Thanks for the compliment and especially for the thoughtful reply. I’ll take your comments in turn.
In the third part of the mini-series on features potentially relevant to invertebrate sentience, we discuss a number of learning indicators, including both classical and operant conditioning. That post is going up June 12. I would be interested to hear your take on the relevant sections.
There is certainly not going to be a perfect correlation between lifespan and potential for learning. (Indeed, there might not be any correlation at all.) The claim that we’re defending is that, in general, longer-lived organisms would benefit more from learning abilities than shorter-live organisms. We expect there to be exceptions both ways (i.e., relatively short-lived organisms that would benefit from learning abilities and relatively long-lived organisms that wouldn’t). Much depends on context of various kinds. Your point about the learning abilities of monarchs vs. bees is well-taken. In future work (to be published mid-July), we take an especially close look at eusocial insects, which are pretty amazing.
Your question about warning pheromones is a great example of a difficulty that has hounded us for the length of the project. Classifying and assessing complex behaviors is context-sensitive. I think you’re right that warning pheromones could fall into at least three categories. (Or maybe different pheromones fall into different categories?) Assessing the evidential force of these features is often even more context-sensitive. A behavior that looks like good evidence for sentience in one context doesn’t always look like good evidence for sentience in a different context. (e.g., a human reporting “I am in pain” is normally great evidence of painful experience. A very simple robot programmed to utter the same sounds is not great evidence of painful experience.)
Hi Gavin,
Thanks for the compliment and especially for the thoughtful reply. I’ll take your comments in turn.
In the third part of the mini-series on features potentially relevant to invertebrate sentience, we discuss a number of learning indicators, including both classical and operant conditioning. That post is going up June 12. I would be interested to hear your take on the relevant sections.
There is certainly not going to be a perfect correlation between lifespan and potential for learning. (Indeed, there might not be any correlation at all.) The claim that we’re defending is that, in general, longer-lived organisms would benefit more from learning abilities than shorter-live organisms. We expect there to be exceptions both ways (i.e., relatively short-lived organisms that would benefit from learning abilities and relatively long-lived organisms that wouldn’t). Much depends on context of various kinds. Your point about the learning abilities of monarchs vs. bees is well-taken. In future work (to be published mid-July), we take an especially close look at eusocial insects, which are pretty amazing.
Your question about warning pheromones is a great example of a difficulty that has hounded us for the length of the project. Classifying and assessing complex behaviors is context-sensitive. I think you’re right that warning pheromones could fall into at least three categories. (Or maybe different pheromones fall into different categories?) Assessing the evidential force of these features is often even more context-sensitive. A behavior that looks like good evidence for sentience in one context doesn’t always look like good evidence for sentience in a different context. (e.g., a human reporting “I am in pain” is normally great evidence of painful experience. A very simple robot programmed to utter the same sounds is not great evidence of painful experience.)