5 papers in the library · 26 citations · publishing 2022-2026
Asian Journal of Philosophy February 5, 2026 Walter Veit
Abstract Goldstein and Kirk–Giannini have recently argued that artificial language agents can possess well-being in the absence of phenomenal consciousness. Here, I challenge their position, contending that their arguments fail to establish that consciousness is dispensable for well-being. Moreover, their arguments generate counterintuitive implications that are more problematic than those they...
Adaptive Behavior June 1, 2025 Walter Veit
What is the role of consciousness in nature? The science of consciousness has largely neglected the question through its emphasis on human experience. In this précis of A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness , I outline how we can move from a top-down approach that begins with investigations in humans to an evolutionary bottom-up approach that targets the adaptive origins of even...
Animal cognition May 2, 2025 Walter Veit, Heather Browning, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin et al. 6 citations
Corvids have long been a target of public fascination and of scientific attention, particularly in the study of animal minds. Using Birch et al.'s (2020) 5-dimensional framework for animal consciousness we ask what it is like to be a corvid and propose a speculative but empirically informed answer. We go on to suggest future directions for research on corvid consciousness and how it can inform...
Synthese 2023 Walter Veit 20 citations
The goal of this programmatic paper is to highlight a close connection between the core problem in the philosophy of medicine, i.e. the concept of health, and the core problem of the philosophy of mind, i.e. the concept of consciousness. I show when we look at these phenomena together, taking the evolutionary perspective of modern state-based behavioural and life-history theory used as the...
The Behavioral and brain sciences March 23, 2022 Walter Veit
The idea that consciousness and complexity are closely related has been a major driver of the popularity of integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness, despite its major formal, phenomenological, and neuroscientific shortcomings. Here, I argue that we can recover this intuition by replacing its biologically neutral notion of complexity with an evolutionary one that I shall dub...