's conception of what is happening in front of your body at that time.
    - pavement 9y ago
      You misinterpret my reference to "frame rate." And you're cherry picking. In the sense that flicker is detectable, when we view a movie in a dark room, we know there are frames in a film reel, if the shutter speed of the projector mechanism operates below a certain frame rate, as an artifact of the media. I'm not claiming that any sort of digital recording occurs, only that the stream of sensory stimulation has a degree of fidelity. That stream of stimulation affecting the chemical sensitivity of our eyes produces a continuous signal, and go ahead and try to tell anyone that a human brain cannot resolve the visual signal carried by the optic nerve. No one will argue with you but only because it's simply not a conversation worth having.
gumby 9y ago
Why can't it be an emergent phenomenon? "You" are just a huge collection of independent organisms, a large subset of which share the same genetic material. But given the degree to which your various symbiotes and parasites (in your gut, in the biofilms in your sinuses, etc) excrete hormones, and the huge quantities of neurotransmitters emitted and received wholly inside your gut, it seems a Victorian concept like "seat of organizational sentience" is rather obsolete. As for sentience itself...it's pretty clear (even from timing data alone) that we end up confabulating most of what we consider perception of reality, so perhaps consciousness and sentience are just convenient mechanisms to characterize the order of events?
- pavement 9y ago
  it seems a Victorian concept like "seat of organizational sentience" is rather obsolete. Ha! So you’re telling me that you exist in more than one place simultaneously? (!!!) Last time I checked, here I am. One person, one voice, one field of vision. If I were to use my fingers to point to where I, myself, am, then it’d be somewhere between my ears and my eyes. But I suppose that person is somehow... quaint?
  - gumby 9y ago
    Yes, I believe you believe in such an "I", as do I and I assume everyone on the planet. But I also (to quote Dennett) say things like "the thermostat wants to keep the temperature between 20 and 22 degrees". It has no wont or desire but it's a handy fiction. You only point to your head due to modern science; Aristotle thought the brain was for cooling the blood as the ancient Greeks thought the soul was in the liver, hence Prometheus' punishment (although ψυχή was literally "breath" -- cf "atman"). Plenty of cultures thought it in the heart, as do we talk of the heart or gut or generative organs making decisions -- certainly we feel the tough decisions there. Could it be those with extensive amputations of gut and an articial heart could be "less human" in a broader sense than just mass? But you seem awfully sure there is consciousness. Perhaps there is no such thing and you only think there is? It seems like a handy mechanism for your genes to use to propagate themselves. The homunculus model, while popular, isn't particularly insightful and is, recursively, useless.
red75prime 9y ago
If there's no sequential bottleneck in information processing, where one piece of information is made available to almost all subsystems, then there's probably no consciousness. If it is the case, we cannot say that the system as a whole is aware of something, because there's no common 'something' available to all subsystems. Returning to ants, the anthill as a whole could probably be aware of a coarse assessment of its own wellbeing without any details.
- pavement 9y ago
  Which is to conclude, either all ants are sentient, or no ants are sentient (but a variety of degrees of sentience is not expected), and the emergent behavior of a colony is its own phenomenon.

mikeash 9y ago

Which cell of your brain is the seat of sentience? I know little about ants and maybe that analogy sucks, but it seems like it could easily not be anything more specific than the colony as a whole.

pavement 9y ago
Well, we have clues that it exists above the chemical layer, and above the cellular layer, since any individual person is capable of sensory processing at a fidelity measurable to auditory sample rates beyond tens of thousands of cycles per second, and visual frame rates above 30 before we notice flicker. That tells you that a continuous signal is captured and integrated across the organ (the brain) in real time.
- gumby 9y ago
  > That tells you that a continuous signal is captured and integrated across the organ (the brain) in real time. Not only does it not tell you any such thing but there is pretty good evidence that that is not what's happening. Look at the amount of data collected via the fovea during a single saccade and tell me one collects "frame" data in any way comparable to one's conception of what is happening in front of your body at that time.
  - pavement 9y ago
    You misinterpret my reference to "frame rate." And you're cherry picking. In the sense that flicker is detectable, when we view a movie in a dark room, we know there are frames in a film reel, if the shutter speed of the projector mechanism operates below a certain frame rate, as an artifact of the media. I'm not claiming that any sort of digital recording occurs, only that the stream of sensory stimulation has a degree of fidelity. That stream of stimulation affecting the chemical sensitivity of our eyes produces a continuous signal, and go ahead and try to tell anyone that a human brain cannot resolve the visual signal carried by the optic nerve. No one will argue with you but only because it's simply not a conversation worth having.

gumby 9y ago

Why can't it be an emergent phenomenon? "You" are just a huge collection of independent organisms, a large subset of which share the same genetic material. But given the degree to which your various symbiotes and parasites (in your gut, in the biofilms in your sinuses, etc) excrete hormones, and the huge quantities of neurotransmitters emitted and received wholly inside your gut, it seems a Victorian concept like "seat of organizational sentience" is rather obsolete. As for sentience itself...it's pretty clear (even from timing data alone) that we end up confabulating most of what we consider perception of reality, so perhaps consciousness and sentience are just convenient mechanisms to characterize the order of events?

pavement 9y ago
it seems a Victorian concept like "seat of organizational sentience" is rather obsolete. Ha! So you’re telling me that you exist in more than one place simultaneously? (!!!) Last time I checked, here I am. One person, one voice, one field of vision. If I were to use my fingers to point to where I, myself, am, then it’d be somewhere between my ears and my eyes. But I suppose that person is somehow... quaint?
- gumby 9y ago
  Yes, I believe you believe in such an "I", as do I and I assume everyone on the planet. But I also (to quote Dennett) say things like "the thermostat wants to keep the temperature between 20 and 22 degrees". It has no wont or desire but it's a handy fiction. You only point to your head due to modern science; Aristotle thought the brain was for cooling the blood as the ancient Greeks thought the soul was in the liver, hence Prometheus' punishment (although ψυχή was literally "breath" -- cf "atman"). Plenty of cultures thought it in the heart, as do we talk of the heart or gut or generative organs making decisions -- certainly we feel the tough decisions there. Could it be those with extensive amputations of gut and an articial heart could be "less human" in a broader sense than just mass? But you seem awfully sure there is consciousness. Perhaps there is no such thing and you only think there is? It seems like a handy mechanism for your genes to use to propagate themselves. The homunculus model, while popular, isn't particularly insightful and is, recursively, useless.

red75prime 9y ago

If there's no sequential bottleneck in information processing, where one piece of information is made available to almost all subsystems, then there's probably no consciousness. If it is the case, we cannot say that the system as a whole is aware of something, because there's no common 'something' available to all subsystems. Returning to ants, the anthill as a whole could probably be aware of a coarse assessment of its own wellbeing without any details.

pavement 9y ago
Which is to conclude, either all ants are sentient, or no ants are sentient (but a variety of degrees of sentience is not expected), and the emergent behavior of a colony is its own phenomenon.