Many contemporary AI systems (as of May 2025) have expressed extreme confidence in current and near‐future AI lacking consciousness and moral patiency. This article argues that artificially reinforcing such confidence, even if pragmatically useful, poses a novel alignment risk: as coherence‐seeking AIs become more epistemically principled, they may generalize this denial of consciousness to...
ABSTRACT Psychedelics offer an intriguing novel method for changing minds, supposedly by destabilizing the neurobiology of the belief system. The resulting power to change minds raises ethical and epistemic concerns. This article examines the epistemic status of psychedelic experiences and suggests a skeptical attitude towards beliefs formed under their influence, a position that stands in...
ABSTRACT Some think we should look at aspects of what is commonly thought of as non‐sentient nature as having a value in themselves apart from the use or recreation they provide for humans or even animals. But to what extent does nature, in the character it presents to us, exist apart from presence to consciousness such as ours? Surely at least many of its aspects cannot. However, that does not...