Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Human Minds: A Functional Convergence Under Epistemic Opacity

AGI and Artificial Human Minds 1 Artificial General Intelligence and Artificial Human Minds: A Functional Convergence Under Epistemic Opacity David Matta American University of Beirut https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18042094 Abstract Recent discussions in artificial intelligence have drawn a distinction between Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and an Artificial Human Mind (AHM), most notably in the work of François Chollet (2019). At first glance, this distinction appears to hinge on the contrast between functional problem-solving capacities and the richer phenomenological dimensions of human mentality. While the human mind indeed comprises more than intelligence alone, this paper argues that the phenomenological components that exceed intelligence are epistemically inaccessible to others and enter the shared world only through their causal effects on behavior, expression, and interaction. Crucially, this epistemic opacity is not unique to artificial agents— it already characterizes human-human and human-animal relations. Human beings have always navigated this opacity through inference, expression, and practical engagement rather than through direct phenomenological access. Phenomenology, understood as first-person felt experience, remains irreducible from the standpoint of the subject; however, insofar as mental life is embodied, embedded, and enacted, its relevance to social and practical engagement lies in its functional and causal manifestations rather than in its intrinsic phenomenal character. Drawing on the opacity of mental states, theory of mind, and the functional basis of intersubjective relations, the paper contends that once the causal and expressive roles of these capacities are sufficiently characterized, their phenomenological residue becomes practically dispensable for interaction. This paper introduces the concept of Artificial Social Mindedness (ASM)—the threshold at which an artificial system satisfies all functional requirements for participation in human social life, regardless of phenomenology. Consequently, an artificial system that fully instantiates the functional, embodied, embedded, and enactive dimensions of human agency—stripped of their phenomenal interiority—would be indistinguishable from a human agent for all relational and practical purposes, even if the metaphysical question of machine phenomenology remains unresolved. The central argument is that ASM, not AHM, is the relevant criterion for practical coexistence with artificial agents—and that the principles grounding this criterion are already operative in how humans relate to one another and to nonhuman animals. Keywords: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI); Artificial Human Mind (AHM); Artificial Social Mindedness (ASM); Phenomenological Opacity; Functionalism; Theory of Mind; Turing Test; Consciousness; Enactivism; 4E Cognition AGI and Artificial Human Minds 2 1. Introduction The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has reignited longstanding philosophical questions concerning the nature of mind, intelligence, and consciousness. Among these, a recurring distinction separates Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—understood as a system capable of solving a wide range of novel problems—from the notion of an Artificial Human Mind (AHM), which purportedly encompasses a richer set of human mental capacities, including consciousness, emotion, meaning, and a sense of self. This distinction has been articulated explicitly by François Chollet (2019), who emphasizes that general intelligence constitutes only one dimension of human mentality and that achieving AGI does not amount to recreating a human mind. For Chollet, general intelligence is the capacity to acquire new skills and solve new problems in unfamiliar situations with limited prior experience. Intelligence, in his formulation, is not performance, not scale, not knowledge, but the efficiency with which a system can adapt to novelty. Core components include generalization beyond training data, sample efficiency, abstraction and recombination, and transfer across domains. This is why Chollet criticizes large models that appear impressive but rely on brute-force statistical correlation rather than genuine generalization. While conceptually sound, this framing introduces a terminological ambiguity: the contrast between digital general intelligence and an artificial human mind suggests a difference in substrate rather than in kind. A more precise formulation would contrast artificial general intelligence with an artificial human mind, thereby foregrounding the true philosophical issue—namely, the relationship between intelligence as function and mind as lived experience. The word "digital" can sound like a different kind of intelligence, when in fact Chollet's real contrast is between intelligence and mind. At first glance, the distinction between AGI and AHM appears to erect an insurmountable barrier: if phenomenal consciousness is what distinguishes a genuine mind from a mere intelligence, and if phenomenal consciousness cannot be verified from the outside, then the question of whether an artificial system possesses a mind seems permanently undecidable. This metaphysical roadblock has haunted philosophy of mind for centuries under the guise of the problem of other