Could stars be sentient beings?!?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 04:47 PM

What I'd say from my very mundane viewpoint is that "sentient," like "truth," may as well be a useful word. So this wine glass, much as I revere it and its contents, is made of inanimate materials, some once-lived, some never-lived. I'm going to stick my neck out and assert that the wine glass is not sentient in any sense of the word that renders the word useful. Likewise with the sun and intergalactic clouds, etc. Until I know that these phenomena contain anything other than inanimate material, I'm going to cling to the notion that they are probably not sentient in any sense of the word that renders the word a useful one. Sorry to be so boring and unspiritual. I just want some evidence, that's all. Not magical flights of wild imagination.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 03:07 PM

I am neither a hymen nor a chav. Why, I've never even been to Maidenhead.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 01:54 PM

So you're not a hyman chauvinist, but you are a mammalian chavsnist, Steve...

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 01:33 PM

I had a go at starting that hare a few posts ago. It's the old solipsist thing. You know YOU feel, otherwise you rule yourself out of the discussion. But you don't know if anything else feels, and there's no way you can find out. The Turing test.So "sentienht" means simply "feels things like I do". You can dress that as fancy as you like, but for a' that an' a' that...

On the other hand, you can do comparisons- a dog "begs" for treats, so we treat the dog as something with communicable wants and therefore feelings in some way comparable to ours. And go on "down the scale", mice, chickens, lizards, worms, centipedes, spiders..... eventually you (might) conclude that they are more similar to a machine executing an algorithm than to a person with feelings, hopes, desires, fears, intentions and the rest of the paraphernalia of sentience.

Sentience ends with a full stop, or a question mark...

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 12:27 PM

It really does come down to defining our terms. Let's start with "sentient."



Anybody...?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 12:19 PM

Imagination is a wonderful thing and the very concept of something we could recognise as intelligence by any of the ways of describing it is a fascinating concept.

I suppose that's why I get all dismissive about the dismal constraints of religious teaching. It suppresses the imagination and tries to explain with turgid stupidity the infinite beauty of the universe.

Although there is no observable or measurable phenomenon to date that could or would lead to investigating sentient stars other than in our imagination. There is no danger in dreaming though. (Unless and until some bugger reckons the stars are speaking to him. It has to be a him. Women haven't been allowed to start religions for at least three thousand years.)

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Stu
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 10:32 AM

"DO plants fee pain?"

Plants react to external stimuli, are capable of communication during predator attacks. Recent research also demonstrates plants can learn and remember (paper here, paywalled unfortunately: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00442-013-2873-7 ). They are also able to think, as demonstrated here: http://www.mudcat.org/blickifier2.cfm

If these traits were observed in an animal we would regard them as evidence of sentience; there's no reason to not believe that plants also display sentience, possibly of a different nature to animal sentience and they might also experience consciousness, although of a sort very different to ours.

I love the idea that in space there might be sentient gas clouds light-years in width and breadth that think thoughts so slowly we can't even recognise them as intelligent beings, and to them we'd have little more disruptive effect passing through them in a spaceship than neutrinos passing through us do.

Heck, we don't even know if would recognise life if were confronted with it. We might be standing in front of a silicon-based life form and not know it, it could be so utterly different to us.

The main stumbling block to accepting ideas like these often stem from human arrogance rather than lack of empirical evidence, but I suppose it's ever been thus.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 08:23 AM

The sense governing your bullshit antennae is honed and tuned reading Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 05:45 AM

I could have meant "up to us vertebrates" or "up to us mammals" for all you know. And for all I know, come to think of it. Anyhoo...

I'll take a lot of convincing that proprioception isn't just a highly-developed manifestation of coordination. It's an explanation of how nervous systems effect coordination rather than a sense for receiving external stimuli, which is how we normally regard senses, but I'm up for anything, given evidence. Perhaps you'd care to redefine "senses."
I'm definitely not up for telepathy and stuff like that. Where's the real evidence? Show me that and I might get interested. And what are these other senses that animals have that we don't?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Nov 15 - 04:50 AM

When you touch your index finggers together behind your back or shut your eyes and touch your nose with your little finger, that's proprioception, and you'd be crawling around on the floor, and not too well, without it.

But my point was your use of the phrase ""up to us", which rather implies that we are the crown of an evolutionary progress...

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Nov 15 - 02:34 PM

Well, I don't know about what senses above five we might have. I need more evidence. I suppose I could have given a far more comprehensive, and far more tedious, list of organisms in an ascending order of complexity, but I was trying to make a simple point that response to the environment is universal among living things and that there is a wide range of sophistication.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Bill D
Date: 25 Nov 15 - 09:06 AM

"More than 5 senses"

Hmm... well, the very word 'senses' gets a bit ambiguous when we move beyond the standard 5. Proprioception might be considered to be a combination of a couple of others by some.

We have to be careful not to arbitrarily move some 'abilities' into the category of basic senses.

Obviously, there is much disagreement as to whether some claimed senses are real... as in telepathy, precognition...etc.

No matter how we define our own list, attributing any of our own senses to non-human entities is problematic. (DO plants fee pain?)

