Many scientists infer that organisms showing “hedonic place preference behavior” likely experience feelings, because their attraction to pleasure‑inducing, nutritionally empty substances (e.g., cocaine, morphine) cannot be easily explained by unconscious instinct. This paper examines a simple artificial agent that embodies attributes of an affective system and experiences felt uncertainty about its intrinsic needs relative to environmental resources. Despite being fully deterministic, the agent exhibits hedonic place preference through an apparently subjective information‑processing mode. We outline the implications of such engineered behavior for our understanding of the physical basis of consciousness and the experience of free will.
Review