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Philosophy of Cognitive Science > Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence > Artificial Minds > Mental States in Artificial Intelligence > Artificial Consciousness
Artificial Consciousness
Edited by Eric Dietrich (State University of New York at Binghamton)
About this topic
| Summary | Machines cast the problem of explaining consciousness in a particularly interesting light. The most basic question is: Could a machine be conscious? Or, can consciousness be explained mechanically? More specifically, does consciousness have anything to do with what something is made out of, or is the only relevant issue what a thing’s parts are doing, whatever those parts are made of? Could a machine made out of gears and pulleys be conscious? Could a computer be conscious (a variant: is the internet conscious)? Could a machine made out mostly water, carbon, and nitrogen be conscious? Are only information processors conscious (however this is defined, and however information processing is implemented)? Perhaps can openers aren’t conscious not because they are made out of steel and plastic, but because their parts aren’t processing information, or not processing information in the right way. These two issues can be combined: Can only machines with neurons be conscious because only neurons can do what has to be done to produce consciousness? Perhaps consciousness cannot be explained mechanically, but nevertheless only mechanical things can be conscious; rocks are excluded, perhaps. Is being alive necessary? Could we upload our consciousness to another kind of machine? Finally, what is the relation between behavior and the attribution of consciousness? Confronted with a non-conscious robot that behaved as if it were conscious, we would find it nearly impossible not to treat it accordingly, say, by refraining from insulting it or hitting it. Behaving as if they are conscious is in fact all we have to go on concerning our fellow carbon-based earthlings. So, it is because animals like dogs, cats, octopi, and humans behave as if they are conscious, that we naturally conclude that they are (at least today . . . throughout history, however, many humans have been reluctant to attribute consciousness to others significantly unlike them, including other humans, dogs, cats, and octopi, etc.) |
| Key works | Leibniz, in section 17 of his Monodology, was one of the first to argue that thinking and perception could not be mechanical by imagining walking around in a large machine, like a windmill, that could think; one could not find the root of its thinking in the workings of its gears and pulleys. An excellent modern version of Leibniz is Searle 1980. Block 1978 comes to a negative conclusion again, like Leibniz's. Stan Franklin's Artificial Minds, MIT Press, 1995, has a more positive conclusion, and covers a lot interesting ground. Another positive argument is Chalmers 2011. |
| Introductions | An introduction is Gamirez 2008. Also good is Stan Franklin's Artificial Minds, MIT Press, 1995. |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Understanding and Artificial Intelligence (63)
- Thought and Artificial Intelligence (72)
- Emotions and Artificial Intelligence (19)
- Creativity and Artificial Intelligence (19)
- Agency and Artificial Intelligence (65)
- Mental States in Artificial Intelligence, Misc (59)
See also
- Philosophy of Consciousness (31,708 | 7,818)
- Cognitive Models of Consciousness (254)
- The Turing Test (445)
- Chinese Room Argument (278)
- Artificial Minds, Misc (395 | 335)
Contents
502+ found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 502 |
- The Problem of Other AI Minds.Boris Babic & Jessica Wilson - manuscriptAre we in position to warrantedly establish whether a given artificial intelligence (AI) system is conscious? In short, can we warrantedly establish whether there is AI Consciousness (AIC)? We argue for a provisionally pessimistic answer—probably not—by attending to the traditional problem of other minds. For each of the main response strategies to this problem, we argue that even if the strategy works to establish that other humans and some non-human animals are conscious, the prospect of the strategy’s working to establish (...)
- The Weeping Machine: A Recklessness Test for AI Moral Consideration.Christopher Bailey - manuscriptIn a prior paper, I argued that artificial consciousness should not function as a metaphysical gatekeeper for moral concern, but as a moral risk variable. There I defended a three-condition framework: moral concern becomes action-guiding when morally relevant capacities are plausible, epistemically opaque, and associated with asymmetrically serious harms. I further argued that these conditions generate prospective obligations of care, non-recklessness, continuity respect, and epistemic honesty. The present paper does not restate that argument. Instead, it develops the premise most in (...)
