  The advent of conversational agents with increasingly human-like behaviour
throws old philosophical questions into new light. Does it, or could it, ever
make sense to speak of AI agents built out of generative language models in
terms of consciousness, given that they are "mere" simulacra of human
behaviour, and that what they do can be seen as "merely" role play? Drawing on
the later writings of Wittgenstein, this paper attempts to tackle this question
while avoiding the pitfalls of dualistic thinking.
