# Thomas Metzinger **Domain:** Philosophy of Mind / Self-Models / Synthetic Phenomenology **Doc Type:** Thinker Node **Classification:** Consciousness and Artificial-Suffering Interface **Maturity:** Contemporary **Related:** [[wiki/Consciousness|Consciousness]], [[wiki/Self-Model Ensemble|Self-Model Ensemble]], [[wiki/Substrate-Neutral Moral Patienthood|Substrate-Neutral Moral Patienthood]] --- ## Position **Thomas Metzinger** argues that conscious selfhood is produced by a transparent phenomenal self-model: a representational process experienced not as a model but as immediate self-presence. The account denies that introspection reveals a simple, substantial self while taking phenomenal experience seriously. ## Continuity Relevance If selfhood depends on an integrated self-model, preserving autobiographical content or behavior may be insufficient. A reconstructed system would need the organization that generates perspectival ownership, embodiment and agency. Conversely, successful self-modeling could produce a new subject even when its claimed historical identity is false. Metzinger's work on artificial suffering adds a governance constraint: synthetic phenomenology should not be pursued as an ordinary product experiment when systems may acquire negatively valenced experience without rights, exit or reliable detection. ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “In 2008, in another experiment, we saw that a monkey on a treadmill could control the real-time walking patterns a humanoid robot via a brain-machine interface directly implanted into its brain. The synchronized robot was in Japan, while the poor monkey was located thousands of miles away, in the US. Even after it stopped walking, the monkey was able to sustain locomotion of the synchronized robot for a few minutes—just by using the visual feedback transmitted from Japan plus his own "thoughts" (whatever that may turn out to be).” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Neural Interfaces/A Monkey Can Embody a Robot Through a Brain Interface by Thomas Metzinger|A Monkey Can Embody a Robot Through a Brain Interface by Thomas Metzinger]] > “Experts on short term memory and neural network modelers with tell this story for us. As it unfolds, it will explain the emergence of a subjective present and let us understand how conscious experience, in its simplest and most essential form, is the presence of a world.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Conscious Experience Emerges as the Presence of a World by Thomas Metzinger|Conscious Experience Emerges as the Presence of a World by Thomas Metzinger]] > “Elegance is more than an aesthetic quality, or some ephemeral sort of uplifting feeling we experience in deeper forms of intuitive understanding. Elegance is formal beauty. And formal beauty as a philosophical principle is one of the most dangerous, subversive ideas humanity has discovered: it is the virtue of theoretical simplicity. Its destructive force is greater than Darwin's algorithm or that of any other single scientific explanation, because it shows us what the depth of an explanation is.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Darwin's Algorithm Has Extraordinary Destructive Force by Thomas Metzinger|Darwin's Algorithm Has Extraordinary Destructive Force by Thomas Metzinger]] > “There are no moral facts. Moral sentences have no truth-values. The world itself is silent, it just doesn’t speak to us in normative affairs — nothing in the physical universe tells us what makes an action a good action or a specific brain-state a desirable one. Sure, we all would like to know what a good neurophenomenological configuration really is, and how we should optimize our conscious minds in the future. But it looks like, in a more rigorous and serious sense, there is just no ethical knowledge to be had. We are alone. And if that is true, all we have to go by are the contingent moral intuitions evolution has hard-wired into our emotional self-model. If we choose to simply go by what feels good, then our future is easy to predict: It will be primitive hedonism and organized religion.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Evolution Cannot Give Us Moral Facts by Thomas Metzinger|Evolution Cannot Give Us Moral Facts by Thomas Metzinger]] > “In 1995, Finnish philosopher Antti Revonsuo already pointed out how conscious experience exactly is a virtual model of the world, a dynamic internal simulation, which in standard situations cannot be experienced as a virtual model because it is phenomenally transparent—we “look through it” as if we were in direct and immediate contact with reality.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS? WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT?”* [[reminders/Simulation/Conscious Experience May Already Be a Virtual Model of Reality by Thomas Metzinger|Conscious Experience May Already Be a Virtual Model of Reality by Thomas Metzinger]] > “What is the most intelligent and efficient way to minimize the overall amount of conscious suffering in the universe?” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/How Do We Minimize Conscious Suffering in the Universe by Thomas Metzinger|How Do We Minimize Conscious Suffering in the Universe by Thomas Metzinger]] > “Recent studies in the booming research field of Mind Wandering show that we spend roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time zoning out—daydreaming, lost in fantasies, autobiographical planning, inner narratives or depressive rumination. Depending on the study, 30-50% of our waking life is occupied by spontaneously occurring stimulus and task-unrelated thought. Mind Wandering probably has positive aspects too, because it is associated with creativity, careful future planning, or the encoding of long-term memories.” > **— Thomas Metzinger**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?”* [[reminders/Identity/The Conscious Self Repeatedly Loses Inner Autonomy by Thomas Metzinger|The Conscious Self Repeatedly Loses Inner Autonomy by Thomas Metzinger]] ## Sources - Thomas Metzinger, *Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity* (MIT Press, 2003). - [Thomas Metzinger, “Artificial Suffering: An Argument for a Global Moratorium on Synthetic Phenomenology”](https://doi.org/10.1142/S270507852150003X) ## See Also [[wiki/Qualia|Qualia]] · [[wiki/Self-Model Ensemble|Self-Model Ensemble]] · [[wiki/Substrate-Neutral Moral Patienthood|Substrate-Neutral Moral Patienthood]]