The Structural Conditions of the Mapmaker: A Response to Lerchner's Abstraction Fallacy
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) April 28, 2026 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19851156 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Lerchner's demonstration that symbolic computation is a mapmaker-dependent description, and that consciousness precedes computation, can be supplemented by three structural conditions: the mapmaker's operational closure as an autopoietic system, the generalization of the transduction fallacy to all non-autopoietic systems, and the ungrounded observational premises underlying judgments about AI consciousness. |
Abstract
This paper responds to Alexander Lerchner's "The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate But Not Instantiate Consciousness" (PhilArchive, 2026, https://philarchive.org/rec/LERTAF). Lerchner, writing from Google DeepMind, demonstrates that symbolic computation is a mapmaker-dependent description rather than an intrinsic physical process, and that the causal sequence assumed by computational functionalism is inverted: consciousness precedes computation, not the reverse. This paper accepts Lerchner's argument in full and supplements it by making explicit three structural conditions his account leaves underspecified: the operational closure of the mapmaker itself as an autopoietic system, the full generalization of the transduction fallacy to any non-autopoietic system regardless of embodiment, and the ungrounded observational premises on which judgments about AI consciousness rest. Together, these supplements show that the boundary Lerchner draws between mapmaker and computational tool follows from a structural necessity deeper than his account alone establishes. https://philarchive.org/rec/MATTSC-7 Related updates may be available at: patreon.com/NMStructuralTheoryLab