Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Colin Klein, Andrew B Barron
Our target article, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience,” has provoked a diverse range of commentaries. In this response we have collated what we see as the major themes of the discussion. It is clear that we differ from some commentators in our commitments to what subjective experience is and what the midbrain is capable of. Here we clarify where we stand on those points and...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2026
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Tim Bayne et al.
Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities has drawn fresh attention to the prospect of consciousness in AI. There is an urgent need for rigorous methods to assess AI systems for consciousness, but significant uncertainty about relevant issues in consciousness science. We present a method for assessing AI systems for consciousness that involves exploring what follows from...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
November 13, 2025
Colin Klein, Andrew B Barron
6 citations
An increasing number of authors are willing to attribute phenomenal consciousness to relatively simple organisms like insects. Yet it is not at all clear what functional role the substrates of consciousness would play. Here, we argue phenomenal consciousness is a consequence of how mobile animals with spatial senses and a capacity for goal-directed behaviour resolve the complex problem of...
arXiv Preprint Archive
August 17, 2023
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino et al.
Whether current or near-term AI systems could be conscious is a topic of scientific interest and increasing public concern. This report argues for, and exemplifies, a rigorous and empirically grounded approach to AI consciousness: assessing existing AI systems in detail, in light of our best-supported neuroscientific theories of consciousness. We survey several prominent scientific theories of...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2020
Colin Klein, Andrew B Barron
For the materialist, the hard problem is fundamentally an explanatory problem. Solving it requires explaining why the relationship between brain and experience is the way it is and not some other way. We use the tools of the interventionist theory of explanation to show how a systematic experimental project could help move beyond the hard problem. Key to this project is the development of...
Philosophical Psychology
September 22, 2007
Colin Klein
8 citations
Kohler's experiments with inverting goggles are often thought to support enactivism by showing that visual re-inversion occurs simultaneous with the return of sensorimotor skill. Closer examination reveals that Kohler's work does not show this. Recent work by Linden et al. shows that re-inversion, if it occurs at all, does not occur when the enactivist predicts. As such, the empirical evidence...