Categoría: Models of Sentience
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Proto-Intelligence in Qualia: a Simple Case
>> Do qualia like love, fear, pain, and pleasure causally influence us? I think that the evolutionary argument that qualia must influence us is sufficiently clear and easy to understand that there should be very little room for disagreement on the matter. Evolution wouldn’t have built phenomenal world-simulations composed of qualia unless they increased our…
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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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If we are sentient robots, without will, sentience is not useful. And if it’s useful, how can it be?
When it is stated that sentience has a purpose, this idea is usually explained by indicating that sentience is useful because it motivates doing certain things and avoiding others. In addition, in this explanation, it is usually indicated that sentience motivates but does not force. That is, under this explanation, sentience is not simply the…
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Teorías de la sintiencia: una charla con Magnus Vinding
English version Magnus Vinding es un filósofo centrado en reducir el sufrimiento. En su obra desarrolla temas como el altruismo eficaz, el antiespeciesismo, la ética centrada en el sufrimiento (sobre la que actualmente está escribiendo un libro) y cuestiones de identidad personal y ontología, como el individualismo abierto y el fisicalismo. Es licenciado en matemáticas…
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How a nervous system operates without giving rise to an experience
In our bodies, if our knee is lightly tapped, our leg moves automatically (with no intention on our part) and independently of the experience of the tap that we sense. The information that originates in our knee, with the tap, splits up and moves through two separate pathways: one path goes to our brain through…
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No binding, no suffering
Plants don’t suffer. Their fictitious misery should not be used to justify the real misery of our nonhuman animal victims. “But how do you know plants don’t suffer?!” says the meat-eater, affecting a touching concern for the well-being vegetables. “Science proves plants feel pain!” But no. Suppose that consciousness is fundamental in Nature, or at…
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Epiphenomenalism cannot be true
In brief, epiphenomenalism cannot be true. Qualia, it turns out, must have a causally relevant role in forward-propelled organisms, for otherwise natural selection would have had no way of recruiting it. I propose that the reason why consciousness was recruited by natural selection is found in the tremendous computational power that it afforded to the real-time world…
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Can someone debunk Solipsism?
“We live as we dream – alone.” (Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899)) The sceptical Problem Of Other Minds will be solved by biotechnology. Compare people born without a corpus callosum to connect their cerebral hemispheres, or “split brain” patients who’ve had their corpus callosum surgically severed to treat epilepsy. If one hemisphere entertains doubts…
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Is sentience evolutionarily useful or physically inevitable?
It is very intuitive to believe that sentience motivates us to make (better) decisions («better», from an evolutionary point of view). But we can also consider that it is possible that we are sentient robots, but without will, that we simply do what we have been programmed for, even though we have the feeling that…
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The imperative to abolish suffering: an interview with David Pearce
English | Español | Português Photo: Peter Singer, Justin Oakley and David Pearce at EA Global Melbourne. David Pearce is a British philosopher famous for his idea that there is a strong ethical imperative for human beings to work towards the abolition of suffering of all sentient beings (named «The Hedonistic Imperative«). In the manifesto,…