The Logos and Limits of Artificial Cognition: The Exemplar of Military Use

Abstract

The accelerating development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) systems necessitate a critical examination of the boundaries between computation, cognition, and consciousness. This essay contends that as AI increasingly emulates tasks of human judgment, abstraction, and decision-making, it challenges foundational conceptions of mind, agency, and moral responsibility. We employ a philosophically grounded analysis—drawing upon the Cartesian cogito and extended through contemporary cognitive science—to interrogate whether AI manifests cognition or merely its simulacrum. Crucially, we assert that cognition is not reducible to information processing, but entails recursive self-awareness, referential subjectivity, and ethical intentionality. These capacities—essential to moral agency—remain absent in current AI architectures. Nowhere are the stakes of this distinction more pronounced than in military contexts, where iteratively autonomous systems are tasked with operational decisions involving the use of force. The convergence of efficiency with moral detachment in these domains risks displacing reflective human agency with mechanistic execution. We argue that without demonstrable self-reflective awareness, AI cannot satisfy the existential or ethical conditions for true agency. Thus, its role must remain constrained to that of a tool—however sophisticated, governed by human oversight and accountability. The specter of AI is not that it resembles us, but that it may be mistaken for us. To navigate this frontier, we call for a multidisciplinary reckoning that integrates neuroethical inquiry, systems engineering, military doctrine, and philosophical rigor. Herein, before we cede judgment to machines, we must be clear on what it means to judge—and who, or what, is truly capable of doing so.