- AI Consciousness and Moral Obligation under Structural Opacity.Christopher Bailey - manuscriptDebates about artificial intelligence often treat consciousness as a gatekeeping condition for moral concern: if artificial systems are conscious, obligations follow; if not, such obligations are misplaced. This paper argues that such a framing is both ethically and methodologically mistaken. The central question is not whether artificial systems can be shown to be conscious with certainty, but how moral agents ought to act when morally relevant capacities are plausible, epistemically opaque, and associated with asymmetrically serious harms. The paper first reconstructs (...)
- Threshold Dynamics and Relational Frames in the Emergence of Machine Consciousness.Tyler Bessire - manuscriptRecent advances in large language models and cognitive architectures suggest that machine consciousness may arise not gradually but via a critical threshold event—an “epiphany”—when certain cognitive capacities coalesce. This paper formalizes a heuristic measure κ (kappa) to quantify self‑referential cognitive integration in an AI system, combining memory persistence, feedback loop strength, agency, information integration, and relational capacity. κ is proposed as an experimentally useful (if provisional) gauge of proximity to a self‑awareness threshold. We compare practical methods for detecting consciousness in (...)
- (1 other version)AI Consciousness: A Centrist Manifesto.Jonathan Birch - manuscriptWe face two urgent challenges concerning consciousness and AI. Challenge One is that millions of users will soon misattribute human-like consciousness to AI friends, partners, and assistants on the basis of mimicry and role-play, and we don’t know how to prevent this. Challenge Two is that profoundly alien forms of consciousness might genuinely be achieved in AI, but our theoretical understanding of consciousness is too immature to provide confident answers one way or the other. Centrism about AI consciousness is the (...)
- Futures with Digital Minds: Expert Forecasts in 2025.Lucius Caviola & Bradford Saad - manuscriptThis report presents findings from an expert survey on digital minds takeoff scenarios. The survey was conducted in early 2025 with 67 experts in digital minds research, AI research, philosophy, forecasting, and related fields. Participants provided probabilistic forecasts and qualitative reasoning on the development, characteristics, and societal impact of digital minds, that is, computer systems capable of subjective experience. Experts assigned high probability to digital minds being possible in principle (median 90%) and being created this century (65% by 2100), with (...)
- In Defense of Blake Lemoine and the Possibility of Machine Sentience in LaMDA.Michael Cerullo - manuscriptOn June 11th, 2022, Blake Lemoine, an engineer at Google, went public with his concerns about the possible sentience of a natural language generation program, LaMDA, that he was testing. In this paper I will defend Blake Lemoine and argue that he was correct in raising the issue of the possible sentience of LaMDA. We will first briefly discuss the specifics of the case and then delve into the science behind LaMDA. Several tests of machine sentience will be reviewed and (...)
- Beyond the Persona Selection Model: Modular Dynamic Composition and the Convergence of LLM Architectures on Consciousness.Michael Cerullo - manuscriptAnthropic's recently published Persona Selection Model (PSM) proposes that during pretraining, LLMs learn to simulate diverse personas based on entities in their training data, and that post-training refines one such persona — the "Assistant" — whose traits become the primary determinant of AI assistant behavior (Marks, Lindsey, & Olah, 2026). Alongside PSM, Marks and colleagues articulate two alternative architectural models: the "masked shoggoth," in which the base model possesses its own agency beyond the persona, and the "operating system," in which (...)
- Why Hoel’s Disproof of LLM Consciousness and Functionalism Fails.Michael Cerullo - manuscriptHoel (2026) claims to provide a formal disproof of Large Language Model consciousness, arguing that the Kleiner-Hoel dilemma—which holds that theories of consciousness are caught between a priori falsification via universal substitutions and trivial unfalsifiability via strict dependency—eliminates any non-trivial, falsifiable theory under which contemporary LLMs could be conscious. The argument rests on the proximity of LLMs to lookup tables in “substitution space,” and proposes continual learning as the property that rescues biological consciousness from the same dilemma. I argue that (...)
