Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Ontologically Uncertain Bearer of Intelligence

8 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Ontologisch unklarer Intelligenzträger

An ontologically uncertain bearer of intelligence is a being whose status cannot be unequivocally determined as either substantial or merely functional. The class keeps the openness of this question visible as its own methodological determination.

Two contemporary cases — and one contrast case:

Brain Organoids

In-vitro grown neuronal cultures that show elementary learning behaviour. Kagan et al. (DishBrain, Neuron 2022) demonstrate that cortical neuronal cultures can learn the game of Pong. Smirnova et al. (Frontiers in Science 2023) coined organoid intelligence (OI) as a research programme.

Question: Does a neuronal culture with ca. 100,000 neurons have substantial constitution — or is it merely a functional apparatus?

Synthetic Embryo Models

Stem-cell-based structures that did not arise through fertilization but morphologically and developmentally come increasingly close to the embryo (Liu 2021, Hanna 2023).

Question: Does a substance with rational nature arise from a pluripotent stem-cell aggregation — or does it remain an aggregation without this essence-form?

Contrast Case: Advanced Large Language Models

Advanced LLMs (GPT-5, Claude Opus 4) do not belong in the same series as organoids and embryo models — they are the contrast case that sharpens the meaning of the class. They generate texts with apparent self-reference, apparent truth-claiming, apparent argumentation; the linguistic surface of a single output often cannot be distinguished from the acts of a truth-apt subject.

This indistinguishability, however, is apparent, not real — and it is an epistemic feature of the observer, not an open ontological status of the being. In organoids and embryo models the uncertainty sits in the substrate: human-biological material on the organismic developmental line, where even within substance ontology it is undecided whether a rational nature is present or arising. The LLM has no such substrate-based uncertainty.

Here the question is settled on both levels, not just one:

  • Level of enactment: the distinguishing mark is not a behavioural feature but ownership. An LLM asserts without performing the assertion as its own judgement, owned in the first person — no truth-apt act in the first person.
  • Level of substance: an LLM is an artefact — an accidental unity, not a substance with substantial form. It lacks the unified, subsistent bearer that could be the subject of a rational nature at all. The substance question remains “open” only if one has already bought in functionalist premises (multiple realizability) — precisely the move the substance-ontological concept of person rejects. Under the standard of the ontology itself there is no substance-candidate; the question is therefore settled negatively, not left open.

The two levels must not be collapsed into one another — but in this case they coincide in the result: no enactment, no bearer. The LLM case is documented here because it is the most frequent confusion of the present; it does not, however, fall under the protection of in dubio pro persona (see below), because it lacks the antecedent grounds for a rational nature. Whoever still ran it as a genuine case of uncertainty would make the class the door through which the function-criterion returns.

Methodological Principle

In substantial uncertainty about the personhood of a being, the traditional principle in dubio pro persona applies — analogous to the criminal-law principle in dubio pro reo. In uncertainty, the being is to be treated as if personhood were possible, until empirically reliably decided otherwise.

This methodological caution is not an additional standard — it is the same methodological line that the substance-ontological concept of person brings to bear against premature exclusions from the circle of persons (e.g. with Singer).

The principle, however, applies with full force only where there are antecedent grounds for regarding the being as a possible bearer of a rational nature at all — as with the human organism in its earliest development. Where such grounds are lacking, mere behavioural similarity is not a sufficient occasion to trigger the doubt. Otherwise the standard would shift unnoticed from nature to function — precisely the move the substance-ontological concept of person rejects. The reservation must not dismantle the very standard it is meant to protect.

Symmetry with the Singer Critique

The empirical-functionalist concept of person is criticized through the exclusion objection: it withdraws personhood-status from embryos, severely demented, and comatose persons, although the ontological evidence for this denial is insufficient.

The class Ontologically Uncertain Bearer of Intelligence carries this reservation over — with one important qualification. The symmetry is not complete: in the Singer case (embryo, severely demented) positive grounds speak for the presence of the rational nature, only its actual enactment is missing; in the case of an artefact such as the LLM it is precisely contested whether any such nature is present at all. Both errors remain errors — premature ascription risks a category mistake, premature denial risks the Singer error — but they weigh differently from case to case: whoever denies the status to a human early stage commits the Singer error in full gravity; whoever ascribes it to an LLM mistakes a convincing imitation for a nature. The reservation protects above all where the being lies on the human-organismic developmental line.

