Animal Sentience
August 19, 2016
Shimon Edelman, Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete
16 citations
A commentary on Klein & Barron's argument for insect consciousness aims to strengthen their case by appealing to computational theory in addition to neural mechanisms. The authors discuss three distinctions relevant to phenomenal awareness: the capacity for awareness versus its contents, awareness versus selfhood, and the distinction between easy and hard problems in consciousness research. The commentary supports the view that insects may possess a form of consciousness, challenging anthropocentric assumptions in the science and philosophy of mind.
Frontiers in Complex Systems
January 6, 2026
Shimon Edelman
1 citation
The debate over whether evolution has a direction—specifically, whether living systems grow more complex over time—has been revived by arguments that increasing complexity is consistent with the thermodynamic growth of entropy. This paper reviews formal definitions of complexity and the evolutionary mechanisms that can drive its increase. It then proposes that the evolutionary emergence and individual learning of basic phenomenal awareness (a type of consciousness) follow the same time-asymmetrical dynamics. Like life, biological consciousness arguably evolves toward greater complexity for the same underlying reasons.
Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies
February 1, 2018
Shimon Edelman
1 citation
For agents that learn from the past to predict the future, seeking novelty is an intrinsic motivation that helps them adapt to changing environments. An agent's identity is built from its accumulated life experience, which it constantly strives to expand. This drive for novelty conflicts with limited memory capacity: novelty seekers become unhappy when bored, so happiness requires an open-ended pursuit of new experiences rather than reliving past ones. However, finite memory means that continued novelty over a long life eventually causes loss of stored content, disrupting the constructed identity. This essay examines the biobehavioral and cognitive-computational circumstances behind this problem and explores its implications for the human condition.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 4, 2016
Tomer Fekete, Cees van Leeuwen, Shimon Edelman
A computational measure of consciousness (MoC) must be graded, applicable across systems and times, but faces a boundary problem: any MoC that labels a system conscious will also label many of its subsystems, irrelevant extensions, and aggregates of conscious individuals as conscious, implying either that the measured properties are epiphenomenal or that minds proliferate bizarrely. The authors propose solving this by requiring MoCs to measure intrinsic or systemic properties—those that distinguish systems whose existence is a matter of fact from those existing only by interpretation. They argue that a systemic MoC resolves boundary issues and analyze Integrated Information Theory and Geometric Theory of consciousness as test cases.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2011
Shimon Edelman
A person cannot empirically determine whether they are awake or dreaming because any statistical test of reality (e.g., checking for bizarreness) requires baseline measurements that could be tampered with by the same processes generating the dream or simulation. Cryptographic defenses also fail, as reality modification within a dream can extend to verification keys or declared outcomes. Given this double predicament, the rational course is to take reality at face value. Even insights like Buddhist enlightenment are ultimately unreliable for the same reason, though one must be aware of this principle—which may be impossible in altered states like dreaming or religious experience.