Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

After a discussion prompted by one of my coworkers, I wanted to know what you guys thought: Do you believe sentience is explicitly seperate from instinct, or that it is a deeper, more complex version of instinct?

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I think sentience is more like abstract, complex thinking and reasoning, while instinct is already stored and doesn't require thought.

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I agree with Ian, sentience requires a more complex thought capability, while instinct seems to be just there.

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I'd say they're seperate. Setinence needs the thought process only humans and maybe a few other species have in order to come to a conclusion on what to do or something, while instinct is simply something that comes natural to every living being ever.

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discussions are boring when people agree. therefore, I disagree.
they're the same. they're both thoughts thought up by thinkers.

Except instincts aren't so much "thoughts" as they are programmed responses.

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It's a matter of degrees. I don't believe in a hard-and-fast "non-sentient/sentient" barrier. I'd say that a gorilla or the African Grey Parrot N'kisi is probably more "sentient" than, say, a dog, which in turn is probably more sentient than a beetle, which is almost certainly more sentient than a mushroom.

N'kisi in particular is something to wonder about. (Koko the gorilla is too, but speech is something that the average person can comprehend readily, making this example more striking.) It seems that this parrot actually has some level of understanding of what he is saying. We also know that at least some of his responses could just be from conditioning. But how do we know that what we do isn't just some form of conditioning run amok? After all, how do parents teach their kids in their early years? Kid does something wrong, parent gives punishment. Kid does something good, parent gives reward. It's an informal laboratory. I think, supposing there's no fraud or "Clever Hans" effect involved, that for all intents and purposes, the parrot actually does understand (a small subset of) English. Sure, it can't do complicated mathematics or read a book, but then, neither can a three-year-old.

So I think at least there is a heavy overlap between instinct and sentience. There's no clear line dividing the two. There are other parrots who can speak in English, but not on N'kisi's level, and of course there are many parrots who simply mimic what they hear and nothing more (and many don't even do that). They're just different degrees on a scale.

- Kef