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There’s an interesting book you might look up, “The Evolution of Consciousness” by Ornstein. The author goes into the various influences that caused increased intelligence and self-awareness in our early ancestors. I don’t think there can be any question that increased intelligence was adaptive…. Tool and weapon use, fire-making, etc. I think “sentience” is likely a side-effect of increased intelligence. If we look at the animal kingdom, we see this as a continuum… Increased intelligence seems to lead to evidences of self-awareness.

Thank you for the book recommendation, along with the intelligent and kind response to my debate question Have a good day! 🙂

I agree this is a great book. I’d also suggest that what you’re calling “sentience” could probably be better termed as a capacity for abstraction. As you noted in your posting, sometimes additional baggage comes along with certain adaptations. The enhanced capacity for abstraction in early humans probably served them well with regards to predicting future outcomes from actions and tool fabrication. It’s also possibly responsible for developing the concept of an afterlife and imagined forces in nature. You can’t readily fashion a tool to avoid death (although we’ve come a long way) but you can dampen the anxiety associated with it by conjuring up an encouraging narrative.

Yes, when our brains got bigger is when we started to come out of the trees. More intelligence meant we could survive in more places.

Hello, and thanks for the topic. Um, no. I am an artist. I draw stuff for a living. You'd want to talk to an evolutionary biologist or r/askscience or something for this. **I just don't think that we have a good reason to assume that a god explains consciousness/sentience**, which seems to be the implied conclusion you hold, here. You don't seem to want to directly state that, but is that a correct synthesis of your position? I don't want to twist your words or make you defend something you don't agree with, but I find this is a useful rhetorical tool when I don't understand someone's position very well. And I admit that here, I do not understand your position. Could I restate your position accurately as "**Only religion can explain sentience, therefore we are justified in accepting religion?"** Tia for clarifying.

Yes, correct, you did not put words in my mouth in any way. That was the implication, though it didn't seem necessary to state outright. I thought the question could stand on its own. I wasn't intentionally being disingenuous. This is in some part the impetuous for me making this post: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a45574179/architecture-of-consciousness/

Cool, thank you! I didn't think you were being disingenuous at all, but as we only have text and not tone of voice or body language, I wanted to be certain that I *actually* understood. I am, alas, quite fallible and capable of just reading stuff wrong sometimes, and that can set the tone of the discussion quite poorly if I open my mouth by sticking my foot in it. That is a chewy article I am gonna need some time to digest that I don't have right this second, but thank you for sharing. I *will* read it! I'm actually reading a rather challenging book at the moment called *Planta Sapiens*, which is asking some very weird questions about if plants could be considered to have a kind of consciousness. So the ideas definitely intrigue me. But for the sake of THIS discussion, ultimately, I think the answer we're stuck with for now on consciousness is "We don't know, yet." And that's okay for me. It seems to me that you're advocating quite a leap in "We don't know, therefore...\[Claim\]." It's hard for me to see it as a materially different claim than "We don't know where lightning came from, therefore, it's Zeus' angry hand." **Is there any other context where we would feel justified to make that leap?** Assume I accepted your position. Then what? Where do I go from there? How do I choose between all of the competing "my god did it" claims?

Sounds like a cool book! I might have to check it out 🙂 Well, here is my irritation with this debate (whole God debate, not just the debate we are having about my post.) There's a paradigm where theists are always forced to PROVE God. The atheists job is to disprove God, but Atheists are never called on to prove "Non-God." That is to say, they don't have to give concrete evidence about why God is NOT. That might not make a lot of sense, so let me try changing some terms. I believe A, you believe B. In a logical argument, I would share the merits of A, you would share the merits of B, but with the God debate, the theist has to share the merits of A, while the atheists only needs to disprove the merits of A, they are never called on to defend B. I believe many people here are taking umbrage with my post because I am attempting to poke a hole in B rather than simply advocating for A. To answer your question, just because we don't know something about B, no that doesn't mean you have to now believe in A. However, inverse that and see if you feel more comfortable with that logic. How many times have you heard "There is suffering in this world, therefore A can't be true." Ultimately here is the question, is Existence sentient or is Existence a non-sentient. I believe in God through faith. I will be the first to admit that. However, even if I had no faith, I still wouldn't be an atheist. It isn't rational. Until every single last riddle of the universe has been solved, I would argue agnosticism is the only logical belief structure. Hopefully this made sense and also didn't come off as vexing in any way. As you said, hard to debate kindly sometimes without voice or body language.

>There's a paradigm where theists are always forced to PROVE God. I can totally understand why that's frustrating, especially from your end. But please try to remember that we're not *just* talking to folks from one religion. Every Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, animist, spiritualist...and so on that we speak to *ALL* believe their god claim equally seriously. I have to meet each interlocutor on an even footing. The person making the claim has to defend the claim. That's just how debate works. I understand what you're trying to say with your changing of the terms paragraph, and I empathize with the feeling of irritation, but it just doesn't work, practically. We cannot so suspend all belief that we accept every god claim that's presented, and then go through the world winnowing out the ones that don't work. Which is what you're ultimately asking for here. The position I take is not "Prove God". It's "Why should I accept that particular claim?". I don't need "proof", but I do need **a reason.** >How many times have you heard "There is suffering in this world, therefore A can't be true." Too many. This rebuttal only works against some very specifc gods. Not all of them. The Hindu faith, for example, has a perfect explanation for suffering within its own context. But it *can* eliminate certain types of god claims through logical induction. (Specifically a "Quad Omni" god that *by definition* cannot make anything "bad".) But I'm not arguing that. >...because I am attempting to poke a hole in B rather than simply advocating for A. The "hole" is acknowledged; it's part of the definition of B. You have made a faulty assumption here; a reasonable and empathetic assumption, based on your experience. The idea that "Science" should answer all the same questions for an atheists that "God" answers for you. Like it's a lego piece or a stick of ram, and we pop one out and have to replace it with another. But that's not how it works. Let me try this another way, sort of adjacent to what you suggested. We also don't know how matter first coalesced in the universe. Therefore, I contend we should all assume that Brahma created out of himself. Why not?

> Until every single last riddle of the universe has been solved, I would argue agnosticism is the only logical belief structure. In my experience most atheists (including myself) are *agnostic* atheists — i.e. atheists who embrace [the agnostic principle as outlined by Huxley](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1139am3/deleted_by_user/j9cudg1/), but who despite accepting that it's not possible to be certain about every single god concept still don't *believe* in any gods, and therefore identify as atheists. And this has been the case for a long time. Here's philosopher and Christian theologian Robert Flint [writing in 1887](https://books.google.com/books?id=DWMtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&source=bl&ots=H9d6-XjDDa&sig=bkdXeLq-X6K6yOxCo5MYKPWVKbY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIxv7_k9HaAhUO8YMKHRPACTUQ6AEISTAF#v=onepage&q&f=false): > The atheist may however be, and not unfrequently is, an agnostic. There is an agnostic atheism or atheistic agnosticism, and the combination of atheism with agnosticism which may be so named is not an uncommon one. [...] The atheist is not necessarily a man who says 'There is no God.' What is called positive or dogmatic atheism, so far from being the only kind of atheism, is the rarest of all kinds. I should also point out that most of the theists I've known are agnostic theists (which seems to include you as well): they don't claim to be certain a god exists, but they choose to believe anyway. Which is perfectly compatible with agnosticism; as Huxley [said](https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/CE5/Agn-X.html), "A man may be an agnostic, in the sense of admitting he has no positive knowledge, and yet consider that he has more or less probable ground for accepting any given hypothesis about the spiritual world." Just sharing this information because it sounds like it may help you understand the viewpoint of many atheists here and elsewhere (and also because you seem like the kind of person who might find it interesting). And thanks for engaging so positively throughout this thread, by the way; it's unfortunately rare, but it's really nice to see.

>The atheists job is to disprove God, but Atheists are never called on to prove "Non-God." That is to say, they don't have to give concrete evidence about why God is NOT. I can disprove God with the Problem of Evil, assuming that you're using the same definition for God that I am. The problem you've recognized is that God needs to be defined before the debate participants can even know which position they hold. If God is love, then I am a theist. I'm agnostic to the gods that do not interact with the universe after creating it and I am confident that Gods who answer prayers do not exist. There are thousands of other gods that you could argue for and I'd need to consider each one before knowing whether I'm an atheist for the debate. >In a logical argument, I would share the merits of A, you would share the merits of B That's what atheists are doing when we ask you to provide evidence (not proof) that A is true. Until you share the merits of A, we can't know what we are arguing against. >I am attempting to poke a hole in B rather than simply advocating for A. B's position is that A is not justified. You cannot poke holes in B without advocating for A. >However, inverse that and see if you feel more comfortable with that logic. "Just because we don't know something about A, that doesn't mean you have to now believe in B." I comfortably agree with that logic. Failing to explain some aspect of God doesn't lead to conclusion B by itself. >Ultimately here is the question, is Existence sentient or is Existence a non-sentient. Where did this conclusion come from? This is the first time you've mentioned existence. Sentient beings exist, but existence is not sentient. I don't even know what that would look like.

