Predicting likely sentience in other species, can we take a stab at it?

[nvidiot]

As usual I'm walking home from the salt mines, and my mind wanders around as much as my feet. And I was curious about whether it is possible to look for signs of actively developing or potentially developing sentience in other species...

Now don't lose me here, because it is after all a purely speculative concept which would unfortunately be utterly untestable in anything but looooong evolutionary timescales. But if I can see a species or group developing a large brain, complex language system, high manual dexterity and definite evolutionary advantage to higher intelligence, could we argue that that species is a potential sentient species progenitor?

If we weren't apes, and we went back in time and saw the proto-human-apes that eventually developed "higher" intelligence, would we pick them out of the crowd of other species and say: "Watch these guys, they could develop sentience if we come back in a few hundred thousand generations..."

I'm rambling here and finding it difficult to get out the question in my head onto the electronic paper here. Hopefully someone here knows what I'm trying to ask and will rephrase.

Are Cephalopods or Pigs a likely source for a potential future intelligence like us if we gave them enough time? Or is intelligence/sentience; as we refer to it in ourselves; so damn rare and so damn unlikely that even if you have all the ingredients, (some I listed above) that you can't even hope to predict which family of creatures presently existing will maybe give rise to a sentient species?

Again, apologies for the clarity of the question, hopefully I've thrown out enough that people here can understand wtf I'm on about here.

[quarky]

Sea mammals; ant colonies; fungi.

[arthwollipot]

Dolphins are a common choice - problem is that they're not toolmakers. No fingers.

[Bikewer]

Octopi. Very clever, can communicate with each other, and easily manipulate things.

[nvidiot]

Dolphins are a common choice - problem is that they're not toolmakers. No fingers.

Who says you need fingers? Mouths can be just as if not more dextrous in some circumstances. Refer Twin Peaks cherry tying. :P

More seriously, I thought some dolphins did use tools? Sponges on the snout for foraging? Maybe not as "tool like" as we'd like though.

Keep em coming, I'll be interested to see if others here think as pessimistically about this as I think I do about the chances of identifying a potential sentient group.

[aggle-rithm]

Octopi. Very clever, can communicate with each other, and easily manipulate things.

In the 2003 series "The Future is Wild", in which future speciation is speculated upon, it was predicted that land-going squid called "squibins" would be the next intelligent life to occupy our current niche.

This would be millions of years into the future, though.

[aggle-rithm]

If we weren't apes, and we went back in time and saw the proto-human-apes that eventually developed "higher" intelligence, would we pick them out of the crowd of other species and say: "Watch these guys, they could develop sentience if we come back in a few hundred thousand generations..."


We wouldn't have been able to predict with any great certainty that proto-humans would win out over any number of other candidates, because there would be no way of knowing what environmental pressures might shape the genome over time.

For that matter, we wouldn't be able to predict which of the proto-humans would win out, because most of the hominid species turned out to be dead ends.

[aggle-rithm]

Who says you need fingers? Mouths can be just as if not more dextrous in some circumstances.

How about noses? Elephants can do quite a bit with theirs.

This makes me wonder if having dextrous body parts might lead to intelligence automatically since a greater number of neural connections are needed to operate the appendage. Perhaps Mother Nature doesn't know how to create more connections just for the fine motor control, but must globally increase the number of neurons, allowing for the development of problem-solving, communication, and reasoning skills.

[arthwollipot]

Pachyderms are a good choice. They're already marginally tool users.

[Delvo]

I wouldn't bet on it for anything other than tree-dwelling mammals. There's no point in evolving intelligence that can't be put to use, so any overall body plan is only going to evolve as much intelligence as it is physically able to do something with. The best platforms for manipulating one's surroundings are tree-dwelling mammals' arms & hands and cephalopods' tentacles, and cephalopods are stuck in an environment with serious limits on the available natural resources to manipulate. Of course, this criterion would also include the ancestors of squirrels and bats...

[Jerm]

Or is intelligence/sentience; as we refer to it in ourselves; so damn rare and so damn unlikely that even if you have all the ingredients, (some I listed above) that you can't even hope to predict which family of creatures presently existing will maybe give rise to a sentient species

My initial thoughts are leaning towards this. There is no reason for the evolution of any animal to push it towards intelligence specifically. We great apes were "lucky" in that our environment favored large brains and complex thoughts. There is no reason for what we have to be the end goal of species development, so I'd think the chances of it happening again are slim, although there are plenty of examples of convergent evolution, bats and birds, opossum thumbs, etc.

