> the textual nature of prompts leads us to take the intentional stance towards systems which aren’t conscious, and thus miss the essential nature of their non-meaning

I see LLMs as being capable of making useful distinctions and having a rich action space. They are widely used because their operation is useful, and that can only happen when semantics work well in practice. But useful things that pay for themselves don't need our "essential nature" blessing, they already have persistence by mutual entanglement with us.