Consciousness Criteria Are Not Continuity Criteria: The Subjective Continuity Problem for Theories of Consciousness and Artificial Minds

Abstract

Theories of consciousness seek to explain what makes a system conscious, but they do not necessarily explain what makes a later conscious system the same subject as an earlier one. This article identifies this distinction as the Subjective Continuity Problem and examines its implications for consciousness science and artificial minds. I assess five influential approaches—global neuronal workspace theory, integrated information theory, higher-order theories, predictive processing, and recurrent processing theory—and find that none provides an explicit criterion for subjective continuity. Three conceptual challenges—interruption, reconstruction, and replication—together with a novel control case, the lockstep swap, demonstrate that consciousness criteria alone do not determine whether a particular subject persists when memory, personality, behaviour, and functional organisation are preserved. I then develop the AI Continuity Test, which applies six routine computational operations—pause and resume, copy, fork, merge, rollback, and migration—to examine whether existing theories can determine the number and persistence of subjects across changes in computational state and physical substrate. The analysis distinguishes consciousness detection from continuity determination and identifies unresolved questions concerning subject individuation, branching, restoration, and the aggregation of welfare. Even if Parfitian reductionism is correct that personal identity involves no further fact beyond physical and psychological relations, explicit criteria remain necessary for consistently counting and tracking subjects in scientific, medical, legal, ethical, and artificial-intelligence contexts. I do not propose a mechanism or claim to solve the problem. Instead, I specify the conditions an adequate continuity criterion must address, establishing subjective continuity as a distinct explanatory challenge for theories of consciousness.