May 19, 2026 05:03 PM
(This post was last modified: May 19, 2026 05:25 PM by C C.)
Rethinking consciousness: Could everything from animals to AI be aware?
https://thedebrief.org/rethinking-consci...-be-aware/
EXCERPTS: Instead of treating consciousness as a simple yes-or-no question, Dr. Sebo analyzes several possibilities for how consciousness may be distributed across the natural and artificial world, and examines the default assumptions scientists use when evidence remains uncertain.
One possibility is that all animals are conscious. Similarly, the concept holds that all living beings are conscious, including plants and fungi. A third prospect is the idea that any organism capable of processing sensory information may possess awareness. Another approach centers on complex cognition, potentially extending consciousness to future AI systems.
The most radical possibility is panpsychism, the philosophical idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter itself. However, Dr. Sebo cautions that even if simple forms of consciousness existed at the level of matter, further theory would be needed to explain how, or whether, complex conscious experience emerges in larger systems.
Dr. Sebo does not argue that a single default assumption about consciousness is always best. Instead, he argues that scientists and ethicists may need different assumptions for different purposes, depending on the evidence, the research question, and the ethical risks involved.
“We should select different default assumptions about the distribution of consciousness for different purposes and in different contexts, both within and beyond the animal kingdom,” Dr. Sebo writes. “Overall, the aim is to balance theoretical rigor with practical progress, recognizing that assumptions work differently when taken as truth claims and when taken as mere tools.”
One of the central challenges to understanding consciousness is that it remains notoriously difficult to study.
Scientists can observe behavior, brain activity, and information processing, but subjective experience itself cannot be directly accessed from the outside. In philosophy, this is known as the “problem of other minds.” Humans cannot directly verify another being’s inner experience in the same way they can access their own.
“We can directly observe behaviors and anatomies, but not thoughts and feelings,” Dr. Sebo writes. “These epistemic barriers limit our ability to draw firm conclusions about which beings are conscious.”
The inherent inability to observe subjective awareness has led researchers to develop new approaches, including the search for so-called “markers” of consciousness in animals and even in AI systems. By comparing humans and nonhumans, scientists hope to identify similarities that indicate the presence of subjective experiences in animals and in technology.
However, these techniques may have significant limitations... (MORE - missing details)
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It's always been absurd to deny both phenomenal consciousness and degrees of the capacity to identify and understand to anything with a brain. But the latter (cognition) is an attribute of intelligence, which is dependent upon a memory system (which non-living and non-artificial matter in general lacks.)
https://thedebrief.org/rethinking-consci...-be-aware/
EXCERPTS: Instead of treating consciousness as a simple yes-or-no question, Dr. Sebo analyzes several possibilities for how consciousness may be distributed across the natural and artificial world, and examines the default assumptions scientists use when evidence remains uncertain.
One possibility is that all animals are conscious. Similarly, the concept holds that all living beings are conscious, including plants and fungi. A third prospect is the idea that any organism capable of processing sensory information may possess awareness. Another approach centers on complex cognition, potentially extending consciousness to future AI systems.
The most radical possibility is panpsychism, the philosophical idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter itself. However, Dr. Sebo cautions that even if simple forms of consciousness existed at the level of matter, further theory would be needed to explain how, or whether, complex conscious experience emerges in larger systems.
Dr. Sebo does not argue that a single default assumption about consciousness is always best. Instead, he argues that scientists and ethicists may need different assumptions for different purposes, depending on the evidence, the research question, and the ethical risks involved.
“We should select different default assumptions about the distribution of consciousness for different purposes and in different contexts, both within and beyond the animal kingdom,” Dr. Sebo writes. “Overall, the aim is to balance theoretical rigor with practical progress, recognizing that assumptions work differently when taken as truth claims and when taken as mere tools.”
One of the central challenges to understanding consciousness is that it remains notoriously difficult to study.
Scientists can observe behavior, brain activity, and information processing, but subjective experience itself cannot be directly accessed from the outside. In philosophy, this is known as the “problem of other minds.” Humans cannot directly verify another being’s inner experience in the same way they can access their own.
“We can directly observe behaviors and anatomies, but not thoughts and feelings,” Dr. Sebo writes. “These epistemic barriers limit our ability to draw firm conclusions about which beings are conscious.”
The inherent inability to observe subjective awareness has led researchers to develop new approaches, including the search for so-called “markers” of consciousness in animals and even in AI systems. By comparing humans and nonhumans, scientists hope to identify similarities that indicate the presence of subjective experiences in animals and in technology.
However, these techniques may have significant limitations... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - - - - -
It's always been absurd to deny both phenomenal consciousness and degrees of the capacity to identify and understand to anything with a brain. But the latter (cognition) is an attribute of intelligence, which is dependent upon a memory system (which non-living and non-artificial matter in general lacks.)
