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Offlineteen
Yeee Haaww

Registered: 02/13/04
Posts: 242
Last seen: 18 years, 1 month
Sentient Beings
    #3142531 - 09/16/04 03:53 AM (19 years, 6 months ago)

I've been wondering about the idea of sentience, and well the first thing I tried to do was find a list of sentient species, and that wasn't possible :/

Basically I am wondering about stuff like whether all human beings have sentience. I certainly don't remember most of my infancy, for example, maybe *I* wasn't around to see that?

And well some of the drooling vegetables I see getting wheeled around shopping malls don't seem like they could behave to achieve survival, let alone avoidance of suffering...

So yeah two main things I have been thinking about

- Are people born with conciousness or are they born as automatons that acquire sentience later

- Is it possible that some humans are not sentient

What happens if you clone someone...


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Don't give me that load of bunk~!

Edited by teen (09/16/04 03:57 AM)

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OfflineGomp
¡(Bound to·(O))be free!
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Registered: 09/11/04
Posts: 10,888
Loc: I re·side [primarily] in...
Last seen: 1 year, 28 days
Re: Sentient Beings [Re: teen]
    #3142638 - 09/16/04 06:30 AM (19 years, 6 months ago)

If it is knowing and perceiving; having awareness of surroundings and sensations and thoughts

i dont know if i dont know. am i still Sentient Being?


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Disclaimer!?

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InvisibleDieCommie

Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
Re: Sentient Beings [Re: teen]
    #3142715 - 09/16/04 07:48 AM (19 years, 6 months ago)

Whatever the case may be, a clone would be no different than a regular person.  At least as regular as the DNA donor is  :wink:

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Offlinegnrm23
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/29/99
Posts: 6,488
Loc: n. e. OH, USSA
Last seen: 5 months, 21 days
MU! (tr. = "not!") [Re: teen]
    #3142724 - 09/16/04 07:57 AM (19 years, 6 months ago)

in all seriousness, a monk asked joshu: "does a dog posess buddha-nature?"
joshu turned to the monk & shouted "Mu!"


~
and who is watching?
:wink:


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old enough to know better
not old enough to care

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Invisibleredgreenvines
irregular verb
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Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 38,063
Sentience [Re: teen]
    #3142985 - 09/16/04 09:59 AM (19 years, 6 months ago)

Sentience could just be subject to sensation with feelings (i.e. pleasure and pain or neutral) including all animals and many plants.

but it could mean conditionable by feelings.(i.e.subject to pleasure pain and indifference the being will build memories) which would narrow it down a bit.

I think you would then be able to project sentience on to most of the creatures now living on this planet that can learn.

but if you add "capable of transcendence or moral learning" you will restrict the list to humans - some mammals, some birds, & maybe a lizard or two and possibly a carp like fish.

all humans have the required potential even when severely mentally handicapped, and clones would have it equally.

the weird question comes when androids are built if they learn and confront moral dilemmas in face of pleasure and pain through which they have learned their characters. will they be transcendent and morally ascendent as well as conditionable?

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InvisibleMoonshoe
Blue Mantis
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Registered: 05/28/04
Posts: 27,202
Loc: Iceland
Re: Sentience [Re: redgreenvines]
    #3143503 - 09/16/04 12:42 PM (19 years, 6 months ago)

the way i understand it sentience is awareness of your own existance. In my understanding all organic life meets that requirement, the problem is people are totally incapable (generally) of realizing that their particual form of sentience is not the only form.

For me to hear that my cats for example are not sentient (if im right in saying sentience means awareness of self) is ridiculous, he obviously is aware of himself in every way i am, more or less


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Everything I post is fiction.

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Offlineteen
Yeee Haaww

Registered: 02/13/04
Posts: 242
Last seen: 18 years, 1 month
Re: Sentience [Re: Moonshoe]
    #3144714 - 09/16/04 05:12 PM (19 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

sentience is awareness of your own existance. In my understanding all organic life meets that requirement




I find that to be ludicrous. I understand only a limited number of organisms are self aware. Cats would be self aware, the fuzzy green things growing in my canning jars probably wouldn't be...


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Don't give me that load of bunk~!

Edited by teen (09/16/04 05:15 PM)

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OfflineMuppet
Nomadic Jester
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Registered: 08/14/02
Posts: 28,785
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Re: Sentience [Re: teen]
    #3144876 - 09/16/04 06:02 PM (19 years, 6 months ago)

you'd think that wouldn't you  :wink:



..........

Thus Spake Muppet


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:craven:  Ravings of a Madman  :craven:

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InvisibleMoonshoe
Blue Mantis
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Registered: 05/28/04
Posts: 27,202
Loc: Iceland
Re: Sentience [Re: Muppet]
    #3144890 - 09/16/04 06:05 PM (19 years, 6 months ago)

"the fuzzy green things growing in my canning jars probably wouldn't be... "

you may be right, in fact you probably are. I have the vague notion that A. anything that recognizes its own biological needs (homeostasis requirements) is at least on that level aware that their is an IT, a self that needs those requirements to be met.

And B. the forms of conciousness are so diverse and alien to us in concept that we would never be able to know what degree of sentience something has. I mean, if i believe that this human body i am is capable of understanding transcendent, cosmic knowledge, than its not that hard to believe mold could at least be self aware.

But again this is pure speculation and not even well developed at that. This is not something ive put much thought into

But as for any mammalian animal, or fish, basically anything with a spine, i think sentience exists in.


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Everything I post is fiction.

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InvisibleDiploidM
Cuban

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
Re: Sentient Beings [Re: teen]
    #3146576 - 09/17/04 12:23 AM (19 years, 6 months ago)

Quote:

I certainly don't remember most of my infancy, for example, maybe *I* wasn't around to see that?




Sentience appears to me to be an emergent property of the brain. It seems to require not only the physical constructs of the brain but also the stimulus (nurture?) of existing outside the womb. But who knows for sure.

There is even evidence that it may have its underpinnings in the realm of quantum mechanics, or even more weirdly, the realm of sub-Planck Scale physics:

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat...ec49c4c8fcb9607


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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