ABSTRACT Some philosophers argue that near‐term artificial intelligence (AI) systems might soon be welfare subjects. We should take AI welfare seriously, they urge, because AI systems might soon have properties indicated by our best scientific theories of consciousness, and consciousness suffices for welfare subjectivity. I argue that this view faces constraints from the epistemology of...
Abstract The sensory constraint on conscious thought says that if a thought is phenomenally conscious, its phenomenal properties must be reducible to some sensory phenomenal character. This chapter argues that the burgeoning psychological literature on aphantasia, an impoverishment in the ability to generate mental imagery, provides a counterexample to the sensory constraint. The best...