A Theory of Sentience PDF Download

Author: Austen Clark
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 9780198238515
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Drawing on the findings of neuroscience, this text proposes and defends the hypothesis that the various modalities of sensation share a generic form that the author, Austen Clark, calls feature-placing.

Author: Donald M Broom
Publisher: CABI
ISBN: 1780644035
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Sentience – the ability to feel, perceive and experience – is central to the animal welfare debate as it raises the question of whether animals experience suffering in life and death. This book explores and answers these questions in an objective way, based on the latest research and empirical evidence. Beginning with an introduction to sentience, the book investigates why we are so interested in sentience, when, as a species, humans became sentient and how it has changed over time. The book defines aspects of sentience such as consciousness, memory and emotions, and discusses brain complexity in detail. Looking at sentience from a developmental perspective, it analyses when in an individual’s growth sentience can be said to appear and uses evidence from a range of studies investigating embryos, foetuses and young animals to form an enlightening overview of the subject. With a full chapter covering ethical decisions such as animal protection and experimentation, this book is not only an invaluable resource for researchers and students of animal welfare and biology, but also an engaging and informative read for veterinarians and the general public. Sentience – the ability to feel, perceive and experience – is central to the animal welfare debate as it raises the question of whether animals experience suffering in life and death. This book explores and answers these questions in an objective way, based on the latest research and empirical evidence. Beginning with an introduction to sentience, the book investigates why we are so interested in sentience, when, as a species, humans became sentient and how it has changed over time. The book defines aspects of sentience such as consciousness, memory and emotions, and discusses brain complexity in detail. Looking at sentience from a developmental perspective, it analyses when in an individual’s growth sentience can be said to appear and uses evidence from a range of studies investigating embryos, foetuses and young animals to form an enlightening overview of the subject. With a full chapter covering ethical decisions such as animal protection and experimentation, this book is not only an invaluable resource for researchers and students of animal welfare and biology, but also an engaging and informative read for veterinarians and the general public.

Author: Jackie Higgins
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 9781529030815
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
An enthralling examination of some of the most remarkable creatures in the animal kingdom, and what they tell us about what it means to be human.

Author: Pentti O Haikonen
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 981120506X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
THIS BOOK is the fully revised and updated second edition of 'Consciousness and Robot Sentience'. With lots of new material, it will provide new insights into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine consciousness, beyond materials published in the first edition. The organization of this book has been streamlined for better clarity and continuity of the lines of arguments.The perspective of AI has been added to this edition. It is shown that contemporary AI has a hidden problem, which prevents it from becoming a true intelligent agent. A self-evident solution to this problem is given in this book.This solution is surprisingly connected with the concepts of qualia, the mind-body problem and consciousness. These are the hard problems of consciousness that so far have been without viable solution. Unfortunately, the solution to the hidden problem of AI cannot be satisfactorily implemented, unless the phenomena of qualia and consciousness are first understood. In this book an explanation of consciousness is presented, one that rejects material and immaterial substances, dualism, panpsychism, emergence and metaphysics. What remains is obvious. This explanation excludes consciousness in digital computers, but allows the artificial creation of consciousness in one natural-like way, by associative non-computational neural networks.The proof of a theory calls for empirical verification. In this case, the proof could be in the form of a sentient robot. This book describes a step towards this in the form of the author's small experimental robot XCR-1. This robot has evolved through the years, and has now new cognitive abilities, which are described.

Author: Joyce D'Silva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136571698
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Modern urban life cuts us off from direct connection with the animal world, yet daily the lives of millions of animals are affected by what we consume and wear and what we trade in. The use of animals for food, labour and pleasure pursuits has long been justified with the assumption that unlike humans, animals aren't fully sentient beings. In recent years, however, science has revealed an astonishing array of complex animal behaviour, and scientists and policy makers now accept that the animals we make use of are indeed conscious, with preferences and intentions. The implications for our culture of factory farming, fast food and rainforest liquidation are staggering. In this powerful book, internationally renowned experts on animal behaviour and agriculture such as Jane Goodall, Tim Lang and Vandana Shiva are brought together with ethicists, religious scholars, international industry and regulators for the first time to debate these critical issues and tackle the profound implications of animal sentience. The first sections discuss scientific and ethical perspectives on the consciousness, emotions and mental abilities of animals. Later sections address how human activities such as science, law, religion, farming, food production, trade, development and education respect or ignore animals' sentience and welfare, and review the options for changes in our policies, our practices and our thinking. The result is nothing less than a stark and necessary look into the heart of humanity and the ethics that govern our animal powered society.

