Michał Wyrwa

Historically, technological advancements allowed us to extend our capacities. However, too much reliance on technology can undermine essential cognitive functions. As we extend our minds, we can also overextend them. In this paper, we elaborate on what it means to dilute our minds in the context of the age of generative artificial intelligence (gAI), with a special focus on computationally understood reasoning, which guides most of our decisions and actions in the environment. While gAI can be a powerful ally in enhancing productivity, careless offloading to gAI bypasses the very cognitive processes required for retaining deep understanding and problem-solving. We introduce the concept of optimally extended mind, which relies on technology to augment rather than substitute cognitive processing, thereby maintaining cognitive wellness. Our framework of cognitive wellness elucidates why some mind-extending practices are detrimental, describing the mechanism of cognitive dilution. To mitigate these risks, we propose a virtue ethics approach to gAI usage. Cultivating virtues such as prudence and temperance, we argue, can protect our reasoning capacities while still allowing us to benefit from gAI assistance.

The conviction that people recognize consciousness as radically difficult to explain is popular in the contemporary philosophical debate concerning consciousness. Among multiple questions revolving around this so-called “meta-problem of consciousness,” we find one of great importance: how universal problem intuitions are, i.e. how widespread the perception of consciousness as difficult to explain is. In this paper, we have two goals. First, to check if results for Polish natives would resemble the previous outcomes for English-speaking participants, and second, to propose a novel approach to interpreting empirical data. Following the previous study by Rodrigo Díaz described in his paper “Do People Think Consciousness Poses a Hard Problem? Empirical Evidence on the Meta-problem of Consciousness” (Journal of Consciousness Studies 28(3–4) 2021), we asked participants to rate the possibility of epistemic and metaphysical reduction of two phenomena: pain and water. The obtained results show no cross-cultural differences when compared to the previous research. Regarding the interpretations of earlier empirical results that supported the lack of folk problem intuitions, we argue that both these earlier results and our results suggest the very opposite. There is indeed a meaningful sense in which laypeople view consciousness as hard to explain.

Scholars of consciousness often view the “what it is like” phrase as an easy-to-understand strategy for introducing the topic of phenomenal consciousness. But do laypeople understand and use the phrase the way scholars do? The ordinary view assumes that the ubiquity of the phrase in philosophical writings reflects an alignment with everyday language, where it purportedly refers to phenomenal consciousness. In this article, I argue that the ordinary view is incorrect, as it overestimates laypeople’s conceptual grasp of phenomenality. Instead, I propose a weaker view: laypeople use “what it is like” to describe their subjective experiences in general terms, without committing to the concept of phenomenality. This approach offers a practical entry point for exploring how ordinary language and thinking about consciousness intersect with philosophical discourse.

Folk psychology's usefulness extends beyond its role in explaining and predicting behavior, i.e., beyond the intentional stance. In this paper, I critically examine the concept of phenomenal stance. According to this idea, attributions of phenomenal mental states impact laypeople's perception of moral patiency. The more phenomenal states we ascribe to others, the more we care about their well-being. The perception of moral patients—those affected by moral actions—is hypothesized to diverge from the perception of moral agents, those who perform moral actions. Despite its appeal, especially considering its exploration of the established relationship between folk psychology and moral cognition, the idea of the phenomenal stance faces significant challenges. It relies on laypeople recognizing the phenomenality of experience, yet experimental philosophy of consciousness suggests that there is no folk concept of phenomenal consciousness. Moreover, proponents of the phenomenal stance often conflate phenomenal states with emotional states despite the existence of both non-emotional conscious states and, arguably, non-conscious emotional states. Additionally, attributions of conscious mental states impact the perception of both moral agency and patiency. I report on experimental results indicating that some of these attributions lower the perceived moral patiency. Besides providing reasons to reject the idea of the phenomenal stance, I argue that the perception of moral patiency is guided by attributions of affective states (affects, emotions, moods). I call such attributions the affective stance and explore this concept’s relationship with empathy and other psychological concepts.

Philosophers and scientists refer to the special character of phenomenal consciousness, something supposedly obvious to all conscious persons. However, we had no empirical evidence about the folk view of consciousness until the first studies were carried out in the experimental philosophy of consciousness. According to the leading interpretation of these results, laypersons—people without academic knowledge about consciousness—do not notice the phenomenal aspect of consciousness. The aim of the article is to answer the question of whether we can trust these results. I show that there are serious doubts about the validity of the experimental philosophy of consciousness research. As a result, the leading interpretation should be rejected, and the question about the folk nature of the concept of consciousness must be regarded as open.