There is a recent list in Psychology Today, Characteristics probably necessary for sentience, where the author, with the help of ChatGPT, included "Body and emotions, Internal representations, Attentional mechanisms, Sense of time, narrative, and memory, More sophisticated cognition and learning, Real-world, pragmatic thinking ability, Higher-level creativity, ethics, morality, and philosophical reflection."
If all these are required for sentience, whatever prepares each one, does the mechanism differ from others? Is this list a wealth of labels to describe observations or term outputs, or does the mind differentiate for each?
Whatever emotions are to the mind, is it the same as what is described? Is higher-level creativity in one place, or is it obtainable at disparate destinations? Consciousness is from the mind, its derivation is the key, not descriptions of what it might be.
What Is Consciousness?
Consciousness is simply the interactions of the components of the human mind. When the components interact, they help to know.
If consciousness is absent, as it is generally said, in a deep sleep, coma, or under general anesthesia, are the processes that give rise to consciousness, off, or are they present but the output is not graduated enough to be labeled as consciousness?
This is similar to intelligence. How is it organized by the mind for use by the individual? Mechanisms then output. What is the basic mechanism of the human mind that results in the label of sentience and intelligence?
If those are outputs, could machines replicate them, even if the mechanisms are not available? For the mechanisms and outputs, do plants have some, and do animals also have some?
The human mind, where consciousness and intelligence are produced, has a universal mechanism. Its components, with features, have graded interactions.
It is these interactions and their grades that result in outcomes like memory, intelligence, perception, sensation, emotion, feelings, regulation, awareness of being, experience, and so forth, all collected as consciousness.
The components of minds are quantities and properties, or travelers and stations. Their features include early splits or go-before, sequences, prioritization, principal spot, thick and thin shapes, and so forth.
Conceptually, the electrical and chemical impulses of nerve cells as a collection, is what is referred to as the mind. Or, the group of impulses is what the mind is. Electrical impulses as a collective can be said to be quantities, while chemical impulses as properties.
The thousands of synapses for one neuron, represent properties, and bearing features too.
It is property acquired, to degrees in any moment that determines what sentience is. It is this same mechanism that is useful for intelligence.
The labels like predictive coding, processing, prediction error, and others are observations, but the underlying mechanisms are with the features of the components of the mind.
The outputs of sentience and intelligence (what is the total possible knowing for a system, emanating internally or externally at any point?) are possible for machines. The outputs and mechanisms for sentience and intelligence, to lower degrees are possible for plants and animals.
Humans remain unmatched in properties possible and the vastness of mind mechanisms, but the outputs are not improbable.
Feature image source