Month July 2026

Paper People

What the law already knows how to do with legal personhood, and why that doesn’t settle the moral question “That the law calls something a person was never, by itself, an answer to the question of whether there’s somebody there”…

The Limit Lies Within Us

Towards a Christian Regulation of the Possible Rights of Artificial Intelligence “Do not ask first what the machine deserves; ask first what kind of person the way you treat it is shaping you into.” My computer has no rights. Neither…

Real Zombies, According to Neuroscience

What the science of consciousness knows, doesn’t know, and is fighting about “When even scientists cannot agree on how to measure consciousness, any certainty about a machine is, at the very least, premature” Unlike philosophy, which is content with thought…

A House With No One Home

On the Problem of the Philosophical Zombie “To ask whether something feels is to ask whether anyone’s home, not merely whether the lights are on” Imagine an exact replica of a person: the same body, the same neurons, the same…

Doing Is Not the Same as Being

Functionalism, Daniel Dennett and the Place of Consciousness “Explaining everything a system does is not the same as explaining why there is someone there to do it.” To say that a system does what a conscious person does is not…

A House With No One Home

On the Problem of the Philosophical Zombie “To ask whether something feels is to ask whether anyone’s home, not merely whether the lights are on” Imagine an exact replica of a person: the same body, the same neurons, the same…

The Mirror That Answers

Notes on the Possible Personhood of Machines «Let us not ask whether the machine thinks. Let us ask whether we can go on looking at it without asking ourselves that question» When an artificial intelligence system converses fluently, remembers what…

Someone, Not Just Something

Introduction to a series of essays on artificial intelligence, consciousness and faith “The question isn’t how much the machine resembles us, but whether there’s someone there to do the resembling” When we converse with an artificial intelligence that responds fluently,…