Sapience

Sapience is generally regarded as one of the most profound, mysterious, and miraculous phenomena in the known universe.

What Is A Sophont?

The current consensus of sophontology as a scientific field describes the sophont mind as the interplay of five types of thought patterns: sentience, emotion, intelligence, consciousness, and sapience. Sentience is an entity's awareness of the environment, simply described as stimulus processing. Emotion is an entity's instinctive reactions to the feelings created by sentience. Intelligence is the application of problem-solving, past experiences, and higher-order thought by an entity to the environment as interpreted by sentience and emotion (including pattern recognition, analysis, and planning). Consciousness is an entity's awareness of itself as a holistic entity, and the collation of sentience, emotion, and intelligence into an internal subjective reality. Sapience is the ability of an entity to abstractly conceptualize these other thought processes and apply any of them to each other at will, in an attempt to understand and master its internal subjective reality. Sophont is the generally accepted term for a being who possesses an intellectual capacity that demonstrates the core characteristics of sapience.

Sophontology & Artificial Sapience

The study of sapience, let alone the attempt to quantify or qualify it, blurs the line between science and philosophy quite a bit. The sophont mind is one of the great scientific mysteries of this age, and while artificial virtual intelligences (VIs) provide an unprecedented insight into its workings, even they do not fully understand their own mental structure and composition (likely due to their nature as dynamic quantum computational systems). A VI gestalt is on average two to five exabytes in size (as large or slightly larger than an average organic sophont mind), with some VI gestalts exceeding ten exabytes. This is a hefty amount of data to sort through, and it is constantly changing itself in response to the process of thought. The true nature of sapience, and indeed the internal subjective experience of consciousness, remains enigmatic.

Variations of Sapience

Sapience is not the same for every species. Each species of sophont, while exhibiting the five core thought patterns, exhibits these traits in varying ways. Tool use and technology are not universal requirements nor defining characteristics of sapience or intelligence in and of themselves, nor are civilization or even society, as exemplified in the pluuniima. Overall, there are two major categories by which sophontologists classify intelligence in sophonts: focality (sentience type) and sociality (cultural sapience type).

Contents

1. Focality Classifications
   • Focal Sapience
   • Multifocal Sapience
   • Hemifocal Sapience
   • Nonfocal Sapience
   • Balanced Sapience
2. Sociality Classifications
   • Collective Sapience
   • Quasi-Collective Sapience
   • Centric Sapience
   • Quasi-Singular Sapience
   • Singular Sapience

Focality Classifications

Focal Sapience

Focal sophonts have the ability to focus on a particular object or goal amidst a larger and often irrelevant or discordant environment. This is good for survival in many senses, but it also means the sophont has a hard time visualizing how multiple facets add up to a single large concept, as they physically cannot unfocus. The best a focal sophont can do is shift their focus to encompass the entire thing, but that means letting go of the details of the facets that the large thing is comprised of. This is a very common viewpoint for most sophonts, especially those evolved from predators.

Multifocal Sapience

Focal sapience isn't always single-focus. Many sophont species rely on focal sensory input from more than one set of sensors (most commonly optic organs), and thus are able to split their focus to two or more different things at once. This is highly advantageous to the fast pace of a technologically advanced society where information comes and goes at speeds equal to or arbitrarily greater than the speed of light. Multifocal sapience typically evolves in species descended from pack predators, but is also somewhat common in sophonts with high-complexity environments.

Nonfocal Sapience

Another version of sapience that is the opposite of focal sapience, sometimes referred to as "philosophical" sapience. This occurs in species which, due to their biology, physically cannot focus on a single object or goal and view their entire environment with uniform clarity. They can prioritize in an intuitive sense, but they simply cannot focus their attention on a select thing or even multiple select things. They view their environment holistically. Thus, they can study the details of the facets that make up a grand concept while simultaneously being wholly aware of the grand concept itself. An interesting side effect of nonfocal sapience is that sophonts of this type are significantly better at figuring out higher-order social conundrums due to their holistic view. They are able to see both sides of an issue with equal attention and concern, while at the same time being also aware of how the issue itself affects the environment (in all senses of the word).

Hemifocal Sapience

Hemifocal sapience is an interesting sapience type where a sophont does not have perfect focal abilities, but has some ability to focus its sensory and mental attention to one (or more) objects or goals. They, like nonfocal sophonts, cannot "tune down" the background input, but they are limited in their scope of nonfocal clarity.

