IAH 206 Midterm 1

With John Grey

Sentience

The capacity for valenced experience

Phenomenal Consciousness

• The capacity for experience

• The feeling of what it is like to have an experience

Valence/Arousal Model

Model of emotions posits that all emotion concepts pick out locations in a space defined by two dimensions, valence and arousal

Valence

The dimension in the valence arousal model that runs from misery to pleasure

Arousal

The dimension in the valence arousal model that runs from sleepiness to high wakefulness

Sapience

Human level intelligence and self awareness

Selfhood

Having a unified self or “I” that persists through time

Incommensurable pains/pleasures

No way to measure how much better or worse an experience is from another

Consciousness

The capacity for experience

Reasonable people

• Respond to evidence

• Care about consensus

• Consider risks

• Have reasonable morals

• Cares whether their beliefs are true

The zone of reasonable disagreement is…

• Supported by evidence

• Guided by moral reasons

• Sensitive to new evidence

Epiphenomenalism

Consciousness is a byproduct of neural activity

Materialism

Consciousness is the same thing as neural activity, in that sense is causal

Interactionist dualism

Consciousness is distinct from the body but they interact. Consciousness can exist without the body (life after death)

Biopsychism

Consciousness is an aspect of life. All living things are conscious

Panpsychism

Consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality. It is present, to a greater or lesser degree in all entities.

Consequentialism

Morality demands that you act to produce the best outcome. There is debate over whose interests we are concerned with.

Sentientism

The interests of sentient beings.

Biocentrism

The interests of any living being

Ecocentrism

The interests of the ecosystems that sustain life, and only secondly of the individual animals within them.

Deontology

Morality demands that you act in accordance with the moral rules. There is debate over what the rules are and whether they govern our treatment of nonhuman animals as well.

Kantian Ethics

Do not use a person as a mere tool. Only concerned with humans.

Contractualism

The rules of morality are the rules it would be rational for you to agree to obey, provided everyone else also agreed to them. As such moral rules don’t directly govern animal treatment.

Religious Deontologies

Moral rules vary greatly from religion to religion with some suggesting humans are of higher priority while also acknowledging we must regard animal welfare.

Sentience Candidates

• Implies a realistic possibility of sentience that it would be irresponsible to ignore regarding relevant policy decisions

• Is rich enough to allow the identification of welfare risks and the design and assessment of precautions.

Investigation Priorities

• Further investigation could plausibly lead to the recognition of of a sentience candidate

• It is affected by human activity in ways that may call for precautions if it were a sentience candidate

Tyranny of Expert Values

When we let experts decide on decisions concerning our welfare

PARC tests

• Permissibility in principle

• Adequacy

• Reasonable Necessity

• Consistency

P- Permissibility in principle

Checking whether a proposal is legally/morally permissible.

A- Adequacy

Checking whether a proposal does enough to mitigate risks.

R- Reasonable Necessity

Checking whether a proposal involves unnecessary measures beyond what is needed for adequacy.

C- Consistency

Checking whether a proposal is consistent with any other relevant policies we’ve adopted.

MCS+

Minimally conscious state (plus): responds verbally to painful stimulus; sentience candidates

MCS-

Minimally conscious state (minus): respond non verbally to painful stimulus; sentience candidates

PVS

Persistent vegetative state: unresponsive wakefulness; not enough evidence for sentience

Coma

Unconscious state; Not sentience candidates

Locked in Syndrome

Not a disorder of consciousness but restricts communication; Clearly sentient

The Warnock Rule

Human embryos should not be experimented on past 14 days of development.

Neural Organoid

• A collection of neurons grown from stem cells

• Not sentient, Not sentience candidates, not an investigation priority

Anthropomorphism

Assuming that animal behavior that resembles human behavior must correspond to inner experiences similar to human experience.

Anthropectomy

Assuming nonhuman animals must not have anything like human inner experience, regardless of their behavior.

Associative Learning

Creating a connection between two stimuli or between a behavior and consequence. Motivational trade offs.

The Mirror Test

A test to determine if a nonhuman animal recognizes the reflection in the mirror as ones self

Features of Unreasonable Individuals

• They hold baseless beliefs

• They hold dogmatic beliefs

• They hold abhorrent moral beliefs

The 3 Framework Principles of EOS

• A duty to avoid causing gratuitous suffering

• Sentience candidature can warrant precautions to reduce risk of causing gratuitous suffering

• Assessments of what precautions are proportional to the risk should be informed, democratic, and inclusive

Classical Conditioning

A single conditioned stimuli overlaps temporally with an unconditioned stimulus.

The important division between R1-R3 and R4-R5

• R1-R3 deny that fish, insects and most invertebrates are sentient

• R4-R5 do not necessarily deny this

Birch believes these all count as reasonable.

R1

Sentience requires distinctively primate neural mechanisms and is absent in non primates

R2

Sentience requires mechanisms distinctive to the mammalian neocortex and is absent in non-mammals.

R3

Sentience requires the neocortex in mammals but can also be achieved by other brain mechanisms performing relevantly analogous functions (such as the avian pallium).

R4

Sentience does not require the neocortex even in mammals and can be achieved in at least a minimal form by integrative subcortical mechanisms crucially involving the midbrain. However, it is absent in non-vertebrates.

R5

Sentience does not require the neocortex even in mammals and can be achieved in at least a minimal form by integrative subcortical.

Application of Framework Principles to Disorders of Consciousness

• Assume that patients with disorders of consciousness are sentient.

• Avoid line-drawing: phase out use of the diagnostic categories MCS+, MCS-, PVS.

• Seek more humane options of hastening death than withdrawal of CANH.

Application of Framework Principles to Fetuses and Pre term Infants

• The ethics of abortion should be separated from the question of when a fetus
  becomes sentient. (Even if we knew this, the ethical debate would remain.)

• Human fetuses are sentience candidates at the beginning of the second trimester.

• Anesthesia/pain relief should be considered when surgery is performed on a fetus.

Application of Framework Principles to Neural Organoids

• If a neural organoid develops a functioning brainstem, it’s a sentience candidate.

• When that happens, a ban on creating such organoids should be considered.

• If a neural organoid is a sentience candidate, research on it (if permitted!) should
  be subject to ethical review similar to that for research on sentient animals.

Application of Framework Principles to nonhuman animals

• Sentience is distinct from intelligence, brain size, and even the capacity for pain.

• All adult vertebrates are sentience candidates.

• Some invertebrates (like octopus, lobster, and insects) are sentience candidates.

• We should work toward humane methods of slaughter of sentience candidates;
  where this is impossible (e.g., octopus), farming of the animal should be banned.