I’m grateful for recent speculations about whether AI systems might achieve human-like intelligence (AGI) and/or sentience. These have led me to think more carefully about the ingredients that go into these capabilities. I think a necessary ingredient is agency, and understanding agency can sharpen our inquiry into the prospects for AI. What is agency and… Continue reading The Question of Artificial Agency
Tag: Mind
Biological Agency and Free Will
Given my recent interest in the idea of naturalized biological agency (the topic of my last post), I was excited to read Kevin Mitchell’s book—Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will—which develops this notion and connects it to the debate over human free will. Mitchell is a neurogeneticist at Trinity College (Dublin); he blogs… Continue reading Biological Agency and Free Will
The Enactive Approach to Agency
Introduction Explaining the properties and behaviors of organisms leads us to introduce a repertoire of concepts foreign to the world of non-living things. Arguably the most important of these is agency. Agency implies that behaviors are structured by intrinsic goals or purposes, and this brings with it further notions, such as those of norms and… Continue reading The Enactive Approach to Agency
Why AI Doom Scenarios are Misguided
I think AI doom scenarios are flawed. Here’s why. The discussions I have seen assume the human brain is essentially a computer (or computational system). It is thought that AI systems will soon match and then exceed the brain’s computational power, leading to artificial general intelligence (AGI). Then one can speculate about why such an… Continue reading Why AI Doom Scenarios are Misguided
The Causal Roots of Consciousness
In this post I recap my preferred framework for tackling the hard problem of consciousness, and then try to extend the analysis a bit deeper. I have favored a “divide and conquer” strategy that recognizes two dimensions to the problem. Our conscious experience has both a qualitative character and a subjective character, and both can… Continue reading The Causal Roots of Consciousness
Metaphysics and the Problem of Consciousness
[Originally published April 16, 2020] In a recent post I talked about different frameworks for addressing the subjective dimension of consciousness. One path used ideas from philosophy of mind, the other looked to evolutionary biology. Of course, many who ponder solving this and related aspects of the mind-body problem take a more overtly metaphysical turn.… Continue reading Metaphysics and the Problem of Consciousness
A Panpsychist Surprise Ending
[Originally Published March 31, 2020] While I have been catching up on some reading relating to panpsychism lately (see recent posts here and here), I had turned back to thinking about another topic, the philosophy of quantum theory, when following up on some references led me to a surprise endorsement of panpsychism. Specifically, I have… Continue reading A Panpsychist Surprise Ending
Different Approaches to Subjectivity
[Originally Published March 25, 2020] In the last post, I endorsed a Russellian approach to the mind-body problem (specifically the view labeled “panqualityism”), noting that one of the important tasks this framework leaves us with is explaining the subjective dimension of consciousness. This problem arguably requires less of a deep dive into metaphysical waters, but rather… Continue reading Different Approaches to Subjectivity
Panpsychism!
[Originally published March 20, 2020] I have been enjoying following some debates about the problem of consciousness on twitter and in blog posts. In particular, philosopher Philip Goff has been tirelessly advocating the merits of panpsychism.1 As usual, this meets with a mixture of principled objections and more ungenerous responses. I thought I would revive my blog… Continue reading Panpsychism!