Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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bumblebee-on-a-flower-stockpack-adobe-stock
Bumblebee on a flower
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
November 21, 2023
Categorized
Animal mind, Evolution
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What Do Bees’ Joy and Pain Really Tell Us About Insect Minds?

If sentience, like intelligence, can be independent of phylogeny (place in Darwin’s tree of life), the conventional picture of evolution might need rethinking
Denyse O'Leary
November 21, 2023
5
Animal mind, Evolution

This summer entomologist Lars Chittka made another plea in Scientific American for the recognition of insects as capable of emotion. It’s been shown that bumblebees can learn “specific strategies for opening a puzzle box” by mimicking the behavior of previously trained bees. But, he says,it goes beyond that: Bees, for example, can count, grasp concepts of sameness and difference, learn complex tasks by observing others, and know their own individual body dimensions, a capacity associated with consciousness in humans. They also appear to experience both pleasure and pain. In other words, it now looks like at least some species of insects-and maybe all of them-are sentient. Lars Chittka, “Do Insects Feel Joy and Pain?”,Scientific American, July 1, 2023 He decided Read More ›

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Illustration of spiral arrangement in nature. Golden Ratio concept
Type
post
Author
News
Date
May 20, 2021
Categorized
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind
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Quick Facts on IIT (the Leading Theory of Consciousness)

IIT may be part of a trend in science in which emergence and panpsychist theories are slowly replacing materialist and physicalist ones
News
May 20, 2021
5
Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind

Consciousness, as a concept, is so easy to experience and so hard to define. Or explain. The most popular current theory of consciousness is Integrated Information Theory (IIT), pioneered by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and championed by Allen Institute neuroscientist Christof Koch. For the purpose of discussing IIT, science writer Mike Hogan works with this definition: Consciousness for purposes of this theory is defined as ‘self-awareness’ or the Central-Identity; the inner-voice that allows your brain to talk to itself, an awareness that ‘you’ exist, the rationalization of your own relevance to that existence, and an awareness of the cause and effect of your actions in regard to yourself and your environment. Mike Hogan, “The Best Available Story of Human Consciousness” at Read More ›

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close up of a red ant face in white
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
February 24, 2021
Categorized
Natural Intelligence
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Can Insects, Bacteria, and Plants Have Personalities Too?

If personality amounts to observed individual differences in behavior, the answer is yes, though the issues are more complex for plants
Denyse O'Leary
February 24, 2021
8
Natural Intelligence

Yesterday, we looked at a paper in which researchers reported that marmosets (a South American monkey) have personalities. Most of us would simply assume that they do and we are right to think so. Research on many vertebrate animal species shows that even reptiles and fish have personalities. Of course, the number of dimensions a vertebrate’s personality can have varies with its intellectual and lifestyle complexity. But now, what about the vast world of the invertebrates, the life forms whose body is not organized around a spinal cord terminating in a brain? Their body plans can vary from that of a starfish through to a honeybee. Can they have personalities, despite very different brain arrangements, including — in some cases Read More ›