What Is Consciousness For? Sixteen Theories Take a Crack at the Question

Albert Newen, anole lizards, Antonella Tramacere, Antonio Damasio, Axel Cleeremans, biology, Carlos Montemayor, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, Dogs, Eva Jablonka, Experience, Gianmarco Maldarelli, horses, Jacques Singer, Jonathan Birch, Jonathon D. Crystal, Julio Hechavarria, Kristin Andrews, Krzysztof Dołęga, Lars Chittka, Léa Moncoucy, Lucia Melloni, Maxime Janbon, memory, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Nicholas Humphrey, Noam Miller, Olga Dyakova, Onur Güntürkün, philosophy, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Royal Society, Sarah Skeels, self-awareness, Simon Alexander Burns Brown, Simona Ginsburg, T.S. Eliot, Yuranny Cabral-Calderin, zoology
It sounds like we do not really know what we are looking for, which will doubtless complicate efforts to find it. Source
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The Superior Programming that Makes Plants Look Smart

animals, anthropomorphism, bacteria, behavior, biology, Chapman University, Curiosity rover, Darwinians, Duke University, ethylene, flowers, herbivores, Ian T. Baldwin, intelligence, Intelligent Design, ivy, leaf senescence, leaves, Life Sciences, memory, Michael Pollan, Nature (journal), nitrogen, programming, Richard Karban, self-awareness, strigolactone, synthetic organic chemistry, tendrils, tentacles, The New Yorker, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, trees, Wesley Smith
Two signaling molecules — strigolactone and ethylene — can work independently to begin the process of leaf senescence. Source
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Peter Singer Compares Abortion to Turning Off a Computer

abortion, Artificial Intelligence, babies, bioethics, ChatGPT, chimpanzees, computer, Culture & Ethics, dementia, human life, humans, infanticide, infants, Medicine, moral collapse, persons, Peter Singer, philosophy, pregnancy, Princeton University, self-awareness, sentience, sentient beings, unborn baby, unconsciousness, Yahoo News
Singer first claims that should an AI ever become “sentient,” turning it off would be akin to killing a being with the highest moral value. Source
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Five Reasons Why AI Programs Are Not “Human”

adrenaline, algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Blake Lemoine, Boundaries of Humanity Project, computer science, Culture & Ethics, DNA, emotions, engineers, Feelings, free will, Google, human cells, imagination, Isaac Asimov, LaMDA, Language Model for Dialogue Applications, life, Love, machines, materialists, Neuroscience & Mind, René Descartes, self-awareness, sentience, software, soul, Stanford University, Three Laws of Robotics, toaster, Washington Post, William Hurlbut
A Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, mistakenly designated one AI program "sentient." Source
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