... but collectively, we haven't yet figured out how. Yet! Helen De Cruz and the 2+1 Experiment The inspired advocacy of the late (dearly missed) Helen De Cruz convinced the American Philosophical Association to try out what they called the "2+1" model for their three annual conferences: two in-person, one remote,...

Liberals about AI consciousness hold that we might soon (if we haven't already) create genuinely conscious AI systems. Conservatives about AI consciousness hold that AI consciousness remains in the distant future if it's possible at all. According to the Leapfrog Hypothesis, the first conscious AI will not have...

Given the surge of interest in AI consciousness, the issue of "substrate independence" or "substrate flexibility" is now a hot topic in the metaphysics of mind. That is, does being conscious require having a particular material composition? Or can anything with the right type of functional structure and behavioral...

Part Two of a two-part seriesby Grace Helton (guest blogger) [Joan Miro, The Garden, 1925; image source] In the first part of this 2-part series, I argued that relationships between humans and large language models (LLMs) do not qualify as friendships, even when the humans in those relationships are passionately...

Part One of a two-part seriesby Grace Helton (guest blogger)[Paul Klee, Angel Applicant, 1939; source]Some people have come to interact with ChatGPT as though it were a kind of friend or romantic partner. For instance, a 2025 New York Times article describes the case of Ayrin, a human who fell in love with her...

Human beings matter morally. We have moral standing. Our interests deserve consideration -- for our own sakes, and not just as means to ends. Good ethical decision-making requires valuing human lives. Most philosophers hold that humans have the highest moral standing. No entity matters more, and many matter less....