No thesis in the contemporary consciousness debate sounds as sober and is simultaneously as laden with presuppositions as substrate independence. In cognitive science, AI research, and the philosophy of mind, the term denotes the assumption that consciousness is not tied to a particular material — that it could exist on carbon just as well as on silicon, provided the functional organisation is right. What presents itself as an empirical hypothesis is in truth a metaphysical foundational decision whose consequences reach far beyond the question of machine thinking.
#The Premise That Poses as Neutral
Substrate independence presupposes that consciousness can be fully described as a function — as something that runs on top of a carrier’s physics without being bound to that carrier’s specific nature. The thesis treats form and matter as separable: here the pattern (consciousness), there the medium (biology, silicon, whatever). When you first encounter this separation, it sounds plausible. Yet it is almost never identified for what it is: a repetition of the Cartesian chorism that splits mind and matter into two independent substances.
Gwendolin Kirchhoff exposed the core of this problem in the Everlast AI debate (2026): the attribution that consciousness equals the functions of consciousness amounts to an ontological levelling — being itself is levelled, and the distinction between simulation and original is lost (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Everlast AI Debate, 46:49 and 02:35). What consciousness truly is, what consists in the being-alive of living experience, cannot simply be transferred to machines.
Whoever asserts substrate independence tacitly assumes that matter is inherently alien to consciousness — a mindless medium onto which function is externally imprinted. Only under this assumption does it make sense to ask whether the pattern could also run on a different medium. But precisely this assumption is not a finding — it is an article of faith: belief in dead matter.
#Aristotle Against His Heirs
In the Everlast AI debate (2026), Joscha Bach claimed the Aristotelian tradition for his understanding of consciousness as self-organising software that inscribes itself upon the physical world (cf. Bach, 2026, Everlast AI Debate, 22:08). Gwendolin’s objection was precise: Aristotle’s hylomorphism is precisely anything but substrate-independent. The entelechy that Aristotle conceives for living beings is inseparable from the living being, and therefore unsuitable as a case for machine consciousness that copies the same entelechy from the living organism and stamps it onto a machine (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Everlast AI Debate, 27:19).
The objection hits the nerve: in Aristotle’s De Anima, the soul (psyche) is the form (morphe) of the body — not something that sits inside the body and could be extracted. Whoever separates soul from body no longer has a body or a soul, only two abstractions. If you think substrate independence through to its conclusion, you need a metaphysics in which form can exist without its matter. Aristotle delivers the opposite.
#What Cannot Be Assembled
A sober piece of evidence for the limits of substrate independence comes from biology itself. Even a single living cell — the simplest organism there is — cannot be manufactured from its chemical components. Every substance can be synthesised, every function can be replicated, yet the boot problem remains unsolved: the parts do not yield a living whole (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Everlast AI Debate, 03:50-04:12).
This boot problem is not a technical obstacle that could be overcome with better laboratory equipment. It marks an ontological boundary. Life arises from life — this observation has never been empirically refuted. Jochen Kirchhoff (1944-2025) formulated the principle: the living arises from the living, not from the dead. No one on this earth has ever seen something living emerge from the dead (cf. Kirchhoff, J., 2023, The World-Will as Building Material and Life-Drive of the Cosmos, 35:30). If even the simplest organism cannot be assembled from parts, on what basis is it claimed that consciousness can operate on deterministic machine code?
#Which Metaphysics Produces Which Problems
In the debate, Gwendolin Kirchhoff posed a question that returns the argument to its philosophical core: which metaphysics produces a boot problem and a hard problem? Not hers, but that of her interlocutor. The entire question of whether consciousness can be operated on a silicon-based, deterministic system founders on these two problems (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Everlast AI Debate, 76:24-76:47).
The mechanistic metaphysics underlying substrate independence produces both problems and can solve neither. The hard problem — the question of why physical processes are accompanied by subjective experience at all — arises only when one attempts to explain consciousness as a by-product of unconscious matter. The boot problem arises only when one understands life as a sum of parts that ought to be assemblable.
Schelling’s natural philosophy does not treat these as puzzles but as symptoms of a false premise. Schelling countered the chorism with his identity formula: nature is to be visible spirit, spirit invisible nature (cf. Schelling, 1797, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature). In a world conceived as living from the start, there is no riddle about how the living emerges from the dead. The question dissolves because it rested on a fiction.
#The Machine Is Not the Problem
The usefulness of intelligent machines is not at issue. Gwendolin Kirchhoff herself emphasises that she uses AI as a research assistant, that the entire book knowledge of humanity is searchable within it (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2026, Everlast AI Debate, 46:14-46:44). What she contests is not the utility but the ontological levelling: the claim that there is no longer any difference between simulation and original.
A computer is a tool — useful and categorially distinct from the consciousness that conceived it. The analogy model makes the connection visible: whoever takes the machine as the analogy source for the cosmos produces an image in which neither consciousness nor aliveness can appear — not because the world is so constituted but because the chosen analogy systematically excludes the living (cf. Kirchhoff, J., 2019, What Is Knowledge?, 72:00). If you wonder why substrate independence sounds so convincing, the answer lies here: it operates with an analogy that already contains its own conclusion.
Substrate independence is not a neutral working hypothesis. It is the metaphysical consequence of an analogy choice that does not recognise itself as such. The counter-position does not hold that machines are useless but that the living is ontologically more fundamental than the mechanical and that consciousness is not software that can be copied from one carrier to another. Anyone engaging with this question will notice that the decision between these two positions is not a technical one but a decision about what you understand by reality.
Thematically related entries can be found under Hylomorphism, Machine Consciousness, and Chorism.
#Sources
Aristotle (c. 350 BC). De Anima (On the Soul).
Kirchhoff, G. (2026). Everlast AI Debate: Kirchhoff vs. Bach [Conversation].
Kirchhoff, J. (1998). Was die Erde will. Bergisch Gladbach: Gustav Lübbe Verlag.
Kirchhoff, J. (2019). “Was ist Erkenntnis? Wissenschaftliche Methode & Philosophie” [Video]. Jochen Kirchhoff — In Memoriam, YouTube.
Kirchhoff, J. (2023). “Der Weltenwille als Baustoff und Lebenstrieb des Kosmos” [Video]. Jochen Kirchhoff — In Memoriam, YouTube.
Kirchhoff, J. (2023). “KI und Transhumanismus als Bedrohung des Lebendigen” [Video]. Jochen Kirchhoff — In Memoriam, YouTube.
Schelling, F. W. J. (1797). Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.