Philosophies
December 22, 2023
Javier A. Galadí
Philosophy should destroy certain inherited ontological concepts and everyday word meanings that tradition transmits but also conceals. Tradition induces self-evidence, blocking access to the origin of concepts and making us believe no return is needed. Making tradition transparent dissolves these concealments. Applied to the mind–body problem, this reveals occultations originating from Descartes himself. A new framework for consciousness research emerges: as an individual cognitive being, one cannot avoid splitting reality into what one is and what one is not, extending this individual duality into a collective, culturally transmitted error.
Philosophies
October 27, 2023
Sebastian Sunday Grève
The logical problem of 'strong' AI—whether artificial intelligence can be genuinely intelligent and conscious—reduces to whether an artificial form of life is possible, which is paradoxical because it asks whether an unnatural form of nature is possible. The paper argues that machines can share the human form of life and thereby acquire human mindedness, including intelligence, consciousness, and sentience, in the same way a human being typically does.
Philosophies
June 22, 2023
Izak Tait, Joshua Bensemann, Trung Nguyen
Consciousness requires specific cognitive building blocks, including perceptive, computational, and meta-representational capacities. Each attribute is strictly necessary for consciousness to emerge, and the framework applies to human, organic, artificial, and organizational entities. Some intuitively necessary attributes are neither required nor sufficient. The building blocks constitute a meta-theory for classifying consciousness, not a theory of consciousness itself.
Philosophies
June 23, 2022
Igor Aleksander
Consciousness is a prerequisite for thought, so asking whether a machine can think leads to the more fundamental question of whether a machine can be conscious. In Turing's imitation game, a conscious human is replaced by a non-conscious machine that may deceive an interlocutor, since consciousness cannot be observed from speech or action. This paper examines the developing paradigm of machine consciousness alongside an existing analysis of living consciousness to argue that a conscious machine is feasible and capable of thinking. The proposed route uses learning in a "neural state machine," drawing on Turing's concept of neural "unorganized" machines. The conclusion is that such a machine could possess an artificial form of consciousness resembling the natural form, illuminating the nature of consciousness.
Philosophies
April 21, 2022
Tom Froese
Across sociology, psychology, and biology, a similar pattern emerges when people gain object experience: in scientific discovery, tactile-to-visual sensory substitution, and animal perception, sensations initially felt as local bodily events become attributed to an external object. This similarity is explained not by mental construction but by an enactive, participatory realism: skillful use of instruments and interfaces extends our basic perceptual capacities through socio-material engagement with the world. Object experience is thus relational, involving self, others, and the environment directly. Scientific observation becomes a socio-materially augmented process of becoming acquainted with observed objects, analogous to tool-use and perception generally.
Philosophies
April 21, 2022
Nir Fresco
The truism that the brain processes information or that cognition is information processing is accepted in cognitive science, yet it is unclear how to evaluate such claims without a specification of what "information" means in neurocognitive theories. This article systematically identifies key features of information that information-based neurocognitive theories posit, which can reveal the explanatory role of information and serve as desiderata for evaluating candidate theories of information. After discussing explanation in cognitive science and its implications for information, three notions are introduced: natural, sensory, and endogenous information. Six desiderata are identified and defended based on cognitive scientific practices, and the global workspace theory of consciousness is used as a case study that arguably posits five or six corresponding features of information.
Philosophies
January 20, 2021
Fiorella Battaglia
Moral issues arise not only when neural technology directly affects people's lives but also when its interventions indirectly conceptualize the mind in new ways. The paper reviews theories of consciousness, subjectivity, and third-person perspectives on the brain, particularly as applied to an "extended mind," and identifies a major transformation in philosophy of action. This transformation is understood through additional epistemic devices, including a legal perspective on regulating human–machine interaction and a personality theory of the symbiotic connection between human and machine. The author argues this is a new area of philosophical concern characterized by self-objectification, which becomes "alienation" following Ernst Kapp's philosophy of technology. The paper contends that intervening in the brain can affect how we conceptualize the mind and modify its predicaments.
Philosophies
May 31, 2019
Steven Umbrello, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
Embodied artificial intelligence may overcome computational limits of disembodied AI, but it introduces new forms of information integration and decision-making that raise ethical concerns. Drawing on N. Katherine Hayles's concept of nonconscious cognition, the paper argues that embodied AI could possess a type of cognition distinct from consciousness. It proposes that suffering can be understood not merely as a physical or conscious state but as grounded in nonconscious cognition, which could be exacerbated in embodied AI systems. This reframing has implications for applied ethics and the assessment of suffering risks (s-risks) in future AI development.
Philosophies
April 15, 2019
Cosmin Vișan
Time is no different from any other qualia—it is an emergent level of consciousness. Like all qualia, time inherits qualities from prior levels, receives top-down influence from higher levels, and impresses top-down influence on lower levels. This phenomenological analysis argues that time, despite its perceived importance in science and philosophy, arises from the same emergent structure of consciousness as other subjective experiences.
Philosophies
November 8, 2018
Robert Prentner
A new philosophy of nature is needed because physicalism cannot account for consciousness. The authors propose 'experiencing' as a conceptual primitive: a process involving an agent's interaction with its world through action based on phenomenal experience. This process has two aspects: a subjective 'what-it-is-likeness' and an objective physical description. Experiencing is distinguished from metacognitive awareness, and scientific theories of awareness should respect this distinction. Experiencing is non-exclusive, a-personal, and primitive, not limited to humans. The concept is linked to theoretical biology through information processing by organisms.
Philosophies
December 6, 2017
Robert Prentner
Contrary to the prevailing view, the molecular organization of biological systems is essential for understanding the dynamics linked to conscious experience in complex organisms. Molecular sciences can either identify mechanisms directly tied to phenomenology or characterize the dynamics of the underlying substrate. The perspective also addresses substrate-independence in information-processing theories of consciousness and the combination problem in panpsychism, arguing from a molecular standpoint that molecular details are crucial.