{"id":2636,"date":"2025-12-16T14:26:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T19:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=2636"},"modified":"2025-12-16T14:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T19:40:15","slug":"feeling-vs-functing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2025\/12\/16\/feeling-vs-functing\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling vs. &#8220;Functing&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Many animals (spiders, cephalopods, adult salamanders, beetles, etc.) are asocial except for mating. If feeling was exapted for other functions, <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/rstb\/article\/380\/1939\/20240300\/235156\">in what sense is it\u00a0<em>original<\/em><\/a><em>?\u00a0&#8212; <\/em>felt\u00a0rather than just &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/eprints.soton.ac.uk\/272402\/1\/explangap1.htm\">functed<\/a>&#8220;?\u00a0<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>This has been dubbed the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hard_problem_of_consciousness\">hard problem<\/a>.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org\/animsent\/vol8\/iss33\/1\/\">Plants<\/a> seem to function through chemo-mechanical signals (including learning) without feeling. Can we take feeling as given and only ask about its <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/rstb\/article\/380\/1939\/20240300\/235156\">function<\/a>? Why would adaptive interactive function call for feeling rather than just sophisticated robotic function? It is still not clear how &#8220;feedback loops,&#8221; &#8220;reafference,&#8221; adaptive control, and robotic learning could explain feeling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many animals (spiders, cephalopods, adult salamanders, beetles, etc.) are asocial except for mating. If feeling was exapted for other functions, in what sense is it\u00a0original?\u00a0&#8212; felt\u00a0rather than just &#8220;functed&#8220;?\u00a0\u00a0This has been dubbed the \u201chard problem.\u201d Plants seem to function through chemo-mechanical signals (including learning) without feeling. Can we take feeling as given and only ask &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2025\/12\/16\/feeling-vs-functing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Feeling vs. &#8220;Functing&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,152,2,219,3,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness","category-hard-problem","category-ethics","category-evolution","category-other-minds-problem","category-sentience"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2636"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2642,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2636\/revisions\/2642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}