[MuDPhuD]

Or is intelligence/sentience; as we refer to it in ourselves; so damn rare and so damn unlikely that even if you have all the ingredients, (some I listed above) that you can't even hope to predict which family of creatures presently existing will maybe give rise to a sentient species?

Again, apologies for the clarity of the question, hopefully I've thrown out enough that people here can understand wtf I'm on about here.

from Wikipedia:
Sentience is the ability to feel, or perceive, or be conscious, or have subjective experiences. 18th century philosophers used the term to distinguish the ability to think ("reason") from the ability to feel ("sentience"). In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences (known as "qualia"). For Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care. The term is central to the philosophy of animal rights, because sentience implies the ability to suffer, which entails certain rights. In science fiction, a non-human character described as "sentient" will typically have similar abilities, qualities and rights to a human being.

By that definition all the creatures speculated on so far are already sentient. They experience sensation, suffer, have some degree of intelligence. Is a dolphin or chimpanzee conscious? I think you will gave a hard time arguing otherwise. The various features which once separated men from "animals" have all been shown to be present in animals. Tool use, communication (including the ability to learn and use language in a meaningful way), emotion, planning, etc. have all been demonstrated in non humans, so I'm not sure where you want to draw the line for "sentience".

[AvalonXQ]

The correct term is "sapience"; over time, people have started using "sentience" to mean the same thing.

[Newtons Bit]

How about Stundie winners?

[Ziggurat]

Dolphins are a common choice - problem is that they're not toolmakers. No fingers.

That's just what they want you to think! :p

[Verde]

I wouldn't bet on it for anything other than tree-dwelling mammals. There's no point in evolving intelligence that can't be put to use, so any overall body plan is only going to evolve as much intelligence as it is physically able to do something with. The best platforms for manipulating one's surroundings are tree-dwelling mammals' arms & hands and cephalopods' tentacles, and cephalopods are stuck in an environment with serious limits on the available natural resources to manipulate. Of course, this criterion would also include the ancestors of squirrels and bats...

We already have the NorthWest Tree Octopus (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/), so it seems like a significant step.

Also, cats are almost there.

V.

[nimzov]

"Whatever intelligence is, it can't be intelligent all the way down. It's just dumb stuff at the bottom." [Andy Clark]

In my view, this pretty well illustrates the different levels of intelligence: from a single ant, to a colony of ants. From a single neuron to a brain.

[Bikewer]

It may have been Arthur Clarke's old book, The Deep Range that speculated about evolved squid or octopi.....It may have been another one though.
Also, in Footfall, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle had invading aliens modeled on "intelligent pachyderm" models.... They had bifurcated trunks with grasping "fingers" on the end.

[Mister Earl]

I'd suggest parrots and other bird species. They have a form of language, have a sense of self, and are highly intelligent.

[quarky]

I'm not sure about manipulation of objects being all important.
Besides, ant colonies, collectively, are moving vast amounts of stuff.

A pod of orcas has to rank way up there, as per "crown of creation", yet its all quite prejudiced.

[excaza]

Wasn't there a study showing that elephants are self-aware? I seem to remember something about them recognizing themselves in a mirror, hopefully I can google-fu it if I'm not completely making it up :p

[aggle-rithm]

I'd suggest parrots and other bird species. They have a form of language, have a sense of self, and are highly intelligent.

On "Life After People" it was speculated that human languages would be heard for about 50 years after all the humans died off, as domesticated parrots and other "talking" birds would continue to mimic human speech. It would only last one generation, though, because there is little survival advantage in it.

(PS...I'm not sure if that's what you're implying, but parroted speech is not language. It lacks deep semantics.)

[aggle-rithm]

I'm not sure about manipulation of objects being all important.
Besides, ant colonies, collectively, are moving vast amounts of stuff.

A pod of orcas has to rank way up there, as per "crown of creation", yet its all quite prejudiced.

Star Trek IV implied that humpback whales were at one time in contact with an advanced species on a faraway world. A destructive probe arrived to determine why they had lost contact...which raises the question, "how did they ever HAVE contact?" Did whales once have subspace transmitters hidden away somewhere? Or did whalesong somehow traverse the vast emptiness of space to bring news of the dirtbag planet they were living on in which all they could do was swim around and eat plankton?

