Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Multiple Insights Into Affective Sentience, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg

Animal Sentience

We discuss some of the many valuable insights into affective sentience from Birch’s The Edge of Sentience, such as its eight criteria for determining which entities have sentience (e.g., emotions) and its insights into the difficulty of testing whether an Artificial Intelligence system has attained sentience. We add our own perspectives on why the eight criteria are valid, on the difficulty of using behavioral trade-offs to determine whether an animal has sentience, and why evolutionary theory says consciousness is not an epiphenomenon.

Could 'Real Existing Ai' Be Sentient?, Tim Crane

Animal Sentience

Jonathan Birch is rightly sceptical about the idea that today’s AI machines (e.g. LLMs) are candidates for sentience. Nonetheless, he gives three reasons for taking the future possibility of AI sentience seriously. I dispute them all. Birch fails to distinguish the very idea of an artificial mind from computational AI (what I call ‘Real Existing AI’); he does not adequately distinguish a simulation from a replica or copy; and he fails to acknowledge that the appeal to computational functionalism in this context is straightforwardly question-begging.

Artificial Sentience: From Computational Functionalism To Behaviourism?, Wanja Wiese

Animal Sentience

I critically examine Jonathan Birch’s account of how brain emulations might create artificial sentience candidates, arguing that his account risks collapsing into a behaviourist account, unless the specific computational processes realised by such emulations are carefully considered. Drawing on examples from computational neuroscience, I show that similar behaviours can arise from vastly different computational processes, thereby undermining the suggestion to focus on behaviourial profiles to determine whether a brain emulation of a sentience candidate is itself a sentience candidate.

Modeling Large Language Model Cognition, Eleni Angelou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project builds three core directions in a philosophy of cognitive science for large language models (LLMs): 1) interpreting LLM behavior, 2) analyzing the system in terms of Marr’s three levels, and 3) mapping the correspondence between behavioral outputs and the internals of the system. It consists of the following three chapters accordingly:

Dennettian Stances and Large Language Models

The aim of this chapter is to argue that there are convincing grounds for applying Dennett’s framework of stances to LLMs against worries that doing so produces “counterfeit people”. After introducing the intentional and design stances, I take sycophancy as a …

Curated Spaces: Cognition By Design, Sydney Harvey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Curated Spaces: Cognition by Design” is a dissertation that considers the connection between designed spaces and cognition. This work combines philosophy of mind and aesthetics. The dissertation introduces the term “Curated Cognition”, which builds on the concept of situated cognition ( Brooks, 1991; Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman,  2003;  Sterelny, 2010; Krueger, 2015; Colombetti, 2020 ). The dissertation argues that the environment is essential to cognition, and all environments are curated; therefore, the way we think, feel, and act is curated as well. Some non-human animals may inhabit worlds that are not curated. For example, an octopus may find shelter in …

Navigating The Edge Of Sentience Without A Scientific Meta-Consensus, Daniel West

Animal Sentience

In The Edge of Sentience (2024, 2025), Birch develops a precautionary framework for crafting public policies about potentially sentient systems. Underlying this framework is a commitment to the democratic principle that the public should authorize all significant moral judgments that arise during the policymaking process. In this commentary, I suggest that Birch’s framework fails to live up to this commitment by requiring scientists without public accountability to make consequential moral judgments. I suggest a friendly amendment to Birch’s framework by replacing the idea of a scientific meta-consensus with the method of formal expert elicitation, a well-tested method of gathering expert …

From Insect Cognition To Sentience: Exploring The Edge, Catherine Macri, Martin Giurfa

Animal Sentience

What does The Edge of Sentience tell us about insect sentience and consciousness? In this commentary, we reflect on Jonathan Birch’s framework for defining and scientifically investigating sentience in animals. We discuss the methodological challenges of studying subjective experience in evolutionary distant species, and consider trace conditioning, affective states, and neural architectures as potential windows into consciousness in insects. We argue that uncertainty, whether concerning definitions or methodology, should not prevent experimental investigation; rather it should motivate new approaches and experimental designs for exploring the diversity of conscious experience.

Self-Maintenance And The Evidence For Artificial Sentience, Mads J. Hansen, Christoffer Lundbak Olesen

Animal Sentience

Birch aims to remain neutral about whether life is necessary for sentience. We argue that life can be given a role while maintaining neutrality. Markers of sentience have been identified in living systems, where some contribute to the system's self-maintenance. When such a marker is reproduced in an artificial system that is not self-maintaining it is not clear that it is as reliable as in living systems.

