This is a response to the nine commentaries on our target article “Unlimited Associative Learning: A primer and some predictions”. Our responses are organized by theme rather than by author. We present a minimal functional architecture for Unlimited Associative Learning that aims to tie to together the list of capacities presented in the target article. We explain why we discount higher-order thought theories of consciousness. We respond to the criticism that we have overplayed the importance of learning and underplayed the (...) importance of spatial modelling. We decline the invitation to add a negative marker to our proposed positive marker so as to rule out consciousness in plants, but we nonetheless maintain that there is no positive evidence of consciousness in plants. We close by discussing how UAL relates to development and to its material substrate. (shrink)

This paper concerns biopsychism, the position that feeling is a vital activity of all organisms or living beings. It evaluates biopsychism specifically from the perspective of the enactive conception of life and life-mind continuity. Does the enactive conception of life as fundamentally a value-constituting and value-driven process imply a conception of life as sentient of value? Although a plausible case can be made, there remains a conceptual and inferential gap between differential responsiveness to value and hedonic value or affective valence. (...) Nevertheless, the case for zoopsychism—that animals are the only sentient living beings—over biopsychism is also inconclusive. (shrink)