[ExI] Taxonomy of Minds

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 29/03/2026 23:03, Jason Resch wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 8:30 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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>     On 29/03/2026 10:59, Jason Resch wrote:
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>     > Thanks Ben, I have been thinking a lot about this since you mentioned it. I am now thinking there might be a few different stages of "self modeling".
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>     I reckon there's a whole lot more to be considered than either of us have thought of. It might be a bit premature to start writing a taxonomy of minds, there's still so much we don't know.
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>     This is probably another thing that we'll have a much better chance of tackling after uploading starts happening (not necessarily human uploading, though. I expect once we start working with vertebrate brains, a lot of things will become clearer. I can see parallels with genome decoding, in terms of what we can learn)
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> Uploading will surely help, as will the emergence of super intelligence, but note that biologists began to taxonimize life forms long before we understood the genome, and even before Darwin explained evolution.
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> Many researchers today are studying animals to gauge their capacity for language, planning, theory of mind, learning, self-recognition, etc. So we have a lot of data already, and could begin to classify the sorts of minds other animals (or even plants) have now.
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> One of the interesting things I have found is that there are several documented cases of apparent suicide by dolphins. They all occurred after extended periods of isolation and separation from their closest human companion. The dolphins simply drowned themselves.
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> Assuming they did indeed intentionally commit suicide, does this indicate that dolphins understand their own mortality, that they can weigh the merits of death vs continued suffering? Does that indicate an ability to introspect at a deep level? Might it suggest an understanding that their own conscious experience is tied to their life, or a belief in an afterlife?


I don't think plants can be said to have minds, but that's a different discussion altogether.

We should be extremely careful when looking at what dolphins do. The tendency to anthropomorphise is almost irresistible.

I was reading this morning about something that a biologist, Marc Hauser, has called 'floodlight intelligence', which is the ability to combine many cognitive inputs over time, as opposed to a narrower type of intelligence focused on specific individual problems. Many animals have the focused type of intelligence, but floodlight intelligence is much rarer, I don't know if it's unique to humans (probably not, at least in some degree), but it's probably the kind of thing that can be included in a taxonomy of minds. There are probably other things like that as well.

Yes, we have been categorising things before we were properly ready to, for a long time. It has advantages, and disadvantages too. I've cursed Benjamin Franklin many times for labelling electrons negative instead of positive, but we're stuck with it now, and generations of confused electrical engineering students just have to get used to the daft convention.

We are similarly stuck with things like Linnaean taxonomy, the periodic table, etc., whether they are right (or maximally useful) or wrong (or just confusing).

(echoes of evolution, here, as per 'climbing mount improbable'. Perhaps this kind of thing is inevitable. But the example of biological evolution shows how it is dangerous, or at least sub-optimal)

I suppose it isn't going to work to say "just hold on, we don't yet know enough to be slapping these labels on these things", people are just too keen to get on with it.

I just wonder if there is some way of realistically winding things back when we do realise the mistakes we make. It's been done, at least partially, in chemical terminology, and we all know that Pluto is no longer a planet. Apparently (personally, I don't like that one, but maybe that's just because I grew up with nine planets). Oh, yes and apparently we are now 'hominins' instead of hominids (or maybe as well as, I'm not sure).

Anyway, as far as taxonomising minds is concerned, I think we're very much in the 'still collecting data' stage, so shouldn't be too keen on pinning things down, I think that would be premature.

-- 
Ben