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  1. (5 other versions)What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1974 - Philosophical Review 83 (4):435-50.
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  • (2 other versions)On a confusion about a function of consciousness.Ned Block - 1995 - Brain and Behavioral Sciences 18 (2):227-–247.
    Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different "consciousnesses." Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an example a form of reasoning about a function of "consciousness" based on (...)
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  • (5 other versions)What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1979 - In Mortal questions. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 435 - 450.
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  • Animal Liberation.Bill Puka & Peter Singer - 1977 - Philosophical Review 86 (4):557.
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  • (1 other version)Mortal Questions.Thomas Nagel - 1983 - Religious Studies 19 (1):96-99.
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  • Is consciousness intrinsically valuable?Andrew Y. Lee - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (1):1–17.
    Is consciousness intrinsically valuable? Some theorists favor the positive view, according to which consciousness itself accrues intrinsic value, independent of the particular kind of experience instantiated. In contrast, I favor the neutral view, according to which consciousness is neither intrinsically valuable nor disvaluable. The primary purpose of this paper is to clarify what is at stake when we ask whether consciousness is intrinsically valuable, to carve out the theoretical space, and to evaluate the question rigorously. Along the way, I also (...)
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  • The Value of Consciousness.Neil Levy - 2014 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 21 (1-2):127-138.
    Consciousness, or its lack, is often invoked in debates in applied and normative ethics. Conscious beings are typically held to be significantly more morally valuable than non-consious, so that establishing whether a being is conscious becomes of critical importance. In this paper, I argue that the supposition that phenomenal consciousness explains the value of our experiences or our lives, and the moral value of beings who are conscious, is less well-grounded than is commonly thought. A great deal of what matters (...)
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  • Agency and Moral Status.Jeff Sebo - 2017 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 14 (1):1-22.
    According to our traditional conception of agency, most human beings are agents and most, if not all, nonhuman animals are not. However, recent developments in philosophy and psychology have made it clear that we need more than one conception of agency, since human and nonhuman animals are capable of thinking and acting in more than one kind of way. In this paper, I make a distinction between perceptual and propositional agency, and I argue that many nonhuman animals are perceptual agents (...)
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  • Moral Limits of Brain Organoid Research.Julian J. Koplin & Julian Savulescu - 2019 - Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 47 (4):760-767.
    Brain organoid research raises ethical challenges not seen in other forms of stem cell research. Given that brain organoids partially recapitulate the development of the human brain, it is plausible that brain organoids could one day attain consciousness and perhaps even higher cognitive abilities. Brain organoid research therefore raises difficult questions about these organoids' moral status – questions that currently fall outside the scope of existing regulations and guidelines. This paper shows how these gaps can be addressed. We outline a (...)
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  • Chimpanzees: Self-recognition.G. Gallup - 1970 - Science 167:86-87.
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  • Phenomenal Consciousness.Peter Carruthers - 2001 - Mind 110 (440):1057-1062.
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  • Cerebral organoids: ethical issues and consciousness assessment.Andrea Lavazza & Marcello Massimini - 2018 - Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (9):606-610.
    Organoids are three-dimensional biological structures grown in vitro from different kinds of stem cells that self-organise mimicking real organs with organ-specific cell types. Recently, researchers have managed to produce human organoids which have structural and functional properties very similar to those of different organs, such as the retina, the intestines, the kidneys, the pancreas, the liver and the inner ear. Organoids are considered a great resource for biomedical research, as they allow for a detailed study of the development and pathologies (...)
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  • Ethical (and epistemological) issues regarding consciousness in cerebral organoids.Joshua Shepherd - 2018 - Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (9):611-612.
    In this interesting paper, Lavazza and Massimini draw attention to a subset of the ethical issues surrounding the development and potential uses of cerebral organoids. This subset concerns the possibility that cerebral organoids may one day develop phenomenal consciousness, and thereby qualify as conscious subjects—that there may one day be something it is like to be an advanced cerebral organoid. This possibility may feel outlandish. But as Lavazza and Massimini demonstrate, the science of organoids is moving fast, and I agree (...)
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  • Adopt a moratorium on heritable genome editing.Eric Lander, Françoise Baylis, Feng Zhang, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Paul Berg, Catherine Bourgain, Bärbel Friedrich, Keith Joung, Jinsong Li, David Liu & Others - 2019 - Nature 567 (7747):165–8.
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  • Brain damage and the moral significance of consciousness.Julian Savulescu - 2009 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (1):6-26.
    Neuroimaging studies of brain-damaged patients diagnosed as in the vegetative state suggest that the patients might be conscious. This might seem to raise no new ethical questions given that in related disputes both sides agree that evidence for consciousness gives strong reason to preserve life. We question this assumption. We clarify the widely held but obscure principle that consciousness is morally significant. It is hard to apply this principle to difficult cases given that philosophers of mind distinguish between a range (...)
