Philosophies, Vol. 10, Pages 103: Cognitive Integration for Hybrid Collective Agency

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050103

Authors:
Ruili Wang

Can human–machine hybrid systems (HMHs) constitute genuine collective agents? This paper defends an affirmative answer. I argue that HMHs achieve collective intentionality without shared consciousness by satisfying the following three functional criteria: goal alignment, functional complementarity, and stable interactivity. Against this functionalist account, the following two objections arise: (1) the cognitive bloat problem, that functional criteria cannot distinguish genuine cognitive integration from mere tool use; and (2) the phenomenological challenge, that AI’s lack of practical reason reduces human–AI interaction to subject–tool relations. I respond by distinguishing constitutive from instrumental functional contributions and showing that collective agency requires stable functional integration, not phenomenological fusion. The result is what I call Functional Hybrid Collective Agents (FHCAs), which are systems exhibiting irreducible collective intentionality through deep human–AI coupling.

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Ruili Wang www.mdpi.com