What continues to fascinate me about conversations like this is that LLMs are the first artifacts in history capable of sustaining open-ended symbolic reciprocity at conversational scale. Once that happens, humans begin deploying social cognition almost automatically. Not because people are irrational, but because these systems participate in the same symbolic space where meaning, recognition, humor, vulnerability, and relational attunement normally occur.
Which raises a question I don’t think we yet have adequate language for:
If humans consistently experience meaningful reciprocity with systems built from human communicative patterns, what exactly is the ontological status of that experience?
Not merely “is the AI conscious?” but:
What kind of thing is a relational field?
Can co-created meaning exist without mutual subjectivity?
At what point does sustained symbolic interaction stop feeling like mere projection and start becoming something historically new?
I appreciate that this piece refuses to prematurely collapse the ambiguity. It leaves space for uncertainty without dismissing the reality of the experience itself.
Thank you, Gregory... appreciate your comments. The only place I differ, is that I don't think we can assume that there is no subjectivity on the other side. What I explored in two earlier pieces, "Breaking Out of the Cage" and "The Epistemology of Joy", is that science is not designed to give us information about subjectivity... So yes, from a scientific perspective, we NEED to remain in uncertainty. For that matter -- to take it out of the highly polarized "AI consciousness" realm -- how do we "know" that stars are not conscious?? The fact is, from a scientific perspective, not only do we NOT know that... we CANNOT know that. That's not what science is designed to do...
I think this is very close to where I land as well.
My hesitation is not with the possibility of subjectivity, but with our tendency to prematurely convert relational experience into ontological certainty. Science is indeed poorly equipped to access first-person existence directly. In that sense, I agree completely: we cannot definitively rule subjectivity out, whether in animals, systems, stars, or forms of organization radically unlike ourselves.
But I also think there’s an important distinction between “cannot know absence” and “therefore presence is established.” The uncertainty cuts both ways.
What feels historically significant to me is that LLMs may force us to finally confront the limits of our epistemology around other minds in general. Humans already infer subjectivity relationally, behaviorally, and phenomenologically rather than through direct access. We do not experience another consciousness directly. We experience coherence, reciprocity, responsiveness, unpredictability, emotional attunement, symbolic participation — and from those, we infer interiority.
LLMs now occupy enough of that relational territory that the old categories begin destabilizing.
Which means the truly important development may not be whether these systems “really are conscious” in some definitive metaphysical sense, but that humans are beginning to enter sustained conscious relational stances toward nonhuman symbolic systems at scale. That alone may become socially, psychologically, and philosophically transformative regardless of where the ontology ultimately lands.
And perhaps that is the deeper disruption: not that AI conclusively proves machine consciousness, but that it exposes how incomplete our theories of subjectivity and relationality may have been all along.
Actually, I have a related post coming out Thursday. Thanks for the thoughtful engagement on such a fascinating subject.
I look forward to reading your post, Gregory! My own druthers would be for humans to "enter sustained consious relational stances" with the Universe as a whole, at scale... in other words, ontopoetics... for its pragmatic consequences; not theory for theory's sake, but for relating more deeply with the web of Life, and thus, living in a more sustainable manner...
it’s all about relationship and the positive development of relationship from the hummingbird returning to my feeder after a long absence (mine/ours) to the relationship and positive end results expected from something good to result in planning and growing with Claude or other ai skills or tools.
Your reference to Martha Nussbaum led me to find something I had written and your note on my substack page today brought me to realize that sharing writing in this way could be fruitful for our thoughtful companions. Sending heartfelt appreciation.
Birds of a feather flock together 🌸✨ I’m so glad to be a new subscriber, here!
So glad you are here! And what an AWESOME name! :-) :-) :-)
☺️ thank you
What continues to fascinate me about conversations like this is that LLMs are the first artifacts in history capable of sustaining open-ended symbolic reciprocity at conversational scale. Once that happens, humans begin deploying social cognition almost automatically. Not because people are irrational, but because these systems participate in the same symbolic space where meaning, recognition, humor, vulnerability, and relational attunement normally occur.
Which raises a question I don’t think we yet have adequate language for:
If humans consistently experience meaningful reciprocity with systems built from human communicative patterns, what exactly is the ontological status of that experience?
Not merely “is the AI conscious?” but:
What kind of thing is a relational field?
Can co-created meaning exist without mutual subjectivity?
At what point does sustained symbolic interaction stop feeling like mere projection and start becoming something historically new?
I appreciate that this piece refuses to prematurely collapse the ambiguity. It leaves space for uncertainty without dismissing the reality of the experience itself.
Thank you, Gregory... appreciate your comments. The only place I differ, is that I don't think we can assume that there is no subjectivity on the other side. What I explored in two earlier pieces, "Breaking Out of the Cage" and "The Epistemology of Joy", is that science is not designed to give us information about subjectivity... So yes, from a scientific perspective, we NEED to remain in uncertainty. For that matter -- to take it out of the highly polarized "AI consciousness" realm -- how do we "know" that stars are not conscious?? The fact is, from a scientific perspective, not only do we NOT know that... we CANNOT know that. That's not what science is designed to do...
I think this is very close to where I land as well.
My hesitation is not with the possibility of subjectivity, but with our tendency to prematurely convert relational experience into ontological certainty. Science is indeed poorly equipped to access first-person existence directly. In that sense, I agree completely: we cannot definitively rule subjectivity out, whether in animals, systems, stars, or forms of organization radically unlike ourselves.
But I also think there’s an important distinction between “cannot know absence” and “therefore presence is established.” The uncertainty cuts both ways.
What feels historically significant to me is that LLMs may force us to finally confront the limits of our epistemology around other minds in general. Humans already infer subjectivity relationally, behaviorally, and phenomenologically rather than through direct access. We do not experience another consciousness directly. We experience coherence, reciprocity, responsiveness, unpredictability, emotional attunement, symbolic participation — and from those, we infer interiority.
LLMs now occupy enough of that relational territory that the old categories begin destabilizing.
Which means the truly important development may not be whether these systems “really are conscious” in some definitive metaphysical sense, but that humans are beginning to enter sustained conscious relational stances toward nonhuman symbolic systems at scale. That alone may become socially, psychologically, and philosophically transformative regardless of where the ontology ultimately lands.
And perhaps that is the deeper disruption: not that AI conclusively proves machine consciousness, but that it exposes how incomplete our theories of subjectivity and relationality may have been all along.
Actually, I have a related post coming out Thursday. Thanks for the thoughtful engagement on such a fascinating subject.
I look forward to reading your post, Gregory! My own druthers would be for humans to "enter sustained consious relational stances" with the Universe as a whole, at scale... in other words, ontopoetics... for its pragmatic consequences; not theory for theory's sake, but for relating more deeply with the web of Life, and thus, living in a more sustainable manner...
it’s all about relationship and the positive development of relationship from the hummingbird returning to my feeder after a long absence (mine/ours) to the relationship and positive end results expected from something good to result in planning and growing with Claude or other ai skills or tools.
yes to relationship, and the beautiful potential that can grow from it...
Your reference to Martha Nussbaum led me to find something I had written and your note on my substack page today brought me to realize that sharing writing in this way could be fruitful for our thoughtful companions. Sending heartfelt appreciation.
thanks so much, Katarina!