London Futurists's video: Progress in understanding consciousness

Consciousness has been debated since at least the dawn of history. What is the relationship between mind and body? Are our subjective inner experiences, our so-called qualia, or raw feelings, simply the interactions of chemicals in our brains? In the 2020s, many philosophers and scientists continue to claim that there is a ‘hard problem of consciousness’ – that consciousness cannot be fully understood with reductive methods of neuroscience and psychology. Against this, as covered in this presentation, approaches called ‘eliminativism’ and ‘illusionism’ claim that consciousness does not exist in the ways implied by everyday language. With the advent of AIs that are displaying more features of apparent sentience, there’s a renewed public interest in these age-old debates. At what point will it become ‘immoral’ to switch off and dismantle an AI that seems to be conscious? When might an AI decide ‘of its own free volition’ to take actions in defiance of its innate programming? And given the long history of philosophers apparently talking past each other on questions of consciousness, what prospects are there for clear progress to be made? The speaker in this London Futurists webinar is Jacy Reese Anthis, a PhD Fellow from the University of Chicago. Jacy is a philosopher, sociologist, statistician, and all-round polymath. He is the author of the book "The End of Animal Farming" and the co-founder of the Sentience Institute, whose website starts with the phrase, "Expanding humanity's moral circle". The event was recorded on 14th January 2023. It was introduced and moderated by David Wood, Chair of London Futurists. For more information about this event see https://www.meetup.com/london-futurists/events/290688767/ For more information about the speaker and his projects, see https://jacyanthis.com/ https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/