The purpose of this essay is to raise the prospect that engaging in artificial consciousness research, research that aims to create artifactual entities with conscious states of certain kinds, might be unethical on grounds that it wrongs or will very likely wrong the subjects of such research. I say might be unethical because, in the end, it will depend on how those entities are created and how...

Conventionally, there is a tendency to view consciousness as simply a property or activity of the brain. One can explain a lot about consciousness in this way – but not everything. In this article, we draw attention to certain aspects of consciousness that resist the conventional interpretation including, in particular, out-of-body experiences, past-life memories, the apparent linked consciousn...

Attempts to decode what has become known as the (singular) neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) suppose that consciousness is a single unified entity, a belief that finds expression in the term 'unity of consciousness'. Here, I propose that the quest for the NCC will remain elusive until we acknowledge that consciousness is not a unity, and that there are instead many consciousnesses that ar...

This analysis comments on Bernstein's lack of clear understanding of subjectivity, based on his book, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis. Bernstein limits his interpretation of subjectivity to thinkers such as Gadamer and Habermas. The authors analyze the ideas of classic scholars such as Edmund Husserl and Friedrich Nietzsche. Husserl put forward his notion of...

ions, actions, emotions, perceptions of our body and, in general, of anything that make us feel watchful. It also involves the subjective feeling of being present on the scene where events are occurring, and of being responsible for them in some way.Authors such as Damasio and Edelman have argued, albeit in slightly different ways, that there are different levels of consciousness. However, ...