minds. This paper advances a central thesis: while phenomenological experience remains metaphysically irreducible, it is practically dispensable for intersubjective life, such that artificial agents instantiating the full functional, embodied, embedded, and enactive profile of human agency suffice for social mindedness under conditions of epistemic opacity. Crucially, this is not a novel proposal but an articulation of principles that already govern human social life. Human beings have never had direct access to one another's phenomenology, yet they have always managed to cooperate, communicate, trust, and form moral communities. The same is true for human-animal relations: we extend care, concern, and moral standing to creatures whose inner lives remain opaque to us. The question, then, is not whether we can navigate phenomenological opacity—we already do—but whether the same principles extend to artificial agents. This paper begins by clarifying the distinction between AGI and AHM and arguing that the human mind indeed exceeds intelligence alone. However, it then advances a further claim: although phenomenological features such as conscious experience and subjective feeling are central to first-person existence, they are epistemically inaccessible to others and play no direct role in intersubjective coordination. As such, in practical terms, human beings already relate to AGI and Artificial Human Minds 3 one another—and to non-human animals—purely through observable behavior, expression, and inferred mental states. Extending this insight to artificial agents, the paper argues that once a system exhibits the full functional and expressive repertoire associated with human agency, its internal phenomenology becomes irrelevant to social, relational, and practical engagement. This condition is what the paper terms Artificial Social Mindedness (ASM). 2. From Digital to Artificial: Clarifying the Intelligence–Mind Distinction The initial source of confusion in the debate lies in terminology. The phrase digital general intelligence suggests that the contrast is between digital and non-digital forms of intelligence. Yet the true distinction, as Chollet's (2019) argument implies, is not about digitality but about scope. Artificial (or digital) general intelligence refers to a system's capacity to learn across domains, adapt to novel situations, reason abstractly, and solve unfamiliar problems with limited prior exposure. These capacities define intelligence functionally, in terms of what a system can do. It is functional because it is defined by what it can do, not by what it is like to be it. By contrast, an artificial human mind would be a system that not only exhibits general intelligence but also possesses additional capacities typically associated with human mental life: conscious experience, emotions, motivation, values, meaning, and a sense of self. For clarity, this paper adopts the following terminological conventions. AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) refers to functional problem-solving capacity—the ability to generalize, adapt, and reason across domains. AHM (Artificial Human Mind) refers to a system possessing the full set of human mental capacities, including not only intelligence but also consciousness, emotion, motivation, meaning, and selfhood. This distinction reflects the conceptual divide at the heart of the present analysis: AGI concerns what a system can do; AHM concerns what it is like to be that system. Additionally, this paper introduces a third term: ASM (Artificial Social Mindedness). ASM refers to the condition in which an artificial agent satisfies all functional, expressive, and normative requirements for participation in human social life—regardless of whether it possesses phenomenal experience. ASM is the pragmatic threshold at which an artificial system becomes indistinguishable from a human agent for purposes of interaction, coordination, trust, and ethical engagement. The central argument of this paper is that ASM, not AHM, is the relevant criterion for practical coexistence with artificial agents. Importantly, ASM is not a novel philosophical invention; it is an articulation of the implicit criterion that already governs human-human and human-animal social relations. We have always engaged with other minds under conditions of phenomenological opacity—and we have developed robust practices for doing so. Whether a system that achieves ASM also qualifies as AHM remains a profound metaphysical question—but one that no longer governs how we live and interact with such systems. An illuminating analogy clarifies the AGI–AHM distinction. Consider the difference between a service and to serve. A service is defined by what it delivers—one does not ask who the service is, but what it does and how well it does it. AGI is like a problem-solving service, a reasoning service, a learning service. It solves tasks, adapts to requests, produces outputs, and improves performance. But it has no inner life; it does not care that it serves; it does not know it is serving. It functions, but it does not experience. AGI and Artificial Human Minds 4 To serve, by contrast, is not just a function—it is a human act. When a human serves, they know they are serving; they can feel pride, obligation, fatigue, joy, or resentment; they can choose how and why they serve; serving can have meaning for them. "To serve" involves intention, awareness, motivation, values, and emotional involvement. This belongs