Saunt Taunga’s Question

Saunt Taunga’s Question is a named philosophical problem attributed to Saunt Taunga. It asks whether a sufficiently large field of cellular automata can think.

First noted context

The question is cited by Fraa Erasmas during a walk through the Cloister, shortly before Provener. He brings it up while debating with Fraa Lio about whether ants can carry out coordinated maneuvers—such as “flanking”—without any commander to see the field and direct their movements.

Themes and use so far

• Serves as a touchstone for discussions about coordination without centralized control, using simple local rules.
• In the ant debate, it frames whether patterns arising from many simple agents can amount to genuine “thinking” or strategy.

Status

No answer is provided; it functions as a rhetorical and philosophical touchpoint among the avout encountered so far.