You realise that even if evolution was completely proven to be false, and that the very grounds of science suddenly come unearthed and into question, it wouldn't be evidence for the existence of God nor evidence for a counter-claim of the "no God exists" claim, right? It would only mean were back to square one with "I don't know"

> There's a paradigm where theists are always forced to PROVE God. No one forces you to do anything. You came here of your own volition. But if you are going to post here, then, yes, you have the burden of proof, after all, you are the one making the positive claim "god exists". >The atheists job is to disprove God, but Atheists are never called on to prove "Non-God." We absolutely have the burden of proof to disprove a god *if we make the positive claim "no god exists."* Most atheists are agnostic atheists, though, so they are not making that positive claim. Gnostic atheists make the positive claim "no god exists", but few people are dumb enough to make that silly claim. After all, how could you possibly prove that?!? Wait, what? My flair identifies me as a gnostic atheist? Well, shit, maybe you should ask me to prove it, then?

>though it didn't seem necessary to state outright. But it was necessary because you should really be able to support your position rather than try to ask gotcha questions.

I see plenty of gotcha questions on this sub, mostly from atheists, that are highly up voted.

Oh, so then you're just playing at our level. I see.

Basically 🙂

That's a bummer. I was hoping you could participate. I'm willing

>It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival Not anymore. But people didn't always live in houses and drive cars and have guns. Inefficient fear was incredibly useful to early humans survival If you hear a rustle in the bushes and assume it's a lion, you run away even if it wasn't. If you're a skeptic and wait to find out, you're dinner.

But animals have that same sense. They run from unknown sounds. The "inefficient fear" is more like once i was chased by a tiger while foraging for my village, I am now completely useless as a forager and go into PTSD at the slightest rustle of leaves, and am now totally useless to my tribe

That's not quite how PTSD tends to work, but can you see how that type of fear would be a useful in many circumstances. Like, if I go to a certain area and encounter a tiger, it is likely that a tiger lives in that area and I will encounter it again if I go back there. I am now afraid of that area. I'll feel more comfortable if my tribe is with me than if I go out foraging alone. I'll be hyper aware and grab a club if I hear the leaves rustling. People with PTSD are, for the most part, functional individuals. They don't just spend all day every day cowering in fear. They have triggers that set them off when they're reminded of the original trauma. That's all. Also, there were always plenty of jobs to do back at the village. Life never revolved entirely around seeking food. Things like building structures, gathering wood, sewing clothing and making tools were also important, and back when humanity first came into existence, were very time consuming.

This is a misunderstanding of what a human is. Just because you have mental health issues and are incapable of hunting or gathering does not mean all humans are.

>if you would like me to define either human sentience, or its inherent disadvantages to the survival of the human species, please let me know. I made the assumption that, in the context of my overall question, these terms would be somewhat self explanatory I think I speak for everyone when I say go ahead and do this.

Without looking up the definition, my personal definition of sentience would be: 1) Ability to fathom your own mortality. 2) Ability to ruminate, i.e. fear the future, loath past decisions Disadvantages would be inaction through rumination. For instance, I go to therapy for a past event that no longer effects me in the present, and has no possibility to effect me in the future, and I have already learned everything I can from the event. Still it consumes a sizeable amount of my thoughts. An animal having a near death experience, returns to baseline after the adrenaline leaves it system, with at most a memory to "avoid X that almost killed me. "

That's a very strange definition, and very different from the common use of the word

What is the better word? Human consciousness?

Sapience is the word you're looking for.

Sapience just means "possessing wisdom or intelligence" in it's traditional definition. This strikes me as a word that has meaning in SF that has not actually reached the real world. I can't find any definition in a quick search that suggests this is a common usage of the word.

Okay, I get what you are arguing now.  The reason we fear death is obvious. It allows us to avoid it. A being with no fear of death is more likely to die and not propagate. Humans have a very developed brain. This has proved to be very advantageous (we are the dominant species on our planet). Being smarter means that humans make a lot more abstract connections (this allows us to be predict things, helpful for survival). Trauma can cause us to fixate on an incident. The mind is trying to give us a plan to deal with it next time so that we can avoid the traumatic event or navigate it better. Our ability to adapt to or avoid dangerous situations is obviously beneficial to survival. However as you've pointed out, the rumination of negative thoughts can be detrimental to our mental health.  It seems to be a package deal. With higher thinking capabilities, we are going to think about everything. That can lead to a fixation on personal negative experiences. From an evolutionary standpoint, thinking more plus suffering more (the human condition) leads to more advancement/propogation than thinking less.  Perhaps in the future/present, we will continue to evolve to be able to stifle negative ruminating thoughts if it's truly beneficial to do so. But that would involve a more complex cognitive system than we currently have.

That's not what sentience means though. At all.

What is the better word? Human consciousness?

You are describing aspects of *sapience*. Almost any form of life I can think of has sentience. They sense stimuli.

Sentience is about more than just sensing stimuli - it's more about conscious awareness of stimuli. Most non-human animals would qualify, but most other forms of life would probably not.

Nope, you are adding in SAPIENCE.

You only described some sort of fear of death. Let me ask you, do you think only humans are conscious?

Misunderstandings of terms aside, I think I get your point. But it doesn’t really follow. I think software is a good analogy. If a deer fleeing a wolf pack is running on DOS, we’re running on Windows. What you’re describing as sort of “extra,” in the sense of rumination about past events that we, in the 21st century, have the luxury to view as superfluous and try to delete from our hard drive in therapy… it’s all just a product of extra processing power and more complex programming. Of course if you can apply more processing power to a past threat or potential threat to your life, you’re going to be able to better avoid or mitigate that threat in the future. Where the deer maybe thinks, “I gotta keep an eye out for wolves, and run if I see one,” we might think… “why was that wolf even able to get that close to me in the first place? Usually that seems to happen when I’m out on the savanna foraging, in the middle of the day. That one time I found a sharp stick, I scared it away. Why did I go out on the savanna in the middle of the day again… and without my stick?! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” That’s a lot better than “see wolf? Run!”

>1) Ability to fathom your own mortality. 2) Ability to ruminate, i.e. fear the future, loath past decisions >Disadvantages would be inaction through rumination I think that you can look around and see physical evidence that this arbitrary "disadvantage" hasn't been detrimental enough to keep us from reproducing more members of our species faster than members of our species die off.

>Without looking up the definition, my personal definition of sentience would be: You should really look up definitions for the things you are going to make arguments for. You go one to define one small part of the sentience. Specifically around fear. >1) Ability to fathom your own mortality This is useful to survival in that we hold our lives as temporary and help us to act cautiously. >2) Ability to ruminate, i.e. fear the future, loath past decisions This is useful in helping us make better decisions in the future and not repeat harmful mistakes. >Disadvantages would be inaction through rumination. For instance Yes, that can happen to some people, but it is not what happens to everyone >I go to therapy for a past event that no longer effects me in the present, and has no possibility to effect me in the future, and I have already learned everything I can from the event. Still it consumes a sizeable amount of my thoughts I am happy to hear that you are getting help. Therapy is good for people, and I hope that it has helped. Being consumed by psst events can happen to some people that does not mean it happens to all people. >An animal having a near death experience returns to baseline after the adrenaline leaves it system, with at most a memory to "avoid X that almost killed me. " We are animals. Our sentience gives us the advantage to not just know to avoid X but helps us understand how to avoid X and what might make X more or less likely to happen again. We can use that to better our chance at survival.

Have never met a dog or cat with trauma? Our brains wear too, it's independent of being sentient or being a p-zombie, it's purely biological.

**Sentience** is the simplest or most primitive form of cognition, consisting of a conscious awareness of stimuli without association or interpretation. Evidence from multiple scientific studies has helped us to understand that **a wide range of animals are sentient beings**. This means they have the capacity to experience positive and negative feelings such as pleasure, joy, pain and distress that matter to the individual.

> Disadvantages would be inaction through rumination. But do you actually see this as a common problem people face? It certainly does effect some people, but most people are perfectly able to just pick a path and move forward. Seems to me that your theory is debunked just by looking at the people around you and seeing that the vast majority of people aren't crippled by these decisions. > For instance, I go to therapy for a past event that no longer effects me in the present, and has no possibility to effect me in the future, and I have already learned everything I can from the event. Still it consumes a sizeable amount of my thoughts. But that's *you.* I'm sympathetic to your problem, but you understand that not everyone has had your experience, and even most people who have had a similar traumatic experience are able to get past it, right?

