Lecturer: Charlotte Gauvry
Fields: Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of Neuroscience, Ethics of AI
Content
Determining the presence of consciousness can be challenging in some cases. Consider individuals with severe brain injuries, such as comatose patients, or those with mental disorders. The question also extends to non-Human animals and even to emerging entities like brain organoids, isolated hemispheres after hemispherotomy or advanced AI systems. These entites might exhibit minimal, say borderline, consciousness. But how can we certain they are conscious at all? The question matters because, if they are conscious, they may require protection from harm.
Session 1 will provide a general introduction to the philosophy of consciousness, in order to define the main concepts involved: phenomenal consciousness (p-consciousness), borderline consciousness and synthetic consciousness
Session 2 will address methodological questions concerning the detection of p-consciousness providing an overview of the neuro-philosophical theories of consciousness currently available
Session 3 will focus on two concrete cases of synthetic consciousness: the isolated hemisphere after hemispherotomy and brain organoids
Session 4 will focus on AI-consciousness
Literature
- Jonathan Birch (2024). The Edge of Sentience, Oxford University Press: https://academic.oup.com/book/57949
Lecturer
Dr. Charlotte Gauvry received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège (Belgium). She is currently a Teaching and Research Assistant in Philosophy at the University of Bonn (Germany). Her work focuses on the philosophy of consciousness, particularly its metaphysics (with an emphasis on representationalist and illusionism theories), borderline cases, and ethical dimensions. She has published on mental disorders (e.g. depersonalization and derealization) and brain injuries (e.g. hemispherotomy), and co-edited, with Arnaud Dewalque, Consciousness and Representation: An Introduction to Representational Theories of Mind (in French).
Affiliation: University of Bonn
Homepage: https://www.cst.uni-bonn.de/en/persons/charlotte-gauvry