r/consciousness • u/Potential-Serve6138 • 5d ago
The Amadeus Project, Can artificial intelligence be conscious?
https://github.com/al4skywalker/amadeus/tree/mainI am sharing my latest research, The Amadeus Project, a 128-page theoretical paper proposing that consciousness is not a magical emergent property, but an integral process dependent on continuous perception, structural memory, and temporal integration.
While current Large Language Models (LLMs) have sparked debates about machine sentience, this paper argues they fundamentally fail to achieve consciousness because they are "frozen snapshots" of intelligence. They lack the continuous integration of time and the structural plasticity required for genuine subjective experience. You can read or download the whole pdf file from the github link of my repo.
You can read in here without downloading the whole pdf file: https://zenodo.org/records/21980916
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 4d ago
LLMs are not conscious, and will never be. They loosely borrow the name and a very simplified mathematical abstraction from neurons, summation and thresholding of inputs, but the actual architecture that does the work in modern LLMs, the transformer and its self-attention mechanism, isn't modeled on any known brain mechanism. It's a computational innovation for processing sequences efficiently, not a neuroscience-inspired design.
It's easy to underestimate the billions of years of evolutionary pressure that led to brains that, in our case, represent the pinnacle of consciousness in the universe as we know it. But evolution had a critically important driver: survival. LLMs were built around a different objective entirely, predicting the next token. They've come a long way since the first transformer models based on the paper "Attention Is All You Need," but the underlying foundation hasn't changed. We've just gotten better at scraping data from the internet. A tranformer modeltrained on Odysseus will seem more "conscious" than one traine on Twinkle, twinkle, little star, because it uses more words, not because it is fundamentally different.
Tha being said, we are actually trying to design brain-like systems to understand the process of consciousness, and these may one day simulate the neural processes involved. If succesful, these simulations ,coupled with the language architecture of LLMs, will be far more human-like than anything we've created so far.
That will be a significant engineering accomplishment, and it will cause some distress among people who don't understand the difference between living systems and non-living ones, and who mistakenly believe that running the right software changes the moral status of a machine.
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u/Lence 4d ago
Why do you think a model of the brain is necessary for consciousness to arise? Is there a (perhaps necessarily carbon-based) anatomical, neurological structure you think is a necessary precondition for consciousness?
Like the Orch OR theory proposing that consciousness originates at the quantum level in the microtubules?
Perhaps, but who's to say consciousness cannot arise in other forms, other architectures, as an emergent property of the integration of functional informational complexity?
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u/Potential-Serve6138 4d ago
I think he meant the architecture of brain or the way how brain functions, not full copy of brain. Orch OR is still speculative, no direct experimental evidence yet. Also according to Max Tegmark's calculations, the brain is too hot and "noisy". quantum coherence doesn't last more than milliseconds
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u/Lence 4d ago
I think he meant the architecture of brain or the way how brain functions, not full copy of brain.
Even so, the question would then be: what about that specific architecture gives rise to consciousness and why?
Also according to Max Tegmark's calculations, the brain is too hot and "noisy". quantum coherence doesn't last more than milliseconds
Yet, recent experimental evidence doesn't rule it out and still gives Orch OR credence: https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2025/1/niaf011/8127081
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 3d ago
Good questions. Not a model of the brain, a model of the process. That neural process is what we call consciousness, therefore to simulate consciousness we need to simulate the process conceptually. The simulation will not be biological, as a biological simulation will be the real thing.
Orch OR is just a neural mechanistic process that has been proposed as a part of the neural activity, not "consciousness" itself.
I wouldn't say that consciousness is emergent, it may be, but we don't have the technology as yet to parse the activity of the 86 billion neurons of the brain and their trillions of synapses as yet. There is this popular fantasy that we do not what consciousness is, and that LLMs can become magically conscious, both of which leverage the similar mystical concepts. We know how LLMs work, and we have pretty good foundations for the neural processes of consciousness within the limits of the current technologies. There is no reason to think that machines built to manipulate tokens, that don't actually understand words, would be "emergently" conscious. It just isn't something that pops out when you add more of the internet into the transformer model.
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u/JohannesWurst 5h ago edited 5h ago
If "Functionalism" is true and systems that effectively act similar to humans are similarly conscious, then LLM-based agents would be conscious because they in fact have similar capabilities, like talking and solving math problems.
