The dog found a nest of 'em in the backyard once. She started digging at the hole then stuck her nose in it. Got rewarded with a snoutful of bees for the effort.
Pooch looked like a happy hamster for a few days but recovered ok. She stopped rooting around after that though!
Can you be sentient without first being concious? If not, and I'd argue not, then in speaking of sentience we are also necessarily speaking of conciousness.
Your assertion that sentience is perception of environment is a category error. You've mistaken casually identifying sentience in others with sentience itself.
I've fetched the definitions for all three terms and quoted them below.
Merriam-Webster
consciousness noun 1 a: the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself b: the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact c: awareness especially: concern for some social or political cause
The organization aims to raise the political consciousness of teenagers. 2: the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : mind 3: the totality of conscious states of an individual 4 : the normal state of conscious life regained consciousness 5 : the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes
sentience noun 1: a sentient quality or state 2: feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought
by extension...
sentient adjective 1: capable of sensing or feeling : conscious of or responsive to the sensations of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling 2: aware 3: finely sensitive in perception or feeling
sapient adjective : possessing or expressing great sagacity
Sentience is the capacity of sensing or feeling. That's an important distinction.
how is sense and reaction an indicator such a system carries within it a theory of mind?
I don't know and I'm not saying it is.
Then I fail to see the point or intention of your first comment. How are your semantics meant to further the discussion or clarify the reader's thinking?
we do not know what it is we are talking about.
Do we not? That's precisely why it's important to make that difference. Sentience is relatively easy to define and can be assigned with a lot of confidence whereas sapience isn't and can't.
If sentience here is taken literally to mean "physical sense ability" in the broadest sense then, yeah, sure. That's not helpful though. It's too reductive to be relevant to the topic at hand. Within philosophy of mind sentience is often referring to the ability or capacity for feeling (as in experience (joy, grief, etc)). It's a complex quality of some thinking minds and may well be a spectrum of ability whose boundaries are difficult to define.
[…] can sentience exist apart from perception of environment? I'd say it must.
Wait, really? Can you give several examples of this, then?
A person suffering from pseudocoma or "locked-in syndrome" is as close a real-world approximation I can think of. With that as a starting point we can arrive at my conclusion via thought experiment and create as many examples as you'd like.
Think of a brain in a vat. Maybe it's your brain. You're awake but you have no sensory input and, to your knowledge, no way of asserting your existence to the outside world.
It's a hellish thought. It demonstrates the importance of recognizing that one self's connection to the external is not equivelant with the self though.
Now digitize that mind. We now have an artificial intelligence. Disembodied. No sense organs to speak of. A thinking mind alone in a void.
Some variations on the Chinese Room demonstrate how thick a quagmire this discussion can be
For example, the chance for something to become sentient is never increased by a lack of stimuli, right?
Agreed! 😄
My point is not that an organism might find an evolutionary niche which requires no sense organs and yet develop sentience (though the universe is so vast that improbable is not impossible).
My point is that our measures and models cannot be the thing itself. Reponse to stimuli as you describe are mere measures we use to categorize minds based on our current models. Even if we believe our means are valid and useful and provide access to some level of truth: we cannot reasonably claim they allow total surety.
The relaxed position of mammalian eyelids leaves them open. Muscles must contract for the eyes to be shut. Dead creatures cannot contract their muscles so their eyes remain open after they die.
You cannot shut their eyes for them by closing their eyes with your hand. Morticians place contacts in cadaver's eyes while preparing the body for a wake. Those contacts grip the inside of the eyelids so that they remain closed.
This is why some cultures have funerary traditions in which objects are placed over the eyes.
TL;DR: you and your loved ones won't close their eyes when they die.
I asked to receive a drawing of me writing the prompt asking for that drawing. Someone delivered a picture of an abject moron drooling while typing away at a keyboard on a desktop computer. Hah! Jokes on THEM! I was on my CELLPHONE while on the TOILET.
Otherwise accurate. 11/10
What elevates you, in your mind, to replace solidarity with disgust and empathy with such dismissive, petty, useless condescension? Your judgement is meaningless. Your ire misplaced. Your indignation unearned.
Must perfection precede praxis? Can the misled not recognize deception and correct their course? If you're as wise as you think then you would be helping those trying to affect change instead of yelling into the void about how they should be doing it better.
Well, two, actually.
I keep seeing this sentiment and I don't understand it. Are you speaking purely out of anger and ignorance? The recent No Kings protest was either the third or first largest protest in the history of the U.S.A. and some communities have literally been running ICE gestapo out of their towns.
The Christian Conservative minority have gridlocked the American government, silently stacked the judicial system in their favor, and partnered with the American oligarchy to bankroll fascists and create the most pervasive, effective, and enduring propaganda machines ever seen (that's already worked its way into Australia and had been finding footholds in Europe).
The idea that Americans aren't doing anything about this or that there could ever possibly be a single unified movement that magically fixes "the issue" is incoherently reductive and impractical. If I see a comrade struggling for air I don't yell at them to just breathe. I help them remove the pig standing on their neck. What are YOU doing to lend a hand or show lost comrades that there's still hope?
It's not too late. The 14th amendment Section 3 specifically prohibits an insurrectionist from holding public office unless a special Congressional vote is held and passes with a 2/3rds majority.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
All US citizens should call their representatives and demand they uphold their sworn Constitutional duty to refuse the certification of Donald Trump's victory as he is disqualified from holding office.
This is not speculation. Donald Trump was successfully impeached for inciting insurrection. The US is in the middle of a Constitutional crisis which Congress must resolve.
Finding your reps is easy. Go here:
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Either let the site use your location or enter your home address. It'll pull all the info you need in one click.
Long time guitar owner here. You could get some wood glue and use a small amount to affix the chip back to the guitar pretty seamlessly so long as you've got a steady hand. In my experience it's harder than it looks.
My direct advice? Keep the missing chunk in a safe place and live with the guitar as-is for a month. There's no rush and this will give you some time to process.
If the gouge ends up sticking in your mind as something you want gone? Call a local luthier, explain what happened, that you'd like it restored, and ask for an estimate or evaluation if you want to budget for the expense. If you have a preference for a kind of repair you can ask for that too. Mending a wound on an instrument can be an opportunity to add beauty instead of simply removing a blemish. What kind of repair you want is entirely up to you and a temp fix now might make the repair more difficult / expensive.
If none of that sounds appealing and if after a few weeks the idea of a nail polish scar or other punky hack makes you happy then go for it! It's your instrument and best is conditional so go nuts. 🙂
My only concern with leaving the natural wood exposed would be moisture and cracking/paint flaking over time. Even if you think the chip looks bad ass and you end up wanting to keep it: I would ask a luthier to seal it up to preserve the instrument (battle-scar and all).
Correct and correct. Only commenting to add a wiki link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
When it feels like someone is spouting impenetrable bullshit look for this connection.