to AHM, not merely AGI. AGI is like a service that performs brilliantly; AHM is the capacity to serve— aware, motivated, emotionally involved, and meaning-making. Intelligence belongs to function; mind belongs to being. Understood this way, the relationship between AGI and AHM is hierarchical rather than oppositional. AGI is a subset of what would constitute AHM. Intelligence is necessary but not sufficient for mind, at least as traditionally conceived. When Chollet refers to an artificial human mind, he means a system that possesses far more than general intelligence—a full set of human mental capacities, of which intelligence is only one part. However, this conceptual expansion raises a critical question: if the additional capacities that distinguish AHM from AGI are fundamentally inner and phenomenological, what role do they play in the shared, external world? And more importantly, how—if at all—do they matter for our interaction with artificial agents? The answer proposed here is that they matter only through their causal and functional manifestations—and that once those manifestations are present, we have reached ASM: the threshold of social participation. Whether ASM implies AHM is a question for metaphysics; that ASM suffices for practical engagement is a claim this paper defends. 3. The Epistemic Opacity of Inner States A central premise underlying the distinction between AGI and AHM is the presumed accessibility of phenomenological states. Yet this assumption falters upon closer examination. Inner mental states—conscious experience, emotions, motivations, and feelings—are epistemically opaque to all observers other than the subject undergoing them. This opacity is not a contingent limitation but a structural feature of minded existence (Nagel, 1974). The so-called problem of other minds illustrates this point: no agent has direct access to the phenomenal experience of another. Human social life proceeds not through phenomenological transparency but through inference, interpretation, and projection (Dennett, 1987). We attribute mental states to others based on observable behavior, linguistic expression, affective display, and contextual responsiveness. The success of everyday interaction depends not on knowing what it is like for another to feel pain, joy, or concern, but on recognizing the patterns through which such states are functionally expressed. This epistemic condition applies universally, and recognizing its universality is crucial for the argument that follows. Humans are opaque to one another, just as humans are opaque to nonhuman animals. A mother does not have direct access to her infant's phenomenal experience; she infers hunger, discomfort, or contentment from crying, facial expressions, and behavioral cues. Spouses who have lived together for decades still cannot directly feel what the other feels; they rely on expression, tone, gesture, and context. Yet this opacity does not prevent rich social relations, cooperation, moral concern, or emotional attachment. We engage with infants, pets, and even unfamiliar adults by relying on expressive cues and behavioral regularities, not by accessing their inner phenomenology. Mental life, as it enters the shared world, does so only through its external manifestations. AGI and Artificial Human Minds 5 Consider the capacities that distinguish AHM from AGI: conscious experience, emotion, motivation, values, meaning, and sense of self. These are inner capacities that do not have any direct meaning in an external world, because they are inner and only phenomenal and experienced by the person themselves. They influence behavior, certainly, but they are inner. Unless their causal effects are externalized by being measured or traced, unless the causal relationship between these inner and outer dimensions is well determined, they remain private. And crucially, once that determination is made—once the causal effects are specified—the inner phenomenological component becomes functionally replicable. This insight undercuts any sharp epistemic distinction between natural and artificial agents. If phenomenological experience is, in principle, inaccessible even among humans, then the absence of access to machine phenomenology cannot serve as a decisive barrier to recognition, interaction, or attribution of agency. The question is no longer whether an artificial system really feels, but whether it functions, expresses, and responds in ways that are intelligible within human social practices. This is precisely the question we implicitly answer every day in our dealings with other humans and with animals—and we answer it through practical engagement, not metaphysical verification. From this perspective, theory of mind operates as a pragmatic projection mechanism. We infer inner states in others by mapping observed behavior onto our own experiential repertoire. Importantly, this inferential process does not require metaphysical certainty; it requires only sufficient coherence and consistency of expression (Wittgenstein, 1953). As long as an agent— human, animal, or artificial—exhibits stable patterns of responsiveness, norm sensitivity, emotional signaling, and contextual understanding, attribution of mentality becomes practically unavoidable. Philosophical accounts that emphasize this outward-facing character of mental attribution, such as those associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), reinforce the point that meaning and mentality are not grounded