Debate about interrogational torture still returns to the ticking-bomb scenario, despite the weight of evidence that it neither works nor withstands moral scrutiny. The post-9/11 record, from Abu Ghraib to the CIA black sites, already marked a decisive shift toward psychological forms of coercion. The technologies now emerging make a different kind of coercion possible. This paper argues that...
Abstract This discussion paper argues that brain–computer interface (BCI) technology provides empirical evidence for substrate-independent consciousness. Beginning from physicalist premises, I draw on neuroscientist Jon Lieff’s research showing consciousness operates at molecular levels where biological and mechanical distinctions dissolve. Examining ordinary speech reveals consciousness...
This hybrid work combines art criticism and artist interview to examine Robert Seidel’s experimental film Hysteresis (2021) as a meditation on consciousness at the threshold of human-machine convergence. Drawing on Maurizio Ferraris’s concept of hysteresis—the persistence of effects beyond their causes—the paper argues that Seidel’s five-minute film offers a rare aesthetic glimpse into...
Abstract In this Discussion Note I argue that to understand the problem of consciousness, both as it applies to humans and may apply to machines, is a matter of paradigm lenses. I challenge the positing of human superiority with regard to intelligence and consciousness. I begin by reviewing Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm shifts, including what he regarded as the limitations of scientific...