Hedda Hassel Mørch
University of Inland Norway
Critic Current evidence and current methods do not support the claims being made
Hedda Hassel Mørch is a philosopher at the University of Inland Norway whose book Non-Physicalist Theories of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2023) is the most systematic map of the positions this site’s debate keeps circling. Her argument, developed across papers on panpsychism, Russellian monism, and the explanatory gap, is that physical science describes structure and dynamics, and no amount of structural description by itself yields the intrinsic, felt nature of experience. Something must supply the intrinsic character, and the candidates, panpsychist proto-experience, idealist mentation, or non-reductive physical properties, each carry different verdicts for artificial minds.
Her position matters to the AI consciousness debate because it polices a boundary the functionalist program tends to blur. The indicator-property method this site tracks assesses organization, and Mørch’s work states precisely why organization alone may not settle the question, examined against the site’s functionalist emergentism and the cellular and idealist objections in one frame.
She also engages AI directly. Her 2026 Journal of Consciousness Studies commentary with Karen Crowther addresses superpsychism, the position that consciousness is universal to complex systems, extending her mapping to the machine case. Her profile anchors the site’s coverage of the intrinsic-nature debate.
Known for. Non-reductive physicalism, Russellian panpsychism, Non-Physicalist Theories of Consciousness, the argument that physics leaves phenomenal properties unexplained
Coverage on this site
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Related researchers
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Hedda Hassel Mørch is listed with the other critics and skeptics, who hold that current evidence and current methods do not support the claims being made. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.