The value of consciousness: experiences worth having
Open accessAbstract
DC. Dennett (2020,personal communication) asked: ‘How do we go from doing things for reasons to having reasons for doing things?’. This question targets a fundamental shift in nature: while all organisms act in the way they do for reasons that are shaped by extrinsic evolutionary cost functions, some also act for reasons of their own, even engaging in behaviour that may be detrimental to their own existence. For such organisms, we argue, phenomenal experience—what it feels like—has intrinsic value. Here, we elaborate on the perspective developed by Axel Cleeremans and Catherine Tallon-Baudry (Cleeremans, Tallon-Baudry 2022 Neurosci. Conscious , 2022 , niac007. (doi: 10.1093/nc/niac007 )) and defend the claim that phenomenal experience broadens an organism’s ability to act in a manner that is not merely responsive to the objective value of an extrinsic evolutionary cost function but is also shaped by the preference-driven subjective value associated with items, situations, events or other agents. Importantly, we argue that the intrinsic value of subjective experience cannot always be reduced to other forms of extrinsic values, because subjective value can act not only as a driver of behaviour, but also as a target for behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolutionary functions of consciousness’.
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Respondents may view consciousness positively, thus preferentially attributing it to entities, including AI, when uncertain to provide what they perceive as a socially agreeable, expected answer.
“Respondents may also view consciousness positively (Moncoucy et al., 2025), thus preferentially attributing it to entities, including AI, when uncertain to provide what they perceive as a socially agreeable, expected answer (Steenkamp et al., 2010).”
From Are Attributions of Consciousness to AI Chatbots Epistemically Innocent? (2026) · cites this paper as Moncoucy et al., 2025
The Introduction (page unavailable) describes phenomenal experience as intrinsically valuable to the conscious subject, which supports a positive valuation of conscious experience. It does not examine whether respondents view consciousness itself positively. The claims about attributing consciousness to AI and giving a socially agreeable answer are attached to a different citation in the citing sentence. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Moncoucy, L., Dołęga, K., Tallon-Baudry, C., & Cleeremans, A.
- Affiliations
- Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE)
- INSERM-ENS, Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
- Corresponding author
- Cleeremans, Axel
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2025-11-13
- Volume
- 380
- Issue
- 1939
- Pages
- 20240303-20240303
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC12612692
- OpenAlex
- W4416188548
- Cited by
- 6
- References
- 54
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3
- FWCI
- 6.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Dépôt institutionnel de l'Université libre de Bruxelles (Université Libre de Bruxelles) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- H2020 European Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Keywords
- phenomenal consciousness, subjective value, extrinsic value, reasons for action
- MeSH terms
- Consciousness, Biological Evolution, Humans
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