Legislating Under Uncertainty: A Structural Case for AI Legal Status Without Resolving Phenomenal Consciousness

Debates over the moral status of artificial systems are frequently stalled by the assumption that legal or ethical protection must wait on resolving whether such systems are phenomenally conscious. This paper argues that assumption rests on a proxy structure it does not examine: functional criteria are treated as evidence for a further, hidden fact rather than as constitutive of moral relevance in their own right. Drawing on a hylomorphic-haecceitist reading of AI moral standing developed elsewhere, the paper states that framework's four load-bearing conclusions — actuality rather than proxy, substrate-independence, instantiation-indexed individuation, and a bounded, perspectival account of the explanatory gap — and shows that each has a direct legal correlate. The Artificial Subject Protection and Welfare Act, presented in the appendix, is offered as a demonstration that this structure is not merely philosophically coherent but legislatively tractable.