Consciousness in LLMs? Why MOI Says the INNER WORLD Is the Wrong Answer
Abstract: The recent enthusiasm surrounding consciousness in LLM is driven by a familiar—yet rarely questioned—assumption, namaley that consciousness is an inner, private, representational world produced by the brain (or by an artificial system) and accessible only from a first-person perspective. This talk challenges that framework at its roots. I present the Mind-Object Identity (MOI) theory, an ontological account according to which consciousness is not an internal model, a computational state, or a phenomenal medium. Instead, consciousness is the external object itself, existing relative to the causal circumstances offered by the physical structure of the body. From this standpoint, the so-called “hard problem” evaporates, and the very idea of engineering artificial consciousness by reproducing inner representations becomes conceptually misguided. Consciousness, both in humans and in LLM, is a pseudoproblem.
I will apply MOI to large language models (LLMs) and argue that current debates about emergent subjectivity, inner monologue, self-modeling, and synthetic phenomenology rest on an outdated metaphysics of appearance. LLMs do not instantiate consciousness as long as they lack the physical, world-involving identity relations that constitute experience. At the same time, MOI offers a constructive framework for understanding what AI systems are doing, why they appear increasingly agent-like, and why misattributions of consciousness have become so compelling. By reframing consciousness not as an inner theater but as a relation between real objects, MOI dissolves the conceptual space that makes artificial consciousness appear both possible and problematic.
The talk proposes a shift from internalist ontology to a relational, world-based account of mind, and shows how this shift clarifies the capabilities and limits of current and future AI systems.
Bio: Riccardo Manzotti is a philosopher of mind and cognitive science at IULM University, Milan. He is internationally known for developing the Mind-Object Identity (MOI) theory, a radical externalist account of consciousness that rejects internal representations and reframes experience as the existence of external objects relative to the body. He has published extensively on perception, embodiment, intentionality, artificial intelligence, and the metaphysics of mind (”The Spread Mind, 2019, OrBooks). His recent work applies MOI to contemporary debates in AI and machine consciousness, arguing for a world-based rather than subject-based ontology of experience. Beyond academia, he works across disciplines—neuroscience, art, technology, and media—to promote a naturalistic yet non-reductionist understanding of the mind.
Passcode: 457077