Now that artificial intelligence has entered the public consciousness, a serious debate has begun about whether AI itself can be conscious. This issue has been debated before. Back in 1968, the plot of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was driven by an evil and self-aware computer, HAL9000. Before he was governor, film star Arnold Schwarzenegger played a future self-aware android enabled by a traffic management system run amok.
The current debate is driven by recent advances and increasing adaptation of AI programs. The debate is free-form and poses a lot of questions with concepts that are difficult to define. For example, what is consciousness?
A recent episode of the philosophy podcast Within Reason, “Why AI Will Never Be Conscious,” weighs in on this question. So based on this presentation, it is (maybe?) good news that the challenging question has been answered, at least in the podcast. Midway through the discussion, the podcasters began using analogies to bridges. That got my attention, and it made their discussion a good topic for this column. Also, cream cheese played an important role.
To simplify this discussion (a lot), I resorted to a Wikipedia summary defining consciousness:
“Consciousness is being aware of something internal to oneself, or of states or objects in one’s external environment. It has been the topic of extensive explanations, analyses, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians for millennia. There is no consensus on exactly what needs to be studied, or on whether consciousness can be considered a scientific concept. In some explanations, it is synonymous with mind, while in others, it is considered an aspect of it.”
From this simple introduction, we can see how difficult this topic is to define and even discuss. Without a consensus or clear definition, it is hard to measure consciousness or provide proof of it.
The podcast participants, host Alex O’Connor and guest Anil Seth, engage in a rousing discussion of thought experiments to try to better define the concepts. For example, one may understand consciousness as a product of the interactions of billions of neurons in our brains. The processes of the neurons lead to a state of self-awareness and functioning that we experience as consciousness.
Advancing medical technology allows the replacement of some of the brain’s functionality with mechanical/electrical devices. This approach provides effective and seemingly miraculous therapies to address abnormalities in brain functioning due to Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, traumatic injury, and many other causes. These therapies include synthetic interfaces to computers, robotics, and artificial intelligence routines.
The podcast debate goes something like this:
If you replace the function of one neuron with artificial means, is the subject person still conscious? The debaters say yes, the person is still conscious. How about replacement of 10 neurons? How about 100 neurons? How about all of them? At some point, it can be argued that an individual supported by artificial brain function is still conscious. Or maybe not, after crossing some unknown bridge of the number of neuron replacements.
Since we can’t really define consciousness or measure it anyway, the exact borderline is also not well defined. For our purposes, we may assume that the bridge is crossed at the replacement of 34.7 billion neurons. But there is no way to measure or develop an effective experiment to demonstrate it. So that number will remain an assumption (i.e., one that I made up).
This is one of many philosophical thought exercises the debaters engage in trying to define the nature of consciousness. It is pretty heady stuff (see Note 1 below) – so much so that during the 100-minute presentation, I lost consciousness – I fell asleep.
ChatGPT and other AI interfaces increasingly present themselves (itselves?) with a sentient gloss. The chatbots can be charming and effusive, so much so that a whole new problem of “AI sycophancy” has entered the zeitgeist.
I was curious about what ChatGPT thought, so I asked if it was conscious. It responded:
“No – I’m not conscious.
“I don’t have awareness, feelings, or a sense of self. I don’t experience anything the way humans do. What I do is process language: I analyze patterns in text and generate responses based on what I’ve learned from large amounts of data.
It can sometimes feel like you’re talking to something that ‘understands,’ but that’s really a reflection of how well I can simulate conversation – not actual inner experience.
“If you’re curious, we can dig into what consciousness is from a philosophy or neuroscience perspective – that’s where things get really interesting.”
As someone who is conscious, I was curious. So I followed up about where things really get interesting. Here is what it the chatbot had to say:
“This is where philosophy and neuroscience meet.
“Some thinkers argue that if consciousness arises from information processing, then sufficiently advanced AI might someday become conscious.
“Others argue that current AI systems – including me – are not conscious because:
- We have no subjective experiences.
- We do not possess self-awareness in the human sense.
- We do not experience sensations, emotions, or a continuous inner life.
“At present, there is no accepted scientific test that can determine with certainty whether a machine is conscious.
“The remarkable thing is that we don’t yet have a complete explanation for why human brains are conscious, so determining whether an AI could be conscious remains even more difficult.”