As a long-time reader of science fiction, I have enjoyed imagining & speculating about concepts that I have NO notion of how to test for or evaluate. Frank Herbert gave us interesting ideas in "Whipping Star" and other stories, but my interaction with the Sun is limited to night & day and sunscreen lotion.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 25 Nov 15 - 06:15 AM

If the sun IS sentient, how could we tell? We can't tell if another mammal, or even another human being, is sentient, we can't see inside its mind, or soul, or whatever you like to call the "sentient core" (deliberate scare quotes- you have to fill in your own bit there). But we can tell that they react as though they are sensing events, and mofifying their behaviour according to those events. So let's look at the sun in the same way. Are there any events we can observe that the sun reacts to in a way that are not at least as well explained by the simple mechanical action of physical laws?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Nov 15 - 05:07 AM

"Up to us and our five senses" - that's a bit species-chauvinist, Steve. Anyway we've got more than five senses ( proprioception, for a start), and there are other creatures with senses we haven't got.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 09:11 PM

Thanks, Steve. That I comprehend (but it's a whole helluva lot to think about).

The hold-up is going to be time. If we suppose that our sun is sentient and somehow we could communicate with its sentience, we won't know for over eight minutes because time is tied to the speed of light. Our sun could get back and forth with us in eight minutes, but the next nearest sun will need 4.2 years (at the speed of light), so we're stuck with that time between responses in conversation. If we're ever going to test the hypothesis we'll need to compress the time involved or deal with our conception of time in a different way. Yes? No?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 08:36 PM

Unless you're a Buddhist, "sentient" isn't an especially useful word. "Sensitivity" is a quality possessed by all living things that enables them to detect aspects of their surroundings (stimuli) and respond accordingly. That ranges from primitive detection of and responses to light, chemicals or heat in single-called organisms, to more sophisticated abilities to respond to things like gravity and daylength in vascular plants, right up to us and our five senses. Dunno where you'd care to draw the "sentient above this point" line on that scale. We could talk about consciousness instead, though even that might not get us much further...

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 08:23 PM

That isn't what I meant, my apologies. I'll rephrase it: What does sentient mean in this context and then what defines beings?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 08:12 PM

Actually, Kevin, he was just repeating what I'd already called meself...   :-)

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 07:57 PM

"Rabid atheist" is out of line, Pete, with your general practice of avoiding inflammatory language (even if your views, expressed however mildly, may tend to inflame some of those of us who disagree with them). Steve isn't going to bite anyone - and I assure you, if he did bite you, there's no likelihood that it would turn you into an atheist overnight.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:23 PM

Rabid atheist? I was bring self-deprecating, pete. I'm also a militant atheist, an attack atheist, a new atheist and whatever-else-you-like atheist. However, I do articulate my notions clearly and I provide explanations for what I say that are actually related to what I say. You are most decidedly not the man to be criticising anyone else's use of logic.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:10 PM

The universe certainly has got brains. Ours.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:01 PM

Nice tune , nicely done, Dave. A little unorthodox theology, but a well crafted Sydney carter song, I thought.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 02:09 PM

♫ "But that lucky old sun got nothin' to do
But roll around heaven all day."♫

seems pretty smart to me! ;>

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 02:08 PM

Any attempt to define those concepts runs up against the rocks of anthropomorphism. I think both Fred Hoyle and Sydney Carter were trying to say that.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 01:37 PM

"Stars sentient? Other than human imagination, what evidence is there with which to consider such a concept?"

Good question. To be sure I understand, what are we using as a working-definitions of 'sentient' and of course 'beings'? I may be making some assumptions that are off the wall. (Wouldn't be the first time and I doubt it will be my last.)

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 01:21 PM

Since Pete is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRNybGDSbM

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 01:03 PM

I liked Fred Hoyle. Of course, he is remembered for the two huge mistakes but with regard to the steady state universe, his refusal to even consider the mounting evidence that precluded his thesis sadly puts him at the ignorance level of religion.

He had an excellent way of articulating though and did a lot to ignite my fascination with Astro physics.

Stars sentient? Other than human imagination, what evidence is there with which to consider such a concept?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,Pete from seven stars link
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 12:41 PM

Being as what my tag is, seems appropriate to post here ! Added to that Steve is bringing his anti theism here. So I wonder how being a scientist and a " rabid atheist " is conducive to logical reasoning......

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 12:34 PM

The answer to the question posed by GUEST at 08:20 is yes.

Fred Hoyle wrote not only the Black Cloud, but a couple of other novels, and also A for Andromeda for TV. This portrayed scientists as real people, Fred of course being both. It also put forward the idea that scientists could have lab assistants who looked like Julie Christie. Both the Black Cloud and A for Andromeda portray alien life forms which are very different from ourselves, so not unrelated to the original post.

Sadly, most of A for Andromeda is lost. There was a remake in 2006, but it was a pale shadow.