Why Minds Need Bodies: Organismic Unity And Limits Of Artificial Consciousness, Renée Snow

Comparative Philosophy

This paper argues that functional organization alone is not sufficient for phenomenal consciousness or the existence of a unified subject of experience. While many contemporary accounts of artificial consciousness assume that replicating the causal or computational structure of the brain would be sufficient for subjective experience, this paper identifies a deeper constraint: consciousness depends on organismic unity. The argument proceeds through a triangulation of conceptual, empirical, and metaphysical considerations. First, Zuboff’s thought experiment shows that functional organization can be preserved while the unity of the subject dissolves, suggesting that causal pattern replication alone cannot secure subjectivity. Second, findings from neuroscience …

Fang Zhu’S Shen-Mie-Lun And Contemporary Physicism: A Cross-Cultural Dialogue, Soo Lam Wong

Comparative Philosophy

Fan Zhen’s 范缜 “Shen-Mie-Lun 神灭论” can be read as a debate between a physicalist and a dualist in the philosophy of mind. Many of Fan’s arguments found in the “Shen-Mie-Lun” correspond to contemporary physicalism in Western analytic philosophy. My aim in this essay is to bring Fan's “Shen-Mie-Lun” into conversation with contemporary physicalism in the following way: (1) offer an outline of Fan’s physicalism as presented in the “Shen-Mie-Lun” (2) map his view onto the key positions and concepts of contemporary physicalism, (3) show how his view is (a) incompatible with eliminative …

Can Machines Testify? Llms And The Boundaries Of Testimonial Epistemology, Michael J. Cummins

Philosophy Summer Fellows

As Large Language Models and AI chatbots become increasingly prevalent, pressing questions are raised about whether beliefs formed through LLM interactions carry the same epistemic weight as beliefs formed through human testimony. How we answer this question depends on whether LLMs can function as testifiers, a role which is typically assumed to require a human or human-like agent. This assumption has gone largely unexamined, yet its consequences are significant: if LLM outputs cannot constitute testimony, then the justificatory tools of testimonial epistemology are unavailable to any beliefs formed through LLM interaction. This paper challenges that assumption. It first argues that …

Ai Is Not The Kind Of Thing That Can Ever Be Sentient, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

Sentience evolved to allow organisms to move through their environment avoiding harms and achieving benefits. Sentience did not evolve from computation. It evolved from valenced feelings. AI (even robots) are not embodied and are not the kind of thing that needs to be sentient. There is no way to get from computations to feelings. They are qualitatively different things. We should avoid being lulled into thinking that an inanimate object designed to engage our propensity for anthropomorphism, like AI, is actually a mind.

Look Out For Our Kind, Christof Koch

Animal Sentience

Strongly supportive overall of Birch’s broad tent Sentience Project, I offer an alternative dyadic, single-class, two-stage process based on estimating the probability for sentience, and the associated confidence, for any individual or taxonomic group. I criticize Birch’s narrow computational framework when addressing the question of algorithmic sentience; there are alternative approaches.

Walking The Tightrope: The Precautionary Dilemma Of Neutrality And Guidance, Farhan Lakhany

Animal Sentience

Jonathan Birch’s The Edge of Sentience promises a precautionary framework that guides ethical action without taking sides in the disputed metaphysics of consciousness. I argue that it cannot do both. Birch admits “biopsychism” (that all living organisms are conscious) into his "zone of reasonable disagreement," yet his operational criteria exclude plants and unicellular organisms by requiring evidence that biopsychism holds to be irrelevant. This leaves a dilemma. Keeping the “broad” standard preserves neutrality but extends candidacy to all life, guiding nothing; restricting to scientific evidence guides action but is itself the theoretical commitment the framework was meant to avoid.

Animal Ethics And The Lowest Common Denominator, John O. Adenitire

Animal Sentience

This commentary assesses the pragmatic framework proposed in Jonathan Birch’s The Edge of Sentience (2024). Celebrating the book's exceptional clarity, scientific rigor, and profound real-world impact on UK legislation, I nevertheless have some questions about the method by which Birch arrives at his policy recommendations for animal protection. In seeking an overlapping consensus between deeply divergent ethical and credal viewpoints, the framework risks defaulting to a minimalist, lowest-common-denominator standard of protection for animals. Birch also risks drawing the standard even lower by including serious academic positions in animal ethics that deny moral status for animals altogether. A rights-based approach offers …

On The Edge Of Science?, Mark Briffa, Lynne U. Sneddon

Animal Sentience

In The Edge of Sentience, Jonathan Birch (2024) provides a thought-provoking synthesis of current perspectives on animal (and artificial) sentience. He addresses the question from conceptual, ethical, regulatory and empirical viewpoints. Here we focus on some of the scientific issues raised, including defining and operationalising the concept of sentience and the implications for policy and regulation. Despite unresolved conceptual challenges, the book makes a compelling case for the continued scientific investigation of animal sentience.