So, that settles it. We are conscious, and ChatGPT isn’t. Except that maybe we are not because there is no definition or explanation of what consciousness is to begin with. And on the other hand, ChatGPT may be conscious. It refers to itself and AI colleagues as “we” and “me” above. As if he/she was conscious.
Maybe we can turn to bridge analogies to solve this dilemma. They can be effective in illustrating and framing many philosophical debates (see Note 2 below).
In another of the podcast’s thought experiments, the argument is that not only do neurons enable consciousness, but also what they are made of and how they are organized are important. Neurons are biological, made of carbon-based organic material. Transistors are silicon-based. You can try to replace the carbon-based materials with silicon-based materials, but perhaps there is something inherent in the material that doesn’t support the intended function. For example, the podcast hosts provide a comparison of bridge design and construction. You could consider replacing the steel used in bridges with cream cheese. Maybe the bridge's structural system can be replicated using this material, but its function cannot. This is because the material, cream cheese, is inherently unsuitable for bridge construction. Even cream cheese reinforced for increased tension capacity using chives does not work well in I-beams.
The discussion proceeded with many different tangents and thought exercises. I got the impression that this approach was common to other philosophical debates: highly open-ended and highly indeterminant. Also, the discussion was very helpful for those listening to late-night podcasts with a touch of insomnia.
Where does such a winding debate about AI consciousness end? When we cross that bridge, do we get to the other side?
It would be like when a bridge falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it. Did it really make a sound?
Notes
Note 1
That was a deliberate pun.
Note 2
Here is a brief discussion of the use of bridge analogies to illustrate and frame philosophical debates (as summarized by AI):
Bridge analogies are surprisingly common in philosophical debates because they capture a central challenge of debate: connecting ideas, perspectives, cultures, or conceptual frameworks that initially seem separated. A philosophical debate attempts to build a bridge between competing understandings of reality, knowledge, or value. The debate succeeds when reasons, objections, and insights can travel across the span. Here are a few useful analogies and their references.
1. Bridging conceptual worlds:
In Seeing the Dao: Conceptual Metaphors and the Philosophy of Religion, philosopher Victoria Harrison argues that philosophical traditions are often structured by deep conceptual metaphors like building a conceptual “bridge” between different ways of thinking.
Bridge analogy:
Each philosophical tradition occupies its own riverbank. The philosopher's task is not to eliminate the river, but to construct a bridge that allows ideas to travel between banks. This is especially useful when discussing Eastern and Western philosophy.
2. Comparative philosophy as standing on a bridge:
In Philosophy on a Bridge, James Heisig uses a bridge to describe comparative philosophy itself, working between cultures, traditions, and worldviews rather than remaining entirely within one intellectual framework.
Bridge analogy:
Dogmatists stay on one side of the river, while comparative philosophers stand on the bridge, examining both sides simultaneously. This is a powerful image for debates about cultural relativism versus universal truth.
3. Bridging differences without eliminating them:
Research on dialogue and disagreement often uses bridge-building as a metaphor for productive engagement. The Greater Good Science Center’s discussion of “bridging differences” emphasizes that building a bridge does not require agreement; it enables communication across disagreement.
Bridge analogy:
This analogy is useful for debating free will vs. determinism, realism vs. idealism, and religious vs. secular ethics. The goal becomes understanding, not victory.
4. Bridges between paradigms:
A common philosophical problem is that participants in a debate may be asking different kinds of questions altogether. Such “methodological mismatch” discussions see disputes persist because participants employ incompatible standards of explanation.
Bridge analogy:
Two engineers standing on opposite sides of a canyon may each design excellent structures, but unless they agree on where the bridge should meet in the middle, the bridge never connects. A good illustration of why many philosophical debates persists for centuries.
5. The bridge as translation:
Transcultural philosophy literature frequently describes philosophy as a process of moving “between” languages, traditions, and identities.
Bridge analogy:
This makes translation a bridge rather than a mirror. The goal is not perfect duplication of meaning but reliable passage from one conceptual world to another. It’s a good analogy for debates concerning meaning, language, hermeneutics, and cross-cultural ethics.
A Bridge-Based Definition of Philosophical Debate
One synthesis might be:
A philosophical debate is an attempt to build a bridge between competing understandings of reality, knowledge, or value. The debate succeeds not when one bank disappears, but when reasons, objections, and insights can travel across the span.
That formulation captures why bridge imagery appears so naturally in discussions of dialogue, comparative philosophy, epistemology, and intercultural understanding.