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  • Person-Rearing Relationships as a Key to Higher Moral Status.Agnieszka Jaworska & Julie Tannenbaum - 2014 - Ethics 124 (2):242-271.
    Why does a baby who is otherwise cognitively similar to an animal such as a dog nevertheless have a higher moral status? We explain the difference in moral status as follows: the baby can, while a dog cannot, participate as a rearee in what we call “person-rearing relationships,” which can transform metaphysically and evaluatively the baby’s activities. The capacity to engage in these transformed activities has the same type of value as the very capacities (i.e., intellectual or emotional sophistication) that (...)
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  • Human cerebral organoids and consciousness: a double-edged sword.Andrea Lavazza - 2020 - Monash Bioethics Review 38 (2):105-128.
    Human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are three-dimensional in vitro cell cultures that mimic the developmental process and organization of the developing human brain. In just a few years this technique has produced brain models that are already being used to study diseases of the nervous system and to test treatments and drugs. Currently, HCOs consist of tens of millions of cells and have a size of a few millimeters. The greatest limitation to further development is due to their lack of vascularization. (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Moral Insignificance of Self‐consciousness.Joshua Shepherd - 2017 - European Journal of Philosophy 25 (2):398-415.
    In this paper, I examine the claim that self-consciousness is highly morally significant, such that the fact that an entity is self-conscious generates strong moral reasons against harming or killing that entity. This claim is apparently very intuitive, but I argue it is false. I consider two ways to defend this claim: one indirect, the other direct. The best-known arguments relevant to self-consciousness's significance take the indirect route. I examine them and argue that in various ways they depend on unwarranted (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Moral Insignificance of Self‐consciousness.Joshua Shepherd - 2016 - European Journal of Philosophy 24 (4).
    In this paper, I examine the claim that self-consciousness is highly morally significant, such that the fact that an entity is self-conscious generates strong moral reasons against harming or killing that entity. This claim is apparently very intuitive, but I argue it is false. I consider two ways to defend this claim: one indirect, the other direct. The best-known arguments relevant to self-consciousness's significance take the indirect route. I examine them and argue that in various ways they depend on unwarranted (...)
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  • Integrated Information Theory: From Consciousness to Its Physical Substrate.Giulio Tononi, Melanie Boly, Marcello Massimini & Christof Koch - 2016 - Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17 (7):450--461.
    Uncovering the neural basis of consciousness is a major challenge to neuroscience. In this Perspective, Tononi and colleagues describe the integrated information theory of consciousness and how it might be used to answer outstanding questions about the nature of consciousness.
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  • Cerebral organoids and consciousness: how far are we willing to go?Andrea Lavazza & Marcello Massimini - 2018 - Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (9):613-614.
    In his interesting commentary, Joshua Shepherd raises two points—one related to epistemology, the other to ethics—about our article on human cerebral organoids.1 2 From the epistemological standpoint, he calls into question the need for a theory of consciousness. A theory of consciousness, for him, is not necessary because of the lack of consensus about the very nature of consciousness. Shepherd suggests that ‘given widespread disagreement, applying a theory of consciousness may not be helpful when attempting to diagnose the presence of (...)
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  • Cerebral Organoids and Biological Hybrids as New Entities in the Moral Landscape.Alice Andrea Chinaia & Andrea Lavazza - 2022 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 13 (2):117-119.
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  • From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0.Masafumi Oizumi, Larissa Albantakis & Giulio Tononi - 2014 - PLOS Computational Biology 10 (5):e1003588.
    This paper presents Integrated Information Theory of consciousness 3.0, which incorporates several advances over previous formulations. IIT starts from phenomenological axioms: information says that each experience is specific a sh it is what it is by how it differs from alternative experiences; integration says that it is unified a sh irreducible to non-interdependent components; exclusion says that it has unique borders and a particular spatio-temporal grain. These axioms are formalized into postulates that prescribe how physical mechanisms, such as neurons or (...)
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  • Brain Organoids and Consciousness: Late Night Musings Inspired by Lewis Thomas.Joseph J. Fins - 2021 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 30 (4):557-560.
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  • Consciousness, value and functionalism.William E. Seager - 2001 - PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 7.
    Charles Siewert presents a series of thought experiment based arguments against a wide range of current theories of phenomenal consciousness which I believe achieves a considerable measure of success. One topic which I think gets insufficient attention is the discussion of functionalism and I address this here. Before that I consider the intriguing issue, which is seldom considered but figures prominently at the close of Siewert's book, of the value of consciousness. In particular, I broach the question of whether the (...)
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  • Ripples of consciousness.Jacobo D. Sitt, Jean-Rémi King, Lionel Naccache & Stanislas Dehaene - 2013 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (11):552-554.
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