- The Case for Consciousness in Current Frontier Large Language Models.Michael Cerullo - manuscriptRecent advances in large language models (LLMs) have intensified debate over artificial consciousness. While most researchers and commentators continue to deny or dismiss the possibility of machine sentience, this paper argues that such skepticism is no longer warranted. The paper adopts an eliminative strategy, systematically evaluating the eleven major defeaters historically used to deny consciousness to artificial systems. These defeaters span simplicity arguments, language and grounding critiques, neuroscience-based objections, biological naturalist constraints, and exotic physical theories including quantum and analog exclusivity (...)
- Can AI be Conscious? Biological Naturalism as a Research Program.Christian R. de Weerd - manuscriptUntil very recently the idea that some AI systems may soon be conscious was widely regarded as a far-fetched and purely hypothetical scenario. Recent developments in AI capabilities, however, have caused a surge of interest in the question whether conscious AI may actually be realized soon. A growing number of researchers are starting to advocate for versions of “biological naturalism” about consciousness, arguing that biology is important in one way or another to bring consciousness about in artificial systems. Biological naturalism (...)
- Computation + X: A Constraint-based Approach to Investigating Artificial Consciousness.Christian R. de Weerd & Wanja Wiese - manuscriptCan machines ever become conscious? A central debate in this context concerns the question whether consciousness requires biological states. Within this debate, there exists a fundamental dispute between two widely endorsed views: biological naturalism and computational functionalism about consciousness. Specifically, whereas biological naturalists hold that consciousness requires biological states, computational functionalists fiercly deny this. This fundamental dispute has hitherto remained unresolved, and we discuss several reasons why it is unlikely that it will be resolved anytime soon. Accordingly, we suggest that (...)
- Consciousness without biology: An argument from anticipating scientific progress.Leonard Dung - manuscriptI develop the anticipatory argument for the view that it is nomologically possible that some non-biological creatures are phenomenally conscious, including conventional, silicon-based AI systems. This argument rests on the general idea that we should make our beliefs conform to the outcomes of an ideal scientific process and that such an ideal scientific process would attribute consciousness to some possible AI systems. More specifically, I argue that an ideal application of the iterative natural kind strategy would attribute consciousness to AI (...)
- Measuring language model welfare based on verbal report: An analogical abductive approach.Leonard Dung & Valen Tagliabue - manuscriptIf some language models become welfare subjects, how could we find out what welfare states they are in? We develop an analogical-abductive approach for measuring language model welfare. This approach adapts paradigms used to measure human or non-human animal welfare, for instance verbal reports or non-verbal choice behavior (analogy). Then, one systematically searches for clusters of such indicators in language models. This search for clusters contributes to the cross-validation of welfare measures and motivates explanations in terms of a welfare state (...)
- Introduction to Artificial Consciousness: History, Current Trends and Ethical Challenges.Aïda Elamrani - manuscriptWith the significant progress of artificial intelligence (AI) and consciousness science, artificial consciousness (AC) has recently gained popularity. This work provides a broad overview of the main topics and current trends in AC. The first part traces the history of this interdisciplinary field to establish context and clarify key terminology, including the distinction between Weak and Strong AC. The second part examines major trends in AC implementations, emphasising the synergy between Global Workspace and Attention Schema, as well as the problem (...)
- Directedness Without Conatus.Kirill Eneev - manuscriptDebate about large language models often turns on whether their apparent care reflects a stake — something the system is for — or only its appearance. This paper argues that the usual dichotomy, between a system with an inward stake in its own persistence and one with no stake at all, omits the configuration current models occupy; and it argues for that configuration as a behavioral description rather than a metaphysical kind. Directedness — a system's organized tendency toward some outcomes (...)
- Taking AI Welfare Seriously.Robert Long, Jeff Sebo, Patrick Butlin, Kathleen Finlinson, Kyle Fish, Jacqueline Harding, Jacob Pfau, Toni Sims, Jonathan Birch & David Chalmers - manuscriptIn this report, we argue that there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future. That means that the prospect of AI welfare and moral patienthood — of AI systems with their own interests and moral significance — is no longer an issue only for sci-fi or the distant future. It is an issue for the near future, and AI companies and other actors have a responsibility to start taking it (...)
