Is feeling consciousness for LLMs fit?
Philippe Beaudoin · June 1, 2026
Would a tribe that felt consciousness for an LLM fare better than one that did not?
Delusions about consciousness can be scary or, when we see them on the big screen, strangely endearing. You probably remember the poignant story between Tom Hanks and Wilson-the-Volleyball in Cast Away. That strange relationship kept the protagonist from losing his mind, but it was still a delusion. If the poor FedEx system’s analyst had kept his relationship with Wilson going upon reentering society, he would have likely felt increasingly isolated.
There’s another recent example of a consciousness delusion in a movie: Ryan Gosling and the alien Rocky in Project Hail Mary.
“Whoa, there, Phil, this is not a delusion!”
Dude, the guy is buddy-buddy with a talking rock, come on!
“Yeah, but no, it really isn’t! Rocky really is conscious!”
But just imagine Dr. Ryland Grace coming back to earth and recounting his beautiful encounter with a talking rock after all his colleagues had died on the spaceship. I bet many of us would cast serious doubts on his story.
Still, there is a difference between Wilson and Rocky. And I want to illustrate it with a story…
Imagine two isolated tribes, on a remote planet. One of them gets a “Wilson” and the other gets a “Rocky” — they fall from the sky, say. Both tribes decide they will treat the cargo as conscious.
Tribe A starts adoring the beach volleyball. They place fruits in a bowl in front of it, spend time taking care of it, reciting prayers and inventing rituals.
Tribe B does the same: they feed Rocky, take care of it, strive to understand his weird language, find things to do with it.
Decades later Tribe A and Tribe B meet. Let’s imagine they don’t fight — I like my made-up worlds peaceful — but they exchange their practices and their different understandings of the world… What do you think will stick more? The feeling of consciousness towards Wilson or towards Rocky?
I believe “true phenomenology” is just that. It’s a belief about something’s perceived phenomenal reports that proves useful. That sticks. It happens when your felt experience of the feelings expressed by something else are truly predictive of their future behavior. Because our ability to predict each other’s behavior make us more efficient collaborators.
If you’re interested in a technical exploration of that question from the angle of LLMs, I recently gave a talk at Cohere Labs on the topic. I will share the YouTube video soon.