I propose a physicalist theory of consciousness that is an extension of the theory of noémona species. The proposed theory covers the full consciousness spectrum from animal to machine and its huma...

Recently we proposed a theory of consciousness, the attention schema theory, based on findings in cognitive psychology and systems neuroscience. In that theory, consciousness is an internal model o...

As part of the development of the Symbolic and Sub-symbolic Robotics Intelligence Control System, we have implemented a memory store to allow a robot to retain knowledge from previous exp...

This paper follows directly from an earlier paper where we discussed the requirements for an artifact to be a moral agent and concluded that the artifactual question is ultimately a red herring. As...

International Journal of Machine Consciousness, Volume 06, Issue 02, Page 141-161, December 2014. This paper follows directly from an earlier paper where we discussed the requirements for an artifact to be a moral agent and concluded that the artifactual question is ultimately a red herring. As before, we take moral agency to be that condition in which an agent can appropriately be held responsible for her actions and their consequences. We set a number of stringent conditions on moral agency. A (...) moral agent must be embedded in a cultural and specifically moral context and embodied in a suitable physical form. It must be, in some substantive sense, alive. It must exhibit self-conscious awareness. It must exhibit sophisticated conceptual abilities, going well beyond what the likely majority of conceptual agents possess: not least that it must possess a well-developed moral space of reasons. Finally, it must be able to communicate its moral agency through some system of signs: A "private" moral world is not enough. After reviewing these conditions and pouring cold water on recent claims for having achieved "minimal" machine consciousness, we turn our attention to a number of existing and, in some cases, commonplace artifacts that lack moral agency yet nevertheless require one to take a moral stance toward them, as if they were moral agents. Finally, we address another class of agents raising a related set of issues: autonomous military robots. (shrink)

By allowing one artificial neural network to govern the synaptic noise injected into another based upon its appraisal of patterns nucleating from such disturbances, a contemplative form of artifici...

Igor Aleksander and Helen B. Morton, Int. J. Mach. Conscious. 06, 67 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400113.

Raúl Arrabales, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 1 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400010.

Peter Boltuc, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 5 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400022.

Ron Chrisley, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 13 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400034.

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Randal A. Koene, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 41 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S179384301440006X.

Drew McDermott, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 45 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400071.

Alexei V. Samsonovich, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 49 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400083.

Ricardo Sanz, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 55 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400095.

Murray Shanahan, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 63 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400101.