Consciousness, Sapience and Sentience—A Metacybernetic View

Abstract

Living systems are complex dynamic information processing energy consuming entities with properties of consciousness, intelligence, sapience, and sentience. Sapience and sentience are autonomous attributes of consciousness. While sapience has been well studied over the years, that of sentience is relatively rare. The nature of sapience and sentience will be considered, and a metacybernetic framework using structural information will be adopted to explore the metaphysics of consciousness. Metacybernetics delivers a cyberintrinsic model that is cybernetic in nature, but also uses the theory of structural information arising from Frieden’s work with Fisher information. This will be used to model sapience and sentience and their relationship. Since living systems are energy-consuming entities, it is also natural for thermodynamic metaphysical models to arise, and most of the theoretical studies of sentience have been set within a thermodynamic framework. Hence, a thermodynamic approach will also be introduced and connected to cyberintrinsic theory. In metaphysical contexts, thermodynamics uses free-energy, which plays the same role in cyberintrinsic modelling as intrinsic structural information. Since living systems exist at the dynamical interface of information and thermodynamics, the overall purpose of this paper is to explore sentience from the alternative cyberintrinsic perspective of metacybernetics.

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“…MAT provides a comprehensive lens to understand, diagnose, and improve agency functionality. Its holistic perspective is rooted in metacybernetics, which is a general cybernetic theory for complex systems, as Yolles notes [12,42], and it involves a multiontological model of culture, disposition, and operative functionality that can represent key aspects of complex organisations. Operative functionality provides agency with an operational capacity that encompasses an ability to execute behavioural tasks and achieve adaptive goals, efficaciously undertaken when requisite conditions of stability are satisfied.…”

“…Using such information can lead to undesired outcomes, and may cause or develop process instabilities so that deviation away from an intended state occurs, and this may result in unpredictable or even chaotic behaviour. Efficacious information may be intrinsic if it reflects the true or hidden structure of an observed event, whether it is internal or external to agency [42]. Intrinsic information is a measure of how much an agency discovers from the hidden structure of events by maximisingoptimising the content description of its observable event, including hidden data.…”

Culture, Mindset and Functionality in Regional Organisations – A Study on ASEAN and the European Union

“…Following both Piaget and Bandura [242,243], operative intelligence may be taken to have an efficacious capacity in an agency to create a cycle of activity that manifests figurative objects as operative objects, hence operative intelligence provides for a capacity to evidence its figurative attributes. A summary of the different intelligences can be given as follows (adapted from Yolles [244]):…”

“…We are aware that the intelligences can refer to cognition or affect. Cognition intelligence is part of the cognition system from which rationality emanates, and it is responsible through its network of processes for efficacious action [244]. The second is affect/emotional intelligence which is responsible for controlling and manifesting emotion, as well as recognising it in a social setting.…”

Culture, Mindset and Functionality in Regional Organisations – A Study on ASEAN and the European Union.

“…Following both Piaget and Bandura [241,242], operative intelligence may be taken to have an efficacious capacity in an agency to create a cycle of activity that manifests figurative objects as operative objects, hence operative intelligence provides for a capacity to evidence its figurative attributes. A summary of the different intelligences can be given as follows (adapted from Yolles [243]):…”