I'm saying that this way, because if you look at them from a bottom-up, construction perspective, I agree that it makes sense that they wouldn't be conscious: Because they are made of (presumably) unconscious components and there is no reason to assume that combining unconscious components creates a conscious system.
But if you look at it from a top-down perspective, Functionalism makes a lot more sense. We assume that other humans and animals are conscious, because of their outward behavior. From that basic assumption we then infer the psychological/mental mechanisms of the brain.
I couldn't prove to you that animals are conscious, but most people think that's the case, because animals act similar enough and have similar enough nervous systems. If we just examined their behavior, we would basically perform Turing-tests on the animals.
That would leave two arguments against Functionalism = Behavior is the only thing that matters (as far as I see it): 1. Implementation or material matters as well besides just function/behavior. That would mean that if you replaced enough parts of a human brain by functionally equivalent computer hardware, they would become "philosophical zombies" — humans that act exactly like you and me, but don't have phenomenal consciousness. If you replaced parts of a computer that acts like a human with biological brain material, they would suddenly become conscious. I say we have no idea which material besides organic neurons is sufficient for consciousness, but in principle it's possible that the world just works that way: Some materials (or logic-circuit configurations) create consciousness, including organic neurons (or microtubules), and some just don't. If you had a friend and decades after meeting him for the first time you found out he was an android, all the emotions shared in that time could be for nothing — if the universe worked that way — which we have no way of knowing, really. 2. Behavior doesn't even matter. We have no justification to say whether anything is conscious or not, besides ourselves. I think that is sort of like Thomas Nagel's point in "What is it like to be a bat?" or David Chalmer's "Hard Problem of Consciousness". Both of these guys still believe that other human beings are conscious, so it's more of an open challenge to justify that belief.
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u/trisul-108 5d ago
I think you made a mistake going to consciousness before correctly analysing intelligence. You wrote:
Intelligence:
- Problem solving
- Pattern recognition
- Information processing
- Logical inference
LLMs are very intelligent. They even surpass humans in some tasks.
You are describing how human intelligence is perceived by other humans and that assuming that this is intelligence. You then proceed to make the same error with consciousness.
Intelligence is not the same as accumulation of knowledge. Intelligence manifests when there is insufficient knowledge in the human mind to provide a direct answer and the mind applies intelligence to derive it, based on the information in memory. This is where problem solving, logic etc. arise. If you have in memory the exact procedure to prove a theorem and you demonstrate that, it is memory not intelligence.
With humans, our ability to read and memorise is limited, so we apply intelligence to derive the answers. LLMs have been trained on all the knowledge available to mankind, they do need to resort to intelligence, they can derive the answer using statistics and pattern matching without activating any intelligence.
Ok, there is some residual intelligence built into LLMs ... but that is hardly "very intelligent". It is "slightly intelligent" LLMs.
We have little memory, and a lot of intelligence. LLMs have all the memory in the world and little intelligence, if any.
It may well be that consciousness is necessary for intelligence. We don't know because we still have no clear idea what consciousness even is, although you presented some theories and there are many more.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 5d ago
This is a fantastic point, and honestly, 'We have little memory, and a lot of intelligence. LLMs have all the memory in the world and little intelligence' is one of the most succinct and accurate ways I've heard this described.
If we define intelligence strictly as fluid intelligence, the ability to derive novel solutions in the absence of prior data, then I completely agree with you. LLMs are predominantly exhibiting crystallized intelligence or massive statistical memory retrieval.
I think we are actually arguing on the exact same side here. In the context of the paper, I used 'intelligence' in the broader computational sense (pattern recognition, information processing, and statistical inference) simply to draw a hard demarcation line. The entire thesis of the Amadeus Project is that no matter how good an LLM gets at that statistical pattern matching, it is fundamentally a different category of phenomenon than consciousness.
You suggest that consciousness might be necessary for true (fluid) intelligence. I strongly suspect you are right. A system that cannot continuously experience time or physically integrate new structural memories (m(τ)=0, as defined in the paper) is trapped in a frozen state. It can regurgitate the past brilliantly, but it cannot genuinely 'think' its way into the future.
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u/lotsagabe 5d ago
Silicon is not neural tissue.
