Autor: tstadmin
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An empirical investigation of hedonistic accounts of animal welfare
«Many scientists studying animal welfare appear to hold a hedonistic concept of welfare -whereby welfare is ultimately reducible to an animal’s subjective experience. […] analysis showed welfare judgments depended on the objective features of the animal’s life more than they did on how the animal was feeling: a chimpanzee living a natural life with negative…
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The Challenge of Determining Whether an A.I. Is Sentient, by Carissa Véliz
«…sentience may go unnoticed for years, as was the case with Martin Pistorious [1] … Because brain death can be misdiagnosed [2], and because we have little understanding of the necessary and sufficient causes for consciousness and therefore cannot be certain of when someone might be in pain, some experts have called for the use…
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The world as a neural network
We discuss a possibility that the entire universe on its most fundamental level is a neural network. We identify two different types of dynamical degrees of freedom: «trainable» variables (e.g. bias vector or weight matrix) and «hidden» variables (e.g. state vector of neurons). Source
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Kolmogorov theory of consciousness. An algorithmic model of consciousness
Characterizing consciousness is a profound scientific problem with pressing clinical and practical implications. Examples include disorders of consciousness, locked-in syndrome, conscious state in utero, in sleep and other states of consciousness, in non-human animals, and perhaps soon in exobiology [astrobiology] or in machines. Here, we address the phenomenon of structured experience from an information-theoretic perspective. ……
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An organism able to learn and move with no brain, no mouth, no stomach, no eyes and 720 sexes
A Paris zoo is showcasing a mysterious creature dubbed the «blob,» a yellowish collection of unicellular organisms called a slime mold that looks like a fungus, but acts like an animal. This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on public display on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet can…
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The search for invertebrate consciousness
There is no agreement on whether any invertebrates are conscious and no agreement on a methodology that could settle the issue. How can the debate move forward? I distinguish three broad types of approach: theory‐heavy, theory‐neutral and theory‐light. Theory‐heavy and theory‐neutral approaches face serious problems, motivating a middle path: the theory‐light approach. At the core…
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Conversations about the badness of involuntary suffering
I have the intuition that voluntary suffering might not be bad. This is primarily due to personal experience: I often feel sad (sympathy) when I encounter sad stories or sad situations, but I don’t have the intuition that this is bad for me, because I don’t feel like I ought to look away or stop…
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Physical theories of consciousness reduce to panpsychism
The necessary features for consciousness in prominent physical theories of consciousness that are actually described in terms of physical processes do not exclude panpsychism, the possibility that consciousness is ubiquitous in nature, including in things which aren’t typically considered alive. I’m not claiming panpsychism is true, although this significantly increases my credence in it, and…
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How trees secretly talk to and share with each other
Trees secretly talk to each other underground. They’re passing information and resources to and from each other through a network of mycorrhizal fungi—mykós means fungus and riza means root in Greek—a mat of long, thin filaments that connect an estimated 90% of land plants. Scientists call the fungi the Wood Wide Web because ‘adult’ trees can share sugars to younger…
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A conversation between Brian Tomasik and Luke Muehlhauser
Luke and Mr. Tomasik found that they agreed about the following: Physicalism and functionalism about consciousness. Specifically, Mr. Tomasik endorses “Type A” physicalism, as described in his article “Is There a Hard Problem of Consciousness?” Luke isn’t certain he endorses Type A physicalism as defined in that article, but he thinks his views are much…