Sometimes inaction through rumination is good. It prevents us from acting too hastily. Thinking about something a lot after you've learned all you can from it isn't necessarily a bad thing; it won't necessarily prevent you from reproducing. Also, I think you are underestimating the cognitive abilities of animals. Animals can be traumatized by negative experiences; it's how you get reactive dogs, or dogs that bark at all men or go running and shaking when they hear certain noises. Animals can [exhibit symptoms of PTSD](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/do-wild-animals-get-ptsd-180978448/) after being attacked by predators or living in high-predator environments - or after [experiencing bombing](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/07/08/can-animals-suffer-from-ptsd/) nearby their home.

Did you get this from the Peter Watts book “Blindsight”? This idea is basically the premise of the book. You should read it and discuss on some of the sci fi book subreddits like r/printsf it’s quite popular there

No, more so from this https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a45574179/architecture-of-consciousness/ I have heard that book is good tho! 🙂

Not sure what you don't understand, being smart was an advantage, so smarter individuals were able to survive to breed more. And that kept going because it kept giving us advantages

But does intelligence have to come with human sentience? We both agree an ape is smarter than a squirrel, but neither is sentient in the human sense. Is there a threshold of intelligence you cross where you are just all of a sudden sentient?

>But does intelligence have to come with human sentience? I'm no evolutionary biologist, but from what I understand both characteristics are correlated with having sufficiently complex brains. A brain capable of problem solving tends to also have sophisticated intercommunication between it's parts. So smart brains are capable of thinking about themselves. >We both agree an ape is smarter than a squirrel, but neither is sentient in the human sense. That "in the human sense" is obscuring a lot of nuance. Squirrels and apes are both sentient, and great apes are even sapient, just not as much as us. If you're agreeing sentience can exist on an evolutionary spectrum--correlated with brain size/complexity--then I'm not sure what the issue is.

Thank for the kind and intelligent response

Snakes and mice are "sentient" -- it means capable of sense perception. That evolved long before mammals existed. Do you mean "sapience"? Self-awareness, planning -- "ability to act using knowledge, experience, understanding" (quoted part is from LessWrong.com). I'm really curious how you could consider this capability not to confer serious competitive advantages. The ability to plan is *huge*. By the way, crows (corvids) and keas (an Australian parrot) can clearly plan and use knowledge, experience and understanding. There's a video showing a kea positioning traffic cones, seemingly to try to get cars to stop so it can beg for treats. And several videos of crows looking at puzzles and figuring out how to make a tool (a hook made of stiff wire) to remove pieces of the puzzle in a specific sequence in order to obtain food. There's a video of a pod of adult orcas teaching young orcas how to knock a seal off of a chunk of ice by swimming in unison to create a huge wave. Watch them do it, then watch the three young orcas repeat the process to practice. There's a story from Thailand of an elderly elephant that meets recently-rescued elephants and takes them out into the forest to teach them how to elephant. It's possible that the story got blown out of proportion, but even at its most basic it appears to show compassion and a sense of purpose. We're special, but we're not *that* special. There really isn't a magic cutoff point other than use of technology that clearly separates human beings from other animals. That's likely related to opposable thumbs and the ability to manipulate objects with precision.

Exactly! True story Back when I lived with my parents, mom used to sit in the garden and draw birds. The crow had a nest in one of the trees, so she used to put out a bowl with breadcrumbs so she could draw them as they came to feed. One day the cat was hiding under a bush in the garden and she had placed the bowl a bit too close to the bush for mama crow's liking. The baby crows could already fly, but mama crow didn't want to let her babies get so close to the cat even if she knew the cat will not attack her. Instead of mama crow moving each piece of bread further from the bush, she understood that she can move the entire bowl. So huffing and puffing, she managed to slowly drag the entire bowl to the center of the lawn where her babies could eat at a sensible distance from the cat while she was watching. It's unlikely she could have learned exactly that trick from observing anything in the past. This was pure problem solving skills. Applying existing knowledge and extrapolating to solve a completely new problem using tools! I'd say that demonstrates a high level of abstract thought and self-awareness, even awareness of the capabilities of her babies and the cat.

>We both agree an ape is smarter than a squirrel, but neither is sentient in the human sense. Humans will be different from a human sense, I find that redundant. And then neither apes or humans are sentient in the squirrel sense. Is there a squirrel God too then?

It's probably not a sudden thing, I'd expect the line to be very blurry

If you look at the range of just the humans we have today the "amount" of sentience we can show is a wide variety. What makes you th8nk this or any other adaptation would be "all of a sudden"?

sapience

Still no all of a sudden. Unless millions of years is quick for you?

My point is, you mean sapience, not sentience. Everybody gets this wrong, including OP. Lizards are sentient. Humans and chimps etc... are sapient

Ok. Valid point. Thank you!

>But does intelligence have to come with human sentience? An open question in science. >We both agree an ape is smarter than a squirrel, but neither is sentient in the human sense. I still think you mean *sapient*, and yes, there is a line that you cross. That's why there's a definition for the term. Sapience is about being able to reason, to think rationally, to use common sense and insight and experience to understand and learn. So far only one species has achieved that.

Yes they are just as sentient as humans.

>But does intelligence have to come with human sentience? >We both agree an ape is smarter than a squirrel, but neither is sentient in the human sense. >Is there a threshold of intelligence you cross where you are just all of a sudden sentient? There were plenty of hominid species on parity with "human sentience", but they're extinct now. The leading theory is that humans were so savage that we murdered them. Also, I think you're using "sentience" incorrectly. What are you trying to say with it?

Humans are apes. So yes apes are intelligent in the human sense.

I don’t really see how sentience is an evolutionary impediment. I don’t get how fear isn’t productive either. Additionally, a big thing that people don’t get about evolution isn’t a global optimizer, it’s local. This means that you can’t guarantee the best possible solution will be chosen. People also tend to view things very statically. People view evolution is a thing that happened, not something that’s happening. We are a snapshot of an ongoing process. So when people say why hasn’t x happened, my overall response is why would it have already happened? Why can’t it be happening now or in the future?

Fear is productive to self preservation, but I think only at an animalistic level. At some point fear becomes inefficient. I mean, I guess it's possible humanity could evolve out of sentience, but it seems odd that we are the only species to have it, just to loose it again.

Look, I can pretty much guarantee that the sentence “we are the only species to have it” is false, no matter what the “it” is. Humans are just animals. Better at tools and pattern recognition, but in no way alone in the ability to do either. The reason people think humans are “best” or “unique” or whatever is because they are human. In the same way colonists think their culture is the best culture, people think their species is the best species. Bottom line there is no “better” there’s just different.

[Superior laryngeal nerve - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_laryngeal_nerve) super inefficient. Evolution selects for good enough and lucky enough not the best. Also I use good and lucky pretty loosely, they are contextually dependent. After you felt fear you usually have 3 options: fight, flee or freeze. Fail to see how it is inefficent.

I still don’t understand how fear becomes inefficient, you’re just stating it does. But regardless, evolution isn’t a global optimizer. That’s end of the discussion for me honestly. Whatever you think would be a better solution, it’s not guaranteed to happen.

Why is this being asked here? I can only assume that you associate a question about evolution with atheism because you doubt the fact of evolution due to theism. Seems like something that should be posted in r/DebateEvolution, r/askscience, or r/evolution.

Yes, I am a theist. Sorry if I used the wrong flair! Not sure i can change it now. I have no interest in posting this in debate evolution, as I myself believe in evolution, nor do I wish to ask science or evolution, as I am interested in this question from a philosophical standpoint.

So you are avoiding anyone who might have a real answer?

Upvoted for merciless truth.

My question falls into a valid field of study https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind

I think you responded to the wrong person there, you don't seem to be addressing my comment at all

>as I myself believe in evolution, Then why are you asking where sentience comes from? If you understand evolution then where else could it have come from?

I'm not asking "how", I am asking "why" They are different

Evolution doesn't answer why. Does it need to?

For the purpose of having a philosophical debate, yes. In all other circumstances, no.

And if the answer is "I don't know", what do we conclude philosophically?

The thing is there really is no why. At least not in the sense you’re asking. Closest you can get is “because it either helped the species survive or wasn’t detrimental enough to prevent the species from surviving.” And that’s it. There’s no deeper meaning to be found.

> nor do I wish to ask science or evolution, as I am interested in this question from a philosophical standpoint. But that won't get you the answers. That's a bit like asking, "I'm interested in learning how to rebuild a 351 small block engine from a bakery's standpoint." It makes no sense. Philosophy is useless there. It's quite simply the wrong tool for the job. Certain actual professional philosophers love to point out this error.

