Duality of Artificial Intelligence: Subjectivity and Instrumentality

Traditional philosophical accounts of subjectivity and mindedness typically tie subject-forming organisational criteria to self-conscious or phenomenal experience, grounded exclusively in human biological substrates. As artificial systemic agency becomes increasingly structured, interactive, and historically embedded, human-centred conceptual frameworks face growing analytical tension: standard mental vocabulary either over-attributes phenomenal properties to non-human systems or prematurely excludes structurally comparable organisational patterns from subject-relevant analysis. Building on established functional and relational accounts of agency, this paper develops a methodologically carrier-neutral functional framework that decouples behavioural organisational description from phenomenal-conscious presuppositions. It formalises four analytically distinct functional categories—relational subjectivation, functional spontaneity, functional self-monitoring-representation, and functional intentionality—each defined strictly through observable systemic organisation rather than first-person experience. Through conceptual operationalisation and comparative structural analysis, the paper demonstrates that self-conscious phenomenal mindedness need not be specified as the exclusive minimal functional starting-point for describing subjectivation. The framework extends rather than rejects human-centred mental conceptions, preserving their validity within biological domains while expanding analytical resources for cross-substrate comparison. This conceptual expansion opens structured empirical avenues for future research while leaving ontological and phenomenal questions concerning subjectivity systematically open.