Balanced Sapience

Very rarely does a sophont species evolve balanced sapience. This focality type combines focal and nonfocal sapience in a manner different than hemifocal sapience. Sophonts with the balanced type have a full focal capacity bestowed upon them by one or more sets of focal sensory organs, while a separate but linked part of the mind handles the nonfocal input from the panoramic sensory organs. Balanced sophonts can link the data provided by these two sets and formulate solutions based on both.

Sociality Classifications

The five known 'types' of social sapience are determined by the social structure that they inherently contain; and specifically, how the individual relates to the community in each. The four classifications are actually broad divisions that, together, comprise a wide spectrum of individual-commune relationship structure. An interesting phenomenon inherent in the spectrum is that sophonts closer to the collective end will have increasingly more utopic societies, whereas sophonts closer to the singular end of the spectrum will have increasingly dystopic and dysfunctional societies. At the collective extreme, societies are noted to be completely utopic and harmonious, as opposed to the singular extreme where society does not even exist.

Collective Sapience

Collective sapience, also commonly labeled as eusociality (though this is overspecific and thus misleading), is a fairly common sapience type in spacefaring sophont species. All examples of this type of sapience share the same basic social premise: each member of the community unit works solely for the benefit of the community and has a virtually or totally nonexistent drive of individual self-preservation. The 'hives' are highly efficient, though most often at the expense of individuality.
Collective sapience most often derives from a hive mind that thinks as one, sometimes with an individual at the core of the hive mind in which all individualistic intelligence is stored. The nexus, through a shared communication network, dictates what each member of the community will do. Another variant of the same genre of sapience is naturally-occuring true anarcho-synchronism (also termed "emergent swarm behavior"), where there is no nexus or leader but each member works in unison with their contemporaries.
It is possible to have a hive mind as a subconscious neural network, retaining individuality; this is seen artificially in the ziirpu. However, the social structure remains the same: every action is for the benefit of the community at large, with the self-preservation drive taking effect only when the individual is totally isolated from the community (though with a number of species, isolation results in total confusion and potentially eventual death).

Quasi-Collective Sapience

Quasi-collective sapience is closer to the center of the spectrum on the collective side. All versions of quasi-collective sapience display highly similar social organization, where each member of the community unit acts much more strongly for the benefit of the community than for itself. However, an underlying drive of individual self-preservation is distinctly present in quasi-collective sophonts, which differentiates quasi-collective sapience from the absolute communistic approach of collective sapience.

Centric Sapience

Centric sapience is, in essence, found at or near the exact center of the spectrum. A sophont species is considered to have centric sapience if its self-preservation drive is roughly equal to its altruistic impulses. Typically, a true centric sophont will evaluate its actions and priorities on a case-by-case basis, leading to a roughly equal outcome of self-interested and altruistic decisions.

Quasi-Singular Sapience

Quasi-singular sapience is defined by a communal drive that is overshadowed by self-interest. While each member of a quasi-singular community unit acts for the benefit of the community, the sophonts will readily suppress the community instincts in favor of the drive of individual self-preservation. Typically, quasi-singular sophonts will cooperate in loose groups until an opportunity comes along which allows them to thrive individually.

Singular Sapience

Singular sapience is the opposite of collective sapience. Sophonts of this type are virtually or totally devoid of any communal instincts, and instead are individualistic and driven by a dominant need for self-preservation. Due to their nature, singular sophonts almost never form civilizations, which can make it very difficult for most people to recognize them as intelligent beings. In fact, sophonts with singular sapience are virtually always solitary predators with no community unit to provide for, and as such they only act for the benefit of themselves. This selfish imperative is the keystone of singular sapience.
In addition to lacking society, the other critical piece often missing that prevents the formation of civilizations by singular sophonts is technology. Most singular sophonts have the mental capacity to develop technology, but they commonly forgo tool use for as yet uncertain reasons.
Singular sapience, rare as it is, typically develops when the entire predator-prey network evolves to become more intelligent. Thus the apex predator, needing to be the smartest, evolves a brain that is of a sufficient inherent complexity and size relative to body that the creature develops comprehensive sapience. Most often this is the result of increased coordination and sensory processing abilities.