Philosophy and Theoretical Science
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Abstract
Abstract
I critically examine Jonathan Birch’s account of how brain emulations might create artificial sentience candidates, arguing that his account risks collapsing into a behaviourist account, unless the specific computational processes realised by such emulations are carefully considered. Drawing on examples from computational neuroscience, I show that similar behaviours can arise from vastly different computational processes, thereby undermining the suggestion to focus on behaviourial profiles to determine whether a brain emulation of a sentience candidate is itself a sentience candidate.
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@article{Wiese2026Artificial,
title = {Artificial Sentience: From Computational Functionalism to Behaviourism?},
author = {Wanja Wiese},
journal = {Animal Sentience},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.51291/2377-7478.1957},
url = {https://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1957}
}FAQ
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