01
SILICON MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH
Seth's line: current digital AI is unlikely to be conscious because computation alone may not be sufficient. More brain-like or life-like systems keep the door open.
FIELD GUIDE · AI, MINDS & CONSCIOUSNESS
CAN A MACHINE FEEL?
Chatbots talk like they're alive. Nobody's got a consciousness meter. The fight is over code, biology, and whether experience can run on silicon.
UPDATED 2026-10-12
TL;DR
THE STORY SO FAR
02
BIOLOGY MAY JUST BE ANOTHER KIND OF COMPUTATION
David Richards and Blaise Agüera y Arcas go the other way: prediction, homeostasis, and self-maintenance may all be computational processes — so life's special sauce could point toward conscious machines.
03
IF A MACHINE FEELS, MAYBE “ALIVE” HAS TO MOVE
Mark Solms spots the naming glitch: on strict biological naturalism, a conscious nonliving system would break the vocabulary — so the fight moves to what counts as living.
04
PREDICTION IS NOT THE WHOLE ANIMAL
Peter Godfrey-Smith: biology might matter, but don't let predictive processing carry the whole case. The two claims don't have to live or die together.
LATEST FROM AI NEWS PAGE
FROM THE FRONT PAGE
KEEP READING
NEXT FIELD GUIDE →WILL AI ROT YOUR BRAIN?AI makes you faster today and rustier tomorrow. The fight is over which mental work is drudgery — and which work is how judgment gets built.MORE QUESTIONS
- WHY DOES PETER THIEL FEAR THE ANTICHRIST?
A billionaire who builds surveillance software fears a world government promising protection. Douthat pressed him in 2025. Then came the secret lectures, the pope, the AI safetyists — and an Iran-war break with Trump.
- DID THE FUTURE STOP IN 1970?
Peter Thiel made his fortune on the internet and keeps insisting the internet was not enough. Flying cars, Mars, AI, longevity and the meaning of progress — the other half of his worldview.
- IS THE U.S.-CHINA AI RACE MAKING ANYONE SAFER?
Washington is trying to choke off China's AI — chip bans, blacklists, and now Taiwan making smuggling a crime. Beijing just returned the favor, locking down its own AI exports. Meanwhile the models keep getting cheaper, better, and closer together. A field guide to the argument over whether the race protects anyone, or just speeds everything up.
SHOW YOUR WORK
SOURCES
Primary documents and reporting behind this guide.
- SILICON MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGHConscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalismBehavioral and Brain Sciences
- COMPUTATIONAL FUNCTIONALISMFunctionalismStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Facing Up to the Problem of ConsciousnessDavid Chalmers
- GLOBAL NEURONAL WORKSPACEConscious Processing and the Global Neuronal Workspace HypothesisNeuron / PMC
- INTEGRATED INFORMATION THEORYFrom the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0PLOS Computational Biology
- PREDICTIVE PROCESSING / ACTIVE INFERENCECurrent Research HighlightsAnil Seth
- THE DENNETT MOVEFacing up to the hard question of consciousnessPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B / PMC
- Minds, brains, and programsBehavioral and Brain Sciences
- BIOLOGY MAY JUST BE ANOTHER KIND OF COMPUTATIONLife is inherently computational, and consciousness probably is tooBehavioral and Brain Sciences
- IF A MACHINE FEELS, MAYBE “ALIVE” HAS TO MOVEReal artificial consciousness is, of course, incompatible with biological naturalismBehavioral and Brain Sciences
- PREDICTION IS NOT THE WHOLE ANIMALBiological naturalism without the primacy of predictionBehavioral and Brain Sciences
- DUNGWhy I am not a biological naturalistBehavioral and Brain Sciences