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A Theory Of Sentience
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Book Synopsis A Theory of Sentience by : Austen Clark
Download or read book A Theory of Sentience written by Austen Clark and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the findings of neuroscience, this text proposes and defends the hypothesis that the various modalities of sensation share a generic form that the author, Austen Clark, calls feature-placing.
Book Synopsis Sentience and Sensibility by : Matthew R. Silliman
Download or read book Sentience and Sensibility written by Matthew R. Silliman and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2006-11-30 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sentience and Sensibility is a dialogue that engages a number of issues in moral theory in a rigorous and original manner, while remaining accessible to students and other nonspecialist readers. It accomplishes this by means of the time-honored (if presently dormant) medium of philosophical dialogue, in which its characters actively challenge each other to clarify their ideas and defend their reasoning. In this manner the conversation develops and weighs some proposed solutions, in largely non-technical language, to a number of current and traditional moral problems (including the nature and origin of moral value, the moral status of nonhuman animals, problems of partiality, and other vexed topics).Moral philosophy and theory can seem as remote and intimidating as everyday ethical matters and moral intuitions are pressing. Sentience and Sensibility proposes that these two should meet. The book's characters gently challenge each other to clarify their thinking and defend their reasoning, and in this rigorous yet personable manner explore traditional and fresh takes on morality. The conversation aims not only to discover thoughtful answers to such questions, but to do so while being respectful of both philosophical theory and ordinary moral intuitions
Book Synopsis Consciousness And Robot Sentience (Second Edition) by : Pentti O Haikonen
Download or read book Consciousness And Robot Sentience (Second Edition) written by Pentti O Haikonen and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THIS BOOK is the fully revised and updated second edition of 'Consciousness and Robot Sentience'. With lots of new material, it will provide new insights into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine consciousness, beyond materials published in the first edition. The organization of this book has been streamlined for better clarity and continuity of the lines of arguments.The perspective of AI has been added to this edition. It is shown that contemporary AI has a hidden problem, which prevents it from becoming a true intelligent agent. A self-evident solution to this problem is given in this book.This solution is surprisingly connected with the concepts of qualia, the mind-body problem and consciousness. These are the hard problems of consciousness that so far have been without viable solution. Unfortunately, the solution to the hidden problem of AI cannot be satisfactorily implemented, unless the phenomena of qualia and consciousness are first understood. In this book an explanation of consciousness is presented, one that rejects material and immaterial substances, dualism, panpsychism, emergence and metaphysics. What remains is obvious. This explanation excludes consciousness in digital computers, but allows the artificial creation of consciousness in one natural-like way, by associative non-computational neural networks.The proof of a theory calls for empirical verification. In this case, the proof could be in the form of a sentient robot. This book describes a step towards this in the form of the author's small experimental robot XCR-1. This robot has evolved through the years, and has now new cognitive abilities, which are described.
Book Synopsis Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals by : L. Syd M Johnson
Download or read book Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals written by L. Syd M Johnson and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-06 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume represents a unique addition to the available literature on animal ethics, animal studies, and neuroethics. Its goal is to expand discussions on animal ethics and neuroethics by weaving together different threads: philosophy of mind and animal minds, neuroscientific study of animal minds, and animal ethics. Neuroethical questions concerning animals’ moral status, animal minds and consciousness, animal pain, and the adequacy of animal models for neuropsychiatric disease have long been topics of debate in philosophy and ethics, and more recently also in neuroscientific research. The book presents a transdisciplinary blend of voices, underscoring different perspectives on the broad questions of how neuroscience can contribute to our understanding of nonhuman minds, and on debates over the moral status of nonhuman animals. All chapters were written by outstanding scholars in philosophy, neuroscience, animal behavior, biology, neuroethics, and bioethics, and cover a range of issues and species/taxa. Given its scope, the book will appeal to scientists and students interested in the debate on animal ethics, while also offering an important resource for future researchers. Chapter 13 is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
Book Synopsis Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI by : Markus D. Dubber
Download or read book Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI written by Markus D. Dubber and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume tackles a quickly-evolving field of inquiry, mapping the existing discourse as part of a general attempt to place current developments in historical context; at the same time, breaking new ground in taking on novel subjects and pursuing fresh approaches. The term "A.I." is used to refer to a broad range of phenomena, from machine learning and data mining to artificial general intelligence. The recent advent of more sophisticated AI systems, which function with partial or full autonomy and are capable of tasks which require learning and 'intelligence', presents difficult ethical questions, and has drawn concerns from many quarters about individual and societal welfare, democratic decision-making, moral agency, and the prevention of harm. This work ranges from explorations of normative constraints on specific applications of machine learning algorithms today-in everyday medical practice, for instance-to reflections on the (potential) status of AI as a form of consciousness with attendant rights and duties and, more generally still, on the conceptual terms and frameworks necessarily to understand tasks requiring intelligence, whether "human" or "A.I."
