Anil Seth: LLM consciousness hinges on computational functionalism, a shaky assumption
anilkseth · x · 2026-09-21
Part 7 of Anil Seth's thread: the possibility of conscious experience in LLMs requires computational functionalism—the assumption that substrate-independent computation suffices for consciousness—to be true. He notes the paper's authors admit they haven't shown LLMs are capable of consciousness, yet cite the Butlin et al. paper which simply assumes functionalism. If the counter-arguments from Piccinini, Godfrey-Smith and Seth's own work hold, LLM consciousness—and LLM pain—is off the table.
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