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Molecular complexity and Sentience
Posted on: Wed, 2006-11-15 16:32
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Molecular complexity and Sentience
When is the switch? Obviously the human would count as sentience, and water (assuming it is pure H2O) is a molecule. Where do you draw the line? Why? Rational Squad Alerts |
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[quote=JoshHickman]When is the switch? Obviously the human would count as sentience, and water (assuming it is pure H2O) is a molecule. Where do you draw the line? Why?[/quote]
from wikipedia:
[i]Sentience refers to possession of sensory organs, the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness. The possession of sapience is not a necessity. The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connote knowledge, consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different usages in English. The two words can be distinguished by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know".[/i]
[i]Sentience is the ability to sense. It is separate from, and not dependent on, aspects of consciousness.[/i]
that pretty much sums it up.
water molecules don't have sensory organs, or the ability to sense things.
they only react depending on what other molecules, elements, particles, and/or energy (mechanical and/or electromagnetic) there is around it.
its reactions are automatic, and different from [i]sensing[/i] things around it. sensing is only the ability to percieve.
EVERYTHING is a mechanical automatic reaction. He do not 'will' the molecules in our bodies to move. I ask when the system is complicated enough to say there is a sort of sensing. You can tell a computer to check and make sure it is running, but does that make is sentient?
Yes, as a matter of fact, it does. It's not sentient life, but it could be called sentient.
[quote=JoshHickman]EVERYTHING is a mechanical automatic reaction. He do not 'will' the molecules in our bodies to move. I ask when the system is complicated enough to say there is a sort of sensing. You can tell a computer to check and make sure it is running, but does that make is sentient? [/quote]something is sentient if it has the ability to percieve events outside itself, and make sense of them in some way. not just react with them.
a computer has a mouse and keyboard, and sometimes things like a scanner, webcam, microphone etc. they are like sensory organs, which detect and interpret events outside them.
a computer does not have a consciousness, but being sentient does not depend on consciousness.