{"id":1623,"date":"2022-01-20T12:36:35","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T12:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2022-01-20T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T12:38:08","slug":"consciousness-the-f-words-vs-the-s-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2022\/01\/20\/consciousness-the-f-words-vs-the-s-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Consciousness: The F-words vs. the S-words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cSentient\u201d is the right word for “conscious.”. It means being able to feel anything at all<\/em> \u2013 whether positive, negative or neutral<\/em>, faint or flagrant, sensory or semantic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For ethics, it\u2019s the negative feelings that matter. But determining whether an organism feels anything at all<\/em> (the other-minds problem) is hard enough without trying to speculate about whether there exit species that can only<\/em> feel neutral (\u201cunvalenced\u201d) feelings. (I doubt that +\/-\/= feelings evolved separately, although their valence-weighting is no doubt functionally dissociable, as in the Melzack\/Wall gate-control theory of pain<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201csense\u201d in English is ambiguous, because it can mean both felt sensing<\/em> and unfelt \u201csensing,\u201d as in an electronic device like a sensor, or a mechanical one, like a thermometer or a thermostat, or even a biological sensor, like an in-vitro retinal cone cell, which, like photosensitive film, senses and reacts to light, but does not feel a thing (though the brain it connects to might).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the best of our knowledge so far, the phototropisms, thermotropisms and hydrotropisms of plants, even the ones that can be modulated by their history, are all like that too: sensing and reacting without feeling, as in homeostatic systems or servomechanisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feel\/feeling\/felt<\/em> would be fine for replacing all the ambiguous s-words (sense, sensor, sensation\u2026) and dispelling their ambiguities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Although \u201cfeeling\u201d is somewhat biased toward emotion (i.e., +\/- \u201cfeelings\u201d), it is the right descriptor for neutral feelings too, like warmth, movement, or touch, which only become +\/- at extreme intensities.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing the f-words lack is a generic noun for \u201chaving the capacity too feel\u201d as a counterpart for the noun sentience<\/em> itself (and its referent). (As usual, German has a candidate: Gef\u00fchlsf\u00e4higkeit<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And all this, without having to use the weasel-word<\/a> \u201cconscious\/consciousness,\u201d for which the f-words are a healthy antidote, to keep us honest, and coherent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSentient\u201d is the right word for “conscious.”. It means being able to feel anything at all \u2013 whether positive, negative or neutral, faint or flagrant, sensory or semantic. For ethics, it\u2019s the negative feelings that matter. But determining whether an organism feels anything at all (the other-minds problem) is hard enough without trying to speculate about whether there exit species … <\/p>\n