The AI Consciousness Debate is the current interdisciplinary debate (2023—2026) over the possibility of machine consciousness. Schwitzgebel’s (2023) Full Rights Dilemma formulates the central problem: contested AI personhood leads to a dilemma — either rights for unconscious systems or moral failings against conscious ones.
The Personhood ontology resolves this dilemma: AI in principle has no actus essendi (act of being) and therefore cannot be a Person. The debate arises only on the presupposition of an empirical-functionalist concept of person, which confuses Personhood with person-behavior.
Searle’s Chinese Room Argument shows that syntax is not sufficient for semantics. The Philosophical Zombie shows that behavior (second actuality) does not logically entail consciousness. The Statistical Ethics Simulation in large language models is deutera energeia (second actuality) without prote energeia (first actuality): the simulation of an action without a self that acts. In his phenomenological critique of AI (What Computers Can’t Do, 1972), Hubert Dreyfus drew the basic line confirmed in the current debate: intelligence is not a problem of symbol processing but is bound to embodied standing in the world, intuition, and context — conditions that no purely formal architecture fulfills.
The substance-ontological concept of person makes clear: Personhood is not a functional state but a ground of being. A machine can simulate person-behavior but cannot have Personhood — just as a p-zombie can behave without experiencing.
Ontological Classification
Ontological relations:
- Sub-forms: Full Rights Dilemma, Chinese Room Argument, Philosophical Zombie, Statistical Ethics Simulation
- concerns: Artificial Intelligence, consciousness
Chapter assignment: Chapter 5: Oblivion of the Person (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Schwitzgebel, Eric (2023): “The Full Rights Dilemma for AI Systems of Debatable Moral Personhood.” Robonomics: The Journal of the Automated Economy 4, Art. 32. Preprint: arXiv:2303.17509.
- Bexten 2017, p. 195 ff. (Personhood and Functionalism) (German).
- Searle, John R. (1980): “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3(3), pp. 417—457.
- Chalmers, David J. (1996): The Conscious Mind. In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.