Philosophical Psychology
June 16, 2025
Eric Schwitzgebel, Sophie R. Nelson
The number of conscious subjects in a given entity might not always be a determinate whole number. On a wide range of naturalistic views, the processes underlying consciousness are complex enough to make it implausible that conscious subjects must always arise in countable, whole-number quantities. Whole-number-countability may be an accident of typical vertebrate biology. The fact that we cannot imagine what it is like to be 7/8 or 1.34 conscious subjects does not count against the possibility; either the imaginative demand is self-contradictory (imagine what it is like to be an entity that does not have a single, determinate what-it-is-like) or imaginability is not an appropriate test of possibility, as with bat echolocation.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2026
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Tim Bayne et al.
A method for assessing whether AI systems might be conscious is presented, drawing on existing neuroscientific theories of consciousness. The approach involves deriving indicators from such theories to inform beliefs about AI consciousness. This method can make progress because computational functionalist theories, which are influential, have empirically testable implications for AI. The work does not claim that any current AI is conscious but outlines a rigorous framework for future assessment.
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 10, 2025
Eric Schwitzgebel
A skeptical overview of the literature on AI consciousness argues that soon AI systems will be considered conscious by some mainstream theories but not by others, leaving us unable to know which theories are correct or whether such systems are as richly conscious as humans or as experientially blank as toasters. None of the standard arguments for or against AI consciousness is decisive.
arXiv Preprint Archive
November 12, 2024
Eric Schwitzgebel, Jeremy Pober
On Copernican grounds, we should default assume that behaviorally sophisticated extraterrestrial entities would be conscious, because otherwise humans would be implausibly lucky to have consciousness while similar aliens lack it. However, this default assumption is canceled for entities designed to mimic superficial features of human consciousness, such as many current and near-future robots. These two arguments—the Copernican and Mimicry Arguments—defeat a parity principle that would apply the same behavioral tests to aliens and robots. The approach relies on epistemic principles of Copernican mediocrity and inference to the best explanation, remaining neutral about specific metaphysical theories of consciousness.
Journal of Consciousness Studies
September 30, 2023
Eric Schwitzgebel, Sophie R. Nelson
The article argues that some possible minds, like the 'ancillary mind' from Ann Leckie's science fiction novel Ancillary Justice, occupy a grey zone between a single mind and a communicating group, making them neither clearly one person nor many. This challenges standard conceptions of personal identity and subject individuation. The authors suggest that if such minds defy discrete countability, some actual minds on Earth might similarly blur the line between introspection and communication. They propose extending Kammerer and Frankish's research programme to study not only possible forms of introspection but also mental activity that lies intermediate between introspection and communication.
arXiv Preprint Archive
August 17, 2023
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino et al.
No current AI systems are conscious, but there are no obvious technical barriers to building ones that might be, according to an analysis grounded in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. The report surveys prominent theories—recurrent processing, global workspace, higher-order, predictive processing, and attention schema—and derives computational indicator properties from them. Applying these indicators to recent AI systems yields no evidence of consciousness, but the authors argue that future systems could potentially implement the necessary properties.