"No Consciousness, No Welfare"

Mattia Cecchinato (University of Oxford)

This talk is online and free to attend.

It will occur on December 4, 11AM EST (8AM PST/4PM GMT/5PM CET). Please visit the SSEA's website (https://www.ethicsandanimals.org/upcoming) for more information and link to attend.

ABSTRACT: Many philosophers hold that only conscious beings can be welfare subjects, subjects for whom things can be intrinsically beneficial (or harmful). This popular view―call it Phenomenal Necessitarianism―has, however, recently met some sceptics. Advocates of the non-necessitarian view argue that at least some putatively non-conscious entities, such as some sophisticated artificial intelligences, can have mental states like beliefs and desires, which they contend are sufficient to form welfare interests. This paper makes a new argument for Phenomenal Necessitarianism based on the special type of epistemic justification we have to believe in it. I argue that we have certain distinctive kinds of introspective experiences which immediately provide prima facie justification for a necessitarian belief. I also contend that there is no appropriate defeating evidence against this introspectively justified belief―neither from intuitions, nor from wellbeing theory, nor from philosophy of mind. Since, in the absence of defeating evidence, prima facie justification should be taken as all-things-considered justification, I conclude we ought to be necessitarians.