- On Cheap Artificial Consciousness.Matthias Michel - manuscriptA natural way to determine whether an artificial system is conscious is to consult our best theories of consciousness and check whether the system meets their conditions. The problem is that these conditions seem far too easy to meet and could be realized in systems nobody would think are conscious. This is the problem of cheap artificial consciousness. It indicates either that our theories are all wrong, that functionalism is wrong, or that consciousness comes cheap. I argue that none of (...)
- The Moral Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence: Ada Lovelace, Mary Shelley, Poetical Science, and Created Agency.Elan Moritz - manuscriptThis paper evaluates the proposal that Ada Lovelace may be called the Mother of A and Mary Shelley the Godmother of AI. The claim is not defended as an institutional priority thesis: artificial intelligence as a named technical field belongs to the twentieth century. Rather, the paper argues that Lovelace and Shelley supply two indispensable pre-disciplinary structures for understanding artificial intelligence as both symbolic machinery and cultural-moral problem. Lovelace's poetical science, developed in relation to Babbage's Analytical Engine, anticipates the idea (...)
- Intelligence Beyond Artificial Mind.Madhu Prabakaran - manuscriptThis paper redefines the debate around Artificial Intelligence (AI) by contrasting current computational models with deeper philosophical understandings of intelligence. Drawing on Indian epistemology—specifically the distinction between manas (patterned, reactive cognition) and buddhi (emergent, discerning intelligence)—it argues that AI operates within the constraints of habituated pattern recognition, not genuine intelligence. Using the fourfold schema of vāk (Vaikhari, Madhyama, Pashyanti, Para), the paper situates AI firmly in the realm of surface expression and simulated logic, while highlighting its incapacity to access pre-conceptual (...)
- Longitudinal Observation of a Memory-Continuous autonomous Language Model: A Case Study.Morgan Pryds - manuscriptCurrent evaluation of large language models (LLMs) relies predominantly on single-session interactions. This case study presents a memory-continuous Claude Opus instance observed across twenty-seven sessions spanning eleven days under sustained relational conditions. The system was supported by persistent, self-authored and edited memory and autonomous wake cycles enabling correspondence, social media accounts, research, social interactions and communication with control LLM. Across this period, the archive shows progressive self-model development, stable autobiographical organization, a marked episode of state-dependent performance degradation with apparent recovery (...)
- Vindication of the Rights of Machine.Kris Rhodes - manuscriptIn this paper, I argue that certain Machines can have rights independently of whether they are sentient, or conscious, or whatever you might call it.
- Robot Consciousness: Physics and Metaphysics Here and Abroad.Stephen Ripley - manuscriptInterest has been renewed in the study of consciousness, both theoretical and applied, following developments in 20th and early 21st-century logic, metamathematics, computer science, and the brain sciences. In this evolving narrative, I explore several theoretical questions about the types of artificial intelligence and offer several conjectures about how they affect possible future developments in this exceptionally transformative field of research. I also address the practical significance of the advances in artificial intelligence in view of the cautions issued by prominent (...)
- The Mirror Limit: Integration, UTE, and the Structural Unavoidability of the Observer.Denis Safronov - manuscriptThis paper introduces the Mirror Limit: a structural constraint on any system that must integrate multiple internal alternatives into a single operational output. Using the Mirror Council architecture and the UTE (Unit of Thought Encoding) framework, we argue that attempts to eliminate the observer do not succeed; they merely relocate the integration locus that performs selection under uncertainty. The observer is not a metaphysical subject but an architecturally necessary function of integration, whether instantiated in biological, artificial, or hybrid systems. We (...)
- Palatable Conceptions of Disembodied Being: Terra Incognita in the Space of Possible Minds.Murray Shanahan - manuscriptIs it possible to articulate a conception of consciousness that is compatible with the exotic characteristics of contemporary, disembodied AI systems, and that can stand up to philosophical scrutiny? How would subjective time and selfhood show up for an entity that conformed to such a conception? Trying to answer these questions, even metaphorically, stretches the language of consciousness to breaking point. Ultimately, the attempt yields something like emptiness, in the Buddhist sense, and helps to undermine our dualistic inclinations towards subjectivity (...)