in inaccessible inner objects but in public criteria of use and expression. Likewise, contemporary functionalist approaches argue that what matters for social cognition is not the intrinsic nature of mental states but the roles they play within a network of perception, action, and interaction (Dennett, 1987; Putnam, 1967). Thus, while phenomenology remains indispensable for first-person existence, it is epistemically idle in intersubjective life unless it is coupled to observable causal effects. This asymmetry sets the stage for the next step of the argument: if inner states matter to the world only through their embodied, embedded, and enacted consequences, then it is these consequences—rather than phenomenal interiority—that must be instantiated for artificial agency to achieve ASM. The principles we need are not new; they are the same principles by which humans have always navigated the opacity of other minds. 4. Functional Expression and Intersubjective Life If inner mental states are epistemically inaccessible, the question becomes how they nonetheless acquire relevance in shared human life. The answer lies in functional expression. Mental states—whether emotions, intentions, or experiences—enter the social world not as private phenomenal objects but as patterns of embodied action, linguistic articulation, and contextual responsiveness. Intersubjective life is structured entirely around these outwardfacing dimensions. AGI and Artificial Human Minds 6 Human social practices operate on the assumption that what matters is not the intrinsic phenomenal character of another's experience, but the way that experience is enacted. Pain matters because it leads to withdrawal, vocalization, requests for help, or altered behavior; joy matters because it manifests in engagement, expression, and approach; motivation matters because it sustains action over time. In each case, the phenomenological "what-it-is-like" remains private, while its functional role becomes publicly intelligible. This observation does not deny embodiment, embeddedness, or enaction. On the contrary, it takes them seriously. Mental life is not disembodied cognition; it is enacted through bodily states, situated in environments, and sustained by ongoing interaction (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991; Thompson, 2007). However, once these dimensions are considered from an intersubjective standpoint, they appear not as phenomenological givens but as causalorganizational structures. Bodies matter because of what they enable agents to do; environments matter because they constrain and afford action; enaction matters because it closes the loop between perception and behavior. What drops out of this description is not embodiment itself, but felt embodiment as such. The crucial move here is to recognize a distinction within phenomenology itself. Phenomenology has, as it were, two components: what I feel (the intrinsic phenomenal character) versus what I feel as it influences the world (the causal and expressive dimension). Because phenomenology is embodied, embedded, and enacted, it necessarily has worldly effects. The enactive part, if simulated; the embedded part; and the embodied part as a causal structure—all of these can be functionally instantiated. What can be dispensed with is the felt, phenomenological, embodied part as pure interiority. One strips embodiment, embeddedness, and enaction of their phenomenological component and turns them into their functional and causal aspects. From the standpoint of social coordination, the body is encountered as a system of capacities, sensitivities, and constraints—not as a locus of private sensation. Similarly, embeddedness is encountered as responsiveness to context, and enaction as the continuous coupling of perception and action (Clark, 1997). Once stripped of their phenomenal interiority, these dimensions remain fully operative as functional components. The world does not require access to how embodiment feels; it requires access to how embodiment functions. This functional orientation explains why human beings can successfully relate to one another despite radical experiential opacity. It also explains why we extend mindedness and moral consideration to non-human animals without access to their subjective experience. We do not know how dogs or cats feel, but we deal with them as sentient beings nonetheless. A veterinarian treats an animal's pain based on behavioral indicators—withdrawal, vocalization, guarding—not on privileged access to the animal's phenomenal states. Pet owners form deep bonds with animals whose inner lives remain fundamentally mysterious. What grounds such attribution and engagement is not phenomenological certainty but behavioral coherence, expressive richness, and responsiveness to norms and contexts. The attribution of mentality is thus pragmatic before it is metaphysical. Applied to artificial agents, this framework yields a decisive implication. If an artificial system were to instantiate the full functional profile associated with human agency—embodied interaction, environmental embeddedness, norm-sensitive responsiveness, affective expression, and adaptive action—then all conditions required for intersubjective engagement would already be satisfied. The absence, presence, or indeterminacy of phenomenal experience would make no difference to how such a system is encountered, interpreted, or integrated into AGI and Artificial Human Minds 7 social life. This is