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Ethics Of Uncertain Sentience
The ethics of uncertain sentience is an area of applied ethics concerned with how to treat individuals whose capacity for sentience—the ability to subjectively feel, perceive, or experience—remains scientifically or philosophically uncertain. The topic is particularly significant in animal ethics, where questions have arisen regarding the moral status of animals such as crustaceans, insects, and fish, and whether they can experience pain. It also applies to debates in neuroethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence. A common approach to these issues involves invoking the precautionary principle, which holds that in cases of uncertainty, it is morally preferable to assume sentience rather than risk causing harm to potentially sentient beings. Views Animal ethics David Foster Wallace in his 2005 essay " Consider the Lobster" investigated the potential sentience and capacity of crustaceans to experience pain and the resulting ethical implications of eating them. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cricket Shelter Modular Edible Insect Farm IMG 20200219 163454590
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field, at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails (small sticks) balanced on three stumps. Two players from the batting team, the striker and nonstriker, stand in front of either wicket holding bats, while one player from the fielding team, the bowler, bowls the ball toward the striker's wicket from the opposite end of the pitch. The striker's goal is to hit the bowled ball with the bat and then switch places with the nonstriker, with the batting team scoring one run for each of these swaps. Runs are also scored when the ball reaches the boundary of the field or when the ball is bowled illegally. The fielding team aims to prevent runs by dismissing batters (so they are "out"). Dismissal can occur in various ways, including being bowled (when the ball hits the striker's wicket and dislodges the bails), and by the fielding side either catching th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Edge Of Sentience
''The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI'' is a 2024 book by British philosopher Jonathan Birch, published by Oxford University Press. It explores the ethical and policy challenges arising at the boundaries of sentience in humans, non-human animals, and artificial intelligence systems. Birch proposes a precautionary framework for decision-making under uncertainty about sentience, emphasising democratic deliberation, proportionality, and welfare protection. Background Jonathan Birch is a Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and the lead investigator of the Foundations of Animal Sentience project. In 2021, he chaired a UK government-commissioned review of scientific evidence on sentience in cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans. The findings contributed to the UK's decision to extend legal recognition of sentience to invertebrates such as octopuses, crabs, and lobsters in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Consciousness
Artificial consciousness, also known as machine consciousness, synthetic consciousness, or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience. The same terminology can be used with the term "sentience" instead of "consciousness" when specifically designating phenomenal consciousness (the ability to feel qualia). Since sentience involves the ability to experience ethically positive or negative (i.e., ''valenced'') mental states, it may justify welfare concerns and legal protection, as with animals. Some scholars believe that consciousness is generated by the interoperation of various parts of the brain; these mechanisms are labeled the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC. Some further believe that constructing a system (e.g., a computer system) that can emulate this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animal Consciousness
Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the Quality (philosophy), quality or state of self-awareness within an animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself. In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, the ability to experience or to feeling, feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. The topic of animal consciousness is beset with a number of difficulties. It poses the problem of other minds in an especially severe form because animals, lacking the ability to use human language, cannot communicate their experiences. It is also difficult to reason objectively about the question because a denial that an animal is conscious is often taken to imply that they do not feel, their life has no value, and that harming the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Yampolskiy
Roman Vladimirovich Yampolskiy (; born in Riga, 13 August 1979) is a Latvian computer scientist at the University of Louisville, mostly known for his work on AI safety and cybersecurity. He holds a PhD from the University at Buffalo (2008). He is the founder and current director of Cyber Security Lab, in the department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering of the University of Louisville. Yampolskiy is an author of some 100 publications, including numerous books. AI safety Yampolskiy has warned of the possibility of existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence, and has advocated research into "boxing" artificial intelligence. More broadly, Yampolskiy and his collaborator, Michaël Trazzi, have proposed in 2018 to introduce "Achilles' heels" into potentially dangerous AI, for example by barring an AI from accessing and modifying its own source code. Another proposal is to apply a "security mindset" to AI safety, itemizing pote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Consciousness
Artificial consciousness, also known as machine consciousness, synthetic consciousness, or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience. The same terminology can be used with the term "sentience" instead of "consciousness" when specifically designating phenomenal consciousness (the ability to feel qualia). Since sentience involves the ability to experience ethically positive or negative (i.e., ''valenced'') mental states, it may justify welfare concerns and legal protection, as with animals. Some scholars believe that consciousness is generated by the interoperation of various parts of the brain; these mechanisms are labeled the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC. Some further believe that constructing a system (e.g., a computer system) that can emulate this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky ( ; born September 11, 1979) is an American artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence. He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. His work on the prospect of a runaway intelligence explosion influenced philosopher Nick Bostrom's 2014 book '' Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies''. Work in artificial intelligence safety Goal learning and incentives in software systems Yudkowsky's views on the safety challenges future generations of AI systems pose are discussed in Stuart Russell's and Peter Norvig's undergraduate textbook '' Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach''. Noting the difficulty of formally specifying general-purpose goals by hand, Russell and Norvig cite Yudkowsky's proposal that autonomous and adaptive systems ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom ( ; ; born 10 March 1973) is a Philosophy, philosopher known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, Existential risk from artificial general intelligence, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test. He was the founding director of the now dissolved Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and is now Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative. Bostrom is the author of ''Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy'' (2002), ''Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies'' (2014) and ''Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World'' (2024). Bostrom believes that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to superintelligence, which he defines as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". He views this as a major source of opportunities and existential risks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethical Extensionism
Ethical extensionism or moral extensionism is a metaethical or metaphilosophical approach in environmental ethics and animal ethics that extends existing ethical theories and concepts to include entities (animals, plants, species, the earth) that are traditionally excluded. For example, while many cultures differ as to what, exactly, is "murder", all cultures take it as wrong to commit murder. An example of ethical extensionism would be to extend to dogs or cats the status of being something that can be murdered, so that it would be wrong under some circumstances to kill a dog or cat. On the one hand, ethical extensionism is a broadening of the class of things to which humans may owe an ethical duty. But Des Jardins makes the point that most ethical extensionism has been merely broadening the ethical sphere incrementally, a process not agreeable to some environmental ethicists who would prefer more of a total replacement of traditional ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philoso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Ethics
In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resources." The main competing paradigms are anthropocentrism, physiocentrism (called ecocentrism as well), and theocentrism. Environmental ethics exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and Integrated geography, environmental geography. There are many ethical decisions that human beings make with respect to the environment. These decision raise numerous questions. For example: *Should humans continue to clearcutting, clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption? *What species or entities ought to be considered for their own sake, independently of its contribution to biodiversity and other extrinsic goods? *Why should humans continue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kai Chan
Kai Ming Adam Chan is a Canadian ecologist and professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is a faculty member at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Re-Wilding and Social-Ecological Transformation. Chan's work focuses on applied ecology, sustainability science, and environmental ethics. Education Chan earned a BSc in Ecology from the University of Toronto in 1997. He later attended Princeton University, where he received a MA in 1999 and a PhD in 2003 in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. His doctoral dissertation, titled ''The Effects of Slightly Leaky Prezygotic Isolating Barriers and the Use of Phylogenetic Tree Shape to Study Diversification'', was supervised by Simon A. Levin. Research interests Chan’s research examines the interactions between human societies and ecological systems, with an emphasis on sustainability and conservation. His work has contributed to the study of ecosyste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