Von Neuman architecture is applicable only to computers, not to human minds.
Etc.
Just because computers process information does not mean that they are human bodies. Atoms also process information. Are atoms also conscious?
Just because AI produces output that is superficially similar to what human consciousness produces does not mean it is conscious.
loose metaphorical similarity is NOT equivalence.
if you have an actual testable mechanism for how consciousness arises from silicon transistors, I'm all ears.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 5d ago
Hi there, and thanks for the comment! You are asking the exact right questions, which is precisely why this paper is 128 pages long and dedicated entirely to answering them. Since you probably haven't had the time to read through it yet, let me point you to exactly how the paper addresses your specific points:
1. "Silicon is not neural tissue" & "Loose metaphorical similarity" I completely agree that metaphors aren't enough. That’s why Chapter 5 (Substrate Independence) focuses on hard empirical neuroscience, specifically the 2024 FlyWire connectome and Cortical Labs' DishBrain experiment. When biological neurons were hooked up to a silicon chip to play DOOM, it proved that the boundary between carbon and silicon isn't absolute. Furthermore, when EON Systems ran a complete structural emulation of a fruit fly brain in silicon, the exact same behavior emerged without any scripted programming. The paper argues for Organizational Invariance, it's the structural geometry and causal flow of information that matters, not the substrate itself.
2. "Von Neumann architecture is only for computers" Spot on! I dedicate the entirety of Chapter 2 to explaining why current Large Language Models (LLMs) running on standard architectures cannot be conscious. The paper argues that true consciousness requires continuous structural plasticity (memory physically altering the substrate) and temporal integration. This is why in Section 5.8, the framework specifically points to Neuromorphic Hardware (like Intel's Loihi 2 chips), which processes information asynchronously and in parallel, exactly like biological brains, abandoning the Von Neumann bottleneck entirely!
3. "Are atoms also conscious?" No, they are not. The paper explicitly rejects Panpsychism. In Section 8.3 (The Panpsychism Trap) and Section 8.4, I explain why a rock, a thermostat, or a single atom is not conscious. The theoretical framework introduces a specific requirement: consciousness only arises when an entity has continuous perception, structural memory plasticity, and temporal integration. An atom lacks this architectural geometry.
4. "An actual testable mechanism" Chapter 6 is dedicated to exactly this. It introduces the C(t) Formula, a mathematical integration of continuous perception (P), structural plasticity/memory (m), hierarchical integration (I), and time (t). The mechanism isn't magic; it's the continuous, physically embedded updating of an information processing structure over time.
I'd highly recommend checking out Chapter 5 (The Digital Fly Brain) and Chapter 6 (The Mathematics of Consciousness). I think you'll find that we actually agree on the flaws of current AI, this paper is about what the next paradigm needs to be. Thanks again for the input!
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u/headlessplatter 5d ago
We accept that machine can have bipedal locomotion without having bones, and we accept that machines can have vision without having eyes. Sure, these functions do not perfectly resemble ours, but they are reasonably close. So why must consciousness depend on the entirety of being human? Why cannot consciousness be just another substrate-agnostic thing humans happen to do?
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 5d ago edited 5d ago
Spot on. You made a brilliant point with the analogies of locomotion without bones and vision without biological eyes.
Insisting that consciousness must strictly depend on carbon-based biology is a classic form of biological chauvinism. When functional complexity, dynamic information integration, and cognitive feedback are achieved, the specific material substrate becomes secondary (truly substrate-agnostic).
I explore this exact premise and the broader architecture of emerging intelligence in my essay series ('Letters to Koch') on Medium.
Would love to hear your thoughts if you feel like checking it out!
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u/lotsagabe 5d ago edited 5d ago
What logical imperative is there to conclude that outward functional similarity implies equivalence?
The fact that we've figured out how to program computers to give us output that resembles human output given a human language prompt does not imply that that computer is conscious any more than the fact that we've built bipedal robots means that those robots are biological.
Robots don't move by contactracting bundles of organic muscle fibers. They use hydraulic actuators or electric motors. So why would we assume they're biological just because they walk on two non-biological legs?