[quarky]

Star Trek IV implied that humpback whales were at one time in contact with an advanced species on a faraway world. A destructive probe arrived to determine why they had lost contact...which raises the question, "how did they ever HAVE contact?" Did whales once have subspace transmitters hidden away somewhere? Or did whalesong somehow traverse the vast emptiness of space to bring news of the dirtbag planet they were living on in which all they could do was swim around and eat plankton?

Beats me, but don't forget sex. And fresh shrimp dinners.

[TX50]

...[D]id whalesong somehow traverse the vast emptiness of space to bring news of the dirtbag planet they were living on in which all they could do was swim around and eat plankton?

Whalesong is on the Voyager golden record. Maybe the super-intelligent aliens managed to play back and parse that. Mind you, I recall Carl Sagan playing back segments of that recording to some kids at one of his Royal Institution Christmas lectures - predictably, hardly any of them could guess what these "typical sounds of Earth" were! :eek:

[Andrew Wiggin]

I vote for racoons. They seem to have usable hands, and some cleverness in terms of figuring out how to get food that's out of reach or closed off.

[excaza]

I vote for racoons. They seem to have usable hands, and some cleverness in terms of figuring out how to get food that's out of reach or closed off.

Well, they're not always that bright, there's a couple here at work that get stuck in dumpsters all the time.

[quarky]

I vote for racoons. They seem to have usable hands, and some cleverness in terms of figuring out how to get food that's out of reach or closed off.

i'm surprised that raccoons haven't been domesticated. They could work on assembly lines or pick fruit.They have good manual dexterity and strength and aren't hard to tame.

[fromdownunder]

I'll go for Otters.

Norm

[INRM]

Cats seem to be a good candidate.

[Loss Leader]

As far as my reading has taken me, the main pressure towards sentience is a food shortage coupled with a poor, but present, ability to digest almost anything.

[JoeBentley]

Are Cephalopods or Pigs a likely source for a potential future intelligence like us if we gave them enough time?

Few years back there was an excellent book called The Future Is Wild that postulated the course of evolution far in the future after the extinction of mankind. 200 million years in the future the continents have reformed into a single large continent and most of the northern hemisphere is dominated by temperate rain forest. In the rain forest live the most intelligent animal of the time, oxygen breathing, tree dwelling cephalopods called Squibbons (Squid/Gibbons) which have the similar intelligence to some primates, can manipulate objects with their tentacles, live in colonies, and even have a primitive language.

Pure conjecture of course, but certainly an interesting concept.

ETA: Which I see was mentioned several posts up and I missed. Well I second it as an interesting concept then.

[Halfcentaur]

Pacific NW Tree octopi site is awesome!

I was watching this old raccoon a few nights ago thinking about this same subject, it's an old subject I've been fascinated by since I was a child, animals evolving intelligence.

Sapience is just such an odd thing to have, and since we're stuck with thinking it's the most important things there are since you can't know what is important without it, it's difficult to step back and view this topic in context.

Giraffe researchers are searching for the next possible species to develop a really long freaking neck.

[ectoplasm]

Wasn't there a study showing that elephants are self-aware? I seem to remember something about them recognizing themselves in a mirror, hopefully I can google-fu it if I'm not completely making it up :p


According to wikipedia:

Animals that have passed the mirror test include: all of the great apes (bonobos,[5] chimpanzees,[5][6] orangutans,[7] humans, and gorillas), bottlenose dolphins,[5][8][9] orcas,[10] elephants,[11] and European Magpies.[12] Initially, it was thought that gorillas did not pass the test, but there are now several well-documented reports of gorillas (such as Koko[13]) passing the test. Other primates have so far failed the mirror test, though rhesus macaques demonstrated a behavior indicative of at least a partial self-awareness.[14

As you might expect, there is some disagreement about the significance of this test, with respect to self awareness and consciousness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

[stevea]

It's going to be a social species with long lasting social groups, and reasonably long lifespan. Most insects and social rodents don't live long enough to child-rear through an extended development/learning period nor to acquire and pass on cultural knowledge. Bats, cats, horses, wolves. Cephalopods fail for lack of social structure.