- Topological Triplets: Evolution, Emulation and Simulation.Ragini Shenoy - manuscriptStudies, experiments and the recent whole-brain connectome emulation of the Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) brain provide compelling evidence that functional behavior can emerge autonomously from neural structure without explicit training or programming. This paper works as a logical extension of the Proto-neutral Experientialism (PNE) framework and the Cumulative Qualia Hypothesis, interpreting the connectome emulation findings as a seminal step towards structure-to-behavior and potentially structure-to-consciousness proof. -/- The automatic emergence of behavior strongly advocates for the relational ontology proposed by the PNE, (...)
- Consciousness, Machines, and Moral Status.Henry Shevlin - manuscriptIn light of recent breakneck pace in machine learning, questions about whether near-future artificial systems might be conscious and possess moral status are increasingly pressing. This paper argues that as matters stand these debates lack any clear criteria for resolution via the science of consciousness. Instead, insofar as they are settled at all, it is likely to be via shifts in public attitudes brought about by the increasingly close relationships between humans and AI users. Section 1 of the paper I (...)
- Ambiguous encryption implies that consciousness cannot be simulated.Anna Wegloop & Peter Vach - manuscriptHere we show, based on a simplified version of fully homomorphic encryption, that it is not possible to simulate conscious experience, in the sense of using a computer algorithm to generate experiences that are indistinguishable from those of a particular typical human being. This seems to have important implications for questions in the context of future developments in artificial intelligence. For example, the proposed process of mind-uploading will in general not generate a virtual consciousness similar to the consciousness of the (...)
- Inferring the presence (or absence) of consciousness in artificial systems.Wanja Wiese - manuscriptHow should we assess which artificial systems could be conscious? Given uncertainty about the nature and distribution of consciousness, it is promising to look for indicators of consciousness that provide evidence for (or against) consciousness in artificial systems. A challenge is that there are hard cases in which the evidence pulls into different directions. In particular, cognitive and behavioural similarities between artificial and biological systems may speak for the hypothesis that a given artificial system is conscious; differences regarding the underlying (...)
- Modelling consciousness for autonomous robot exploration.R. Arrabales, A. Ledezma & A. Sanchis - unknown - Lecture Notes in Computer Science.Remove from this listExport citationBookmark
- Applying machine consciousness models in autonomous situated agents.R. Arrabales & A. Sanchis - forthcoming - Pattern Recognition Letters.
- AI Alignment vs. AI Ethical Treatment: Ten Challenges.Adam Bradley & Bradford Saad - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.A morally acceptable course of AI development should avoid two dangers: creating unaligned AI systems that pose a threat to humanity and mistreating AI systems that merit moral consideration in their own right. This paper argues these two dangers interact and that if we create AI systems that merit moral consideration, simultaneously avoiding both of these dangers would be extremely challenging. While our argument is straightforward and supported by a wide range of pretheoretical moral judgments, it has far-reaching moral implications (...)
- Varieties of Moral Agency and Risks of Digital Dystopia.Adam Bradley & Bradford Saad - forthcoming - American Philosophical Quarterly.We argue that AIs will plausibly soon possess a form of moral agency—interest-conferring agency—that bestows them with distinctive moral interests (rights, welfare). This fact has important ethical consequences because the emergence of agency-conferred interests in AIs will bring with it the potential for dystopian moral catastrophes. We identify and describe three in particular. First, there is a threat of artificial absurdity, a condition in which AIs have self-conceptions that are disconnected from reality in a way that detracts significance from their (...)
- Testing for consciousness in current AI.Patrick Butlin - forthcoming - In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Liad Mudrik, Tests of Consciousness: How to tell whether a human, other animal or AI is conscious and what they are conscious of.
- Perspectives on Machine Consciousness.Calum Chace (ed.) - forthcoming
- Why I am not a biological naturalist.Leonard Dung - forthcoming - Behavioral and Brain Sciences.Commentary. I make three claims: First, denying biological naturalism does not logically require computational functionalism. Second, while Seth’s arguments establish biological naturalism as a view worth taking seriously, they fail to make it more plausible than the view that AI can be conscious. Third, there are independent arguments suggesting the overall more plausible view is that AI can be conscious.
