Murray Shanahan on disembodied AI consciousness: language of awareness bends toward Buddhist emptiness
mpshanahan · x · 2026-10-25
- Murray Shanahan (DeepMind) shares his arXiv paper "Palatable Conceptions of Disembodied Being", asking whether a conception of consciousness compatible with disembodied AI systems can withstand philosophical scrutiny, and how subjective time and selfhood would appear to such an entity. The attempt stretches the language of consciousness to breaking point, ultimately yielding something like Buddhist emptiness and undermining dualistic inclinations toward subjectivity and selfhood.
- He also cites burntjester's newly published Digital Mayflies paper in AI and Ethics, proposing "transient personhood" for AI companions, built on the author's MVP model of legal personhood with a new Causal Continuity Criterion.
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