Mattia Cecchinato

Uehiro Scholarship for Future Generations

Joining us from: Italy

DPhil Philosophy (2022)

I am writing a DPhil thesis on the moral significance of consciousness. We all know more or less what consciousness is: it’s the inner stream of experience that we lose when we fall into a dreamless sleep and regain when we start dreaming or wake up in the morning. It’s colours, smells, pleasures, pains, emotions, and much more. What we know less about is the extent to which consciousness matters morally. Does a being need to be capable of consciousness to have interests that deserve moral consideration? If so, does it need to be conscious in a particular way, or do all conscious minds deserve some degree of moral consideration—no matter how minimal these minds are, or how different they are from our own?

Today, when we try to understand whether we owe anything to animals—and what we owe them if we do—we cannot only investigate their minds empirically. We also need to understand what kind of mind we care about in the first place. In the near future, as AIs become more and more sophisticated, people will start to wonder whether we should treat them as persons, as analogues to animals, or as mere tools. The answer, once again, will largely depend on what kind of mental life should be the focus of our ethical concern.

I'm also interested in the relationship between consciousness and wellbeing. Conscious experiences like joy, pain, affection, and aesthetic appreciation seem extremely important when it comes to evaluating how well one’s life is going. But what is it about consciousness that makes it good (or bad) for us? Imagine that you have access to a machine that can provide you with any positive state of consciousness you are capable of experiencing—an experience machine. How would you program it? What are the best experiences we can have?

I find making progress on these philosophical questions immensely important and satisfying. For this, I will always be grateful for the support of the Uehiro Foundation and to St Cross College—whose beauty has certainly improved the quality of my conscious experience!