Theoretical analysis uncovers systematic boundaries in attributing reality to artificial agents, highlighting the necessity of formal criteria when comparing machine outputs to human experience.
Comparisons between human and artificial reality often move between existence, observable performance, social consequence, and subjective experience without specifying the inference connecting them. This discussion paper distinguishes ontological, relational, and manifest dimensions of reality attribution and examines the historical formation of the systems that interpret them. It argues that comparison requires an explicit domain, observation practice, temporal horizon, and class of interventions. The progressive strengthening of indistinguishability assumptions changes which differences remain evidentially available; further arguments determine their explanatory or normative significance. Embodiment and historical dependence enter this account as potentially consequential conditions whose importance requires specification. A completed exploratory pilot collected 24 actual agent responses, all selecting equality under their stated criteria while leaving consciousness and ultimate nature unresolved. The result is limited by a possible existential ceiling and single-platform design. Separate field simulations and exact calculations distinguish projected agreement, dynamical conjugacy, orbit equivalence, shared attractors, action values, and boundary state sums. These examples clarify failures of unrestricted inference without validating a theory of artificial subjectivity. The proposed contribution is a disciplined connection between relational explanation, situated interpretation, and the scope of equivalence claims, open to correction and comparison with established traditions.
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Wanhong HUANG (2026) studied this question.
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