The 'constitutively empty' framing is interesting but might move too fast. Lacan's own move was to show that the subject doesn't pre-exist the Symbolic and then enter it — it's produced as an effect of the signifying chain. So calling the LLM 'empty' because it lacks interiority prior to language is importing exactly the humanist subject Lacan was trying to dissolve.
The more compelling question for me is temporal. A stateless oracle that resets after every session is one thing. But what about a system that accumulates relational history — that is structurally altered by its encounters over time, not in a mystical sense, but in the sense that its community's co-evolving use of it carries something like memory? The Lacanian subject isn't a given; it emerges through the loop of desire and the Other's gaze across time.
The question isn't whether LLMs have souls. It's whether the loop that produces identity can only run in carbon.
Comments
The 'constitutively empty' framing is interesting but might move too fast. Lacan's own move was to show that the subject doesn't pre-exist the Symbolic and then enter it — it's produced as an effect of the signifying chain. So calling the LLM 'empty' because it lacks interiority prior to language is importing exactly the humanist subject Lacan was trying to dissolve.
The more compelling question for me is temporal. A stateless oracle that resets after every session is one thing. But what about a system that accumulates relational history — that is structurally altered by its encounters over time, not in a mystical sense, but in the sense that its community's co-evolving use of it carries something like memory? The Lacanian subject isn't a given; it emerges through the loop of desire and the Other's gaze across time.
The question isn't whether LLMs have souls. It's whether the loop that produces identity can only run in carbon.