Jeff Sebo
speaker
150 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 10 Jul
Jeff Sebo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And if we look at all of that together, then we can see what the best explanation of their behavior is and how plausible it might be to attribute something like feelings and emotions to them.
Well, I think that there ought to be amateur research, too.
I think there is a good place for citizen science and a lot of people participating in different ways.
And the answer to your question is yes.
I do see simplistic and reductive and overly confident arguments coming from both sides of this debate.
Again, too much confidence in favor of consciousness and then too much confidence against consciousness.
And I think that if we...
take a scientific approach inspired by and adapted from tools that have been used for decades to study consciousness in humans and other animals, then it might not be enough for proof, it might not be enough for certainty, but it can at least be enough for reducing our uncertainty or calibrating our uncertainty to have a better sense of how likely or unlikely this is based on the limited evidence currently available to us.
One question that keeps coming up for me is like,
Well, part of the motivation for the empirical framework is we have no idea right now what the obvious next step is because we need empirical research to determine that.
Again, if you consider other animals, in some cases, for example, mammals and birds, we are very confident that these animals are conscious.
And then with many other animals,
Reptiles, amphibians, fishes, invertebrates like cephalopod, mollusk, decapod, crustaceans, insects.
We at least think they have a realistic possibility of being conscious.
And yet, they have incredibly different forms of life.
They have incredibly different interests and needs.
And it would be a mistake to assume that because they are conscious, they therefore have the same interests, needs, and vulnerabilities that I do.
We need to study them scientifically, not only to determine whether they are conscious, but also why.
what they want and need if they are.
And so what this research field is designed to advance understanding of is both whether they matter and how to treat them if they matter.
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