¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 This is motivated by Glistening’s new post of her lifetime project: “we can begin to formulate a hypothesized set of basic prerequisites that a planet sized being might need to become functionally self-aware.”

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 SOME QUERIES:

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as “qualia”). In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 How might the “qualia” for Gaia differ from human experienced qualia?
Should we “respect and care for” Gaia, because we are “parts” or because Gaia “is like us”?

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Sentience, as defined, doesn’t imply agency.  Would Gaia respond to being sentient?  The issue of Zombies in human consciousness studies would apply to Gaian sentience; might there be a Gaian Zombie?

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Is it the whole planet or just Gaia that would be sentient, or just a global enhanced humanity?
What are some operational procedures we might perform to determine sentience? Which of these “measures” will be necessary and sufficient to define sentience?
Do you wish to include “agency” for your sentient Gaia?
Can we discover whether Gaia is already sentient?

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 All life forms are “sentient” in that they detect and respond to sensory stimuli. Whether they “experience” (and not be Zombies)  remains controversial. But, science is tending towards “animal experience”. Some animals recognize their self in mirrors, most don’t.  Is self-awareness a requirement you seek?

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 If you seek humanity or Gaia to have a human style “consciousness” you must go beyond mere “sentience”.
To what extent do you imagine all life forms – from bacteria to biomes – as contributing to Gaian sentience?
Do you consider an evolved humankind analogous to the brain of a sentient Gaia?
Or, are you limiting the sentience to a humanity embedded in intelligent technology – a collective consciousness?

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 How might the “consciousness of a collective” differ from “collective intelligence” (as studied by George Por and Tom Atlee).
Your diagram suggests this limitation, along with your hope that sentience might be engineered to catalyze. Also, your use of the phrase “planet sized being” could limit sentience to enhanced humanity, globally distributed.
Do you believe there exists a “collective unconscious” that has more reality than metaphor?
Do you believe there exists “metaphysical beings in ethereal hierarchies”?

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 A halfway query would be whether very tight teams are sentient and have agency (more than the sum of their parts). Is there a dyadic sentience for identical twins; a psychic resonance possibly enabled by identical DNA and entanglement?

¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 In my NU GENESIS mythology, Gaia is not only sentient, but can forecast and has agency through feedpast bootstrapping. Humankind is hypothesized as a “tool” by which Gaia can gain shift/evolve from networked ecologies to integral organism.
I speculate there is a “cosmic rule” that only sentient biospheres can agree to interact. Individual species are forbidden to visit other biospheres except as welcomed emmisaries. This is why we have not been visited or contacted by other species; we are not sufficiently mature.

¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 How does your search differ from the strong Gaian hypotheses?
How does your search differ from George Por’s Spanda Journal chapter for which you are an invited participant?