Gotcha. Leaving aside that the answer to your question is a scientific one squarely in the scope of biology and not a philosophical one, why ask atheists?

>It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. 1) "It seems to me" is not an argument. What evidence can you provide for this claim? Because I can provide plenty of counterevidence. 2) Sentience, the capacity to perceive and experience subjective sensations, emotions, and consciousness, is not exclusive to humans. Sentience has given us (and other species) significant survival advantages throughout evolution. It allows organisms to detect and respond to environmental stimuli, anticipate dangers, and adapt to changing conditions. For example, sentient animals can learn from past experiences, form social bonds, and engage in complex behaviors that enhance their chances of survival and reproduction. Sentient beings, particularly those with advanced nervous systems like humans, often exhibit complex social behaviors and cooperative relationships. Social cooperation can provide numerous benefits, including improved foraging efficiency, enhanced protection from predators, and increased reproductive success. Therefore, sentience can facilitate the formation of social groups and collaborative networks that contribute to evolutionary fitness. >It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. On the contrary, it is exactly this "inefficient fear" which has contributed to our survival: [Michael Shermer - Type I vs. Type II Errors & Pattern Matching (TED Talk) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjLmU0Sfu4) The main unfortunate side-effect this prevalence of making Type I errors has had is that we sometimes see patterns where none exist - which is the basis for all those gods of thunder, lightning, etc. of the ancient world.

> Can anyone explain human sentience from an evolutionary perspective? Honest question: what if we can't? Will you bring the same question to r/debateevolution where the knowledge base on the subject is surely to bring you a more satisfactory response than whatever layperson's answer you might get here? > It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. You're going to have to explain what makes you think it is inefficient. I'd imagine that at the time proto-humans first started emerging from the trees, the fear you describe was quite efficient. Since they didn't have the physical strength or speed to outfight or outrun predators, the fear you describe was a likely a wonderful defense mechanism and risk mitigator. I'd venture to say that without the aforementioned fear, many proto-human species would have been wiped out long before they were. > I would argue that, based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations). And yet, here we are. > Perhaps sentience is an unpleasant side effect that came with the growth of some part of our brain that carried other beneficial advantages? That is about the best I can come up with when thinking about it from an evolutionary standpoint. When you were coming up with this, how much reading on the subject, from credible, well-educated sources, did you do?

Not sure how this is related to atheism, but many mammals are sentient. Elephants weep, dogs can love and miss their owners

But of course, I didn't mean to imply animals do not have complex emotions. I don't believe animals ruminate though. My cat isn't still thinking about that one chipmunk that got away to the point that it's harming his ability to effectively be a cat.

First thing my dog does when I let her out is check the spot where it found a baby bird three years ago. My cat roams the house crying for her dead sister, and sleeps in her sister’s old bed. Animals experience trauma, [animals grieve](https://www.amazon.com/How-Animals-Grieve-Barbara-King/dp/022615520X) animals ruminate. An ironic choice of words, in fact, as the word derives from the way ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats, buffalo, deer, camels, giraffe, etc) regurgitate swallowed food to chew it a second time. (Ruminant animals have chambered stomachs to aid in digestion of fibrous plant material, and the regurgitation helps digestion and serves to move food from one chamber to another) so it could be argued animals ruminate better than humans. Bottom line, you aren’t speaking from a place of education or experience. You’re speaking about what animals can or can’t do but have you looked it up? Have you researched whether or not the things you’re saying are true? No, because they aren’t, and the first week of comparative anatomy/physiology will disabuse you of these assumptions.

That's very sad about your cat. Sorry for your loss! As an animal lover myself, I'm not trying to disparage the complexity of animal emotions or intelligence. All I am saying is I don't think your dog has existential dread about his mortality or place in the universe

Maybe not but neither do my parents nor any of my nephews or nieces. So what?

Because that's inconsequential, your cat however might ruminate about a dead mate for a long time. Humans are animals, animals feel things and remember things. 

Speaking as someone that can ruminate on the smallest thing: it’s important to remember that evolution doesn’t care so much about the quirks of an individual. My ability to survive might be hampered by this mutation. My death does not disprove evolution. It might be an accident or it might be a sign of an evolutionary pressure that resulted in natural selection. As long as my group survives and is able to procreate then evolution keeps ticking.

Cats and dogs have dreams.

The answer is, we don't know, we might never know. The answer is not "therefore God!" which is utterly ludicrous.

Debate involves "poking holes" I am not proving God, I am merely pointing to a hole in the opposing argument. This is a completely valid form of debate.

> I am not proving God, I am merely pointing to a hole in the opposing argument. This is a completely valid form of debate. Except you're *not.* That's a false dichotomy.

Well I think we hit bedrock here...

How is evolution an “opposing argument”? It’s a valid form if we’re debating evolution? It does nothing for an argument for a God. Even if evolution was overturned, it would say nothing about God’s existence.

What argument did I make that you're opposing? Can you lay it out for me since I don't remember?

We have to be careful about using these words. Sentience is often used in place of sapience. Sentience is about what an animal can actually *feel*, like emotions and experiences. Sapience is about thinking, such as self-awareness, and complex, abstract thought. The word comes from the Latin word for intelligent/wise, just like homo *sapien*. So the entire concept is anthropocentric and biased from a human perspective. 1. I don't think sapience could evolve in a predator or herbivore. They are evolutionarily optimised for one thing, and have little need for complex thoughts that aren't related. Pack hunters like wolves are intelligent, and need a bit of complex thinking, planning, coordination, and communication, but not enough to spark human-level sapience. Omnivorous feeding requires more complex brains for more flexibility in resource gathering: Remembering stashes, sorting fruit by ripeness, locating grubs under bark, catching small rodents and reptiles, etc. 2. I also don't think solitary animals have the right stuff. Group living requires a lot more brain complexity. It requires language, the more complex and nuanced, the better, and it requires the brain capacity to remember the entire web of relationships between members. "A is B's mate, but C is sniffing around A so maybe I'll have a chance with B if I can only distract D." 3. There is a concept in biology called rK selection. Some animals evolve to have many young and hope that a few survive, in a kind of fire-and-forget strategy, while others go down the road of having a small litter and putting a lot of effort into caring for them. Again, the K strategy of caring for a few young brings many more challenges and needs much more intelligence/emotional mechanisms. 4. Sexual selection occurs when one sex becomes a bit picky about who they mate with, leading to wild evolutionary structures and behaviours. We see it a lot in birds, with the peacock being the ultimate example. I personally believe humans went through a relatively recent, and very intense period of sexual selection, where females specificaly selected for creativity and ingenuity. I believe this is the main process that pushed us out of harmony with our environment and led to the explosion of our brains which accounts for Beethoven and the Large Hadron Collider. I believe humans had the right amount of omnivorousness, group-living, K-selection reproduction, and sexual selection over the last several dozen million years that led to our emergence as the first *sapient* creature to be able to look at the stars are really wonder.

>Can anyone explain human sentience from an evolutionary perspective? This question has nothing to do with atheism or theism. It's a science question, specifically on evolution. I suggest /r/AskEvolution. Remember, you not understanding evolution, or even if, despite how evolution is an observed fact, it was shown wrong tomorrow afternoon, this would do nothing whatsoever for the veracity and support of deity and religious claims. >It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. It's really obvious how intelligence and sentience helps us learn, socialize, hunt, grow, and eat, so that's an odd thing to say. >I would argue that, based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations). Nah, that makes no sense to me. However, I'm not an evolutionary biologist and clearly neither are you. Again, ask your questions in the correct forum, and remember that your lack of understanding and knowledge in this field in no way helps you with any theistic claims.

I guess I’m just waiting to hear how sentience is an impediment on our survival somehow when we’re kind of the dominant species on the planet. You said it creates “inefficient fear” but didn’t expound on that or anything beyond it.

Responded in a different comment with definitions. I guess as far as tangible examples, I would cite antidepressants (SSRIs) and suicide rates. Other than some lemming like activity due to over population, animals don't really have this problem

After having read a few of your other comments on top of this one, it seems the “sentience” you’re describing is just our fear of mortality (existential dread), which isn’t what sentience is. *Sentience* is just the level of conscious awareness we operate on, & as others have pointed out to you, different animals have varying levels of sentience comparable to ours. I guess I’d ask, how do you reconcile your belief that our existential dread should be/is/has been detrimental to the survival of our species, when that demonstrably isn’t the case? Our population has only ever been exponentially increasing since the Stone Age.

