Category: Speculative Sentience
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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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An organism able to learn and move with no brain, no mouth, no stomach, no eyes and 720 sexes
A Paris zoo is showcasing a mysterious creature dubbed the “blob,” a yellowish collection of unicellular organisms called a slime mold that looks like a fungus, but acts like an animal. This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on public display on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet can…
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Robots need civil rights, too
If “consciousness” is a similarly broad concept, then we can see degrees of consciousness in a variety of biological and artificial agents, depending on what kinds of abilities they possess and how complex they are. For example, a thermostat might be said to have an extremely tiny degree of consciousness insofar as it’s “aware” of…
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Plants live in a tactile world, perceive light, have a sense of smell, taste, and respond to sound
Are plants sentient? We know they sense their environments to a significant degree; like animals, they can “see” light, as a New Scientist feature explains. They “live in a very tactile world,” have a sense of smell, respond to sound, and use taste to “sense danger and drought and even to recognize relatives.” We’ve previously highlighted…
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Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism
“—we need both the science and the philosophy to get a theory of consciousness. The science gives us correlations between brain activity and experience. We then have to work out the best philosophical theory that explains those correlations. In my view, the only theory that holds up to scrutiny is panpsychism. When I studied philosophy,…
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How does the world view of a believer in physicalism differ from one of idealism?
Physicalism is the view that no “element of reality” (Einstein) is missing from the mathematical equations of physics – more strictly, tomorrow’s physics beyond the Standard Model plus GR. Idealism is the view that reality is experiential. Most physicalists aren’t idealists, and most idealists aren’t physicalists, but a small minority of researchers are both idealists and physicalists.…
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Collective intelligence, ants and the binding problem
A single neuron in the human brain can respond only to what the neurons connected to it are doing, but all of them together can be Immanuel Kant. Read more The idea of a collective consciousness (Or Anthill) is pretty simple: instead of cells you have small sentient animal that make up a larger creature.…
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If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious
If you’re a materialist, you probably think that rabbits are conscious. And you ought to think that. After all, rabbits are a lot like us, biologically and neurophysiologically. If you’re a materialist, you probably also think that conscious experience would be present in a wide range of naturally-evolved alien beings behaviorally very similar to us…
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Is there any scientific evidence that plants might be sentient?
Plants do metabolize diclofenac (the specific mechanism is explained in the article below). This indicates that it’s possible to test if plants could react to painkillers while being damaged. Metabolism of diclofenac in plants – Hydroxylation is followed by glucose conjugation Aditionally, I think this is also relevant: there’s absolutely no evidence that plants are…
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Is There Suffering in Fundamental Physics?
Any sufficiently advanced consequentialism is indistinguishable from its own parody. The present article is sincere, though it might come across as absurd depending on one’s perspective. In order to reduce suffering, we have to decide which things can suffer and how much. Suffering by humans and animals tugs our heartstrings and is morally urgent, but…