SafetyPage

Model welfare · Article · Rethink Priorities

Do Brains Contain Many Conscious Subsystems? If So, Should We Act Differently?

Read at rethinkpriorities.org ↗Read at sourceAll rights reserved

Outline · 130 paragraphs

  1. Key Takeaways¶4
  2. Introduction¶15
  3. Motivating Conscious Subsystems¶24
  4. Assessing Conscious Subsystems¶44
  5. Either Conscious Subsystems probably doesn’t affect what we ought to do or it should have a minimal impact on what we ought to think we ought to do¶49
  6. Even if Conscious Subsystems is true, neartermists should keep spending on animals¶51
  7. Conscious Subsystems probably supports spending far more on small invertebrates¶57
  8. We should probably assign low credences to the claims that support Conscious Subsystems¶60
  9. Neural correlate theories of consciousness =/= explanatory theories of consciousness¶62
  10. Functionalism doesn’t support conscious subsystems¶83
  11. Conclusion¶96
  12. Acknowledgments¶101