Book Synopsis A Theory of Justice for Animals by : Robert Garner
Download or read book A Theory of Justice for Animals written by Robert Garner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the same time, he argues that humans have a greater interest in life and liberty than most species of nonhuman animals.
Book Synopsis The Feeling of Life Itself by : Christof Koch
Download or read book The Feeling of Life Itself written by Christof Koch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain—three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece—give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information. Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation—it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.
Book Synopsis A Theory of Bioethics by : David DeGrazia
Download or read book A Theory of Bioethics written by David DeGrazia and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a compelling theory of bioethics, covering medical assistance-in-dying, the right to health care, abortion, animal research, and the definition of death.
Download or read book Sentient Flesh written by R. A. Judy and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-02 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Sentient Flesh R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham’s 1937 remark “we should have our liberty 'cause . . . us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world—which he theorizes as “thinking in disorder,” or “poiēsis in black”—foreground the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, Sentient Flesh offers a major intervention in the black study of life.
Book Synopsis The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness by : Mark Solms
Download or read book The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness written by Mark Solms and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime’s quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain’s obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience.
Download or read book Moral Status written by Mary Anne Warren and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1997-11-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Anne Warren explores a theoretical question which lies at the heart of practical ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? In other words, what are the criteria for being an entity towards which people have moral obligations? Some philosophers maintain that there is one intrinsic property—for instance, life, sentience, humanity, or moral agency. Others believe that relational properties, such as belonging to a human community, are more important. In Part I of the book, Warren argues that no single property can serve as the sole criterion for moral status; instead, life, sentience, moral agency, and social and biotic relationships are all relevant, each in a different way. She presents seven basic principles, each focusing on a property that can, in combination with others, legitimately affect an agent's moral obligations towards entities of a given type. In Part II, these principles are applied in an examination of three controversial ethical issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion
Book Synopsis Politics of Species by : Raymond Corbey
Download or read book Politics of Species written by Raymond Corbey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 595 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The assumption that humans are cognitively and morally superior to other animals is fundamental to social democracies and legal systems worldwide. It legitimises treating members of other animal species as inferior to humans. The last few decades have seen a growing awareness of this issue, as evidence continues to show that individuals of many other species have rich mental, emotional and social lives. Bringing together leading experts from a range of disciplines, this volume identifies the key barriers to a definition of moral respect that includes nonhuman animals. It sets out to increase concern, empathy and inclusiveness by developing strategies that can be used to protect other animals from exploitation in the wild and from suffering in captivity. The chapters link scientific data with normative and philosophical reflections, offering unique insight into controversial issues around the ethical, political and legal status of other species"--
Book Synopsis Sentient Subjects by : Gerda Roelvink
Download or read book Sentient Subjects written by Gerda Roelvink and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-18 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Non-cognitive expressions of the life of the subject – feeling, motion, tactility, instinct, automatism, and sentience – have transformed how scholars understand subjectivity, agency and identity. This collection investigates the critical purchase of the idiom of affect in this ‘post-humanist’ thinking of the subject. It also explores political and ethical questions raised by the deployment of affect as a theoretical and artistic category. Together the contributors to this collection map the theoretically heterogeneous field of post-humanist scholarship on affect, making inspiring, and at times surprising, connections between Spinoza’s and Tomkins’s theories of affect, the concept of affect and psychoanalysis, and affect and animal studies in art and literature. As a result, the concepts, vocabulary, compatibility, and attribution of affect are challenged and extended. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.
