Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?: Scientific American
Can a lobster ever truly have any emotions? What about a beetle? Or a sophisticated computer? The only way to resolve these questions conclusively would be to engage in serious scientific inquiry--but even before studying the scientific literature, many people have pretty clear intuitions about what the answers are going to be. A person might just look at a computer and feel certain that it couldn't possibly be feeling pleasure, pain or anything at all. That's why we don't mind throwing a broken computer in the trash. Likewise, most people don't worry too much about a lobster feeling angst about its impending doom when they put one into a pot of boiling water. In the jargon of philosophy, these intuitions we have about whether a creature or thing is capable of feelings or subjective experiences--such as the experience of seeing red or tasting a peach--are called "intuitions about phenomenal consciousness."
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