Author: Matthew R. Silliman
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972512
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Sentience and Sensibility is a dialogue that engages a number of issues in moral theory in a rigorous and original manner, while remaining accessible to students and other nonspecialist readers. It accomplishes this by means of the time-honored (if presently dormant) medium of philosophical dialogue, in which its characters actively challenge each other to clarify their ideas and defend their reasoning. In this manner the conversation develops and weighs some proposed solutions, in largely non-technical language, to a number of current and traditional moral problems (including the nature and origin of moral value, the moral status of nonhuman animals, problems of partiality, and other vexed topics).Moral philosophy and theory can seem as remote and intimidating as everyday ethical matters and moral intuitions are pressing. Sentience and Sensibility proposes that these two should meet. The book's characters gently challenge each other to clarify their thinking and defend their reasoning, and in this rigorous yet personable manner explore traditional and fresh takes on morality. The conversation aims not only to discover thoughtful answers to such questions, but to do so while being respectful of both philosophical theory and ordinary moral intuitions

Author: Piergiorgio Di Giminiani
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816535523
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In 1990, when Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year military dictatorship ended, democratic rule returned to Chile. Since then, Indigenous organizations have mobilized to demand restitution of their ancestral territories seized over the past 150 years. Sentient Lands is a historically grounded ethnography of the Mapuche people’s engagement with state-run reconciliation and land-restitution efforts. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani analyzes environmental relations, property, state power, market forces, and indigeneity to illustrate how land connections are articulated, in both landscape experiences and land claims. Rather than viewing land claims as simply bureaucratic procedures imposed on local understandings and experiences of land connections, Di Giminiani reveals these processes to be disputed practices of world making. Ancestral land formation is set in motion by the entangled principles of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, two very different and sometimes conflicting processes. Indigenous land ontologies are based on a relation between two subjects—land and people—both endowed with sentient abilities. By contrast, legal land ontologies are founded on the principles of property theory, wherein land is an object of possession that can be standardized within a regime of value. Governments also use land claims to domesticate Indigenous geographies into spatial constructs consistent with political and market configurations. Exploring the unexpected effects on political activism and state reparation policies caused by this entanglement of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, Di Giminiani offers a new analytical angle on Indigenous land politics.

Author: Amir Husain
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501144677
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Explores universal questions about humanity's capacity for living and thriving in the coming age of sentient machines and AI, examining debates from opposing perspectives while discussing emerging intellectual diversity and its potential role in enabling a positive life.

Author: Terry A. Adams
Publisher: [New York] : Daw Books
ISBN: 9780886771089
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Despite the prejudice against D'neeran telepaths, Lady Hanna is asked to be a crew member of the starship Endeavor on its mission of exploration

Author: Nicholas Humphrey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198858531
Category : Consciousness
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
We feel therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are essential to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? To answer these questions we need a scientific understanding of consciousness: what it is and why it has evolved. Nicholas Humphrey has been researching these issues for fifty years. In this extraordinary book, weavingtogether intellectual adventure, cutting-edge science, and his own breakthrough experiences, he tells the story of his quest to uncover the evolutionary history of consciousness: from his discovery of blindsight after brain damage in monkeys, to hanging out with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, tobecoming a leading philosopher of mind. Out of this, he has come up with an explanation of conscious feeling - 'phenomenal consciousness' - that he presents here in full for the first time. Building on this theory of how phenomenal consciousness is generated in the human brain, he turns to the morally crucial question of whether it exists in non-human creatures. His conclusions, on the evidence as it stands, are radical. Contrary to both popular and much scientific opinion, he argues thatphenomenal consciousness is a relatively recent evolutionary innovation, present only in warm-blooded creatures, mammals and birds. Invertebrates, such as octopuses and bees, for all their intelligence, are in this respect unfeeling zombies. And for now, but not necessarily for ever, so are man-mademachines.