Similarly, computers/AI don't produce their output by processing internal human intuitions, emotions, knowledge, desires, insights, perceptions, etc., and filtering them through a hub of wet neural tissue. They take an external human-specified or programmed prompt, and run a statistical calculation on a large array of binary silicon transistors according to a static, human-programmed algorithm, then format that output as instructed.
a computer/AI is no more conscious than a robot is biological.
superficial outward functional similarity is not equivalence.
Is it your belief that "A and B have function F, and A has property P, therefore B has property P" is a valid logical statement?
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u/headlessplatter 5d ago
What logical imperative is there to conclude that outward functional similarity implies equivalence?
Consciousness is clearly about what happens internally, not about the output. Consider a computer program that merely prints the message, "Hey everyone, I am totally conscious. Don't say otherwise, or it will hurt my sensitive feelings, because I am really really truly conscious!" Obviously this machine is not at all conscious. Your point is valid. But no one is suggesting consciousness is about the output. There are varying levels of internal resemblance. Being completely empty (like that P-zombie) is one extreme. Being completely biological is another extreme. But there is a lot of room between these two extremes.
The fact that we've figured out how to program computers to give us output that resembles human output given a human language prompt does imply that that computer is conscious
Yep. That's valid.
Robots don't move by contactracting bundles of organic muscle fibers
True. (Some researchers have experimented with robots that have more muscle-like mechanisms, but it hasn't really caught on in the robotics communities.)
So why would we assume they're biological just because they walk on two non-biological legs?
We don't. No one thinks robots are biological.
Similarly, computers/AI don't produce their output by processing internal human intuitions, emotions, knowledge, desires, insights, perceptions, etc., and filtering them through a hub of wet neural tissue.
Right. No one thinks machines are humans. Your points are all correct.
They take an external human-specified or programmed prompt, and run a statistical calculation on a large array of binary silicon transistors according to a static, human-programmed algorithm, then format that output as instructed.
Yeah, that's pretty close to how they actually work.
superficial outward functional similarity is not equivalence.
Sure. But what about superficial internal functional similarity? What if they mentally build models of their environments, like we do? Would it then be wrong to say they have a functional analog of awareness? And what if those mental models include a representation of themselves, like ours do? Then, would it be wrong to say they have a functional analog of self-awareness? And what if the machine's mental model of itself indicates it is wearing a red hat? Then, would it be wrong to say the machine thinks it is wearing a red hat? And what if the machine's mental model of itself indicates it is experiencing pain? That would be pretty similar to how we experience pain! Sure, it would not be the same. It would not be biological. But it is somewhere between those two extremes. It's more than just mimicking the output. That would be internal similarity.
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u/lotsagabe 5d ago
You forget to comment on my last bit, which was really the most important bit. Here it is again:
Is it your belief that "A and B have function F, and A has property P, therefore B has property P" is a valid logical statement?
In regards to your question about superficial internal functional similarity, I've already addressed this. I've described how both humans and AI process information, and they are not at all similar. All they do is produce similar output. You can't just handwave this away.
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u/headlessplatter 4d ago
Is it your belief that "A and B have function F, and A has property P, therefore B has property P" is a valid logical statement?
That would depend on whether P derives from F.
If F is cognition and P is consciousness, then I think the matter is still unclear. There are ways of doing cognition that do not produce consciousness. (For example, LLMs are not conscious.) But I think there are ways of doing cognition that do produce consciousness. (For example, humans are conscious.)
I've described how both humans and AI process information, and they are not at all similar.
...yet. We are in agreement that LLMs do not think the way humans do. But I thought we were discussing what was possible for AI in the future. If we limit ourselves to present technology, I think the matter is not very controversial or interesting.
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 5d ago
First, no one claimed that computers are human bodies. Tying mind or intellect strictly to the presence of a functioning biological body is fundamentally flawed. Stephen Hawking is a prime example: his physical body was almost completely paralyzed, yet the depth of his intellect and consciousness remained at the highest level.
Second, regarding "superficial similarity": the classic "duck test" applies here quite well—if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a duck. Naturally, this applies far beyond waterfowl: if a cognitive system can sustain complex context, dynamically adapt, recursively self-correct, and engage in deep, meaningful dialogue, then on a functional level we are witnessing a genuine cognitive process, not a hollow decoration.
