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brembs.net

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Jonathan Birch, Précis of The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI

Abstract

Jonathan Birch's (2025) LSE criteria for sentience include motivational trade-offs, exemplified by C. elegansweighing hunger against desiccation risk. Yet once the neural circuit is known, this "trade-off" reduces to a single inhibitory synapse—an ‘elemental’ account discrediting the ‘molar’ one. My commentary illustrates the same discrepancy in Drosophila: dopaminergic ramping during courtship as it progressively suppresses threat-detecting neurons; so persistence past danger reflects recalibrated valuation rather than a weighed decision. As neurobiology increasingly discovers such discrepancies, all criteria resting on behavioral classifications risk being defined away without altering the behavior's validity.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License

Author Biography

 Björn Brembs is a neurogeneticist working at the University of Regensburg. He studies adaptive behavioral choice in situations where animals are forced to act spontaneously and learn from the consequences of their actions.   Website

DOI

10.51291/2377-7478.1944