The species needs to be able to manipulate the environment to create and use tools. Perhaps they don't need opposable digits but they do need at least a pair of opposable appendages with good articulation. It helps to have limbs not required for locomotion. Many rodents have pretty good usage of forelimbs. Pachyderms have some problems getting on the list until they develop a second trunk.

Social, long lived and good articulate manipulators/hands are the basics. Something like meerkats or other longer lived social rodents. seems likely. Perhaps we can cross dogs & octopi. They'd need to evolve to support a larger brain and then get forced into varied environments with complex selection pressures.

[CORed]

We already have the NorthWest Tree Octopus (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/), so it seems like a significant step.

Also, cats are almost there.

V.

Cats have certainly managed to domesticate people.

[quarky]

When cat learn to team up we are doomed.

[Complexity]

Cats.

Already there.

Have more of it than most of us without the need to flaunt it.

[arthwollipot]

Do you think that in the absence of human domestication, cats would have become tool-users somehow?

[Beerina]

How about noses? Elephants can do quite a bit with theirs.

This makes me wonder if having dextrous body parts might lead to intelligence automatically since a greater number of neural connections are needed to operate the appendage. Perhaps Mother Nature doesn't know how to create more connections just for the fine motor control, but must globally increase the number of neurons, allowing for the development of problem-solving, communication, and reasoning skills.

In Footfall, by Larry Niven, the Earth is invaded by an elephant-like species. Their trunks are a little more useful, though, bifurcating twice to give them four little manipulators.

[Beerina]

Pachyderms are a good choice. They're already marginally tool users.

I saw a jaw-dropping sequence at a watering hole once. The elephants went down into it, and it had a small, cliff-like edge that was maybe 3 feet high. When they went to leave, the adults just stepped up, but one baby could not get out.

The film showed the elephants trying to get it out, some pulling on it, others pushing. But the amazing thing was one elephant started digging out a ramp, and the baby got out that way. I was just speechless.

[sphenisc]

Do you think that in the absence of human domestication, cats would have become tool-users somehow?

No, they would have domesticated elephants instead.

[Beerina]

My initial thoughts are leaning towards this. There is no reason for the evolution of any animal to push it towards intelligence specifically. We great apes were "lucky" in that our environment favored large brains and complex thoughts. There is no reason for what we have to be the end goal of species development, so I'd think the chances of it happening again are slim, although there are plenty of examples of convergent evolution, bats and birds, opossum thumbs, etc.

Intelligence allows the development and transfer of advanced behaviors. They can develop a lot faster than ingraining behavior by instinct and trial-and-error over thousands of generations.

We might define a simple intelligence as one that's capable of recognizing success when it tries something, by accident, new that "works". It is also capable of observing and learning successful behavior in others of its species. (This is probably, by the way, why success is so damned sexy. It's also probably why people can quietly observe someone doing something, and change their mind immediately, while being preached at for years does nothing.)

If the jump from that to a higher, problem-solving intelligence took awhile, I would predict it was because there is no clean, obvious benefit to incremental intelligence between the "pretty good" trial-and-error-and-observe levels of dogs, cats, raccoons, and so on, and the much larger brain that can handle abstract problem solving and conceptualization.


That, ironically, could have come about via various social pressures as, sadly, politician apes learned more and more how to trick each other. :( I've had that theory in the back of my mind for a decade or more now.

At some point, some master manipulator ape capable of constructing a whole set of relationships among apes, and planning how to trick them, realized he or she could apply it to things instead of apes.

[Complexity]

Do you think that in the absence of human domestication, cats would have become tool-users somehow?


I don't know.

However, as the result of their having domesticated us, we are now the tools that they use.

[nimzov]

I saw a jaw-dropping sequence at a watering hole once. The elephants went down into it, and it had a small, cliff-like edge that was maybe 3 feet high. When they went to leave, the adults just stepped up, but one baby could not get out.
Not sure if that's the one, but here they really get together to help the baby elephant.

http://www.todaysbigthing.com/cute-animals/2009/09/23

[drewid]

The Crow family is pretty damn smart, and some relatives are fine mimics, presumably because there is some advantage in it.

I seem to remember hearing that someone was working on a dolphin communicator. What happens if it works and they turn out to be even smarter than they seem?

[FattyCatty]

<snip>
That, ironically, could have come about via various social pressures as, sadly, politician apes learned more and more how to trick each other. :( I've had that theory in the back of my mind for a decade or more now.