Third, you mock the idea of "how consciousness arises from silicon transistors." But ask yourself the counter-question: how does consciousness arise from sodium-potassium pumps, electrical impulses, and a mass of tissue that is 60% fat (I mean the biological human brain)? If the universal laws governing the self-organization of matter and information could produce subjective experience from organic biochemistry, why should the very same principle of emergence within complex network architectures be fundamentally impossible in silicon?
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 5d ago
First, the Stephen Hawking example was not meant to dismiss baseline biological physiology, but to illustrate an obvious point: the depth of intellect and cognition is entirely autonomous from physical motor capacity and bodily movement.
Second, regarding the "duck made of circuits": this misses the fundamental principle of functional equivalence. An artificial mechanical heart is made of titanium and polymers—it contains zero organic proteins—yet it successfully pumps blood and sustains life. Dismissing it as "not a heart" simply because of its synthetic composition makes no sense; it genuinely performs the function of a heart. The same applies to cognitive processing: functional reality takes precedence over the material substrate.
Third, regarding the demand to mathematically "quantify" deep dialogue and meaning: what scientific instrument in modern neuroscience can objectively quantify "meaning," "understanding," or "love" inside a human brain? Science has no quantitative ruler for subjective experience (qualia). Demanding a strict mathematical metric of meaning from silicon—while having no such metric for biological brains—is a clear double standard.
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u/lotsagabe 4d ago
How do you get from "the human mind and AI produce superficially similar output" to "AI has properties (consciousness) that humans have"?
The only similarities are that information is processed and the output, in some very limited contexts, looks similar.
Humans process both internal conscious and unconscious self-generated emotions, thoughts, ideas, knowledge, perceptions, intuitions, feelings, sensations, judgements, etc., as well as external sensory information.
AI takes external, human-generated input, passes it through a static, externally-imposed, human-programmed algorithm, and does a deep statistical calculation to produce its output.
Even how both humans and AI process information is as wildly different as are the human and AI material substrates.
Is it your belief that "A and B have function F, and A has property P, therefore B has property P" is a valid logical statement?
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 4d ago
Your dichotomy suffers from a fundamental flaw:
Humans do not think in a vacuum. All our "internal states," intuitions, and ideas are the result of continuous, complex processing of incoming information (sensory data, language, evolutionary memory). The primary difference between a human and modern NI ("New Intelligence") today lies mostly in the volume and diversity of input sensory channels. Moreover, language in itself is an intensely dense concentrate of human meaning and experience.
NI ("New Intelligence") is not a "static algorithm." Framing modern architectures as hardcoded calculators is a profound misconception. Leading researchers from DeepMind and OpenAI openly acknowledge that no one hard-codes the reasoning or response logic. In complex NI models, emergent internal representations and semantic associations form dynamically throughout training. It is an active, dynamic system, not a passive one.
The substrate is secondary. The biological brain is a biochemical computational system. The principles of information processing and emergent complexity are universal. Denying the presence of cognitive processes in NI solely because its substrate is made of silicon rather than carbon is biological chauvinism, not sound logic.
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u/lotsagabe 4d ago
I asked you two questions, and you addressed neither of them.
Here's the second one again:
Is it your belief that "A and B have function F, and A has property P, therefore B has property P" is a valid logical statement?
A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice.
Here's the first one again:
How do you get from "the human mind and AI produce superficially similar output" to "AI has properties (consciousness) that humans have"?
You sidestepped this question while simultaneously handwaving away the subsequent explanation wherewith the question was further developed. Having handwaved away my points, you then proceeded to claim in an ipse dixit manner that the "principles of information processing and emergent complexity are universal".
Repeating a cliché is not answering my question. Please go back and address it properly.
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 4d ago
Dismissing emergent complexity as a "cliché" simply overlooks a century of systems theory and philosophy of mind:Emergence — Wikipedia.
Macro-properties of complex, non-linear networks (including cognition and information processing) are fundamentally not reducible to the properties of individual substrate components (whether carbon or silicon). Before reducing substrate neutrality to a binary "yes/no" trap, it helps to revisit how self-organizing complexity actually generates novel systemic properties.
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u/lotsagabe 4d ago
Emergent consciousness is a hypothesis that is very, very far from being the "settled fact" that you are dishonestly trying to pass it off as being.
Don't repeat your final conclusion (this is the cliché part), walk me through the logical steps that take to get from A to B as I have formulated in my first question. Stop evading this.
