Category: Models of Identity
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Proto-Intelligence in Qualia: a Simple Case
>> Do qualia like love, fear, pain, and pleasure causally influence us? I think that the evolutionary argument that qualia must influence us is sufficiently clear and easy to understand that there should be very little room for disagreement on the matter. Evolution wouldn’t have built phenomenal world-simulations composed of qualia unless they increased our…
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Physicalism Implies Experience Never Dies, by Vitrify her
The inner light of awareness never dies. At least that is the case if you take physicalism seriously. We would actually need to invoke a dualist mysterianism or the supernatural in order to defend the idea that we die. … You might have heard that everything we see and feel and hear is happening in…
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David Conner on entity and agency
Agency is the capacity for some entity to be considered an independent actor with the ability to interact on our shared sociophysical fabric. Agents process information signals from their environment, which can be conceptualized as sensory input or data. These sensory perceptions are internalized into information representations. Entities with agency can analyze and process these…
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If we are sentient robots, without will, sentience is not useful. And if it’s useful, how can it be?
When it is stated that sentience has a purpose, this idea is usually explained by indicating that sentience is useful because it motivates doing certain things and avoiding others. In addition, in this explanation, it is usually indicated that sentience motivates but does not force. That is, under this explanation, sentience is not simply the…
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The importance of phenomenal binding, by David Pearce
We normally assume a fundamental distinction between conscious and non-conscious systems. Instead, I explore the possibility that what makes animals special isn’t consciousness per se, but phenomenal binding. Unless spooky “strong” emergence is true, then a termite colony, or the enteric nervous system, or a classical digital computer, or the population of the United States…