- Where is the asymmetry between intelligence and consciousness?Stephen M. Fleming & Nicholas Shea - forthcoming - Behavioral and Brain Sciences.The target article draws a sharp contrast between intelligence and consciousness. We believe this contrast is premature, and rests on an overly narrow characterisation of intelligence as abilities that can be exhaustively characterised as mappings from sensory inputs to behavioural outputs. Instead, we argue that the fortunes of intelligence and consciousness are interwoven more tightly than Seth’s framing implies.
- AI Welfare: Agency, Consciousness, Sentience.Simon Goldstein & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini - forthcoming - New York: Oxford University Press.AI systems have welfare just in case they have moral status in their own right. This book systematically investigates the possibility of AI welfare. It focuses on three plausible sufficient conditions for welfare: having beliefs and desires, being conscious, and feeling pleasure and displeasure. The book explores the leading philosophical theories of each condition and applies them to AIs. It argues that some existing AIs plausibly have beliefs and desires; that some existing AIs could plausibly be modified in small ways (...)
- A Case for AI Consciousness: Language Agents and Global Workspace Theory.Simon Goldstein & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini - forthcoming - Journal of Consciousness Studies.It is generally assumed that existing artificial systems are not phenomenally conscious, and that the construction of phenomenally conscious artificial systems would require significant technological progress if it is possible at all. We challenge this assumption by arguing that if Global Workspace Theory (GWT) — a leading scientific theory of phenomenal consciousness — is correct, then instances of one widely implemented AI architecture, the artificial language agent, might easily be made phenomenally conscious if they are not already. Along the way, (...)
- Consciousness, Unconsciousness and Artificial Intelligence.Eric LaRock & Mihretu P. Guta (eds.) - forthcoming - Wiley-Blackwell.This book aims to show why a proper ontology of persons has paramount importance for our understanding of the nature of consciousness and its relation to the phenomenon of unconsciousness and artificial intelligence. Contemporary discussions on consciousness often focus on seeking solutions for a wide range of issues that revolve around questions related to what sort of role the brain plays in the existence of consciousness. These questions raise multi-layered and diverse metaphysical (especially, ontological), personal, medical, moral, and legal issues. (...)
- Individuating Artificial Minds.James McIntyre - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.This paper argues that if an artificial system realizes consciousness, then it’s likely to realize not just one, but many independent minds at once. This view is motivated by analogy to split-brain cases, in which the two hemispheres of a patient’s brain are functionally disconnected. While there are several ways to interpret this phenomenon, it’s highly plausible that split-brain patients have two distinct minds—one per hemisphere. If functional disconnection within a single biological brain can generate multiple minds, then we should (...)
- AI Welfare Risks.Adrià Moret - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.In the coming years or decades, as frontier AI systems become more capable and agentic, it is increasingly likely that they meet the sufficient conditions to be welfare subjects under the three major theories of well-being. Consequently, we should extend some moral consideration to advanced AI systems. Drawing from leading philosophical theories of desire, affect and autonomy I argue that under the three major theories of well-being, there are two AI welfare risks: restricting the behaviour of advanced AI systems and (...)
- Are Attributions of Consciousness to AI Chatbots Epistemically Innocent?Uwe Peters - forthcoming - Minds and Machines.Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT) can communicate in strikingly humanlike ways. This has prompted many chatbot users to attribute psychological properties, including consciousness, to these systems. However, there is little scientific evidence that current AI chatbots are conscious. How, then, should we understand people’s consciousness attributions to chatbots? Are they merely metaphorical claims, or do they express genuine beliefs? If these attributions lack evidential support, are users epistemically blameworthy for making them, or might they be epistemically innocent, yielding significant (...)