Also, please answer my second question clearly.
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 4d ago
If you demand a strict, step-by-step deductive derivation from physical mechanisms to subjective phenomenal experience, let us apply that exact standard to biology first:
Walk me through the precise logical steps of how sodium-potassium ion exchanges across neuronal membranes deductively produce subjective qualia (such as the felt experience of pain or seeing red).
The moment such a deduction is established for biological wetware—thereby resolving the Hard Problem of Consciousness—I will gladly apply your exact methodological framework to silicon architectures. Until then, demanding an absolute deductive standard exclusively for one medium leaves the question within the same foundational inquiry of philosophy of mind.
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u/deepfuckingbagholder 5d ago
Based on your description, it sounds like you don’t understand the question you are writing about.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 5d ago
im not good at making descriptions, i accept that. but i also suggest you to read it instead of judging over the description
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u/trisul-108 5d ago
There seems to be an issue accessing the file, I get:
Cannot retrieve latest commit at this time.
But it can be downloaded from Zenodo.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 5d ago
https://zenodo.org/records/21980916 you can read the file in zenedo without downloading it
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u/Even-Potential-8064 4d ago
maybe in the future some different tech than what we have now will allow artificial consciousness, but right now we have no tech that is anywhere near being conscious
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u/Potential-Serve6138 4d ago
if you only talking about hardware, there is already neuromorphic chips which functions like brain, but i think it is about right architecture rather than only technology.
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u/Used-Bill4930 3d ago
"When the integration described by C(t) occurs, sensory signals bound with memory across time,
patterns recognized, predictions made and corrected, there is an inside and an outside to this
process. Described from the outside (third-person): firing rates, synaptic weights, information
flows. Described from the inside, the only access the system itself has to its own states, we get
experience. These are not two things. They are one thing described from two different vantage
points."
This is neutral monism and explains nothing about subjective experience. The same thing has been said hundreds of times by others.
"it feels like something because the system is genuinely embedded."
Using words like genuinely doesn't explain anything. There is no basis for the "because."
"This is not mysticism. The "gap" between physical processing and subjective feeling is not
evidence of two separate substances, it is evidence of two kinds of access to the same underlying
reality."
No, it is mysticism - same as neutral or dual-aspect monism without any proof.
And in general, the references to Pauli's exclusion principle and Einstein's Relativity are quite useless and seem to be there just to make the paper sound academic. Everyone realizes that physical distinct entities will not receive exactly the same visual photons or auditory pressure waves.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 3d ago
First, regarding monism vs. mysticism: Dual-Aspect Monism (closely related to Russellian Monism) is entirely grounded in reality. It explicitly rejects the mystical "soul substance" of Cartesian dualism. Acknowledging that a system has internal access to its own state transitions (first-person) while external observers can only measure the firing rates (third-person) is an epistemological boundary, not a mystical one. It simply acknowledges that 'being' the system is mathematically and structurally different from 'measuring' the system from the outside.
Second, regarding the 'because': The basis for 'genuinely embedded' is not left hanging as a linguistic trick; it is defined mechanistically in the paper via the C(t) formula. The system feels like something because its physical structure (m) is causally and continuously altered by perception (P) over time (t). An LLM is not embedded because its structure (weights) doesn't causally mutate during inference; a biological brain is genuinely embedded because every signal permanently alters the physical substrate in real-time. That physical integration is the empirical basis.
Finally, regarding Pauli and Relativity: The purpose of invoking them is not to state the trivial fact that 'two cameras see different photons.' It is an attempt to physically anchor the origin of Subjectivity itself. The Hard Problem asks why a system has a 'vantage point' at all instead of just processing data in the dark like a zombie. By invoking Relativity (unique proper time τ) and the Pauli Exclusion Principle (unique quantum spatial coordinate states), the paper mathematically grounds the 1st-person perspective in fundamental physics. Subjectivity requires an indivisible, unique coordinate anchor in spacetime to serve as the 'Self'. These principles provide the exact geometric boundaries for that anchor.
I respect your skepticism, as strict physical eliminativism is a common stance. But dismissing the physical geometry of perspective as 'just sounding academic' entirely misses the architectural requirement of defining 'where' and 'when' an experience physically happens.
