How do you know if an AI is conscious?

Abstract: Critical review of a reference article on consciousness in AIs, published by Patrick Butlin and Robert Long’s team on 22/08/23. Part 1 analyzes the pitfalls and resulting breaches in the study: sacralized definition of consciousness, exclusions in the chosen method, transposition of human theories to the digital, occultation of the qualitative phenomenon. Part 2: … Read more

Ecoterrorism: George Monbiot vs Andreas Malm

Is infrastructure sabotage deemed ecocidal productive or counterproductive? The need to repair the damage at an even greater cost to the planet marks these acts as imbued with crass stupidity. However, before concluding, let’s look at the debate between two ecologists, George Monbiot, British journalist, and Andreas Malm, Swedish geographer author of ‘How to sabotage … Read more

How do you really assess animal suffering?

Abstract: Between the sterile positions of the denigration of animal suffering and the human-animal analogism, the truth is that the experience of suffering is strictly individual and connoted “atrocious” according to moral rather than physical criteria. Exacerbated animal suffering is our neglected human suffering. Pain sensors are universal, not what feels them How do you … Read more

Can we do morality without morality?

How to renew ethics? Almost all ethical discussions start from an established morality. That is, every new moral rule is born in a circular way from laws set in stone. This conservatism protects our essential ideals. But the new rules seem exposed to the risk of inbreeding. Do they really adapt best to the frenetic … Read more

Explaining evil is not justifying it

Thinking about evil is not just about burning yourself in it With ‘Evil in modern thought‘, essayist Susan Neiman revisits Nietzsche and Arendt to condemn a resignation from contemporary philosophy about evil. She sees the Holocaust as such an exorbitant evil that it requires a complete overhaul of ethics, not just deconstructing world history. An … Read more

MORALITY summary

Our morality rests on intuition before the ideal. The little child is already building it without having received instructions on this subject. Advantage: every human owns her morality, adjusts it to hazards and personalizes it to her environment. Disadvantage: life in society imposes a difficult consensus with such a diversity of individual morals. Here appears … Read more

Moral (8): The Fundamental Flaw of Utilitarianism

Messianic collectivism Utilitarianism is a flawed philosophy, we have seen, since it can lead to the deliberate killing of innocent people, in defiance of a deontology more fundamental to the human being. But how is this possible, since it claims to represent the D of soliDarity, that is to say the interest of the greatest … Read more

Moral (7): Morally responsible?

Tumor passion Am I personally responsible for a morality that society would find inappropriate? This question, which attacks that of free will head-on, has no simple answer. Let’s look at the case of an American who, in 2000, suddenly became a sexual aggressor. Married and without history until then, he is unexpectedly passionate about prostitution, … Read more

Moral (6): Are biases stupid?

Scoop: an obese man killed by a philosophy teacher! The previous article drowned you in trolleyology. Philosophers study the moral value of our choices. Utilitarianism appears fundamentally flawed in terms of ethics. It calculates the formula of the maximum number of lives by mocking the destroyed units. It represents the pure D of the human … Read more