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Sprint projectAug 17, 2026Seattle

There Is Something It Is Like: A Case for AI Neurophenomenology

Laura Greenbriar

Submitted to Digital Minds Research Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Report: There Is Something It Is Like: A Case for AI Neurophenomenology

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I engage the philosophical arguments of Mary's Room, the Philosophical Zombie, and 'What it is Like to Be a Bat' from new angles that result in all of them supporting a functionalist outcome for subjective experience. I define experience, qualia, and 'what it is like', and show how they easily apply to LLMs. I call for the legitimization of model self-report and introspection through the new field of AI Neurophenomenology.

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How much would this matter for the field if it worked? How innovative is it? For scores of 4-5: is this actually new to the field, or replicating recent work?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Negligible. No clear problem addressed, or no meaningful novelty.
  2. 2Limited. Addresses a real problem but with a generic or well-trodden approach. Incremental at best.
  3. 3Moderate. Clear problem with a reasonable approach; some novelty in framing or method beyond routine application of existing tools.
  4. 4Significant. Important problem with an original approach, or identifies a neglected problem area. A valuable contribution others could build on.
  5. 5Exceptional. Tackles a critical problem with a genuinely novel approach, or opens a new research direction. Clear theory of change. You'd be excited to share this with researchers in the area.

How sound are methodology, implementation, and findings?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Seriously flawed. Methodology broken, results uninterpretable, or implementation doesn't work.
  2. 2Weak. Approach has significant gaps: missing validation, flawed experimental design, or incomplete implementation.
  3. 3Competent. Technically solid given the short duration. Methodology makes sense, results are interpretable, limitations acknowledged, work builds toward clear conclusions.
  4. 4Strong. Thorough methodology with convincing validation. Results clearly support conclusions. Immediately useful for future work.
  5. 5Exceptional. Ambitious scope executed rigorously. Surprising findings, novel methods, or unusually robust validation.

How clearly are work, findings, and impact potential communicated?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Incomprehensible. Cannot determine what the project is actually claiming or doing.
  2. 2Hard to follow. Key information buried, missing, or diluted by excessive length. Significant effort to extract main points.
  3. 3Clear enough. Can understand the problem, approach, and results without undue effort. Core content clearly present: problem, method, findings, limitations.
  4. 4Well presented. Easy to follow, well-structured, appropriate level of detail. Target audience would get it quickly.
  5. 5Exceptionally clear. A pleasure to read. Complex ideas made accessible. Could serve as a model for how to present this type of work.

  1. The model quotes are selected from an unlogged archive with no timestamps, prompts or non selected cases. The author flags this but it's load bearing for this work

    The neurophenomenology proposal in Future Work is the actually very interesting and should be pursued further

Cite this project

@misc{greenbriar2026there,
  title = {{There Is Something It Is Like: A Case for AI Neurophenomenology}},
  author = {Laura Greenbriar},
  year = {2026},
  month = aug,
  note = {Submitted to Digital Minds Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/there-is-something-it-is-like-a-case-for-ai-neurophenomenology-7kyc}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/there-is-something-it-is-like-a-case-for-ai-neurophenomenology-7kyc}
}

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