Zoomposium with Thomas Metzinger, Part 1: 🧠 Phenomenology, Modeling, & the Ethical Limits of Artificial Consciousness 🤖
How can what we experience be scientifically captured at all? This is precisely the question addressed by the Zoom Symposium with Thomas Metzinger—one of the most influential philosophers of consciousness of our time. The focus is on the challenge of not only describing phenomenal experience—that is, subjective experience from the first-person perspective—but also translating it into formal, testable models. Metzinger advocates combining classical phenomenology with empirical research—an approach that is gaining increasing prominence under the term “computational phenomenology.” Particularly fascinating in this context are states of minimal phenomenal experience (MPE): forms of consciousness that do not rely on a distinct “I” narrative and yet enable a pure “being present.” Could such states be the key to understanding the fundamental structures of consciousness? But the conversation goes even further—toward one of the most pressing questions of our time: 👉 Can artificial consciousness emerge—and if so, what does that mean ethically? With his concept of Synthetic Phenomenology and his warning against Artificial Suffering, Metzinger draws attention to an often-overlooked risk: It is not just intelligence, but consciousness itself that could pose a moral challenge—especially if artificial systems were capable of experiencing suffering. This shifts the focus of the debate: The central question in AI ethics is no longer just what machines can do, but what they might experience. 🎥 Watch Part 1: https://youtu.be/bn9m2CRot-Y 📎More information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2026/03/15/selbstmodelle-metzinger/