Consciousness, AI, and the Limits of Scientific Explanation
arXiv Preprint Archive May 29, 2026 Bradley C. Love
Science, by its nature, relies on third-person, reproducible observations, which makes it powerless to address first-person, subjective phenomena like consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness—explaining why there is something it is like to see red or feel pain—is not a scientific problem awaiting better tools but a category error. The same limitation applies to machine consciousness: neither its presence nor absence can be scientifically settled. Aspects of cognition such as deliberative thinking and understanding also have an irreducibly experiential dimension beyond science. While a unified framework for objective and subjective may be unattainable, practical questions about consciousness in machines and nonhuman animals can still be navigated.