are bees concious?

[ALine]

I wanted to start a debate on whether a thing that is that small can be considered conscious.

[iNow]

How are you defining consciousness?

[ALine]

1 minute ago, iNow said:

How are you defining consciousness?

the ability to have a behavior recognizable as being able to use tools and resources to achieve intended consequences.

[iNow]

Just now, ALine said:

the ability to have a behavior recognizable as being able to use tools and resources to achieve intended consequences.

Then, yes. Bees are that. 

[ALine]

A definition for consciousness could also be a debate in itself I kind of want to start.

[iNow]

2 minutes ago, ALine said:

A definition for consciousness could also be a debate in itself I kind of want to start.

Ask 10 different people what it means and you'll get 12 different answers. 

[ALine]

Just now, iNow said:

Ask 10 different people what it means and you'll get 12 different answers. 

there has to be one that satisfies all of them. 

What is one you can think of?

[iNow]

1 minute ago, ALine said:

there has to be one that satisfies all of them. 

I cannot join you in that conclusion

2 minutes ago, ALine said:

What is one you can think of?

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3956087/

[ALine]

9 minutes ago, iNow said:

I cannot join you in that conclusion

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3956087/

yes, but what is awareness then?

[Phi for All]

2 minutes ago, ALine said:

there has to be one that satisfies all of them. 

What is one you can think of?

No definition of consciousness that includes bees is going to be useful to humans, imo. Stretching it to fit is a mistake.

Frankly, I can't think of a definition of consciousness in humans that would be meaningful to us. Are we all automatically conscious because we're human? Are we distinguishing between consciousness and sentience? 

I have noticed there seems to be a minimum threshold on a combination of intelligence/education/experience, such that you need to know a certain amount before you can even hope to know more. It's that moment for many when "the light bulb comes on", when "things just click", and the human brain suddenly has enough "smarts" to keep it curious and thriving. Some humans never seem to meet this threshold, where your own (consciousness?) becomes self-sustaining and capable of dynamic growth.

[ALine]

12 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

It's that moment for many when "the light bulb comes on", when "things just click", and the human brain suddenly has enough "smarts" to keep it curious and thriving

I love this part you said.

17 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

No definition of consciousness that includes bees is going to be useful to humans, imo. Stretching it to fit is a mistake.

I would argue that a similar definition can be discovered due to both us and bees having neurons, just different structures.

[Phi for All]

32 minutes ago, ALine said:

I would argue that a similar definition can be discovered due to both us and bees having neurons, just different structures.

So all things that possess neurons are conscious? I told you, stretching definitions too far dilutes them into meaninglessness. 

I really think, if you're going to include humans in this, you should focus on human consciousness. Our brains are different, our capacity for knowledge and learning is different, and that has to affect this concept you're trying to define. Trying to draw similarities between humans and insects with regard to thinking is futile, imo.

[TheVat]

Big umbrella term.  SEP provides an overview of the conceptual range of the word.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#ConCon

 

 

[DrmDoc]

2 hours ago, ALine said:

there has to be one that satisfies all of them. 

What is one you can think of?

In previous discussions, I've defined consciousness as merely the basic awareness suggested by an organism's observed--or observable--behavioral responses to stimuli.  We cannot determine organisms or objects of interest as possessing consciousness if they are incapable of producing observable behaviors suggesting that quality.  Bees produce objectively observable behaviors and their behavioral responses to centuries of direct human contact suggests minimally their awareness on some level.  However, if the question is does bees possess human equivalent consciousness, the answer would be suggested by whether bees are able to produce human equivalent responses to human equivalent stimuli.

From another perspective, if an organism or object's reactions to stimuli suggests some basic level of awareness or consciousness, then we might ask ourselves if the attraction or repulsion between the poles of magnets suggest some level of awareness between magnets?  Although not a level or measure suggestive of human awareness, I would argue that the attraction/repulsion between the poles of separate magnets suggest a type of basic awareness between magnets.  For those who might argue otherwise, you should understand that from my perspective having consciousness does not necessarily confer intelligence or that an organism or object possesses a mind.

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, DrmDoc said:

From another perspective, if an organism or object's reactions to stimuli suggests some basic level of awareness or consciousness, then we might ask ourselves if the attraction or repulsion between the poles of magnets suggest some level of awareness between magnets?  Although not a level or measure suggestive of human awareness, I would argue that the attraction/repulsion between the poles of separate magnets suggest a type of basic awareness between magnets.  

You are operating with your own idiosyncratic definition of consciousness, which seems to bear little relation to the term as it is defined in cognitive sciences or philosophy of mind.  If you start defining terms any way you want, then yes, I suppose you could conjure aware magnets.  Since this is a science forum, there is an emphasis on consensus on what terms mean, hence my attempt to post the SEP summary of some commonly adopted definitions of consciousness.  For example...

