|
Wave-Particle Theory of Conscious Awareness
(A philosophical viewpoint) 
Addendum - updated March 31 2025 Please note: The fully updated 2025 version is now published. The latest edition includes all the material of the first plus new chapters on "Why Today's AIs Cannot Be Conscious", "The Nature of Evil", Evolution, The Intelectual fallacy, and the Natural-Unnatural Equivalence Fallacy. To explain consciousness we must explain not just sensations but how a three-dimensional world is perceived without relying on an inner eye that can make sense of depth cues etc. Both problems are tackled here as well as aesthetics and morality. | ||||||||
|
Sentience Book I
(Can be read independently of other books in the series) 
- Did our consciousness evolve? - Does consciousness give us free will? - Which animals do we think are conscious? - Where does consciousness go when we sleep? - How does consciousness deliver meaning? - What might a theory of consciousness look like? In this book, Carter Blakelaw sets out a theory of what makes us conscious by looking at the logic of What must be left to explain it once all the features that define it are drawn together. | ||||||||
|
Sentience Book II
(Can be read independently of other books in the series) 
To keep an AI honest, we must build-in honesty from the start. To get an AI to understand anything, we must invest it with something of what it’s like to be conscious. In this book, a theory of consciousness is cast into a radically different AI architecture that allows interventions in concept formation, by design. | ||||||||
|
Sentience Book III
(Can be read independently of other books in the series) 
And yet how can a writer, performer, painter, or musician be authentic when AI, if not snapping at their heals, leaps ahead of them so easily? In this book, Carter Blakelaw offers a Manifesto for artists of all kinds, given the nature of the human being, and of human endeavour, and how much of anything a mechanical robot brain (let's be honest about them!) can ever, really, be expected understand. Errata for first editions | ||||||||
The one hundred rules of thumb are fleshed out with examples and counter-examples (and briefly) in this how-to-write book. Some learn the hard way (trial and error and heartache) and some ask for a leg up, always on the lookout for new aspects of craft to learn... Which are you? | ||||||||
|
Sentience: three texts, one volume
Errata for first editions | ||||||