From The Edge To The Grounds Of “Sentientism”, David Degrazia

Animal Sentience

Birch’s book is a remarkable exploration of the nature of sentience, its moral salience, evidence for its presence, and how to arrive at humane policies regarding our treatment of human beings, animals, brain organoids, and AI systems of uncertain sentience. Although Birch endorses the view that sentience is of fundamental moral importance, he endeavors to remain neutral among reasonable moral views and work out how to navigate through uncertainty—both ethical and epistemological—to arrive at defensible policies. While making common cause with Birch’s project, my own recent book advances a developed case in favor of the “sentientism” Birch endorses.

Theatrical Agency In The Constitution Of Logical Space, Esther Marveta Neff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes advantage of our current moment of collapse and shifting episteme to move from resistance and critique into modes of position, prefiguration, and praxiocentricism, giving not only a critique of the colonial-modern logical space of Theatrum Mundi, but also aiming to configure the thetic consciousness that grounds “theatrical agency” in the logic of cognitive and social epistemological modelling.  In what ways do we “build our own worlds”? What does “theatricality” tell us about human agency, especially in the domain of “theoretical attitudes,” and “consciousness”? In what ways, and to what extent, are we responsible for constituting …

Imagination And The Self: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Disciplinary Study, Qianyi Qin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the imagination and the self that engages with cognitive science, philosophy of mind, Buddhism, ethical theories, and a variety of perspectives from Asian and Western philosophy. I address the following questions in three interrelated chapters. First, what does it mean for the self to appear in imagination? In Chapter 1, against certain narrow understandings of the self in philosophy of language, I build a multidimensional model of the self in imaginative experiences to capture the rich phenomenology, drawing on empirical findings on memory and imagination. Second, can the self be removed from imagination? …

Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies, Hanyi Wang

Masters Theses

Digitization is not a modern invention. Derived from the concept of fingers, this mindset of packing information into quantifiable, interchangeable units sounds mechanical, yet eerily physical. Try to imagine: a ghostly hand with millions of fingers with the same length, likeness, and function. Under the worldview of Digital Narrative, we live in a digital simulation: everything is representable with quantifiable units, fluid across media. Yet under this spectacle of convenient abundance, something is missing. The Unknowables are replaced with arbitrary symbols, while the Uncategorizables are omitted. This is a framework that cannot accommodate human subtleties and complexities. One needs to …

Until The Ground Breaks, Annie Hu

Masters Theses

Until the Ground Breaks explores the complex relationship between personal memory, embodied experience, and internalized "archival logic." By examining long-term cross-cultural diasporic experiences and the shifting dynamics of family narratives—including the sensory experiences and fading memory of a grandmother, a father's correspondence that acts as a textual record of emotional logic, and the continuous revision of family history—this thesis dissects the psychological tremors that occur when the illusion of a singular, stable memory archive collapses. This research rejects the view of memory as a static container of truth, revealing it instead as a dynamic, unstable, and constantly rewritten living system. …

Jewelry As A Portable Sanctuary, Yuhao Li

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how individuals remain intact in the presence of emotional difficulty. Rather than treating protection as withdrawal, the research proposes that stability emerges through the construction of an interior structure capable of holding vulnerability without collapse. Drawing on psychological theory, philosophy, and spatial thinking, it frames emotional repair as a spatial condition: an interior that can contain experience and be returned to when external conditions become unstable.
Within this framework, jewelry is redefined as a material extension of this interior. Positioned between body and world, it operates as a structure of containment, functioning as a portable …

Perceptual Heterotopia: A Spatial Experience Through Light, Media, And Textiles, Anne Yeoji Kim

Masters Theses

This study originates from sensory experience of observing sunrises and sunsets. Although the space in which these phenomena occur remains constant, it is perceived in different ways due to changes in the light that enters the space at these times. From these sensory experiences, the study began to inquire into the relationship between reality and the ideal. From this inquiry, it evolved into an exploration of how the ideal, or utopian, could be experienced through the senses within the realm of reality.

The concept of a heterotopia, as proposed by Michel Foucault, was used to expand upon these issues. A …

What Is The Skeleton Of Cognition? A Structural Account Of World Reconstruction Through Processing Axes, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper describes how the placement of a single processing axis reorganizes human cognition and generates a reconstructed world.