At some point, some master manipulator ape capable of constructing a whole set of relationships among apes, and planning how to trick them, realized he or she could apply it to things instead of apes.This article in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/science/05angier.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss) seems to suggest the opposite (if I understand you correctly):
Darwinian-minded analysts argue that Homo sapiens have an innate distaste for hierarchical extremes, the legacy of our long nomadic prehistory as tightly knit bands living by veldt-ready team-building rules: the belief in fairness and reciprocity, a capacity for empathy and impulse control, and a willingness to work cooperatively in ways that even our smartest primate kin cannot match. As Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has pointed out, you will never see two chimpanzees carrying a log together. The advent of agriculture and settled life may have thrown a few feudal monkeys and monarchs into the mix, but evolutionary theorists say our basic egalitarian leanings remain.
<snip>
David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary theorist at the State University of New York at Binghamton, sees the onset of humanity’s cooperative, fair-and-square spirit as one of the major transitions in the history of life on earth, moments when individual organisms or selection units band together and stake their future fitness on each other. A larger bacterial cell engulfs a smaller bacterial cell to form the first complex eukaryotic cell. Single cells merge into multicellular organisms of specialized parts. Ants and bees become hive-minded superorganisms and push all other insects aside.

“A major transition occurs when you have mechanisms for suppressing fitness differences and establishing equality within groups, so that it is no longer possible to succeed at the expense of your group,” Dr. Wilson said. “It’s a rare event, and it’s hard to get started, but when it does you can quickly dominate the earth.” Human evolution, he said, “clearly falls into this paradigm.”

Our rise to global dominance began, paradoxically enough, when we set rigid dominance hierarchies aside. “In a typical primate group, the toughest individuals can have their way and dominate everybody else in the group,” said Dr. Wilson. “Chimps are very smart, but their intelligence is predicated on distrust.”

Our ancestors had to learn to trust their neighbors, and the seeds of our mutuality can be seen in our simplest gestures, like the willingness to point out a hidden object to another, as even toddlers will do. Early humans also needed ways to control would-be bullies, and our exceptional pitching skills — which researchers speculate originally arose to help us ward off predators — probably helped. “We can throw much better than any other primate,” Dr. Wilson said, “and once we could throw things at a distance, all of a sudden the alpha male is vulnerable to being dispatched with stones. Stoning might have been one of our first adaptations.”
An inherent sense of fairness may be one of humanity's defining traits. If this sense of fairness is necessary for developing sentience, I think cats are immediately ruled out.:D I have read about elephants showing emotion, sharing, and helping each other (e.g., pnas.org (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/03/02/1101765108), ElephantFriends.org (http://www.elephantfriends.org/mind.html)). If these are related to a sense of fairness, perhaps elephants become a more likely candidate.

[drewid]

Dolphins work co-operatively and have primate-like social structures.

They even have the equivalent of teenage gangs hanging out on street corners and getting into fights, (and instigating gang rape).

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web1/eberdan.html

[arthwollipot]

I don't know.

However, as the result of their having domesticated us, we are now the tools that they use.Very good point. Have we domesticated the cats, or have they domesticated us?

[stevea]

I still think the features needed are:
A/ Social animals - implies the contact & communication ability needed to pass on behaviors.
B/ Longish lifespan - with A/ Implies the potential to raise/support the young through an extended learning period.
C/ Good manipulators. Without the ability to manipulate the environment there are no tools.

Do you think that in the absence of human domestication, cats would have become tool-users somehow?
Cats - poor ability to manipulate the environment. Poor social structure. Huge fail. Much worse communication skills than a dog (with worse manipulators) or other social animals.

Besides cats aren't smart - it's just that their owners are so damned ... ;)

Intelligence allows the development and transfer of advanced behaviors. They can develop a lot faster than ingraining behavior by instinct and trial-and-error over thousands of generations.

I think we agree - but I'm confused by your description. A "hardwired" organism can develop extremely rapidly; born with almost all adult behaviors. What we see as intelligence is in part plasticity of behavior; learned behavior. But it requires a LOT of time for individuals to master those behaviors. Look at humans - we're pretty much in a learning phase for 18-30 years and that figure is increasing as cultural knowledge and 'tool' complexity increases. It requires a huge expenditure to rear 'children' for so long. In fact in recent decades the prime reproductive years for females overlap the learning phase - causing a lot of social problems from pregnant high-schoolers to professional career development vs cfamily choices. The other aspect (perhaps what you meant) is that new behaviors are transferred between individuals at a very high rate. We can create tools in days or years to accomplish tasks that would otherwise require eons of evolution (e.g. live in the arctic, go to the moon).