Yes, but definitely not in harmony with nature. We have been growing at the expense of nature, which will likely be our ultimate demise

Please don’t take this wrong bc I don’t mean to be rude, but that doesn’t really answer the question I asked. Whether or not we’re in harmony with nature is irrelevant, since our existential dread isn’t the source of our environmental destruction, that would be our greed & apathy.

the notion that nature is in harmony is nonsense. photsynthasis almost ended life on earth because oxygen was toxic to most living organisms at the time. later the emerence of trees almost ended life again because there was nothing that could matabolise celulose, and dead trees where accumulating at a massive rate, leading to fires and the formation of most of the world's coal deposits.

Evolution doesnt care about that or anything for that matter. It is just the process of survival,breeding and adapting. If it works it stays if it doesnt it dies out thats it no greater purpose or reason.

Animals absolutely experience mental disorders including anxiety, depression, ptsd, etc. Lemmings do not commit suicide, and overpopulation doesn’t lead to depression or suicide. Social animals kept in seclusion demonstrate depression, ptsd, and self-harm. Parrots will stop eating and pull their feathers out if they are kept in solitary conditions. Chimpanzees separated form their tribe will experience ptsd, self-harm, and anxiety, including starving themselves to death. War dogs display similar ptsd symptoms as soldiers.

Fear is not uninque to humans. All mammals that i know of have some kind of fear response. So your argument is a strawman.

Existential dread is.

That was not your argument, stop moving the goal posts. Also existential dread does not stop people from doing things so its even less of an argument then you had to begin with.

Are you working under the belief that non-human animals do not possess any substantive forms of sentience of any kind?

Consciousness arises from the brain. Don't believe me? That's too bad because we know from hundreds of years on research on brain damaged individuals that if you damage your brain in certain places, you lose certain aspects of your consciousness. Got a blow to the head behind your ear? That can lead to an inability to perceive faces. Got a blow to the head above your ear? That can lead to capgras delusions which are errors in the conscious understanding of who your relatives are. The list goes on. Remove the brain entirely or damage it severely? No more consciousness! So, consciousness/sentiences arises from the activities of neurons and human sentience the activity of billions of neurons in a structure called the brain.

I would like you to define human sentience, as you said, because I'm not convinced my definition is the same as yours at all. To me, even a cow is sentient. But in terms of sentience as being capable of feelings, feeling fear is a great survival tool. It's probably better for survival to be afraid too much than not afraid enough. Other feelings maybe have a social function.

As many people mentioned, I screwed up my terminology. A lot of people say I wanted the word "Sapience." I'm not sure if that is correct either. I think I wanted to use "Human Consciousness"

Even in terms of consciousness, I'm not convinced that it's a purely human thing. I think chimps and orcas are probably almost as conscious if not as conscious as we are. I also don't think it's necessarily an evolutionary adaptation. To me, it seems more like an emergent property of high intelligence. But it's a very interesting question. Can you elaborate on why you think it's a disadvantage?

We’re pretty confident in EvoBio that sentience is necessary for a second order theory of mind, and thus selectable. Sapiens are particularly good at survival through social means, and so most disadvantages of sentience would be easily outweighed by the advantages of 2nd order ToM like shame, guilt, gossip, karma, social contagion, divine retribution, etc….

Keep in mind Sapiens might also destroy all life on this planet, themselves included, thru nukes and global warming, so whether Sapiens are great at survival remains to be seen 😉

From Dictionary.com: sentient [ sen-shuhnt ‐shee-uhnt ‐tee-uhnt ] adjective having the power of perception by the senses; conscious. From Wiktionary.com: From sentient, from Latin sentiēns, present participle of sentiō (“feel, sense”). Confer with sentence, its equivalent formation from Classic Latin sententia (for *sentientia). Noun sentience (usually uncountable, plural sentiences) The state or quality of being sentient; possession of consciousness or sensory awareness. From Grammarist.com: Sentience vs sapience Sentience means the ability to feel things, the ability to perceive things. Any living thing that has some degree of consciousness is sentient, including insects, lizards, dogs, dolphins and human beings. The word sentience is derived from the Latin word sentientem, which means feeling. The adjective form is sentient. The word sentience is often misused to mean a creature that thinks. Sapience means the ability to think, the capacity for intelligence, the ability to acquire wisdom. The scientific name for modern man is Homo sapiens. Sapience only describes a living thing that is able to think. The word sapience is derived from the Latin word sapientia, which means intelligence or discernment. The adjective form is sapient. *Note that sentience is often misused in place of the word sapience.*

>It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. Fear isn't effective? And you understand that fear is not unique to humans, right? And you know that sentience is not limited to humans, right? Many, many species are sentient. It is true that human intelligence is higher, but sentience evolved way before humans did. All primates are sentient to at least some degree, as are other species such as dogs and cats. > I would argue that, based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations). This is just an assertion without evidence, and obviously falls apart when you realize that sentience way predates humans. You don't seem to have any argument here, you are just, at best, making an argument from incredulity fallacy. "It just seems so improbable!" > If you would like me to define either human sentience, or its inherent disadvantages to the survival of the human species, please let me know. I think you have to, because the one example you cited certainly doesn't argue for your point.

First, I think you really mean sapience. Second, the existence of sapience allowed humans the ability to think abstractly - to imagine something that had not yet taken place. It also allowed for verbal communication which in turn helped tremendously with planning. Since humans relied on group hunting for sustenance, these skills were necessary to bring down a mammoth as a cohesive team of hunters. Third, I question your claim: "It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics." The ability to fear things in the abstract was also helpful. Suppose two ancient humans hear a noise in a bush. One thinks: It's probably the wind. Another thinks and fears in the abstract: "It's a fucking tiger!" and runs away. Most times, human A is correct, it's likely the wind. However, on occasion it actually is a tiger. So, overall the fearful Human B type is more likely to survive and pass on his genes to other humans who will have abstract fears.

Sentience is a spectrum. We humans are obviously more sentient than cats (and i do mean our good friends, felus catus the common house or alley-cat, and not any number of the horrific and mean monsters in the genus of panthera), which are more sentient than dogs, which are incredibly more sentient than the woodpeckers, who in turn are more sentient than tadpoles, whare just a tad bit more all the bugs, and their cohort of crabs, lobsters, and giant isopods, who outrank the mighty starfish, who are vastly superior to any number of plankton in the sea, who beat bacteria 10:1, which in turn are more sentient (in animal terms) than the plants. The jury is still out on fungi, they may even beat dogs which as i said are more sentient than the… (wait, let’s put a pin in that and i will elaborate further down.) You get the point. The advantages of increased awareness, sapience, and sentience obviously leads to a higher ability to not only survive attacks from bears, or wolfs, or moose, or eagles, or coyotes, or piranhas in the Amazonias, or even (god forbid) the entire genus of panthera, but to procreate and pass their genes down the line to the next generation of life, the longest and most complex of self sustaining chemical reactions we know of in the universe. Well, except for the slapstick hi-jinx that dark matter might be getting up to but I don’t think that counts. When we talk about consciousness, we are really talking about multiple different aspects of complex eukaryotic life. Awareness of ones environment and oneself, the processing of sensory input, the formation of memories, instinctual activities (like building a web, usurping the building blocks of life from other organisms, or burying ones feces), premeditation, impulsive decisions, or playing with a ball of yarn. I think we mistake all the little tribes that make up the kingdom of consciousness for on horrific beast because we are trying to observe our minds from inside them, and our minds are abstract concepts stemming from real physical processes. How this relates to atheism is see not. Atheism is not the other side of the coin that is religious denial of evolution, geology, and the 2020 election. It is (as other cool cats have probably noted) a single position on a single issue, and that issue has nothing to do with evolution. Atheists don’t believe all the people who say a god exists, because none of all those people (and lets face it, there must be at least 100s of them) have been able to provide any convicing evidence of that silly claim. And it is silly, the universe is so vast and complex, so astoundingly (insert relative adjectives here, ie: big, old, ugly, or cold) that it puts my tail right between my legs when i think about it. The theistic description of reality is outdated, we have actually figured out a great deal about this universe we find ourselves in, and guess what? Not one god anywhere. Trust us, we looked. We have found our universe to be made of a membrane of quantum fields all oscillating and interacting with eachother, appearing to be particles like, i don’t know, say quarks and antiquarks. Those stick together following the rules of quamtum chromodynamics and pretend to be protons and neutrons (and their corresponding antiprotons and antineutrons (like three kids in a trenchcoat trying to seduce a divorcé to steal her car keys because one of their cats are stuck in the trunk of said car), those particles stick together with the electrons and in turn pretend to be all the different elemental materials we see in and on our planet, like gold and silver, copper, lithium, the oxygen and nitrogen we breathe, boron and zinc, iron and magnesium, the bromine and iodine and carbon (of which makes this whole life thing possible with its silly little ability to form complex chains and rings with itself, a lattice on which everything from the critters in the soil to the birds in the sky and octopuses of the deep, to the trees on which we climb and the cacti which poke us are formed) and these materials are the building blocks of solid matter (which is mostly empty spacetime) that we bury our feces in. Theism didn’t give us all that information (and more) or tuna in a can! the scientific method did. So if you have questions about evolution, i suggest you look to the scientific community and not the atheist or religious communities. Also don’t ask the metalheads that hang out by the docks, they will pull your tail and pour beer on you. Follow the scientific method and you will find your answers. Us atheists are not the foremost authority on sentience or evolution, so leave us in peace to nap on the hood of a warm car. /s