What it is like. Thomas Nagel's (1974) famous“what it is like” criterion aims to capture another and perhaps more subjective notion of being a conscious organism. According to Nagel, a being is conscious just if there is “something that it is like” to be that creature, i.e., some subjective way the world seems or appears from the creature's mental or experiential point of view. In Nagel's example, bats are conscious because there is something that it is like for a bat to experience its world through its echo-locatory senses, even though we humans from our human point of view can not emphatically understand what such a mode of consciousness is like from the bat's own point of view.

(the encyclopedia entry also describes a half dozen other ways of defining consciousness, some focused on more objective behavioral aspects, some on the perceptual, some on access to information, and some on a sort of meta-cognition - the point to make here is that we must decide which focus to discuss, when approaching the possible consciousness of very simple neural networks like a bee's brain)

 

 

[J.C.MacSwell]

Bees individually or consciousness of say a hive or swarm? I think you could say yes to either depending on a number of definitions, but maybe not always prove it.

[Sensei]

Self-consciousness is the ability to say that one exists by oneself.

The basic test to see if someone knows they exist is to see how they react to their mirror image.

Human child becomes conscious (begins to recognize himself/herself in the mirror) around age two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

 

Edited yesterday at 09:44 AM by Sensei

[dimreepr]

16 hours ago, ALine said:

A definition for consciousness could also be a debate in itself I kind of want to start.

OK, conscious of what?

[dimreepr]

8 minutes ago, carterluke said:

Bees might not be conscious like humans, but reseacrh shows they can solve problems, recognize patterns, and even show signs of stress. Some scientists believe this could mean they have a basic form of awareness. What do you think?

We'll never know...

It's the old Dr Doolittle problem, if we could talk to the animals, they wouldn't make any sense...

[danielj]

‘Biocentrism’ by Robert Lanza, MD has some thought provoking things to say on this subject.
Was also a well written, researched (as far as I could tell) and an enjoyable read, in my own opinion.

His thoughts centre on the theory that all living things are conscious and that from that consciousness, the Cosmos arises. Immortality is invoked somewhere, I recall….
   
It didn’t convince me, but I still enjoyed the book.
    

[CharonY]

7 minutes ago, danielj said:

‘Biocentrism’ by Robert Lanza, MD has some thought provoking things to say on this subject.
Was also a well written, researched (as far as I could tell) and an enjoyable read, in my own opinion.

His thoughts centre on the theory that all living things are conscious and that from that consciousness, the Cosmos arises. Immortality is invoked somewhere, I recall….
   
It didn’t convince me, but I still enjoyed the book.
    

I think I have seen it, and read excerpts but it looked all very handwavy to me. I.e. it didn't really inspire me to invest into it. There was little science that I could recall. I found it mostly trying to justify his perspective, which would be fine, but lacking scientific rigor to actually bring something new to the table.

It seems to be heavy with regard to wondering about stuff, which is fine, really. But it is light on the actual intellectual work, which is a red flag to me, especially if someone in any way claims to revolutionize something.

 

[danielj]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

I think I have seen it, and read excerpts but it looked all very handwavy to me. I.e. it didn't really inspire me to invest into it. There was little science that I could recall. I found it mostly trying to justify his perspective, which would be fine, but lacking scientific rigor to actually bring something new to the table.

It seems to be heavy with regard to wondering about stuff, which is fine, really. But it is light on the actual intellectual work, which is a red flag to me, especially if someone in any way claims to revolutionize something.

 

I agree. But personally I found plenty of food for thought. There were parts of the book that made me consider what existence could perhaps appear like from the perspective of other animals.

If you accept that we are very similar biologically (in complexity and functionality) to many other animals, then the book led me to recognise that I am in a bubble of experience of my own (brain’s) making. I cannot escape it. I see the universe as I see it and however hard I try, that is my lens. I may as well be a Whale, potentially I could be thinking the same thing (in Whale language obvs🙄) 

If nothing else, the book gave me a different perspective on my place in the universe (or lack of it ). Somewhere in the brain, something tells (some of) us we are ‘special’ in nature, a natural evolutionary arrogance if you like. Human Centric. Or perhaps we learnt that from previous human behaviours over the last few thousand years.

It’s been a fair while since Darwin or whoever worked out that’s not true, and maybe that is a feature of the human brain too (might need to think that one through). 
 

I think what I am trying to say is that we shouldn’t underestimate and should understand our cognitive limitations on what it is possible for us to know, given that we can only view the universe through our very narrow field lens. Mr Lanza’s book made me realise that. 

I’m not suggesting that you lot don’t already know that, just an eye opener for me.

 

Edited 12 hours ago by danielj

[CharonY]

10 minutes ago, danielj said:

I’m not suggesting that you lot don’t already know that, just an eye opener for me.

Fair enough and expanding perspectives is certainly not a bad thing.

[Seten]

On 2/21/2025 at 2:01 PM, ALine said:

I wanted to start a debate on whether a thing that is that small can be considered conscious.

You mean are they aware of themselves as separate from their surroundings? They interact with a hive structure and don't run into each other, so yes. 

I hate bees!

[Sensei]

4 minutes ago, Seten said:

I hate bees!

..you are alive because of the bees..