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Bumble bees play, according to new research

phys.org

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Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#61

Post by scoofy »

Retric wrote: post #58
scoofy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is an actual thing. It's not an idea. The idea that somehow a collection of stone objects springs forth a consciousness when arranged in one pattern versus another... is certainly an odd concept.

Why would you assume consciousness is a thing rather than a property of a system? Temperature for example isn’t a substance. I am not saying consciousness couldn’t be a thing, but it just seems to be an assumption without justification. As to arrangements of stuff being important, arrangement of individual pieces can make the difference between a watch and a pile of pieces or a person and a dead body. Many emergent p…

>Why would you assume consciousness is a thing rather than a property of a system?

If consciousness were simply the property of a system, then I'd assume it is effectively an illusion. I'm not sure, and I'm not saying this it would be de facto wrong, I'm just saying it's absurd for me to conceive of it this way, because if it is the case that it's a byproduct of a system, then there is effectively no self. It may be the case that that is true, bit it's useless to conceive of it.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#62

Post by [deleted] »

nescioquid wrote: post #39
comfypotato wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound interested enough that you might enjoy bits of the actual paper [1]. They didn’t exactly say the bees stopped playing under stress. Instead they said the behavior isn’t a stress response (they know this because they eliminated stress from the environment). Also, the evidence that it’s inherently rewarding is bolstered by the pattern of interaction with balls. It increases over time and then drops (typical o…

Okay -- thanks for being patient; appreciate the link to the paper and additional detail. I see the "question begging" emerged from me misconstruing the quotes from the paper above. I think I was especially skeptical because I wanted to believe the conclusion.

[deleted]

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#63

Post by Stupulous »

scoofy wrote: post #61
Retric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume consciousness is a thing rather than a property of a system? Temperature for example isn’t a substance. I am not saying consciousness couldn’t be a thing, but it just seems to be an assumption without justification. As to arrangements of stuff being important, arrangement of individual pieces can make the difference between a watch and a pile of pieces or a person and a dead body. Many emergent p…

>Why would you assume consciousness is a thing rather than a property of a system? If consciousness were simply the property of a system, then I'd assume it is effectively an illusion. I'm not sure, and I'm not saying this it would be de facto wrong, I'm just saying it's absurd for me to conceive of it this way, because if it is the case that it's a byproduct of a system, then there is effectively no self. It may be…

Is math an illusion? Math is a property of systems, as is our and our calculators ability to do it. I would argue that makes it more real.

When you see an object in reality, you're really making a series of assumptions. What you see is reflected light, and you construct a highly innacurate but useful model of what that light logically implies. Something that is external can only be perceived epistemically, as a sufficiently good guess. There's no evidence we're not in a simulation, so it's a toss-up as to whether anything physical exists at all.

Contrast the concept of self awareness. 'I think, therefore I am' is not a guess. It is a certainty, regardless of the broader context, that somewhere, something is a host to my experiences and thoughts.

Tangent: You can extend that a little bit by reasoning that you exist, therefore the things you interact with must exist as something. That doesn't get you past the possibility of the matrix, but it does escape total nihilism.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#64

Post by sgillen »

scoofy wrote: post #18

"Play" as a concept, is a clear social construct. The behaviors we call "play" is very obviously an innate instinctual behavior for humans, and is entirely plausible the same for bees. I see little here to suggest that this implies sentience apart from simple anthropomorphism.

This is not obvious to me, I’ve always thought of for example a toddler playing with a ball by themselves as learning basic intuitive physics.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#65

Post by pluijzer »

scoofy wrote: post #33
version_five wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something we know about the relationship between conciousness/sentience and the size of brain? A computer neural network can be arbitrarily large and there is no evidence it will ever become sentient. While we're related to insects and afaik share some functions. I can definitely picture the idea of their conciousness just being a more basic version of ours. But I'm curious if there is some evidence or reaso…

I mean, we don't know. We literally don't know where or how consciousness exists. We just know that we have it, and we try to extrapolate backwards. Is it a product of the prefrontal cortex? Arguably. Is it the product of the mammalian mind? Seems plausible. The product of a small-but-thresholded nervous system? I think many would agree here. Is it the product of any nervous system? Doubtful, but maybe. Is it the pro…

This always used to be my thought as well. Consciousness and intelligence had a clear hierarchy in my mind. Slowly though I am not so sure anymore. Watching plants grow in their own time frame in the documentary "the private life of plants", reading about the communication networks of trees in "The Hidden Life of Trees" and having observed nature a lot; this hierarchy starts to fade.