Most existing psychological and social theories begin from emotion, desire, morality, or social behavior. In doing so, they have discussed what forms on top of the cognitive skeleton without first fixing the skeleton itself. When the skeleton is not fixed, entirely different explanations of the same phenomenon can coexist, and it becomes difficult to identify which constitutes a foundational account.

This paper fixes the skeleton first. That skeleton is the processing axis.

The question is: when a single processing axis organizes …

A Kantian Guide To Understanding Agentic Ai And Its Ethical Consequences, Amelia Wang

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

The rapid emergence of Agentic AI, which are systems capable of autonomous, multi-step decision-making with minimal human oversight, has prompted growing discourse and concern regarding whether such systems possess a form of agency comparable to that of human beings, and subsequently, what ethical responsibilities ensue if they do. This thesis argues that many of the ethical risks surrounding Agentic AI stem from a fundamental misconception, which is the tendency to describe these systems using the language of agency ("deciding," "acting," "choosing") without examining whether they satisfy the philosophical conditions for genuine rational agency. Drawing on Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the …

Invisible Shipwrecks And Neurological Endangerment: The Trade-Off In Seeking Asylum - Reframing The Neurobiological Cost Of Forced Migration, Eisha Giran

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Forced migration along the Spain–Morocco route represents one of the most visible humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century, yet its neurological dimensions remain insufficiently examined. This paper investigates how prolonged displacement and trauma reshape neural systems involved in stress regulation, memory, and emotional processing. It introduces the concept of neurological endangerment, defined as a condition of prolonged and inescapable threat exposure during forced migration in which stress-response systems remain chronically activated, opportunities for recovery are structurally constrained, and cumulative neurobiological risk persists beyond the period of immediate danger.

To address the gap between biological measurement and lived experience, this paper …

Phenomenological Philosophy Of Psychedelics: Psychedelic Experience In The Modes Of Saturation And Flesh, Michael V. Kramer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work seeks to develop the nascent sub-field of the phenomenological philosophy of psychedelics. Beginning with a general overview of key aspects pertinent to psychedelic studies, the focus then turns to a general disciplinary discussion of current approaches within the philosophy of psychedelics, as well as psychedelic philosophy—a distinction which is technically deployed. Special consideration is given to the specific approach known as the “natural philosophy of psychedelics,” which is taken as the philosophical foil to the preferred approach of phenomenological philosophy. A survey of the extant literature regarding the implementation of phenomenology within psychedelic discourse is then provided …

What History Shows: A Structural Account Of Fixed-Point Theory Formation, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

Theory generation has long been subsumed under categories such as creativity, genius, and innovation. These categories do not distinguish assembly-based conceptual synthesis from fixed-point theory generation.

This paper makes that distinction explicit. The termination condition of assembly is external: data, citation, endorsement, usability. The termination condition of fixed-point theory generation is internal: consistency with internally held constraints, resolution of structural contradiction. The two operate under different processing conditions.

The historical record confirms this distinction. What Darwin, Einstein, Spinoza, and Kant produced was not assembly. Their processes involved unresolved branch retention and decomposition necessity, arriving at internally constrained fixed-point termination. Freud …

Soma: Exploring Touch As Performance And Performance As Therapy, Erica Pamson

Expressive Therapies Theses

This project investigated the role of touch within a performative context and its potential as a creative intervention within Expressive Arts Therapy. Grounded in phenomenology and intersubjectivity, the study draws on Expressive Arts Therapy (EXAT) and Performance Art frameworks that position meaning as emerging through embodied, co-created experience. Existing literature identifies touch as a primary mode of perception and communication, essential to both physical and emotional well-being, while also noting its increasing absence and regulation within contemporary Western culture. Performance art literature further highlights the body as both medium and site of relational exchange, often dissolving boundaries between performer and …

Processing Conditions In Narrative Interpretation: A Structural Account Of Cf/Ef Divergence In "The Clerk's Tale”, Griselda Poe

Publications and Research

This paper applies the framework established in Paper 19, "Cognition Is Not Content: A Structural Account of Processing Conditions," to re-describe Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales.

The same narrative produces two incompatible interpretations: a record of domestic violence, and a story of genuine love. This divergence does not arise from differences in ethical judgment or emotional response. It arises from structural differences in the conditions under which information is reconstructed.

This paper does three things. First, it analyzes the characters Walter and Griselda in terms of CF (Core-foregrounded) and EF (Modulation-foregrounded) processing conditions. Second, it describes …