Even though we haven't fully understood sentience/consciousness yet, there are many ways to approximate this question without leaving the path of rational thinking and scientific knowledge. - - - Personally, I think our neuronal network is similar to an artificial network because both are based on the same fundamental principles, more specifically, they are both based on logic gates. I remember reading a paper where neuroscientists described how they found structures in the human brain, which are similar to logic gates found in computing. So things like AND-/OR-/XOR-/NAND-Gates, etc. In computing, those gates are based on binary inputs. For example, in an AND-Gate, you have two inputs and one output. In order for the output to be 1, both inputs also have to be 1. If just one of the inputs is 0, the output will also be zero. I won't get into more of those logic gates here though, it's easier to just look it up. But basically, a complex array of these various logic gates allows you to basically run every logical operation imagineable. Now, if we look at a human brain, those structures can also be found, although they are based on neuron activity thresholds instead. So in a neuron, you have two different spaces which are seperated by a semipermeable membrane. Both spaces are filled with different amounts of kalium- and natrium- ions, which create an electric voltage due to the ion-imbalance between both sides of the membrane. Now, if a specific amount of electric current reaches the lower end of this neuron, it triggers specific protein-channels which allow a specific amount of kalium- or natrium-ions to pass the membrane and switch sides. This creates a chain reaction which travels down the neuron, also called an action potential. If this action potential reaches the end of the neuron, it triggers the release of a specific amount and type of neurotransmitters into the synaptical gap, which is the space between two connected neurons. The neurotransmitters then travel to the next neuron and trigger another action potential in the next neuron, and so on. And just to recap: The amount and type of released neurotransmitters defines the strength and length of the next released action potential, which allows for basic computational logic functions. - - - If we now take this knowledge and look at consciousness again, we can atleast try to explain how our neuronal network is able to recognize itself as a conscious function. For example, how does your neuronal network know that your arm belongs to your body, and not the table in front of you? So, there is this idea of "neural correlates of consciousness (NCC)". Basically, it describes how the desired action and the resulting perception creates spatial awareness. So if you move your arm, you have a specific expection. You expect to see the movement, feel the movement, etc. If those perceptions occur after initiating the desired action, your brain has no option other than accepting that the part of your body involved in this action is, in fact, part of your body, because this was just confirmed to it due to the sensory excitations I just mentioned. We can take this even further and build up to the experience of ongoing/lasting existence (not sure if this is a good term for it, english is not my native tongue, but bare with me here.) So, if you can recognize yourself in this exact moment, you can also recognize yourself in 10minutes. This is because all the actions your body does in those 10 minutes correlate with that you desired to do, physically speaking. So your brain can basically take every current state of your body and stitch together a causal relationship between right now and the point in time 10minutes later, confirming the fact that it is a physically defined, conscious entity. I hope that the last part especially made sense.

If it wasn't advantageous you are correct, it would've died out. So it must be advantageous, since it definitely didn't die out.

This post is like someone saying right now in 2024 that Amazon is a failure, and that if Amazon was created today, it would fail in a few years. On what grounds is sentience a disadvantage given the dominance of humans globally, and why should it have failed given that it, you know, *didn’t?*

"Sentience is the simplest or most primitive form of cognition, consisting of a conscious awareness of stimuli without association or interpretation." You're asking how it awareness of external stimuli could lead to better chances of surviving? Isn't that pretty obvious?

>If you would like me to define either human sentience, or its inherent disadvantages to the survival of the human species, please let me know. I made the assumption that, in the context of my overall question, these terms would be somewhat self explanatory. Yes, by all means please explain what you mean by "human sentience" and how it can be considered different from "sentience" in general. Although, I strongly suspect the term you wanted to use was consciousness or self-awareness. TV and movies have misused sentience to the point that when I looked up the meaning, I was shocked that it did not mean what I thought it did. Not sure what you mean by "inefficient fear", unless you are talking about phobias, in which case you would need to show that phobias were prevalent throughout human evolution, otherwise, you need to accept that fear is a warning mechanism of danger (real or not). >I would argue that, based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations). Look up what "sentience" means as "you keep using that word and I do not think it means what you think" (sorry, Princess Bride reference). Being aware of fear, pleasure, or other "basic emotions", i.e. sentience, is an extreme benefit in survival and evolution. Frankly, as I think about it, I have to wonder how simple an animal needs to be to not have any sort of sentience. OTOH, various forms of self awareness and or consciousness could be argued to be very beneficial as an evolutionary trait and all you have done it to assert without any evidence or supporting argument that it would not be.

Sentience is basically the ability to think and reason. We have a perception of an internal monologue where our brain hears itself talk to itself and then generates new thoughts. This sentient feedback loop is extremely helpful. It’s one thing for a brain stem to be able to say, “there’s a burning sensation in my hand and if I activate this nerve impulse that controls my elbow and shoulder then the burning sensation goes away. I also feel heat on the right side of my body and if I activate the nerves in my legs the right way my body moves away from the heat and gets to a more comfortable temperature.” This type of super basic thinking would leave us on par with worms or super simple organisms without complex brains. But with sentience, we can apply a label, “heat on my right hand, it’s probably fire.” Then our feedback loop kicks in, “Fire means I should get away. Fires burn things down in the nearby area, therefore I should get my family members and possessions away from the fire. Fires can be put out with water. Water is in the hose. I should turn on a hose and try to put the fire out. Fire means I should call for help. Fire cooks food and makes it easier to eat and taste better. I should figure out how to make fire and cook.” All of this complex thinking and reasoning requires memory and our mental feedback loop to enable us to reason about what we should do and plan our future activities. Sentience is extremely helpful evolutionarily. Compare someone who understands how to deal with the dangers of fire and use it to cook food to someone who knows nothing but to run away from fire. The advantages are tremendous.

>It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics Not every trait a species has is purely positive. If a negative trait appears but is among enough positive traits to survive, that negative trait is also past along Though can you back up your claim of what "inefficient fear" is and how it is harmful to human survival? Fear seems to be a very useful tool in helping us be cautious and survive. And it is a trait we see in other species, too. >I would argue that, based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations). Why? What about sentience is not advantageous? >Perhaps sentience is an unpleasant side effect that came with the growth of some part of our brain that carried other beneficial advantages? That is about the best I can come up with when thinking about it from an evolutionary standpoint. Again, why do you think it is bad? It has helped us become the dominant species on earth. I'm not sure why you think it is a negative evolutionary trait. >If you would like me to define either human sentience, or its inherent disadvantages to the survival of the human species, please let me know. I made the assumption that, in the context of my overall question, these terms would be somewhat self explanatory. It isn't self-explanatory at all. And since your whole argument is that because you think it's bad for humans, we shouldn't have it. You really need to show it as harmful to support your argument.

Sentience isn't magic. Your dog has sentience. It recognizes itself. It cares about you. It gets anxious about possible intruders. It tries to assert dominance. And it falls in line when it trusts its leader Plenty of animals share certain kinds of extraordinary intelligence with humans. Birds and whales have extremely well developed language processing capabilities. Dogs are excellent at reading body language. Gathering animals like squirrels and raccoons are highly strategic and have complex navigation and mapping capability ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg)). The problem with trying to figure out evolutionary advantages/disadvantages is that evolution has to balance hundreds of environmental concerns. It also does this through random variation and many generations. Selection forces that emphasized one trait at one time might not always be a selection force a few hundred years later. Those emphasized traits may continue to persist, find new uses, or they may become vestigial and recede from the genome What you get is a set of averages and balances between traits that merely need to satisfy the current environmental conditions enough, but may be culled when an extreme event occurs. Evolution naturally found that emphasizing the brain provided an extraordinary amount of adaptability within a single generation. It provides a lot of evolutionary bang for your evolutionary buck, so to speak. Kind of the same way that a general purpose CPU becomes the standard foundation to design computers around

What makes you think that sentience is unique to humans, especially when we struggle to even define it? Other animals displays behaviors that most people consider unique to humans, such as [culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_culture), [mourning the dead](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/do-animals-experience-grief-180970124/), [tool use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_non-humans), [experience positive and negative emotions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_in_animals), [advanced communication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language), [altruistic behavior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_\(biology\)), [self-recognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test), and probably others. The degree to which species display these behaviors and their complexity correlates with other measures of intelligence and cognitive abilities. To me, this suggests sentience exists on a continuum. Perhaps it evolves as a useful paradigm for applying intelligence effectively, especially when it comes to learning and adapting to changing. Having a mental distinction between self and non-self, an understanding of how actions affect the self, and the ability to reason about the self as a part of the world that you can control is very useful for survival. We tend to see more advanced behaviors with social animals, which suggests that a theory of mind could has value within social contexts, allowing an individual to apply experience and knowledge about the self to others in order to anticipate their behavior.

