It’s definitely interesting to consider the welfare of all sorts of living creatures, but with respect to neuron count, I think it is really the neuron count per organism that is the key thing to consider. As far as I understand it, the neuron count is taken as a proxy for the capacity for valenced/subjective experience of which the specific organism is capable. For example, greater neuron counts enable increasingly complex forms of processing such as self-representation. But it’s a potential indicator at the level of the organism, not at the collective of all the organisms of that type.
I could put 10000 nematodes together but they don’t create a collective consciousness at the same level as a single animal with 3160000 neurons, because their processing is separate. Hence, you want to weight the individual animal in some way, in terms of its capacities for valenced experience, before you multiply by the number of organisms.
As far as I understand it, the neuron count is taken as a proxy for the capacity for valenced/subjective experience of which the specific organism is capable.
That is my understanding too.
I could put 10000 nematodes together but they don’t create a collective consciousness at the same level as a single animal with 3160000 neurons, because their processing is separate.
I agree that putting lots of organisms together does not necessarily create a collective consciousness. However, if we interpret welfare like water as illustrated here (picture below), and consider that the volume of each water bucket is directly proportional to the number of neurons, 10 k nematodes can carry as much water (welfare) as one being with 3 M neurons.
Figure 1: If welfare is like water, some individuals may be larger “buckets.”
I get what you are saying. I don’t have a strong opinion on what kind of function of neuron count it would be but I just am not sure it is likely to be directly proportional. I expect there might be some irregular transitions along the scale of conscious experience that different numbers of neurons get you, and that is not including the differences in arrangement/how the number of neurons within the individual enable orders of magnitude of different and more complex circuitry, which could pay out as wildly different capacities for conscious experience than just the linear increase in neuron number might suggest.
Of course, it could also shake out in the other direction where tons more neurons aren’t actually getting you correspondingly more capacities and that would make an even stronger case for the nematodes...but it could also be that the level of experience that nematode neurons get you barely registers or doesn’t even cross the threshold of having any subjective experience. In the extreme, I imagine there is some level of neuronal number/complexity that we don’t think has any experience at all, and just having tons of those could never add up to a single conscious being. (I’m not saying that is the case for nematodes though)
Further, consider that perhaps most nematode qualia are alike, in which case we may want to discount them to the extent they are just duplicating identical experiences.
It’s definitely interesting to consider the welfare of all sorts of living creatures, but with respect to neuron count, I think it is really the neuron count per organism that is the key thing to consider. As far as I understand it, the neuron count is taken as a proxy for the capacity for valenced/subjective experience of which the specific organism is capable. For example, greater neuron counts enable increasingly complex forms of processing such as self-representation. But it’s a potential indicator at the level of the organism, not at the collective of all the organisms of that type.
I could put 10000 nematodes together but they don’t create a collective consciousness at the same level as a single animal with 3160000 neurons, because their processing is separate. Hence, you want to weight the individual animal in some way, in terms of its capacities for valenced experience, before you multiply by the number of organisms.
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for commenting!
That is my understanding too.
I agree that putting lots of organisms together does not necessarily create a collective consciousness. However, if we interpret welfare like water as illustrated here (picture below), and consider that the volume of each water bucket is directly proportional to the number of neurons, 10 k nematodes can carry as much water (welfare) as one being with 3 M neurons.
Hi Vasco,
I get what you are saying. I don’t have a strong opinion on what kind of function of neuron count it would be but I just am not sure it is likely to be directly proportional. I expect there might be some irregular transitions along the scale of conscious experience that different numbers of neurons get you, and that is not including the differences in arrangement/how the number of neurons within the individual enable orders of magnitude of different and more complex circuitry, which could pay out as wildly different capacities for conscious experience than just the linear increase in neuron number might suggest.
Of course, it could also shake out in the other direction where tons more neurons aren’t actually getting you correspondingly more capacities and that would make an even stronger case for the nematodes...but it could also be that the level of experience that nematode neurons get you barely registers or doesn’t even cross the threshold of having any subjective experience. In the extreme, I imagine there is some level of neuronal number/complexity that we don’t think has any experience at all, and just having tons of those could never add up to a single conscious being. (I’m not saying that is the case for nematodes though)
All of that makes sense, thanks for clarifying!
Further, consider that perhaps most nematode qualia are alike, in which case we may want to discount them to the extent they are just duplicating identical experiences.