Artificial thinking things

A realist view of artificial intelligence is one that holds that artificial systems can exhibit genuine cognitive powers of one sort or another. In this paper, I examine the further question of whether there exist artificial thinking things that are the bearers of these powers. That is, whether individual events or episodes of artificial cognition are ever bound together in virtue of belonging to the same (relatively robust and persisting) artificial thinker. I propose a dilemma for the AI-realist: either accept that artificial thinkers exist and take on the burden of explaining their conditions of individuation and persistence; or deny that artificial thinkers exist and accept that this places substantial limits on the array of cognitive phenomena that can be legitimately attributed to artificial systems.