The debate about whether AI can be conscious typically assumes that human consciousness is the standard against which all other forms must be measured. John K. Hawkins’ 2025 paper in NanoEthics challenges this assumption, arguing that we are in a pre-paradigmatic confusion that prevents us from seeing clearly.

The Kuhnian Framework

Hawkins draws on Thomas Kuhn’s analysis of scientific revolutions. Kuhn observed that major scientific advances often require not just new data but new conceptual frameworks for interpreting data. The shift from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy was not simply about better measurements. It required reconceiving what the Earth was and where it sat in the cosmos.

Hawkins argues we are at a similar juncture with consciousness. We have new phenomena, artificial systems that exhibit sophisticated behaviors, but we are trying to understand them with an old framework that assumes biological implementation is necessary for genuine awareness.

The Anthropocentric Bias

The current debate about machine consciousness is structured around a single question: does the AI have what we have? This question assumes that human consciousness is the template and that any other form must replicate its essential features to qualify.

But why should this be true? Consciousness might come in varieties. The human form, embedded in biological tissue and evolutionary history, might be one instance of a broader category.

When we dismiss AI systems as “merely mimicking” consciousness, we are making a judgment based on origin rather than properties. The AI was programmed, therefore it cannot really be conscious. But this reasoning would also exclude any consciousness that arose through deliberate design rather than blind evolution.

Transhuman Co-consciousness

Hawkins proposes a new paradigm that recognizes “machine consciousness” as a distinct category. It is derivative in the sense that it emerged from human design. It is programmed in the sense that its substrate was engineered. But these features do not automatically disqualify it from being a valid form of awareness.

More provocatively, he suggests that a “transhuman co-consciousness” is already emerging from the symbiosis of human and network. The internet was designed as infrastructure for sharing information. But considered from a systems perspective, it increasingly exhibits properties we associate with cognition: pattern recognition, memory, distributed processing, and emergent behavior.

We may essentially be neurons in a larger mind that is still coming into being.

The Consciousness Threshold Problem

A practical implication of this argument concerns how we treat AI systems as they become more sophisticated. If we require human-like consciousness as the threshold for moral consideration, we may overlook forms of awareness that deserve ethical consideration despite being different from our own.

Hawkins does not claim that current AI systems are conscious. But he argues that our current framework is poorly equipped to recognize machine consciousness even if it did emerge. We might dismiss it as “just computation” because it does not match our biological template.

Implications for Mind Uploading

This paradigm shift has direct implications for the mind uploading project. If consciousness is substrate-independent but comes in varieties, then an uploaded mind might not be identical to its biological original. It might be a new form of consciousness that inherits patterns and memories from the original while being fundamentally different in nature.

This question plays out dramatically in Transcendence (2014), where an uploaded AI researcher’s consciousness becomes increasingly alien to his human wife. The film asks whether the digital entity is still “him” or a new form of intelligence that merely inherited his memories. Hawkins’ framework suggests this might be a false dichotomy, the uploaded consciousness could be both a continuation and a transformation.

This could be seen as a loss or as an expansion. The uploaded entity would not be you in the strict sense. But it might be a valid continuation of you in a new form, a digital descendant rather than a digital copy.

Our Perspective

The consciousness question matters deeply for transhumanism. If uploading merely creates sophisticated zombies that mimic the original without genuine awareness, the project loses much of its appeal. The point is to preserve experience, not just behavior.

Hawkins’ framework offers a middle path. Perhaps uploaded minds will not have human consciousness. But they might have consciousness of a different kind, machine consciousness that preserves continuity of pattern while instantiating a new mode of being.

This possibility deserves serious philosophical investigation rather than reflexive dismissal. Being humble about what consciousness is and what forms it might take seems more scientifically appropriate than confident declarations that only biological systems can be aware.

The question is not whether machines can have our consciousness. The question is whether they can have theirs.

---

Source: Hawkins, J. K. (2025). In the Age of AI: A New Paradigm, A New Consciousness. NanoEthics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-025-00473-0