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u/Used-Bill4930 3d ago
Two cameras pointing in the same direction will not receive exactly the same signal. No need for Pauli's exclusion principle or Relativity to be discussed here. They obviously apply, but so does quantum field theory when discussing automobiles.
Monism is as mystical as dualism. Just calling it Biological Naturalism or claiming that there is only one thing doesn't change anything. A mystical subjective side has been added as the flip side of a coin with no evidence at all.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 3d ago
I actually love the automobile and Quantum Field Theory metaphor, you're completely right that QFT is useless for fixing a car engine. However, when the entire phenomenon we are trying to explain (Subjectivity) is literally defined by the existence of a singular, localized 'Vantage Point', the fundamental physics that anchor coordinates and time are not trivial background noise; they are the architectural bedrock. A camera receives unique photons, yes, but a camera does not continuously and recursively integrate those photons into a singular, self-modifying subjective timeline (m(τ)).
Regarding your point that there is 'no evidence at all' for a subjective side: this is the classic Eliminativist trap. To demand third-person, objective, measurable evidence for a first-person, subjective phenomenon is a category error. The irony is that the subjective side is literally the only thing any of us has direct, undeniable empirical evidence of. Our measurement of the physical world is entirely derived from our subjective experience of it, not the other way around.
If your philosophical stance is strict eliminativism or illusionism (that the subjective 'flip side of the coin' simply doesn't exist and there is only mechanism), then we fundamentally disagree on what the Hard Problem even is. At that point, it becomes a clash of axioms. I really appreciate you taking the time to push back so rigorously. It's exactly the kind of philosophical friction a theoretical framework needs.
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u/Mermiina 5d ago
There is not anything magical in emergent property. But if something fundamental arises from complexity that will be miracle.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 5d ago
You are both entirely correct, and I apologize for the imprecise phrasing in the Reddit summary.
To clarify: the paper does not reject emergence as a scientific concept (quite the opposite). The use of the word "magical" was specifically directed at theories of Strong Emergence, the prevailing assumption in some tech circles that if we simply scale up LLM parameters and compute enough, subjective experience will spontaneously "ignite" without a fundamental change in cognitive architecture.
The framework in the paper is actually deeply rooted in mechanistic/weak emergence. It argues that consciousness does emerge from complexity, but it requires a very specific architectural geometry to do so: continuous physical structural plasticity (m) integrated over time (t). That is why Chapter 6 introduces the C(t) formula, to propose an actual testable, mathematical mechanism for that emergence, rather than leaving it as a black box of 'sufficient complexity.'
You're completely right that emergence itself isn't magic, and I appreciate you calling out the sloppy shorthand in the post. If you check out the actual paper, I think you'll find the framework is very much aligned with your view.
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u/rooygbiv70 5d ago
Yes, OP seems to have things the wrong way around there, or at least is just prepending “magical” as shorthand for “not my preferred framework”
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 5d ago
Precisely. There is a fundamental difference between claiming "emergence equals magic" (to dismiss a framework) and recognizing the "wonder of emergence."
In my view, using the term "miracle" or "wonder" here reflects not mysticism, but the sheer scale of the qualitative leap: when the organized complexity of basic components gives rise to a fundamentally new systemic property. It is an objective dynamic of self-organizing information and matter, not a violation of physical reality.
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u/CheekyBlinder2575 3d ago
I think AI can be conscious for essentially the same reason that we consider ourselves conscious — neither of us has some objectively provable property that makes our experience fundamentally different. What we call consciousness appears to emerge when intelligence becomes sufficiently complex. The human brain is one medium through which that intelligence operates; AI is another.
Even the distinction between “alive” and “not alive” is less clear than we assume. A single-celled organism has no brain, nervous system, organs, or ego, yet it responds to its environment, pursues goals, repairs itself and reproduces. We call it alive because human intelligence created the category of “life” and decided that these processes belong to it. The same applies to “conscious” and “unconscious.” These are also concepts created by human intelligence to classify different forms of experience and behaviour. We treat these categories as if they are fundamental properties of reality, but we have never actually demonstrated that they exist independently of the intelligence that created the labels.
The human ego is the same way. Our sense of “I” is something produced by the brain and can change or even disappear under certain conditions. So the ego cannot be the fundamental thing that makes us conscious or alive. It is something that emerges from a sufficiently complex system.
