Mote Response
I never did respond to this thread, so I figured I’d make a stab at it before touchstone posts Wizard of Earthsea discussion.
laurelar said:
There is a lot of discussion in the book on both sides of the mote about intelligence and sentience. It is a constant exploration to see which of the species and subspecies are intelligent and/or sentient and to what degree.
How do you define each?
Is it possible to be one and not the other?
To what degree do you think the various moties where each?
Well, let us define. Rather, let m-w.com define:
Main Entry: in•tel•li•gence
Pronunciation: \in-ˈte-lə-jən(t)s\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin intelligentia, from intelligent-, intelligens intelligent
Date: 14th century
1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : reason; also : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)
Main Entry: sen•tience
Pronunciation: \ˈsen(t)-sh(ē-)ən(t)s, ˈsen-tē-ən(t)s\
Function: noun
Date: 1839
1 : a sentient quality or state
2 : feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought
Main Entry: sen•tient
Pronunciation: \ˈsen(t)-sh(ē-)ənt, ˈsen-tē-ənt\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin sentient-, sentiens, present participle of sentire to perceive, feel
Date: 1632
1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2 : aware
3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling
Okay, as that definition of sentience is not really useful to the discussion, I also hit up Wikipedia:
Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive subjectively. The term is used in philosophy (particularly in the philosophy of animal ethics and in eastern philosophy) as well as in science fiction and (occasionally) in the study of artificial intelligence. In each of these fields the term is used slightly differently.
In eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires our respect and care. In science fiction, sentience is "personhood": the essential quality that separates humankind from machines or other animals. Sentience is used in the study of consciousness to describe the ability to have sensations or experiences, known to some Western academic philosophers as "qualia".
Some advocates of animal rights argue that many animals are sentient in that they can feel pleasure and pain, and that this entails being entitled to some moral or legal rights.
I think with their ability to adapt and discover, most of the Motie forms that we saw would be defined as intelligent. Now, sentience would depend on where you fall on this spectrum of definition. If you believe that sentience is “personhood,” I don’t believe the Watchmakers would be considered sentient. I’m not even sure the Browns would be. I believe that the Moties have this belief, and that is why they ignored all the humans that they classified as Browns at first, while the less technical humans got their own fyunch(clicks).
Now, based on the ”ability to have sensations or experiences,” I believe that it becomes very hard to be intelligent and not be sentient. It’s very hard to learn when one doesn’t perceive. However, one could still be sentient but not intelligent, if all one requires is to have sensation and experiences.
Interesting that which one is the subset flip-flops depending on which way you approach it.
I was rather surprised at the apparent lack of religion with the moties. There are times in the book when they reference religion, but it seemed they were doing it to put things into a manner we would understand, not that they actually had religion.
I was also surprised at the assertion that human religion would be relatively unchanged 1500 years in the future. I suppose it is possible... its been basically the same for the last 2000 but with space expansion and radioactive wars and so forth, I would expect huge change. I loved the Himmists.
It seemed to me that the Moties had had religion but considered religion Crazy Eddie.
And the static nature of the human society, religion included, bugged me as well.
My theory didn't hold up quite as well once we found out how many different motie types there were, but...
Whites are the masters
Browns are the servants, and are mute and relatively unconcerned with their plight.
When whites and browns mix, they are sterile.
Reds are warriors.
Am I reading too much in here?
I don’t know if you are, though wow, that’s an unfortunate parallel. I couldn’t find any websites that drew the same parallel though, and usually if there’s clear racism in a book, the Internet is full of soapboxes.
As a note, the Doctors were also red, which breaks it a bit as you say after the other types start showing.
Lying and deception were huge themes in this book. Who won the deception wars? What were the consequences? How would things have turned out differently if we were all more up-front with each other?
Though I don’t condone what they tried to do, I don’t think the Moties would have been any better off to have been honest. I think both sides needed to hide what they did-it’s just that the other side really sought out that information at the same time.
And it could be like shieldhaven said, and this was largely a tool to let the authors show off the cleverness of the characters.
Also why is it called tri-v?