I'd claim to only social animals have (or need) much behavioral plasticity to permit significant behavioral development. A cephalopod or cat might be 'smart' as an individual but there is little chance they'll communicate behavior or provide to extended child-rearing.

We might define a simple intelligence as one that's capable of recognizing success when it tries something, by accident, new that "works". It is also capable of observing and learning successful behavior in others of its species. (This is probably, by the way, why success is so damned sexy. It's also probably why people can quietly observe someone doing something, and change their mind immediately, while being preached at for years does nothing.)

Insightful. I *think* that learning from others is key issue. We only need one "Einstein" to create the wheel or shovel, or figure out how to weave cloth. What is required is that a majority of the population can copy the successful behavior and pass it on. This might explain some human risk-taking behavior.

If the jump from that to a higher, problem-solving intelligence took awhile, I would predict it was because there is no clean, obvious benefit to incremental intelligence between the "pretty good" trial-and-error-and-observe levels of dogs, cats, raccoons, and so on, and the much larger brain that can handle abstract problem solving and conceptualization.

We can generalize or extrapolate better than say dogs, BUT there is a danger here. Generalizing from too little experience is problematic, and even the best extrapolations are often wrong. But if the species can potentially gain some new useful behavior, then it's reasonable to expend some individuals in the quest. Risk taking pays off for the species - not necessarily the individual.

As for abstract thinking - I've always found it interesting that humans have no innate sense of probability beyond simple trends and averages. [obviously gambling is (mostly) based on this deficiency]. So perhaps we can't communicate some types of abstract knowledge across our species very well.

The Crow family is pretty damn smart, and some relatives are fine mimics, presumably because there is some advantage in it.

I seem to remember hearing that someone was working on a dolphin communicator. What happens if it works and they turn out to be even smarter than they seem?

Doesn't matter - lousy manipulators. Also I just don't see pachyderms evolving a trunk capable of hurling a spear or handling a shovel.

So you can see that 4-limbed proto-humans had the main ingredients as they moved to the savannas. They have tight social structure, longish lives and two good opposable arms/manipulators freed-up from climbing while clinging to a branch is not so different from grasping many tools. So they could create tools, pass along the successful tool behavior and rear children for an extended learning period.

Otters and meerkats have potential.



This article in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/science/05angier.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss) seems to suggest the opposite (if I understand you correctly):

An inherent sense of fairness may be one of humanity's defining traits. If this sense of fairness is necessary for developing sentience, I think cats are immediately ruled out.:D I have read about elephants showing emotion, sharing, and helping each other (e.g., pnas.org (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/03/02/1101765108), ElephantFriends.org (http://www.elephantfriends.org/mind.html)). If these are related to a sense of fairness, perhaps elephants become a more likely candidate.

I'm not impressed by this line of thought. The human's inherent strong emotional feeling of right/wrong or 'fairness' may be one way to create a very primitive social structure from nothing BUT it's a huge detriment to progress IMO. Any species that nurtures their young has some aspect of this. It doesn't scale.

Despite a deep sense of "fairness" it's clear that individuals and societies only apply 'fairness' selectively. "We" are of course always fair, but "you" are perhaps not. This seems a sort of rationalization mechanism more than an indication of sentience.

The NYT articles example of sticking out your hand to 'beg' from a successful hunter may work nicely in a village with 20 to 200 related kinsmen, but this appeal to fairness can't work in a modern city.

I don't want to turn this into a crackpot thread on economics (this forum has plenty) but many cultures prohibit usury, as a matter of "fairness" and this clearly prevents capital formation and therefore efficient production. So fundamental emotional feelings of fairness act against the interests of successful modern economic structures. The seemingly "fair" prohibition against usury helps keeps a billion plus humans in poverty, uneducated and unproductive.

I shouldn't have to mention the recent demagogic political speeches from both major US parties where there is clearly no agreement about what is actually fair. So yes - a strong emotion but no indication of actual value in a modern social setting.

