Embodied Robots to Test Selfhood

Build robots with bodies, interoception and continual sensorimotor coupling as experimental platforms to operationalize and test rival theories of human selfhood (boundary formation, I/Me distinction, bodily ownership). Rather than merely modelling behaviour, these ‘synthetic selves’ would be used as causal probes: if a particular architecture yields durable subjective‑like continuity, that lends empirical weight to the corresponding theory of human selfhood. — If adopted as a mainstream scientific programme it reframes AI policy and ethics from abstract personhood debates to concrete engineering and regulatory questions about when a system’s embodiment demands new legal or moral treatment.