There is a big connection between consciousness and morality. Killing a family of bears to safe a human child would be seen as a moral think to do. We explain this to ourselves by using levels of consciousness. It is okay to kill, enslave etc. a species with a lower level of consciousness for the benefit of one with a higher level. And humans have the highest levels of consciousness. I believe this is an illusion or even a coping mechanisms for admitting that we find our own species more important. Think of it this way; what if there existed an alien race, superior in intellect and consciousness. Would we be okay with it enslaved us? Would we kill one of our own if it meant saving one of them. I think not. I think the connection between consciousness and morality would disappear.

When connecting consciousness with morality, admitting consciousness to a life form becomes subjective and a costly dilemma. I think that by just admitting that we prefer the survival of our own kind it would be easier to see rich world of many possible consciousness entities in this world. Be it humans, insects, trees or even interconnected systems of species.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#66

Post by DogOnTheWeb »

scoofy wrote: post #16
csallen wrote: post #13

> …insects… are a million miles from the mindless, unfeeling creatures they are traditionally believed to be. Is it truly a common belief that insects are mindless and unfeeling? I would imagine the vast majority of people, when polled, would guess that insects have some form of consciousness and feeling. Of course, that doesn't stop people from squashing or swatting them when they get in the way. In fact, it hasn't…

I think it's extremely hard to say, but I'd say it's hard to argue for sentience when the neural system is so small. This is a serious problem in philosophy. The concepts of "philosophical zombies" is a hard problem. The fact is that we could have perfectly "sentient behavior" from creatures/beings without any sensible consciousness involved. The sentience of humans is debatable, even though it is readily apparent th…

Even if there is a chance it’s all a mirage, wouldn’t it be better to behave as if these and other creatures have an inner life?

Appealing to the philosophical zombie seems like an excuse to discard that our actions might cause real suffering from their perspective, on the unknowable chance they don’t mind.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#67

Post by _0ffh »

puzzledobserver wrote: post #45
abfan1127 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what says play doesn't increase the chance of survival?

I might be misunderstanding Graeber, but I thought his point was that by viewing play through the calculus of evolution and survival probabilities, scientists have not paid as much attention to the fact that play is fun. How did animals come to play? Because it allows them to explore their environment and increases their evolutionary fitness. Why do animals continue to play? Because they enjoy it.

Making you enjoy it is nature's trick to make sure you do it's bidding.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#68

Post by tlokas »

pluijzer wrote: post #65
scoofy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we don't know. We literally don't know where or how consciousness exists. We just know that we have it, and we try to extrapolate backwards. Is it a product of the prefrontal cortex? Arguably. Is it the product of the mammalian mind? Seems plausible. The product of a small-but-thresholded nervous system? I think many would agree here. Is it the product of any nervous system? Doubtful, but maybe. Is it the pro…

This always used to be my thought as well. Consciousness and intelligence had a clear hierarchy in my mind. Slowly though I am not so sure anymore. Watching plants grow in their own time frame in the documentary "the private life of plants", reading about the communication networks of trees in "The Hidden Life of Trees" and having observed nature a lot; this hierarchy starts to fade. There is a big connection between…

I don't know if I would choose humans over bears.

If we take away the whole effect of the trolley problem and only talk about values, I would say that given the choice of 2 human life against the last 2 of a species of some insect, I would choose not to extinct that species.

I agree on the comparison of a higher consciousness than humans visiting earth. I would in most normal cases protect my own humans instead of a bear or alien. But if a human where about to kill a defenceless alien without cause, I would save that alien.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#69

Post by nicoburns »

Retric wrote: post #46
scoofy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating consciousness with intelligence. The two are not the same. One is the experience of qualia, and the ability to hold preferences. The other is the behaviors associated with making predictions and intentionally manipulating the world to achieve tasks. We have a hyper-intelligent chess engines that cannot be argued to be conscious. We also have small mammalian minds, like Koalas, that are dumb as a bri…

Some level of intelligence is a prerequisite for experience of qualia. A rock for example is below that threshold. The question then becomes what exactly is the minim level of perception we are willing to accept. Individual cells respond to their environment indirectly, that’s enough to qualify IMO but I accept people would disagree. Which just illiterates people don’t generally use philosophical definitions directly…

> Some level of intelligence is a prerequisite for experience of qualia.

How do you know that? It’s entirely possible that a rock has all sorts going on that we just can’t detect.

Which sounds facetious, but given that we can’t even detect consciousness in humans, it seems difficult to rule it out entirely.

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