Asymmetry of the Burden of Proof

From in dubio pro persona a burden-of-proof rule follows — but a differentiated one. Both mis-judgements have costs: a falsely denied personhood leads to the negation of an actual person — the graver error, where a person really is present. But a falsely affirmed personhood is not without consequence either; it leads to a category mistake and can paralyse the legitimate handling of mere artefacts or tissues. The burden of proof therefore shifts not wholesale onto the one who denies, but in proportion to the antecedent grounds that speak for a rational nature: strong for the human early stage, weak to none for the pure artefact. In this way the caution remains genuine caution and does not become the door through which the function-criterion returns.

Ontological Classification

Note on Further Application

The formal application of this determination to the cases mentioned — brain organoid, advanced LLM, synthetic embryo model, BCI hybrid — is the subject of ongoing research.

Sources (recension date 25 April 2026).

Further sources:

  • Kagan, Brett J. et al. (2022): In vitro neurons learn and exhibit sentience when embodied in a simulated game-world. Neuron 110(23): 3952 – 3969.e8 (07.12.2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.09.001.
  • Smirnova, Lena et al. (2023): Organoid intelligence (OI): the new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence-in-a-dish. Frontiers in Science 1, Art. 1017235 (28.02.2023). DOI: 10.3389/fsci.2023.1017235.
  • Liu, Xiaodong et al. (2021): Modelling human blastocysts by reprogramming fibroblasts into iBlastoids. Nature 591: 627 – 632. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03372-y.
  • Oldak, Bernardo, Hanna, Jacob H. et al. (2023): Complete human day 14 post-implantation embryo models from naive ES cells. Nature 622: 562 – 573. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06604-5.
  • Tarazi, Shadi, Hanna, Jacob H. et al. (2022): Post-gastrulation synthetic embryos generated ex utero from mouse naive ESCs. Cell 185(18): 3290 – 3306. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.07.028.
  • Lovell-Badge, Robin et al. (2021): ISSCR Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation: The 2021 update. Stem Cell Reports 16(6): 1398 – 1408. DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.05.012.
  • Clark, Amander T. et al. (2021): Human embryo research, stem cell-derived embryo models and in vitro gametogenesis: Considerations leading to the revised ISSCR guidelines. Stem Cell Reports 16(6): 1416 – 1424.
  • Hyun, Insoo, Wilkerson, Amy & Johnston, Josephine (2016): Embryology policy: Revisit the 14-day rule. Nature 533: 169 – 171.
  • Lavazza, Andrea & Massimini, Marcello (2018): Cerebral organoids: ethical issues and consciousness assessment. Journal of Medical Ethics 44(9): 606 – 610.
  • Niikawa, Takuya, Hayashi, Yoshiyuki, Shepherd, Joshua & Sawai, Tsutomu (2022): Human Brain Organoids and Consciousness. Neuroethics 15: 5. DOI: 10.1007/s12152-022-09483-1.
  • Sawai, Tsutomu, Sakaguchi, Hideya, Thomas, Elizabeth, Takahashi, Jun & Fujita, Misao (2019): The Ethics of Cerebral Organoid Research: Being Conscious of Consciousness. Stem Cell Reports 13: 440 – 447.
  • Blackiston, Douglas, Kriegman, Sam, Bongard, Joshua & Levin, Michael (2023): Biological Robots: Perspectives on an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field (Anthrobots / Xenobots). Soft Robotics 10(4): 674 – 686. DOI: 10.1089/soro.2022.0142.
  • Spaemann, Robert (2006): Persons. Translated by Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • George, Robert P. & Tollefsen, Christopher (2008): Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. New York: Doubleday.
  • Snead, O. Carter (2020): What It Means to Be Human. The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Damasio, Antonio (2010): Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York: Pantheon.
  • Frankfurt, Harry G. (1971): Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person. The Journal of Philosophy 68(1): 5 – 20.

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