Animal Minds; termite automatic class recognition (Animals)

by dhw, Thursday, March 22, 2018, 10:34 (2437 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: Non-royal termites – the overwhelming majority of any colony – behave differently towards kings and queens than to each other, but until recently the simple question of how they recognised royalty had been unanswered. (dhw's bold)

DAVID’s comment: A simple automatic set of controls for hive activity. No need for thought here. Termites are obviously sentient, but not thoughtful. Like ants, automatic.

dhw: So when all the chemical processes take place enabling me to recognize the Queen, and I behave accordingly, I am obviously sentient but not thoughtful? We do not judge intelligence in ourselves or other organisms by the chemical processes that take place in our bodies. The only criterion for intelligence is behaviour.

DAVID: So when the hot stove burns your finger, you think before you remove it? Really?

You have missed the point. You always focus on the chemical processes by which organisms perceive things, but it is behaviour that denotes intelligence. Termites, like ants, can solve all sorts of problems. They build whole cities which are so complex that you – with your eagle eye for design – could not possibly attribute them to anything but intelligence. But they are tiny creatures compared to ourselves, and your “large organisms chauvinism”(Shapiro) dictates that tiny creatures can’t be intelligent, so God has to give them “guidelines” (i.e. preprogramme them or do a dabble). And yet at the same time you say that one can’t tell from the outside whether these living creatures are robots or thinking beings. I wonder what size they need to be before you give them the benefit of the doubt!