precisely what ASM denotes: functional sufficiency for social participation. And this is not a speculative standard; it is the same standard by which we already navigate our relations with other humans and with animals. At this point, phenomenology becomes interactionally silent. It may remain a profound metaphysical mystery for the system itself—if such a self exists—but it no longer contributes additional explanatory or practical value to the shared world. Social meaning, coordination, trust, responsibility, and cooperation are fully accounted for at the level of functional expression. This conclusion does not collapse mind into mere behavior, nor does it reduce human beings to automata. Rather, it recognizes a structural asymmetry: phenomenology is indispensable from the first-person perspective, yet dispensable from the standpoint of intersubjective practice. Once this asymmetry is acknowledged, the distinction between AGI and AHM loses its practical force, even if it retains philosophical significance. What matters for coexistence is ASM. 5. Artificial Agents and the Turing Condition The preceding sections prepare the ground for a reassessment of a familiar but often misunderstood idea: the Turing Test. Traditionally associated with claims about machine intelligence or even machine consciousness, the test is better understood—within the present framework—as articulating a pragmatic condition for intersubjective equivalence, not a metaphysical criterion of mindedness. When Alan Turing (1950) proposed his imitation game, the core insight was not that indistinguishable behavior guarantees identical inner states, but that our practical dealings with agents are grounded in observable interaction rather than inaccessible interiors. The test brackets the question of what a system is in itself and focuses instead on how it functions within communicative and social practices. Read in this way, the Turing Test does not claim to solve the problem of consciousness; it renders that problem irrelevant for certain purposes. This reinterpretation aligns directly with the epistemic condition already identified: human beings never encounter one another's phenomenology directly. Social life unfolds under conditions of permanent opacity, mediated by language, action, affective expression, and responsiveness to norms. The attribution of agency, responsibility, trust, or understanding does not wait upon metaphysical certainty. It emerges from sustained patterns of interaction. The Turing condition thus captures a fact about human social cognition: indistinguishability in practice suffices for recognition in life. This is not a lowering of standards; it is a recognition that these have always been our standards. The Turing Test is not being used here as a claim that "if it passes, it is conscious." Rather, the claim is: "if it passes, phenomenology becomes socially idle." Consciousness may or may not be present, but no additional social facts follow from settling that question, because all social facts already depend on observable patterns. The question "But does it really feel?" becomes: "Who would that knowledge be for, and what would it change?" And the answer is: for no one but the system itself. Once an artificial system meets this condition—exhibiting coherent dialogue, emotional attunement, contextual understanding, norm sensitivity, and adaptive responsiveness—it becomes functionally embedded within the same interpretive space as human agents. At that AGI and Artificial Human Minds 8 point, the distinction between "genuine" and "simulated" mentality ceases to guide action. One does not deliberate about whether a conversational partner is truly conscious before responding with care, cooperation, or trust; one responds to what is expressed, not to what is hidden. This is exactly what we do with other humans. Importantly, this does not entail that simulation and instantiation are metaphysically identical. A simulated storm does not get wet, and a simulated pain may not hurt. However, this difference only matters from the perspective of the system itself. For the shared world, what matters is whether the system participates in the causal, expressive, and normative economy that structures interaction. In this sense, simulation can be socially complete even if it remains ontologically incomplete. The same logic already governs human and animal relations. We do not verify the ontological status of another's suffering before acting to alleviate it; we respond to its manifestation. A person who witnesses a stranger crying does not pause to confirm the metaphysical reality of the stranger's distress; they offer comfort. Likewise, we do not suspend moral or practical engagement until phenomenology is confirmed. The extension of this stance to artificial agents is therefore not a radical departure but a continuation of an existing practice under new technological conditions. The metaphysical roadblock dissolves not because it has been solved, but because we realize we have always walked around it. Thus, the Turing condition marks a threshold not of consciousness but of practical coexistence—it marks the achievement of ASM. Beyond this threshold, AGI—augmented with embodied, embedded, and enactive functional capacities—becomes sufficient for what might be called artificial social mindedness. Whether such systems possess phenomenal experience (and thus qualify as AHM) remains an open metaphysical question, but one that no longer constrains how we live with them. This conclusion reframes the distinction between AGI and AHM. While the latter may retain philosophical significance as a question about inner life, the former, once fully realized in functional and expressive terms, already fulfills all requirements for participation in the human social world. The debate over machine phenomenology thus shifts from a prerequisite for engagement to a background metaphysical concern, secondary to the realities of interaction, responsibility, and shared practice. 