Jonathan Simon
Université de Montréal
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
Jonathan Simon is a philosopher at the Université de Montréal working on consciousness, indeterminacy, and the metaphysics of mind. His published work defends the possibility that there is no fact of the matter about whether some systems are conscious, that the property can be vague at its boundaries the way many natural properties are. That thesis, sometimes called phenomenal indeterminacy, is not a dodge. It is a claim about how consciousness relates to the physical world, with direct consequences for artificial systems that sit between the paradigm cases.
Simon is a co-author of the Butlin and Long indicator-properties report, this site’s nineteen researcher checklist, where his expertise informs the report’s careful handling of whether consciousness is all-or-nothing, graded, multidimensional, or composed of separable elements. The report’s box on determinacy, degrees, and dimensions carries his fingerprints, and the site’s own assessment posts inherit that caution.
The position matters for AI consciousness because current systems are exactly the kind of borderline case the thesis predicts. A language model may satisfy some indicators and fail others, and Simon’s framework licenses the honest verdict, that such systems may be indeterminate rather than simply absent of experience. His profile anchors the site’s coverage of the indeterminacy position.
Known for. Indeterminate and graded consciousness, philosophy of AI consciousness, consciousness in blurry cases, indicator properties collaboration
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- Patrick ButlinEleos AI Research. Previously the Global Priorities Institute, OxfordLead author of the indicator properties framework for assessing consciousness in AI systems
- Robert LongEleos AI Research (Executive Director)AI welfare research, the 14 indicator framework for AI consciousness assessment, the Eleos Conference on AI Consciousness and Welfare
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David ChalmersNew York University. Co-director, Center for Mind, Brain and ConsciousnessNaming the hard problem of consciousness, and the philosophical zombie argument
- Karl FristonUniversity College London. Chief Scientist, VERSES AIThe free energy principle and active inference
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Jonathan BirchLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceThe Edge of Sentience, the LSE Criteria, and the run-ahead principle
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Yoshua BengioMila, Université de MontréalThe Consciousness Prior, deep learning foundations, Turing Award, global workspace-inspired representation learning
Jonathan Simon is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.