An Overview of The Information Integration Theory of Consciousness and Reflections on its Potential Ethical Consequences
Aidan Peters St. Francis Xavier University
A BSTRACT Consciousness is subjective experience, it is the feelings which accompany different states in a physical system, for example patterns of cortical activation. The perennial question in the study of consciousness has been: how are consciousness and the physical world causally related? If the ultimate cause of consciousness is the physical world, then volition is illusory and ethics require radical restructuring. Without paying total credence to a materialistic-deterministic philosophy, the current paper sought to explore the plausibility of this reality in order to forward an alternative ethical system grounded in empathy.
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