Download or read book Soul Dust written by Nicholas Humphrey and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radically new view of the nature and purpose of consciousness How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the "soul niche." Tightly argued, intellectually gripping, and a joy to read, Soul Dust provides answers to the deepest questions. It shows how the problem of consciousness merges with questions that obsess us all—how life should be lived and the fear of death. Resting firmly on neuroscience and evolutionary theory, and drawing a wealth of insights from philosophy and literature, Soul Dust is an uncompromising yet life-affirming work—one that never loses sight of the majesty and wonder of consciousness.
Book Synopsis A Theory of General Ethics by : Warwick Fox
Download or read book A Theory of General Ethics written by Warwick Fox and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-09-22 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With A Theory of General Ethics Warwick Fox both defines the field of General Ethics and offers the first example of a truly general ethics. Specifically, he develops a single, integrated approach to ethics that encompasses the realms of interhuman ethics, the ethics of the natural environment, and the ethics of the built environment. Thus Fox offers what is in effect the first example of an ethical "Theory of Everything." Fox refers to his own approach to General Ethics as the "theory of responsive cohesion." He argues that the best examples in any domain of interest—from psychology to politics, from conversations to theories—exemplify the quality of responsive cohesion, that is, they hold together by virtue of the mutual responsiveness of the elements that constitute them. Fox argues that the relational quality of responsive cohesion represents the most fundamental value there is. He then develops the theory of responsive cohesion, central features of which include the elaboration of a "theory of contexts" as well as a differentiated model of our obligations in respect of all beings. In doing this, he draws on cutting-edge work in cognitive science in order to develop a powerful distinction between beings who use language and beings that do not. Fox tests his theory against eighteen central problems in General Ethics—including challenges raised by abortion, euthanasia, personal obligations, politics, animal welfare, invasive species, ecological management, architecture, and planning—and shows that it offers sensible and defensible answers to the widest possible range of ethical problems.
Book Synopsis Sentient Lands by : Piergiorgio Di Giminiani
Download or read book Sentient Lands written by Piergiorgio Di Giminiani and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1990, when Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year military dictatorship ended, democratic rule returned to Chile. Since then, Indigenous organizations have mobilized to demand restitution of their ancestral territories seized over the past 150 years. Sentient Lands is a historically grounded ethnography of the Mapuche people’s engagement with state-run reconciliation and land-restitution efforts. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani analyzes environmental relations, property, state power, market forces, and indigeneity to illustrate how land connections are articulated, in both landscape experiences and land claims. Rather than viewing land claims as simply bureaucratic procedures imposed on local understandings and experiences of land connections, Di Giminiani reveals these processes to be disputed practices of world making. Ancestral land formation is set in motion by the entangled principles of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, two very different and sometimes conflicting processes. Indigenous land ontologies are based on a relation between two subjects—land and people—both endowed with sentient abilities. By contrast, legal land ontologies are founded on the principles of property theory, wherein land is an object of possession that can be standardized within a regime of value. Governments also use land claims to domesticate Indigenous geographies into spatial constructs consistent with political and market configurations. Exploring the unexpected effects on political activism and state reparation policies caused by this entanglement of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, Di Giminiani offers a new analytical angle on Indigenous land politics.
Book Synopsis Fellow Creatures by : Christine Marion Korsgaard
Download or read book Fellow Creatures written by Christine Marion Korsgaard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a compelling new view of our moral relationships to the other animals