This primitive "fairness" emotion seems a "wrong" emotion left over from our primate past. People also have primitive emotions about lust and greed and seasonal depression and deities and tribalism. These may all have been useful at one time - but it is not a good basis for a modern culture and not a direct indication of sentience or intelligence.

[Complexity]

Very good point. Have we domesticated the cats, or have they domesticated us?


Co-domestication, of course.

But all is going according to the cats' evil plan...

I have one curled up on me at the moment. Her new favorite place is to sprawl on the keyboard of my laptop, but I've 'persuaded' her to move for a minute so I can share her with the world.

She pondered the merits of my case for a few moments and acquiesced.

(I feel so used)

[CapelDodger]

An inherent sense of fairness may be one of humanity's defining traits.

A good politician (in the most general sense) will play on that, as they will on all basic human traits - distrust of outsiders, affinity for insiders, celebrity worship, conservatism, confirmation bias ...

The commonest form of human intelligence is not creative but is social intelligence. It manifests at all levels, from diplomatic conferences to the local pub, and, of course, in the schoolyard.

[CapelDodger]

But all is going according to the cats' evil plan...

I'm glad I'm not the only one to have spotted the Great Cat Conspiracy. History cannot be explained by man's rational pursuit of self-interest, but it's worked out remarkably well for Felix Vulgaris. Concidence? I think not.

[FattyCatty]

<snip>
I'm not impressed by this line of thought. The human's inherent strong emotional feeling of right/wrong or 'fairness' may be one way to create a very primitive social structure from nothing BUT it's a huge detriment to progress IMO. Any species that nurtures their young has some aspect of this. It doesn't scale.

Despite a deep sense of "fairness" it's clear that individuals and societies only apply 'fairness' selectively. "We" are of course always fair, but "you" are perhaps not. This seems a sort of rationalization mechanism more than an indication of sentience.

The NYT articles example of sticking out your hand to 'beg' from a successful hunter may work nicely in a village with 20 to 200 related kinsmen, but this appeal to fairness can't work in a modern city.

I don't want to turn this into a crackpot thread on economics (this forum has plenty) but many cultures prohibit usury, as a matter of "fairness" and this clearly prevents capital formation and therefore efficient production. So fundamental emotional feelings of fairness act against the interests of successful modern economic structures. The seemingly "fair" prohibition against usury helps keeps a billion plus humans in poverty, uneducated and unproductive.

I shouldn't have to mention the recent demagogic political speeches from both major US parties where there is clearly no agreement about what is actually fair. So yes - a strong emotion but no indication of actual value in a modern social setting.

This primitive "fairness" emotion seems a "wrong" emotion left over from our primate past. People also have primitive emotions about lust and greed and seasonal depression and deities and tribalism. These may all have been useful at one time - but it is not a good basis for a modern culture and not a direct indication of sentience or intelligence.Totally disagree with almost everything you say here.

[Marduk]

Dolphins are a common choice - problem is that they're not toolmakers.

Bet ?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0607_050607_dolphin_tools.html
;)

[quarky]

I don't know.

However, as the result of their having domesticated us, we are now the tools that they use.

Too true...
Yet tools do break.
Our old cat's tools fell apart and euthanized the bastard.



Non-human intelligence speculation is quite subjective.
Dolphins got smarter as I realized my dumbness.
For that matter, my Dad's I.Q. skyrocketed as I out-grew my teenage years.

[arthwollipot]

Which reminds me - thanks to everyone who sent me the article about the dolphins and the sponges. I appreciate each and every one. :p

[Bamberger]

For that matter, my Dad's I.Q. skyrocketed as I out-grew my teenage years.

I'm approaching the Mensa level now that my son's almost 18.

[AvalonXQ]

There's no more a Cat Conspiracy than there is a Teenager Conspiracy.

The unthinking creatures are highly unsuited for survival on their own. They rely on us to provide food and shelter without returning even rudimentary expressions of affection, lacking the socialization skills instinctual to most mammals.

And cats are almost as bad.

[stevea]

Totally disagree with almost everything you say here.

If you can't make a coherent argument why did you post ? This is 'sposed to be a forum to discuss skepticism and critical thinking. Not to vent unsupported opinions.

Yes IMO the human emotion toward "fairness" doesn't serve larger social structures particularly well. I gave examples.. If you can't rebut - you lose.