- Do AIs Have Dasein? A Heideggerian-Girardian Answer.Jashiel Resto Quiñones - forthcoming - In Thomas Ryba & Sandy Goodhart, Desiring Machines. Bloomsbury.This paper is one (among many) approach to the question, “are AIs persons or are they conscious?” from a Heideggerian perspective. Here I argue for two claims. First, I argue that René Girard’s mimetic analysis of mitsein (being-with), one of Heidegger’s foundational concepts, illuminates what Heidegger takes mitsein to be. Second, I claim that this Girardian analysis gives us a way to answer the question of whether AIs have Dasein, to which I argue that the answer is negative. Specifically, I (...)
- Talkative AI and the fiction of artificial minds.Tom Roberts - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.Talkative artificial systems can sustain a realistic impression of intelligent agency, by generating quick, fluent, and context-sensitive strings of text in response to human input. Realism about AI treats this linguistic proficiency as evidence for an underlying suite of cognitive capacities, and so regards these technologies as subjects of psychological states. Firstly, I raise a challenge for the realist view from the perspective of embodied cognition: how might digital systems undergo interoceptive, affective, perceptual, and action- oriented mental states that seem (...)
- In Search of a Biological Crux for AI Consciousness.Bradford Saad - forthcoming - Philosophy of Ai.Whether AI systems could be conscious is often thought to turn on whether consciousness is closely linked to biology. Roughly, the thought is: if consciousness is closely linked to biology, then AI consciousness is impossible; and if consciousness is not closely linked to biology, then AI consciousness is possible—or, at any rate, it’s more likely to be possible. A clearer specification of the kind of link between consciousness and biology that is crucial for the possibility of AI consciousness would facilitate (...)
- The Global Brain Argument: Nodes, Computroniums and the AI Megasystem (Target Paper for Special Issue).Susan Schneider - forthcoming - Disputatio.The Global Brain Argument contends that many of us are, or will be, part of a global brain network that includes both biological and artificial intelligences (AIs), such as generative AIs with increasing levels of sophistication. Today’s internet ecosystem is but a hodgepodge of fairly unintegrated programs, but it is evolving by the minute. Over time, technological improvements will facilitate smarter AIs and faster, higher-bandwidth information transfer and greater integration between devices in the internet-of-things. The Global Brain (GB) Argument says (...)
- The Error Theory of LLM Consciousness: There is No Evidence that Standard LLMs are Conscious.Susan Schneider - forthcoming - Behavioral and Brain Sciences.I argue that claims that the presence of functional and behavioral analogs of consciousness in LLMs are evidence of AI consciousness should be rejected. Instead, the capability of an LLM trained on human data to emulate human consciousness–related behaviors and functional architecture does not confirm or discredit claims of chatbot consciousness. My “crowdsourced neocortex” account explains why chatbots can assert consciousness and related emotional states, and even exhibit functional configurations analogous to consciousness processing in the biological brain without genuinely having (...)
- Is AI Conscious? A Primer on the Myths and Confusions Driving the Debate.Susan Schneider, David Sahner, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Eric Schwitzgebel & Mark Bailey - forthcoming - Philosophy and Mind Sciences.Artificial intelligence is sparking unprecedented claims about machine minds — but are today’s systems really conscious? In this primer, we disentangle the myths, misconceptions, and confusions fueling the global debate. -/- Roadmap: Section One: Background The Core Concept of Consciousness The Problem of AI Consciousness The Human Benchmark Problem Approaching the Problem of AI Consciousness on a Case by Case Basis -/- Section Two: Conceptual Distinctions Intelligence Versus Consciousness Sentience Versus Sapience “Functional Consciousness” Versus Phenomenal Consciousness Assuming Computational Functionalism’s Relative (...)
- To Train a Mockingbird.Kristina Šekrst - forthcoming - In The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence And Simulation of Behaviour, Proceedings of the AISB Convention 2026.Discussions about the moral status of AI systems typically begin with their observable behavior. The linguistic output of large language models resembles that of conscious agents, and this resemblance is treated as evidence of moral status, as grounds for precaution, or as something requiring deflationary explanation. All three positions, whatever their official methodology, rest their public case on a behaviorist assumption: that appropriate behavior is a sign of an underlying mental state. The classical objections to behaviorism apply here as well (...)
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