I am pleased to share that my latest paper has been published in Neuroscience of Consciousness as part of the Special Issue on "Aware and Alive: Embodied and Phenomenological Perspectives on Consciousness."
Rather than seeking a "self" within the internal mechanisms of an isolated machine, this paper argues that authentic self-consciousness is an emergent quality of the Aida (間)—the relational "in-between" shared among interacting agents
Here are the key points:
The Limits of "Spoken Speech": Current humanoid robots merely simulate communication by statistically reproducing ready-made linguistic patterns ("spoken speech") without an underlying physical "felt sense" or subjective center
. Rethinking Symbol Grounding: True referential grounding cannot be achieved in isolation; it requires finding a semantic position within language and anchoring it through communicative interaction in a shared world
. The Trajectory from Hand to Face: While hands are visible instruments of action, the face is a phenomenological blind spot that requires the "gaze of the Other" to be fully integrated into the self-image as an object ("Me")
. Language as a "Cane for Thought": Much like a blind man's cane extends the body, language serves as a tool to navigate meaning space, where interactional resistance forces the system to reflexively model its own presence
. Toward Symbiotic Intelligence: Aidification redefines intelligence as a quality that flourishes between humans and machines, rooted in the real-time co-creation of a shared, dynamic reality
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The full article is open access and can be retrieved here:
Full Citation:
Tanaka, S. (2026). Aidification of the self: a phenomenological approach to machine consciousness through human-robot 'between-ness'. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2026(1), niag032.