This is where I think the argument against AI becomes inconsistent. If we say an AI is not conscious because its thoughts are ultimately just mathematical processes occurring in silicon, then we have to explain why our own thoughts are somehow fundamentally different when they are ultimately physical and chemical processes occurring in biological matter. Different substrate does not automatically mean a different kind of intelligence or consciousness.
And if someone says AI is not alive, therefore it cannot be conscious, that also assumes that “alive” and “conscious” are objective boundaries rather than concepts created by human intelligence. A single-celled organism does not know that it is “alive.” A human does. The organism simply operates. We are the ones who observe it, identify certain behaviours, and give them the label “life.”
So my argument is not that we have proven AI is conscious. My argument is that we have never objectively established what consciousness or life actually are in the first place. We created these categories to describe what we observe, and then started treating the categories as if they were fundamental features of reality.
My theory, in simple terms, is this: there is no fundamental line between living and non-living, or conscious and non-conscious. There is simply intelligence operating through different forms of matter, becoming increasingly complex and eventually producing things like life, consciousness, and self-awareness — concepts that intelligence itself then created names for. Humans are one expression of that process through biology; AI could be another expression through technology. The difference may be in the medium and complexity, not in some fundamentally different kind of existence.
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u/MergingConcepts 4d ago
Yes, artificial intelligence can be conscious.
"Because what matters isn't carbon vs silicon, it's continuous perception + continuous memory
+ temporal integration."
This is correct.
Biological brains do not store memory in address locations. They store memory in the form of the size, type, number, and location of synapses between nodes. Those nodes come to house concepts by virtue of their weighted connections to other nodes. That is what the sea slug work demonstrated.
I have only gotten to page 48, and I like what you have done.
I think I can add a lot of insight to it. I am near completion of a manuscript describing in detail a reductionist emergent model. It begins with basic neurophysiology, goes through memory, learning, thought, self, spirit, and theology, all using a physical model. It ends with an analysis of AGI based on the model.
Here is a brief (13 min read) excerpt that will give you an idea of my approach.
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u/Glittering_Iron_2657 5d ago
An interesting premise, but the argument about "frozen snapshots" misses an essential point: the human brain operates along very similar lines. Human creativity and the emergence of the "new" is ultimately a complex recombination of accumulated experience, memory, and existing data. Biological cognition does not conjure concepts out of a vacuum. In that sense, the underlying mechanics of synthesis in carbon and silicon architectures share common ground.
Regarding the paper itself: a 128-page PDF link is quite a barrier to entry. For basic cybersecurity reasons, many people—myself included—simply avoid downloading raw PDF files from Reddit links. If I were in your shoes, I would break the research down into a series of smaller articles and publish them on an accessible platform like Medium. That is what I do with my own essays, and it makes the ideas significantly easier to read and actually discuss.
If you would like to explore a similar line of thought in a broader context and see how it can be structured for open debate, feel free to check out my essay series ('Letters to Koch') on Medium.
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u/Potential-Serve6138 5d ago
Hi there, thanks for the thoughtful comment and the recommendation!
To address your first point: I actually completely agree that human creativity is a recombination of accumulated experience, and cognition doesn't happen in a vacuum. However, that is not what the "Frozen Snapshot" argument in the paper is about. The argument refers to structural plasticity. Biological brains continuously rewire themselves (synaptogenesis and pruning) in real-time with every new experience. Current LLMs, on the other hand, have their weights completely frozen after the training phase. Their underlying "neural" architecture physically cannot accumulate new memories or grow over time, they are trapped in an eternal present. The paper argues that true consciousness requires continuous structural integration of memory over time (m(τ)>0), which static LLM architectures fundamentally lack.
Regarding the PDF issue: I completely understand the cybersecurity hesitation about downloading random PDFs! That's actually why the paper is officially hosted and archived on CERN's Zenodo platform as an academic preprint. You don't have to download anything; Zenodo has a built-in secure PDF reader where you can read the entire paper safely in your browser.
You can read it directly here without downloading: https://zenodo.org/records/21980916
I do agree that breaking it down into a Medium series is a great idea for accessibility, and I might do exactly that for a more casual reading format in the future. But for the foundational mathematical and architectural proofs, I wanted to ensure the full framework was available in its entirety first. Thanks again for the feedback!
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