Hayles argues that cognition — the processing of information in service of goal-directed behavior — is far larger than consciousness, extending into the nonconscious operations of biological nervous systems, bodily processes, and technical systems including LLMs. “Nonconscious cognition” names these cognitive processes that operate without subjective experience: they are real, consequential, and increasingly powerful, but they do not constitute the kind of unified, reflexive awareness we associate with consciousness.
OM’s research program draws on this framework in two directions. First, it grounds the argument that protocol undergrounds function as cognitive organisms — distributed, stigmergic, goal-directed — without requiring that they be conscious. Second, it provides theoretical grounding for the parallel between underground collectives and LLMs: both are, in Hayles’s terms, nonconscious cognitive systems whose power and ethical weight cannot be reduced to the human subjects within them. The question of how to think with and give ethical weight to nonconscious intelligence is named in OM’s writing as a central aspiration.
Source: https://ageingcompanions.constantvzw.org/books/Unthought_N._Katherine_Hayles.pdf