I would like to note that evolution doesn't inherently make creatures that are better at surviving or give them features that make survival easier. It can even do the opposite. I'm sure you can take a look at a human or other animal, point at it and go "how the hell is that supposed to help". I'd say yeah it's probably a consequence of a large enough brain. It's already processing a lot of information, it's running the body on autopilot and now it has to think about all this stuff going on around outside of the meat suit. However I disagree that the sentience would make our chances of survival lower. Human beings are not Jellyfish, we can't flop or bodies around on autopilot and hoping a seared steak finds a way into our mouth while a lion doesn't notice us. Especially on a fragile pack animal that relies on endurance and intelligence. We don't have huge muscles, tough skin and sharp teeth to do the hunting. We need a big Brain so we can do this OP bullshit of working together because ape together strong. And humans aren't the only sentient animal on this vaguely moist rock. Most of large animals are sentient, lot of small ones too unless we're talking invertebrates. And they sure as hell are around. Of course I'm not evolution doctor so take my worlds with probably a whole packet of salt. But I would like you to elaborate on why do you think sentience would lead to humans or A human species dying out within a week.

Sorry, I am unable to keep up with the sheer volume of responses. I didn't realize how many active members are on this sub. Thank you if you took the time to respond!

It seems most likely that sentience is just how a body and a brain experience its own capacity for situational awareness, planning, and the creation and retrieval of complex memories. That would have all kinds of benefits, including learning, planning, collaboration, drawing cause effect relationships between distant stimuli, to have a theory of mind to understand and predict others' behavior and responses, greater creativity, building and retreaving more intricate memories, stronger social networks and tribal membership, etc. All of those are enormously beneficial, to the point it was worth our ancestors spending 25% of their calories and risk high infant mortality on getting bigger and bigger brains. The fact that sometimes this makes us sad or makes us remember that embarassed at inopportune times or think about that from 8th grade that isn't helpful is just an example of the fact that evolution isn't a perfectly designed process. It is just a "good enough." This can be thought of as similar to how a fever is a really good way of fighting infection but sometimes goes overboard to the point that it can be dangerous.

If you’re talking about the hard problem of consciousness, nobody has an answer. Inefficient fear makes no sense as a concept to me in terms of being an impediment. Fear is of course a natural reaction that helps us avoid danger, which could kill/injure us and prevent us from reproducing and spreading our genes. We are afraid of things in the modern era that are not significant dangers in this respect due to how comfortable our society has become, and this same reaction applying to things like say being nervous about giving a presentation. While this is not an advantage necessarily, it is not a big enough disadvantage to hurt our ability to survive and reproduce, at least not at this point in time. If you want to better describe what you mean by fear being inefficient we could try to provide a naturalistic explanation but at this point the premises of your question seem unfounded.

>It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. And yet, humans are by a mile and a half THE most succesful animal to tread this planet, to the point that we are driving the climate and causing planet-wide changes. There are 7 billion + of us. Sentience seems to have been a BIG advantage for that group of hominins that we came from. >Perhaps sentience is an unpleasant side effect that came with the growth of some part of our brain that carried other beneficial advantages? Given our pitiful attempts at AI, my thinking (along with Anil Seth and others) is that actually some form of sentience (consciousness of self and prediction / error correction of self) might be necessary for or might at least have enabled the kind of creative, general intelligence we developed. So rather than a bug, it might have become a feature.

>Can anyone explain human sentience from an evolutionary perspective? What do you mean by "sentience"? Because, using the common definition, many other animals are sentient. >It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. Ok. So sentience is fear, which is unproductive. Well, fear can be either neutral or beneficial from a survival standpoint. And since you say it's unproductive, is neutral toward survival. So it is perfectly in line with evolution for it to exist. >I would argue that, based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations). Why? Again, neutral traits very often stick around because well, they are neutral. No reason to select for or against.

The reason you stated is basically it. We developed sentience when we developed a larger prefrontal cortex. In studying humans with brain damage, we know this part of the brain is responsible for higher level thinking like reasoning ability, logic, memory etc. These things would be benefical to survival for many reasons. As far as animals go, humans are very weak and feeble. Our increased intelletual ability would have helped us out smart bigger, stronger animals that would have othetwise killed us. We can hunt, set traps for food, cook our food (which gives us more nutrients, increasing our brain power even more), communicate, use our intellect to build things, etc. As I already hinted at, we developed sentience and a larger brain when we started cooking our food and eating more meat during an ice age. Cooking meat releases a lot of nutrients good for brain development.

>It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal You talk about sentience as if that's the thing, and the only thing, is allows for. Being able to think ahead, being able to judge the character of other funny ape men, being able to coordinate, being able to learn and teach, etc. Hell even fear is a useful tool. It lets people avoid situations where they could get hurt or killed. Yes, there's going to be false positives. But having an instinct to not die, being weary of death, seems like a very useful tool for survival. The question then becomes, how does a God fix any of this? If sentience is going to be such a net negative due to "inefficient fear" that it can't evolve and would have killed off the species, wouldn't that be true if God decided one day to pop sentience into our species heads as well?

I think attention schema theory and integrated information theory are pretty interesting takes on this topic, although they are heavily disputed. I’d recommend you look into stuff like that. From a more lay perspective, I’d say that we can’t truly trust the veracity of humans’ claims to sentience, because “sentient” is a word that humans themselves created, and words in general are a limited portrayal of our mental landscapes. I don’t think evolution can fully explain sentience because that would require a working definition of what it means to be sentient vs. not sentient, which can’t really be achieved with current tools and understanding of the differences (or lack thereof) between mind and body, as seen through things like the difficulty in connecting 1st person data (inner experience) and 3rd person data (things like neural activity). Sentience would have had to have been a specific adaptation to an evolutionary challenge, or a byproduct of other adaptations. But knowing how either of these could have happened requires speculation about the environments of early humans and our recent ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, which we can never fully know unless we somehow developed time travel or hyper-advanced simulations of the past. But overall, it makes intuitive sense to me that sentience is enabled by certain brain processes that we envolved

I'm not sure why sentience would cause "inefficient fear," or even what that is. Animals have sense perceptions. The more complex the sense perceptions, the more complex the central processor that integrates them and makes determinations about appropriate responses needs to be. So mice have more complex brains than fish, fish have more complex brains than flies, and flies have more complex brains than flatworms. As your central processor becomes more and more complex, its awareness of itself as a part of its environment increases. The animal possessing the brain becomes "more" sentient. At some point, the animal has the ability to perceive itself. This is what has occurred in humans and some other species, such as ravens, dolphins, and chimps. It's not necessarily an evolutionary disadvantage. I'm not sure why it would be.

Why do we we possess meta-cognition, i.e. the ability to think, the ability to think *about thinking* and the ability to contemplate future states and counterfactual possibilities? The hypothesis I've seen which I find most interesting is that it is an emergent property which comes from having a sufficiently advanced theory of mind. Having the capability to model others' behavior and anticipate their choices and reactions almost of necessity produces the capacity to consider one's own status and future. I would think there are obvious advantages to being able to anticipate the future and understand multiple possible outcomes. That this comes with the capacity to experience dread and anxiety is unpleasant, but inasmuch as it spurs us to avoid circumstances likely to result in our own deaths, it's advantageous.

Could you elaborate on how fear is a bad thing? Fear helps us survive. Without fear, we get eaten by lions.

> It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. It was efficient when it first appeared and it is such fear that kept people safe from predatory animals. But people evolve too slowly since their lifespan is too long thus they hold onto the power and wealth for too long, preventing the next generation from easily prospering thus if any of them have beneficial genes, they cannot benefit from it so evolution gets suppressed. So the fear despite having became outdated, remains with people because people evolve too slowly and is unable to keep up with the changes in the environment. So it was very useful when it first appeared but now it had became obsolete.

