How to resist the Fading Qualia Argument
Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 5-2024
The Fading Qualia Argument is perhaps the strongest argument supporting the view that in order for a system to be conscious, it does not need to be made of anything in particular, so long as its internal parts have the right causal relations to each other and to the system’s inputs and outputs. I show how the argument can be resisted given two key assumptions: that consciousness is associated with vagueness at its boundaries and that conscious neural activity has a particular kind of holistic structure. I take this to show that what is arguably our strongest argument supporting the view that consciousness is substrate independent has important weaknesses, as a result of which we should decrease our confidence that consciousness can be realized in systems whose physical composition is very different from our own.
Other working papers
The structure of critical sets – Walter Bossert (University of Montreal), Susumu Cato (University of Tokyo) and Kohei Kamaga (Sophia University)
The purpose of this paper is to address some ambiguities and misunderstandings that appear in previous studies of population ethics. In particular, we examine the structure of intervals that are employed in assessing the value of adding people to an existing population. Our focus is on critical-band utilitarianism and critical-range utilitarianism, which are commonly-used population theories that employ intervals, and we show that some previously assumed equivalences are not true in general. The possible discrepancies can be…
The weight of suffering – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
How should we weigh suffering against happiness? This paper highlights the existence of an argument from intuitively plausible axiological principles to the striking conclusion that in comparing different populations, there exists some depth of suffering that cannot be compensated for by any measure of well-being. In addition to a number of structural principles, the argument relies on two key premises. The first is the contrary of the so-called Reverse Repugnant Conclusion…
What power-seeking theorems do not show – David Thorstad (Vanderbilt University)
Recent years have seen increasing concern that artificial intelligence may soon pose an existential risk to humanity. One leading ground for concern is that artificial agents may be power-seeking, aiming to acquire power and in the process disempowering humanity. A range of power-seeking theorems seek to give formal articulation to the idea that artificial agents are likely to be power-seeking. I argue that leading theorems face five challenges, then draw lessons from this result.