Inferring Affective Consciousness in an Artificial Agent: A Case Study
Mark Solms, St John Grimbly, Bruce Bassett, Evert Boonstra, Rowan Hodson, Nicolas Kuske, Kival Mahadew, Benjamin Rosman, Charel van Hoof, Jonathan Shock
Abstract
Creatures that display 'hedonic place preference behaviour' are thought by many scientists to experience feelings, on the assumption that their attraction to pleasure-producing substances which lack nutritional value (e.g. cocaine, morphine) cannot easily be attributed to unconscious instinctual behaviour. In this paper, we discuss how a simple artificial agent that instantiates attributes of an affective system engaging in felt uncertainty about its intrinsic needs in relation to environmental resources can similarly display hedonic place preference behaviour -- through an apparently subjective form of information processing -- while simultaneously being entirely deter-ministic. We outline some implications of this artificially engineered behaviour for our understanding of the physical basis of consciousness and the experience of free will.
Topics
Classified with taxonomy v2 on Fri, 4 Sept 2026.