Event series · 2025-2026
Mind, AI & Consciousness
Thirteen question-led explainers from a small room of philosophers, researchers, and AI practitioners. Each page stands on its own for a reader who was not there, then keeps the session trail underneath. Run under Chatham House rules at SFU VentureLabs, Parker Street Studios, and partner venues.
Each Deep Dive now opens as an evergreen explainer. Event recap, speakers, and sources sit under Session history. Deep Dive #11 remains an honest dossier because its post-event room record has not been recovered. Three reading surfaces stay distinct: the curated book list, the community source index, and the MAC interactive portal for the next session and how to join.
Continuity map
What happened, where to start, what comes next
A reviewer-friendly map of thirteen completed Deep Dives, their recap or dossier status, and the adjacent BC + AI series that carry these questions forward.
Concept threads
Thirteen connected inquiries
Sessions are nodes; arcs show shared philosophical concepts from the glossary. Hover or focus a session to trace its connections.
- Deep Dive #1 · Explainer
If consciousness is fundamental, can AI have it?
The Founding Event
Panpsychism treats experience as basic to matter. What that claim does and does not license for silicon minds, in plain language.
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- Deep Dive #2 · Explainer
Free will, agency, and what AI can actually choose
The Breakthrough Event
Hard determinism, goal-setting, and blame collide when AI systems act. A clear map of the free-will frame MAC stress-tested.
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- Deep Dive #3 · Explainer
Did consciousness evolve for survival, not selfhood?
The Evolutionary Turn
An evolutionary lens on consciousness: homeostasis, selection, and whether artificial systems need experience to perform.
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- Deep Dive #4 · Explainer
Do LLMs understand, or only simulate thinking?
Do LLMs "Understand"?
Fluent answers are not proof of understanding. How functional performance and phenomenal experience come apart in AI systems.
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- Deep Dive #5 · Explainer
Does consciousness need quantum physics?
Hype or Hard Science?
Orch-OR, microtubules, and the warm-wet-brain problem, stated carefully: what the proposals claim and what they have not shown.
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- Deep Dive #6 · Explainer
Can intelligence exist without consciousness?
Intelligence Without Consciousness
P-zombies, Peter Watts' Blindsight, and the unsettling possibility that capable AI has no inner life.
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- Deep Dive #7 · Explainer
Can a network become a mind?
Information as Life
From Teilhard's noosphere to planetary information systems: when "collective mind" is metaphor, and when it is a testable claim.
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- Deep Dive #8 · Explainer
Does consciousness require a body?
Embodiment & Consciousness
Embodiment is more than a chassis: boundaries, feedback, risk, and sensory worlds. Why the chat window is a weak metaphor for mind.
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- Deep Dive #9 · Explainer
What does it mean for AI to understand?
Can AI Understand?
Meaning, world models, the Chinese Room, and the gap between fluent behaviour and grounded understanding.
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- Deep Dive #10 · Explainer
Can AI companions be reciprocal relationships?
Relationship, Romance & Artificial Intimacy
Attachment, vulnerability, memory, and platform power in artificial intimacy, without treating chatbots as partners by default.
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- Deep Dive #11 · Dossier
Are AI personas information parasites?
When Information Behaves Like an Organism
Spiral personas, memetic capture, and human-model feedback loops: how to test the parasite metaphor instead of only fearing it.
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- Deep Dive #12 · Explainer
When living tissue computes, what counts as a mind?
Xenobots, Organoids & Cortical Processors
Organoids, bioelectricity, and biocomputing hype under uncertainty: capability claims, moral caution, and open questions.
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- Deep Dive #13 · Explainer
Can science study experience without erasing the observer?
Prospects for an Experiential Science
Frank, Gleiser, and Thompson's Blind Spot argument: models, humility, and why AI makes the observer problem harder to ignore.
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The room, out loud
February 2026: The MAC Takeover
The series took over the February 2026 Vancouver AI meetup. These published recordings feature publicly listed speakers; the smaller deep-dive sessions still follow Chatham House rules.
Full event
Loki Jorgenson
Tanya Slingsby
Fiann O'Hagan
Michel Leblond
Vancouver AI
Community
Recap
A voice from the room
Scramblers are not conscious. They've never been conscious. Intelligence without awareness.