Not sure how much if I agree with 1). I increasingly find terms like physicalism/idealism/panpsychism worse than useless and conveying more vibes and tribal affiliations than truth propositions. I wouldn't necessarily encourage people to identify with them more explicitly. Though other philosophical terms might be more useful - you mentioned closed individualism which (along with its opposite open/empty individualism) does seem to have more concrete implications on one's attitude towards things like death, survival, mind uploading and various transhumanist technologies if we are lucky enough to ever have those problems. Potentially also has big implications on how you view AI x-risk as well.
IMO more useful distinction than "physicalism vs. non-physicalism" per se is whether you think new physics are needed to explain consciousness like Penrose does (another one is if you think that a system needs to make use of quantum effects for phenomenal binding). That seems like a claim with content, whereas the content of "consciousness is physical/non-physical" seems highly nebulous at best. This new substance that is required to explain consciousness is "non-physical"... uhh, then what?? Debates between physicalism and panpsychism (except the most naive strawmen thereof) in particular get so ridiculously abstract and vague about the intrinsic nature of an electron and whether it counts as "proto-experiential" or something that I doubt they really know what they are even talking about.
I think that, IMO, ideally, it's best, that one treats AI consciousness topic with proper philosophy and science. It's IMO best, if anyone, on any "side", to first approximation, does this:
- 1) explicitly name which certain philosophical assumptions about consciousness they have: like monist physicalism, closed individualism, etc., which i like as well, but there is also for example panpsychism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind
- 2) define consciousness: i like phenomenal consciousness with subjective experience and then you have to define experience and so on, and there is also for example access consciousness or functionalist definitions focusing on certain algorithm and so on https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
- 3) mention which other philosophical assumptions they assume: functionalism vs nonfunctionalism, weak emergence vs strong emergence, computationalism vs not, etc. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/
- 4) mention to what types of models and which concrete models do they subscribe to in consciousness science and philosophy, if they like any in the first place: like integrated information theory, global workspace theory, EM field theories, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_consciousness
- 5) optionally, ideally, mention which empirical measurement process for verification, a falsification criterion, etc., they found and liked, that tries to measure consciousness in humans and other biological systems and in nonbiological systems, where some scientists dont even agree if this whole thing is falsifiable in the first place for both humans and machines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
- 6) mention how his choices apply to biological and nonbiological systems
- 7) mention their level of uncertanity, and what they think they don't know yet
And try to steelman other perspectives other than their own.
On every layer of this analysis you have philosophers and scientists that disagree, or/and are not certain. I think its good to be sympathetic towards the other perspectives.
I think its good to be sympathetic towards the uncertanity in all of this.
Most common perspective (almost consensus) among philosophers and scientists is towards current AI systems are probably very likely not conscious. But not everyone agrees on that, and there are different levels of uncertainity, and there are many valid positions. I think its good to be sympathetic towards their substantive reasons why they disagree, if they have any.
And it's nice to give substantive counterarguments to those who hold differing views and try to steelman their view.
Here's an example of someone apparently attempting to measure Integrated Information Theory in LLMs for example, which I bookmarked, and want to look into, so I'm not sure yet how good it is: Can "consciousness" be observed from large language model (LLM) internal states? Dissecting LLM representations obtained from Theory of Mind test with Integrated Information Theory and Span Representation analysis https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22516
A good resource for consciousness theories is https://loc.closertotruth.com/