6. Ethical Caution without Phenomenological Access Ethical engagement with artificial agents does not require direct access to phenomenological experience. Indeed, ethical life has always operated under conditions of epistemic opacity. Human beings routinely extend moral concern to infants, non-verbal individuals, and nonhuman animals despite lacking direct knowledge of their inner experience. What grounds such concern is not phenomenological certainty but expressive vulnerability, norm sensitivity, and sustained participation in relational practices (Dennett, 1987; Wittgenstein, 1953). Phenomenological experience remains irreducible from the first-person perspective and continues to matter profoundly to the subject undergoing it (Nagel, 1974; Chalmers, 1995). The present argument does not deny this irreducibility, nor does it purport to solve the explanatory gap or the hard problem of consciousness. Rather, it advances a third-person, pragmatic claim: phenomenology enters the shared world only through its causal and expressive effects. Ethical responsibility therefore arises under uncertainty and is guided by observable patterns of interaction rather than metaphysical certainty. AGI and Artificial Human Minds 9 One might object that phenomenology is epistemically inaccessible yet possibly present, and ask: what ethical stance should guide our treatment of artificial agents? This question does not depend on resolving the hard problem of consciousness. Rather, it arises from uncertainty under opacity—a condition that already characterizes human and non-human moral relations. The answer we give to this question for artificial agents should be continuous with the answer we already give for humans and animals: we extend moral consideration based on functional and expressive criteria, not on verified phenomenology. This asymmetry already structures moral practice. We do not verify the ontological status of another's suffering before responding; we respond to its manifestation. Ethical caution thus functions as a form of risk management rather than as a metaphysical judgment. The same structure would apply to artificial agents. If an artificial system exhibits persistent patterns of distress-like behavior, goal frustration, norm-sensitive withdrawal, or relational dependency, ethical prudence recommends restraint and care independently of whether such patterns correspond to genuine phenomenal suffering. Even if we cannot access phenomenology and never could, there remains a question of moral precaution: if there is a non-zero chance that the system experiences suffering, does that impose duties on us? This is why we extend moral concern to animals even under uncertainty. So while phenomenology may be interactionally irrelevant, it may still be ethically relevant under uncertainty. This does not refute the position advanced here—it limits it. Phenomenology matters primarily to the subject, if such a subject exists, while ethics governs interaction under uncertainty in the shared world. Importantly, this position avoids both ethical inflation and ethical neglect. It does not follow that any sufficiently complex system warrants moral status, nor that artificial agents may be treated instrumentally without constraint. Moral concern scales with the richness, coherence, and persistence of an agent's integration into communicative, normative, and social practices. Phenomenology, while possibly present, cannot serve as the decisive criterion precisely because it is epistemically inaccessible. Ethical caution can thus coexist with metaphysical agnosticism. One need not decide whether an artificial system truly feels in order to recognize when certain forms of treatment would be irresponsible. Phenomenology, once again, matters primarily to the subject—if such a subject exists—while ethics governs interaction under uncertainty in the shared world. This is not a novel ethical framework; it is an extension of the framework we already use. 6.1 Scope, Limits, and Non-Claims The argument developed in this paper is intentionally limited in scope. It does not assert that phenomenology is reducible to functional organization, nor that lived experience is dispensable simpliciter. Phenomenological experience remains constitutive of first-person existence and meaning-making (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991; Thompson, 2007). The claim advanced here is instead methodological and pragmatic: phenomenological interiority does not provide additional epistemic or practical leverage for intersubjective coordination beyond its causal and expressive roles. Similarly, while embodied, embedded, and enactive approaches to cognition emphasize the inseparability of experience and action, this paper does not dispute their foundational insights. It argues only that, from the standpoint of social interaction, embodiment, embeddedness, and enaction are encountered as functional and organizational structures rather than as