#34 - Sentience, with Walter Veit, Dennis Hackethal, and Matt Guttman

Do Explain with Christofer Lövgren

Christofer, Walter Veit, Dennis Hackethal, and Matt Guttman speak about whether animals are sentient in this episode of Do Explain. Walter argues "yes", Dennis argues "no" and Matt argues that the hard problem really is hard. They discuss the difference between sentience and consciousness, the special way humans learn, consciousness as a binary jump vs. gradually evolving, animals as mere robots, information processing and computation, the hard problem of consciousness, anthropomorphism, panpsychism, different animal behaviors, and other related topics.
Walter Veit is a theoretical scientist and philosopher with interests stretching widely across science and philosophy. His primary research interests are located at the intersection of the biological, social, and mind sciences in addition to empirically informed philosophy and ethics.
Website: https://walterveit.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wrwveit
Dennis Hackethal is a software engineer and intelligence researcher in Silicon Valley, California. He hosts a podcast called Artificial Creativity about how to create AGI and also writes regularly about philosophy on his blog.
Website: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/
Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/dchacke
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dchackethal
Matt Guttman is a software engineer and analyst in Chicago, Illinois. He holds degrees in philosophy, business management, English literature, and education, and have an active and intriguing online presence on Twitter, @RealtimeAI.
Links provided by Dennis:
- https://www.windowonintelligence.com/
- https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
- https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/buggy-dogs
- https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-is-ambiguous
Studies provided by Walter:
Browning, H. & Veit, W. (2021). The Measurement Problem of Consciousness. Philosophical Topics. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23082.75207

Veit, W. & Browning, H. (2021). Phenomenology Applied to Animal Health and Suffering. In S. Ferrarello (Ed.), Phenomenology of Bioethics: Technoethics and Lived-Experience, pp. 73-88. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65613-3_6

Veit, W. & Huebner, B. (2020). Drawing the boundaries of animal sentience. Animal Sentience 29(13). http://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1595

Browning, H. & Veit, W. (2020). Is Humane Slaughter Possible? Animals, 10(5), 799. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10050799

Veit, W., Dewhurst, J., Dołega, K., Jones, M., Stanley, S., Frankish, K. & Dennett, D.C. (2019). The Rationale of Rationalization – Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, e53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19002164

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Find Christofer on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ReachChristofer