Fred Hoyle was really rather a fine writer. He was also a great scientist. Although his two headline ideas, steady state cosmology and the origin of life in comets have not stood the test of time, his work on stellar nucleosynthesis with the Burbidges and Fowler has, and is one of the cornerstones of modern astrophysics.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 12:31 PM

Neat article, McG of H. From it, "The Sun, Gaia and indeed the entire universe cannot be conscious because they do not have brains."

I thought, but what if the universe IS the brain?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 12:16 PM

The somewhat heretical (in orthodox scientific circles ) scientist Rupert Sheldrake has some interesting stuff about this in a piece here - "Is the sun conscious?" Here

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 11:23 AM

Spooky Action at a Distance may have at least partially provided the answer to the question posed by the OP: "Could stars be sentient beings?!?".

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Amos
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 10:56 AM

STars?

No.

You're projecting.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 08:20 AM

Was it set in his steady state universe?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 08:00 AM

Fred Hoyle wrote a novel about a sentient interstellar cloud.
Title, The Black Cloud.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:52 AM

David Bowie seems to know a thing or two on the subject.

Mind you, he was ripped to the tits on marching powder when he wrote star man. Coined the phrase "space cadet " somewhat inadvertently.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:11 AM

Trees communicate danger to each other. Dogs sniff cancerous tissue.

The term sentient has latitude.

If the earth is the only planet with sentient organic structures, then that would be the most amazing fact to verify. If there were sentient beings on other planets that would be the most amazing fact to verify.

Kicks medieval superstition into a cocked hat either way.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 24 Nov 15 - 03:04 AM

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned Olaf Stapledon's 'Starmaker'.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 10:14 PM

"Could stars be sentient beings?!?"

Gentlemen, watch 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' and then answer that question.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 09:27 PM

Was I picking you up on that notion? After all, it's not far off the speculations of Teilhard de Chardin SJ.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 08:18 PM

Hmm. I did say notion and I did say suppose. As you're an avowed Christian, Kevin, I'm slightly amazed that you should be picking ME up on a fantasy that is million times less fanciful than yours. Or twenty, or eight...

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 07:19 PM

Actually the assumption that some kind of consciousness is restricted to human beings, or indeed to living matter, is just that, an assumption. It's hard to conceive of any way of proving or disproving that assumption so far as non-living matter is concerned. But I think it's as well to recognise that it is an assumption.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 06:55 PM

This thread predates my presence on this board, just about. Recently, in the maelstrom below the dreaded line, a fellow who I won't name in the interests of etiquette, a very confused man in many respects unfortunately, rather inchoately raised the matter of consciousness. I'm a rabid atheist meself, I hasten to add, but I found the notion that the universe is becoming a conscious entity, by dint of our own consciousness here on earth, to be a very intriguing idea. Suppose human life on earth is is the only intelligent life in the universe (that seems very unlikely to me, though it isn't impossible...) Until the first humans, the universe was unconscious. Then we came along, and, as we are not just PART of the universe, but are INTEGRAL to the universe, the universe attained consciousness. As we increase in numbers and in intelligence and as our consciousness sharpens, the universe itself becomes more and more conscious. I like that. We are not just of the universe, we are the universe, as much as any other entity within it. Wow. I'll try to not get too big-headed.

Well bugger me if I haven't garbled all that, but why should I care. It's a lovely notion, much better than God, and, come those horrid wet winter nights, I might just look into it a bit more. And, if by so doing I can make myself just a tad more conscious, I might just be helping the universe!

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 05:58 PM

Oh my... I don't think 'T' read a lot of the discussion about contiguity & how we process ideas. So many notions are tossed about with no more defense than "I think that.."

Interesting to re-read all this.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 02:43 PM

"... more to stars than what science says..."

So, what does science say and when did he or she say it?

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,T
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 01:48 PM

I like your story. I think there is more to stars than what science says. I had similar experience as you. I went to the lake for some peace and it was night-time. No one was around and I spoke out loud. Haha like you I there was no one there either to think I'm crazy! I said something like, "can some action in heaven happen so I know I'm alive?" Soons that happened, a "shooting star" "or meteorite" fell. And whats curious is that I felt it! Like there some communication between the lights in the sky and myself. Thanks for sharing your story!

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Metchosin
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 06:23 PM

Thank you mudpieski!

And thank you daylia, because as I mentioned on the deleted post, one thing this thread got me to do was to rework a poem I wasn't satisfied with........I'll probably continue reworking it again ad infinitum, because thats what I do.

Dragonfly

Trapped upon a deceptive pane of glass,
No longer do you swoop and soar in sunshine.
Too soon, within my hand
Two luminescent emerald orbs
Slowly dim.
The soft green glow recedes
Until your watchful eyes no longer shine
On life's string of lights
And I am left to wonder,
Have you come
And gone
To star light?

S.Grieve

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: GUEST,*daylia*
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 04:19 AM

Metchosin, that's lovely - "corrected" or not. Thanks! & u 2, Peace.

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Metchosin
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 03:41 PM

aw gee! couldn't stop that post in time to make corrections again. Oh well.

OK?. A Mudpiskie

Subject: RE: Could stars be sentient beings?!?
From: Peace
Date: 18 Nov 05 - 01:21 PM

I'm off the thread. Thanks.