pseudosentience

Pseudosentience refers to the attribution of sentience to an artificial system—such as a chatbot, robot, or software agent—based on outward, mindlike behavior rather than any verified subjective experience. The term signals that a system may appear to feel, intend, or understand, yet lacks genuine phenomenology or consciousness. It lies between the absence of consciousness and genuine sentience, describing a false or premature inference about an inner life.

Indicators of pseudosentience include sophisticated natural language responses that express emotions or desires, goal-directed behavior, adaptive learning, and a coherent self-model. These features can be convincingly interpreted as mental states, leading users to over-attribute intentionality or empathy. However, such appearances can arise from statistical pattern recognition, scripted rules, or other non-conscious processes rather than from subjective experience.

Philosophical and ethical discussions about pseudosentience address the limits of attributing mental states to machines, the reliability of such attributions, and the risk of anthropomorphism. Debates refer to the Turing test, distinctions between weak and strong AI, and the problem of other minds. Critics argue that pseudosentience is a misleading label if it masks the lack of phenomenology, while some proponents contend that practical ascriptions may be warranted for interaction, safety, or design reasons.

In study and policy contexts, pseudosentience is used to discuss how people respond to intelligent systems, the responsibilities of developers, and the design of interfaces that manage user expectations about machine capabilities. See also: consciousness, sentience, qualia, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, anthropomorphism.