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If humans are sentient, are molecules in their body sentient? There are around ~22,000 proteins types in their body, yet we are billions, all different.
by JPLeRouzic 4y ago
If humans are sentient, are molecules in their body sentient?
There are around ~22,000 proteins types in their body, yet we are billions, all different.
- dekhn 4y agoNo, molecules are not sentient.
- JPLeRouzic 4y agoThat's my point, I made a tongue in cheek parallel between molecules and software. Neither are sentient, yet humans think they are sentient, so why wouldn't it be the case for a system made with software?
- dilyevsky 4y agoWhat’s your source on this?
- dekhn 4y agome? all of science? basic reasoning and logic?
- xpl 4y ago> No, molecules are not sentient. Have you ever heard about panpsychism?
- dekhn 4y agoYes, but I don't think it's the case.
- turbobooster 4y agoDid you just watch Ghost in the shell?
- lordfrito 4y agoMolecules aren't sentient, but proteins definitely are. /s
- JPLeRouzic 4y agoI like this answer! And thinking about it, the way protein folding is giving them new properties, must make us think more carefully than "Software is a computer program, by definition not sentient."
- Jensson 4y agoWe know sentience doesn't extend to all coupled computations. For example, human sentience doesn't extend to our balance system, or the system controlling our heartbeats, or the system that filters and manipulates vision data in the early stages. Or, the system that decides how to compose sentences, we aren't aware ourselves how that process works or we could have programmed it, instead that is a non-sentient subsystem. The parts our sentience does are easy to program and already solved, for example arithmetics.