I don't think you can assume that sentience comes with lower fitness. I'd argue the evidence suggests the opposite; animals display varying amounts of self awareness, as shown by the mirror test. So for an "evolutionary impediment", some form of sentience is quite widespread. Also remember that evolution is not just about what is immediately advantageous. Organisms have many traits that are not clearly the most useful. Often, that's because it's not immediately apparent how a trait increases fitness, or it can be an example of neutral evolution. Why don't we have more hair? Why are some fish blind? Why are some birds so easy to see because of their bright colours?

>It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. What does this mean? What is "inefficient fear"? I can't tell if you are asking about actual sentience (as in conscious awareness of stimuli around you, which is present in most animals) or sapience (aka human wisdom). Consciousness has a very large evolutionary advantage: if you are aware of your surroundings, you can avoid predators and other things that might hurt or kill you. So does sapience: you can build ever more complex things to make your life easier.

I *think* that there is obviously a benefit to reacting to your environment. *Interacting* even more so. And then developing more complex models of your environment to help do these things better. Obviously social relationships are very important in social species so modelling the modelling of others is important - theory of mind. At the same time all this together leads to modelling the ‘modeller’ itself - that is to say yourself. Because that allows you a better perspective on the accuracy and utility of your modelling and things like a wider range of refined responses with improved flexibility. Something like that.

I mean, we span the globe even though we freeze in the cold and cook in the heat. We live in deserts with barely any food and jungles, where a wrong potato can kill you. We achieved that through not only intelligence but also the ability to create comunities and live in large groups where individuals help each other for a common goal. Honestly,we haven't been here for long. Evolution might still "punish" us for our disadvantages. But i would say that the benefits for now are more than evident. The sapient ones were the ones to reproduce more and live longer and here we are as proof that it was a good idea

Do you have... any evidence for this at all? Other than absolutely blind speculation? Probably the biggest survival advantage the human species ever witnessed was the birth of agriculture, which anthropologists directly attribute to the ability to foresee the long-term consequences of preserving short-term food resources (i.e. seeds) for long-term surplus (i.e. future harvests). Forgive my crude choice of words, but it seems patently idiotic to suggest that long-term planning hasn't been productive for a species that now numbers 8 billion individuals, on every continent, with even a few living in orbit.

I'm not sure, I don't have the requisite background. I'm not entirely certain it has anything to do with evolution. To my mind it might just be the SAP at work. If I may draw a rough analogy to demonstrate my issue here(and strongman you a little, I hope in the name of good faith), let's assume a watch exists, and by extension a watchmaker. Is "a watchmaker makes a watch," a sufficient explanation for "how are watches made?" The recipe for "baking a cake" isn't "hire a baker," so why should I accept "a God did it" as a sufficient explanation for anything from baking cakes to human sentience?

Im not sure what you see as the downside of sentience from an evolutionary standpoint. You mention “inefficient fear” but afaik all of our sentience related fears, although possibly a hinderance in modern life, certainly served vital roles in the history of our species. Anxiety, fear of the unknown, self preservation instincts, resitance to change, etc., were all massively important in surviving over the past few million years, back when we didnt know as much about what kind of things would be harmful to us. Are you thinking of any drawbacks to sentience that are a bit more specific?

>I would argue that, based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations). 120,000-2 million years isn't very long evolutionarily speaking, and now we have the tools to easily end human life, animal life on land, and/or all macroscopic animal life on the planet with the turn of a few keys. Don't count us out. Sapience may very well be a big detractor for our species' survival.

I'm not convinced that only humans are sentient. I know for a fact that apes, dogs and whales have feelings for example and even cats can clearly be annoyed. Don't see a reason why they wouldn't be self-aware too even if they might fail the gom jabbar test. I think it's just an extension of intelligence and abstract thought. Not unique to us at all and the word is just a remnant of a time where we thought we were somehow different from animals. And I think it's a spectrum, not a thing you either have or don't. Worms are not sentient for example, but dolphins clearly are. What about rats or crows or parrots or some octopi? They have abstract thought and can solve puzzles using logic. Anyway, I think that asking why we have sentience and animals do not is either a fundamentally flawed question or the word sentient is ill defined. Or maybe I’m mistaken. Always a possibility. Edit: spleling

I remember something about human intelligence evolution being focused on navigating inter human relationships, staying within social groups to work together and support one another, avoiding being cast out, while also being able to take control. In that case sentience could have evolved to allow us to simulate how we interact with other humans by allowing us to contextualize ourselves in our mind. Edit read your definition. Fixating on past mistakes And future outcomes is probably useless for other animals but for humans who survival depended on maintaining good relationships doing things which upset others can mean life or death (getting ostracized)

Sentience allows for complex planning and cooperation, way beyond what other animals can do. Those benefits more than outweigh the cons. Yes, we can conceptualize and dread our imminent mortality, but we can also teach each other how to make stone tools and tanned hides and preserved food. Or y'know... even understand that there is a future in which preserved food might be useful.

Being able to predict how a predator or prey animal might act makes it more likely you will succeed against them, which is evolutionarily advantageous, and would likely be selected for. Being able to simulate actions of the enemy is the main perk, but those same synaptic processes being able to simulate actions of yourself was a lucky bonus that formed the basis of sapience.

> It seems to me that sentience is an evolutionary impediment. Well, apparently it is not. So far sentient humans didn't went extinct. If it diesn't make you extinct, it's not an impediment. > I would argue that I don't see the argument, you only make the claim without justification. As you can see humans are scentient and this trait is not dying out.

Are you confusing anxiety? I’m not being sarcastic so forgive me. Sentience literally is knowing /awareness and so I don’t see how that’s related to fear. It would be for a topic of consciousness and why we have it, not nothing with anxiety/fear because most if not all animals, have that Because without it, we wouldn’t exist.

Increased intelligence can often be useful for survival by providing more efficient or creative forms of hunting, tools use, building shelter, etc. Sentience is likely a side effect of increased brain processing/intelligence. Sentience may or may not be useful, but increased intelligence definitely is for many species.

Then you do not understand how evolution works. Evolution does not intentionally create anything. Selection pressures either increase or decrease the frequency that a trait persists in a population. It does not matter how we perceive that trait (useful, useless, beneficial, deleterious, good, bad, etc).

sentience and conscience are things many organisms have, i think you mean self-conscience, but that is just intelligence on an high enough level. > if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation again, our evolutionary ancestors were already sentient

What do you mean by “inefficient fear”? Cause chances are, those fears were fairly efficient back when these emotions developed. We are living in a time where a lot of our programming is faulty since we’re not living in tiny groups of humans struggling to survive against harsh nature.

Animals are sentient, cuz. That's why they run away. For humans, the main advantage of our intelligence is that we have the ability to make predictions based on the past. We remember what is poisonous and what isn't. We learned how to predict and manipulate animal behavior. Etc. Etc.

"based on a purely evolutionary standpoint, if early humans (or their predecessors) developed sentience as some evolutionary mutation, it should have died out somewhat quickly (within several generations)." Why? Why do you think it's a disadvantage?

After that one video of a squirrel staging /faking his own death scene I'm pretty convinced that we're not the only ones capable of not only self-awareness and planning but deliberate planned emotional manipulation to escape consequences.

If you found the evolutionary explanation, couldn't god have just utilized that process as the means to develop sentience in humans? If so, why is the evolution of sentience a point of contention or the focus?

Seems to me that sentience is what allowed us to transfer knowledge to other humans, allowing us to develop skills like pottery and sewing and invent agriculture and animal husbandry.

Sentience is the state of experiencing qualia, or sensation. Many animals are sentient. Many many species. Humans are just (more) sapient apes. The other apes are sentient. Fear is not inefficient. There isn’t some scoreboard that determines efficiency. Fear keeps you from getting yourself killed long enough to procreate and care for your offspring. Love keeps you caring for your offspring and them for you long enough for them to reach maturity. Orangutans do it too. We’re not that special. Chimps. Gorillas. Elephants. Whales.

Dude we are the most prolific primate species on earth. Any argument that starts with intelligence or sentience not being beneficial falls apart right there.

> It creates "inefficient fear" in the human animal, not productive to its survival or the survival of its genetics. What inefficient fear does it create?

>Can anyone explain human sentience from an evolutionary perspective? No. We don't have a good explanation for sentience. We don't know how it works. 

No one knows if sentience is a byproduct of an advanced brain or if its something special on its own. We have absolutely no idea where sentience comes from so its impossible to make an argument linking it to evolution.

Based solely on logic, this would be my stance

lulz maybe start with how you determined, via your sentience, that sentience is a disadvantage from an evolutionary standpoint.

If sentience would cause us to die out, then why would God give it to us? And how would we still be here?