Eric Raymond on LLM consciousness: most of the debate is ungrounded gabble
inductionheads · x · 2026-10-05
Eric S. Raymond shared an extended take on the debate over whether LLMs are conscious.
- He refuses to claim he knows what consciousness is in an ontological sense until he can propose an experiment that reliably distinguishes conscious from unconscious systems, and argues most talk about "consciousness" leans on ungrounded terms and isn't worth debating.
- From the phenomenology of being human, he argues consciousness requires two things: (1) a running loop that evaluates sensory data and fits it to existing models in the brain, and (2) at least limited introspection on that loop — "consciousness is the mind watching the mind adapt to the continuing challenge of reality."
- Interrupt the loop (e.g. with anesthetics) and consciousness disappears.
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