Artificiality: Being with AI Joscha Bach at the Artificiality Summit 2024
Aug 23, 2025
Joscha Bach, a cognitive scientist and AI researcher, delivers a thought-provoking lecture at the Artificiality Summit. He dives into the intricate nature of intelligence and consciousness, proposing that our minds function like an orchestrated system. Bach explores the fascinating intersection of plant communication and AI, raising ethical questions about machine consciousness. He also discusses the dualities in expression and creativity, reflecting on the evolving relationship between AI-generated art and human perception.
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AI As A Philosophical Project
- Joscha Bach frames AI as a philosophical project extending Aristotle's inquiry into the psyche and reason.
- He argues AI unifies control and representation to explain minds computationally.
Three Realities And Metaphysical Language
- Bach distinguishes three realities: facts, experience, and physical body, and situates consciousness across them.
- He calls for metaphysics to relate languages that construct these realities and make functionalism coherent.
Consciousness As Virtual Software
- Consciousness is a persistent representation of causal patterns — a kind of software that affects physics.
- Functionally it creates a coherent 'nowness' and increases consistency across mental states.