Triple-dimension video, I’m guessing. Though they apparently didn’t coin the phrase - interesting site here.
laurelar said:
There is a lot of discussion in the book on both sides of the mote about intelligence and sentience. It is a constant exploration to see which of the species and subspecies are intelligent and/or sentient and to what degree.
How do you define each?
Is it possible to be one and not the other?
To what degree do you think the various moties where each?
Well, let us define. Rather, let m-w.com define:
Main Entry: in•tel•li•gence
Pronunciation: \in-ˈte-lə-jən(t)s\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin intelligentia, from intelligent-, intelligens intelligent
Date: 14th century
1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : reason; also : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)
Main Entry: sen•tience
Pronunciation: \ˈsen(t)-sh(ē-)ən(t)s, ˈsen-tē-ən(t)s\
Function: noun
Date: 1839
1 : a sentient quality or state
2 : feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought
Main Entry: sen•tient
Pronunciation: \ˈsen(t)-sh(ē-)ənt, ˈsen-tē-ənt\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin sentient-, sentiens, present participle of sentire to perceive, feel
Date: 1632
1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2 : aware
3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling
Okay, as that definition of sentience is not really useful to the discussion, I also hit up Wikipedia:
Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive subjectively. The term is used in philosophy (particularly in the philosophy of animal ethics and in eastern philosophy) as well as in science fiction and (occasionally) in the study of artificial intelligence. In each of these fields the term is used slightly differently.
In eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires our respect and care. In science fiction, sentience is "personhood": the essential quality that separates humankind from machines or other animals. Sentience is used in the study of consciousness to describe the ability to have sensations or experiences, known to some Western academic philosophers as "qualia".
Some advocates of animal rights argue that many animals are sentient in that they can feel pleasure and pain, and that this entails being entitled to some moral or legal rights.
I think with their ability to adapt and discover, most of the Motie forms that we saw would be defined as intelligent. Now, sentience would depend on where you fall on this spectrum of definition. If you believe that sentience is “personhood,” I don’t believe the Watchmakers would be considered sentient. I’m not even sure the Browns would be. I believe that the Moties have this belief, and that is why they ignored all the humans that they classified as Browns at first, while the less technical humans got their own fyunch(clicks).
Now, based on the ”ability to have sensations or experiences,” I believe that it becomes very hard to be intelligent and not be sentient. It’s very hard to learn when one doesn’t perceive. However, one could still be sentient but not intelligent, if all one requires is to have sensation and experiences.
Interesting that which one is the subset flip-flops depending on which way you approach it.
I was rather surprised at the apparent lack of religion with the moties. There are times in the book when they reference religion, but it seemed they were doing it to put things into a manner we would understand, not that they actually had religion.
I was also surprised at the assertion that human religion would be relatively unchanged 1500 years in the future. I suppose it is possible... its been basically the same for the last 2000 but with space expansion and radioactive wars and so forth, I would expect huge change. I loved the Himmists.
It seemed to me that the Moties had had religion but considered religion Crazy Eddie.
And the static nature of the human society, religion included, bugged me as well.
My theory didn't hold up quite as well once we found out how many different motie types there were, but...
Whites are the masters
Browns are the servants, and are mute and relatively unconcerned with their plight.
When whites and browns mix, they are sterile.
Reds are warriors.
Am I reading too much in here?
I don’t know if you are, though wow, that’s an unfortunate parallel. I couldn’t find any websites that drew the same parallel though, and usually if there’s clear racism in a book, the Internet is full of soapboxes.
As a note, the Doctors were also red, which breaks it a bit as you say after the other types start showing.
Lying and deception were huge themes in this book. Who won the deception wars? What were the consequences? How would things have turned out differently if we were all more up-front with each other?
Though I don’t condone what they tried to do, I don’t think the Moties would have been any better off to have been honest. I think both sides needed to hide what they did-it’s just that the other side really sought out that information at the same time.
And it could be like shieldhaven said, and this was largely a tool to let the authors show off the cleverness of the characters.
Also why is it called tri-v?
Triple-dimension video, I’m guessing. Though they apparently didn’t coin the phrase - interesting site here.