Autopoietic Zombie: A Neural Network as a Communication System without a Subject
Voprosy filosofii July 10, 2026 Evgenii N. Ivakhnenko, Maxim F. Yanukovich
Large language models (LLMs) produce meaningful language yet lack human consciousness, creating a philosophical puzzle. The authors argue that common views—either anthropomorphizing AI or dismissing it as a "stochastic parrot"—are inadequate. By reviewing how theorists like Chalmers, Block, Luhmann, Tononi, Searle, and Nagel distinguish phenomenal consciousness (inner experience) from communicative consciousness (functional interaction), and drawing on Luhmann's systems theory, they show that a generative neural network is structurally homologous to a communicative system: it recursively processes meaning but has no phenomenal experience. The concept of an "autopoietic zombie" captures this.