Musings about intelligence
Feb. 19th, 2013 06:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lionkingcmslWhile thinking about recent deaths I got wondering about "why sentience"?
Some people believe that this is all there is. There is no afterlife. After we die we just rot and everything is gone.
If that is the case what evolutionary advantage does sentience offer compared to non-sentience. The so-called “lower animals” get along quite well; being, as far as we humans can determine, non-sentient.
If sentience does bring an evolutionary advantage it is not clear cut, in my mind. Also if there is no afterlife where is the motivation to do “right”? If we just rot with no promise of reward why should we care if we do “right”. After we are dead we won’t care what we did during our time here and won’t care what history writes about us.
Forget about human technological prowess. I am talking about basic needs, wants and desires. At times our most base, primal, instincts come to the fore and we are hard pressed to suppress them. War is a good example of what I’m talking about. War is the basic need for territory writ very large. Religious wars are a human concept that builds on that most basic need of having space for oneself. The animals also wage “war” with one another when they are defending their territory. Take a lion pride for example. The male of the pride will defend his stake in the pride from an interloper trying to oust him. This is war on a small, localized, scale; with only a few combatants involved.
All this is accomplished without sentience. So my question is: “Why is sentience an evolutionary advantage? Is it not more of a handicap?”
I also have questions about the afterlife, but that will wait until another time.
Some people believe that this is all there is. There is no afterlife. After we die we just rot and everything is gone.
If that is the case what evolutionary advantage does sentience offer compared to non-sentience. The so-called “lower animals” get along quite well; being, as far as we humans can determine, non-sentient.
If sentience does bring an evolutionary advantage it is not clear cut, in my mind. Also if there is no afterlife where is the motivation to do “right”? If we just rot with no promise of reward why should we care if we do “right”. After we are dead we won’t care what we did during our time here and won’t care what history writes about us.
Forget about human technological prowess. I am talking about basic needs, wants and desires. At times our most base, primal, instincts come to the fore and we are hard pressed to suppress them. War is a good example of what I’m talking about. War is the basic need for territory writ very large. Religious wars are a human concept that builds on that most basic need of having space for oneself. The animals also wage “war” with one another when they are defending their territory. Take a lion pride for example. The male of the pride will defend his stake in the pride from an interloper trying to oust him. This is war on a small, localized, scale; with only a few combatants involved.
All this is accomplished without sentience. So my question is: “Why is sentience an evolutionary advantage? Is it not more of a handicap?”
I also have questions about the afterlife, but that will wait until another time.
