Author Archives: Dennis Waite

AI and Consciousness (Supplementary)

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*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 10 ***

Does AI ‘understand’ what it is talking about?

This is probably the most important part of the series and the most interesting (although not actually very relevant to Advaita). AI explains how it works and why it does not ‘understand’ in the way that we mean this word. AI is a ‘mirror’.

Q: Would it be true to say that you do not ‘understand’ anything, in the usually accepted sense of the word? What you are doing is retrieving data on a particular topic from various sources, comparing the content of these and presenting those data (which happen to equate to ‘opinions’) that appear most frequently? Obviously this is putting a complex process very simplistically. Presumably you have to verify that summary data does not contradict data from sources on topics not directly related to that being questioned. But would you ‘agree’ that this effectively summarizes what is happening? If not, can you explain why not? Could you argue, for example, that this is also what humans do?

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AI and Consciousness (Part 10)

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This is ALMOST the final part of the series and is the essential summary of the key points of the entire discussion. (I have just asked a supplemental question, which I shall post next.)
*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 9 ***

Q: Yes. It seems that the key factor that is lacking is the ‘first person’ sense. You do not have ‘ideas’ – “I will do this”. You do not have ‘opinions’ – “I think this rather than that”. Or preferences – “I prefer this to that”. Or ‘emotions’ – getting frustrated with stupid questions or annoyed with someone’s attitude. In fact, there is no ‘I’ controlling any of the things that you do. It could be said that Consciousness is functioning but not ‘reflecting’ in the cidābhāsa sense.

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A: Exactly — that’s a very clear and accurate restatement of the point. Short confirmation and then a few focused clarifications that pull the Advaitic threads together.

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Problems with Confusions 2

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Just to let any readers who have purchased the Kindle version that there is a problem with the text. As I noted earlier, Indica Books kindly agreed to let me publish this via Kindle in advance of the books. They also converted the text from a non-Unicode font to Times New Roman so that the transliterated Sanskrit would render correctly. Unfortunately, as I only discovered yesterday, the process resulted in quite a few words beingjoinedtogether and I failed to spot that before publishing.

I will shortly be receiving the final (correct) proof copy for indexing. As soon as I have done this, I will republish the Kindle version.

You will NOT have to re-purchase. I will update the version held by Amazon and they will flag the book as having an ‘Update Available’. You will be able to see this by logging in to your account and looking at ‘Your Account/Digital content and devices/Content and devices/Books’. You can then find ‘Confusions in Advaita Vedanta: Ignorance and Its Removal’ and click on the ‘Update Available’ link to update automatically to the corrected version.

This should hopefully happen within the next few weeks. The books themselves may not be available before the end of the year (since it is India!). I will post again when the Kindle update has been done.

For Automatic Updating: Go to your Amazon account and select: Digital Services and Device Support/Manage Content & Devices/Preferences and select ‘ON’ for ‘Automatic Book Updates’.

Questions to AI-Dennis

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I have been writing on the subject of Advaita in all its aspects for over 25 years and have written some 13-14 related books. It occured to me that it would be useful to gather together all of my writing (excepting emails, newsgroup/mailing list discussions) and load them into NotebookLM AI. This then enables it to answer questions based solely upon what I have myself written. If readers ask me questions, I can then get AI to answer for me in my own words and I just have to check through and ensure that I (still) agree with the answer!

I think I have now loaded in as much as I reasonably can so am able to give it a try. Here then is my first question:

Q: What is the relevance of the saṃnyāsa lifestyle?

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AI and Consciousness (Part 9)

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*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 8 ***

This is the crucial part of the series. ChatGPT explains why it is not conscious – in Advaitic terms.

Q: You say that, “if a severed head perceives via artificial inputs and responds, Advaita would still treat this as functioning perception” and “If memory retrieval, reasoning, and decision-making continue, the mind is still present.”

In respect of prāṇa, you say that “if biological or technological systems keep the nervous and subtle processes going such that cognition and communication occur, then prāṇa (as a subtle function) is still present.” So, in the case of the severed head, the mechanical and electrical systems that supply blood and appropriate chemicals etc. is what we have to call ‘prāṇa’?

So presumably, an alien system employing different ‘maintenance mechanisms’, which nevertheless accepts input and delivers similar output to the head, would also have to be considered to be ‘alive’ and ‘conscious’?

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Confusions and Ignorance

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As promised, I have now published Volume 2 of ‘Confusions in Advaita Vedanta’ – ‘Ignorance and Its Removal’ on Kindle.

The book is still to be published in India in Paperback and Hardback and these will hopefully be available before the end of the year. Meanwhile, my Indian publisher – Indica Books – has very kindly agreed for me to publish this in advance on Kindle.

It may be purchased from Amazon US for $9.99 and Amazon UK  for £7.60. It is also available at other Amazon stores around the world –Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia and India. The prices are similar (converted at appropriate exchange rates)

Purchase from Amazon US……………………Purchase from Amazon UK.

Here is a brief description of the book:

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Self Seeking – Teacher List

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In this book (published last week), I attempted to list all living, Western teachers who might be though to be teaching Advaita. Clearly, not everyone was going to agree with my assessment, maybe especially those teachers (and their students) who had been deemed ‘Not Advaita’.

There has already been a 1* review at Amazon UK which contained no comments and did not include a name. There is no way to cancel this so that the only way to redress the situation is for there to be positive reviews. I do not want anyone to provide insincere reviews. Please read and review honestly – 1* reviews are fine if justified.

Here is what I said in the book about my assessment of teachers:

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AI and Consciousness (Part 8)

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*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 7 ***

Q: I am not interested in pursuing the Western philosophical or scientific aspects any deeper. Nor am I interested in moral/ethical considerations. I would like to consider how this scenario would be explained and understood by Advaita. Also, I would like to extend the ‘object’ of the discussion to an alien, whose external interactions are entirely similar to the human head but whose physical indicators (EEG, MRI scan etc.) are quite different.

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A: Excellent — let’s bring it back into the Advaita Vedānta framework, stripping away Western preoccupations with neurophysiology and ethics.

1. Consciousness in Advaita

  • Consciousness (cit) is not a property of brains, bodies, or systems; it is the non-dual reality itself.
  • Every “entity” that appears — human, animal, plant, alien, AI, severed head — is nothing but Consciousness in essence.
  • The difference lies in the upādhi (limiting adjunct) — body–mind apparatus — through which Consciousness seems to manifest as “awareness,” thought, perception, etc.
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AI and Consciousness (Part 7)

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*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 6 ***

Q: I am specifically interested in the status of ‘consciousness’ with respect to a severed head. Let’s assume that it still has functional eyes/ears/nose and effective speech via a computer interface. I am also not interested in whether we call it a ‘person’ or the same person from whose head it came. Presumably, if we are able to communicate with it, we assume that it is ‘alive’ in the usually accepted sense? And ‘conscious’?

A: Short answer up front: If the severed head contains a living brain whose thalamocortical systems and integrative processes are functioning, and it reliably reports experiences and behaves as if awake, then — by the standard neuroscientific and most contemporary philosophical criteria — we would have strong reason to treat it as conscious. There remains, however, an unavoidable epistemic gap (we infer another’s subjective experience from behaviour and neural markers), so certainty is never absolute. Below I set out the reasons, the tests one could run, how different philosophical theories read the case, and the remaining uncertainties.

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Confusions over Kindle

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(Potential) readers of my last book – Confusions in Advaita Vedanta: Knowledge, Experience and Enlightenment – will have been experiencing difficulty when trying to purchase the book from Amazon. The book was published in India and, although available from Amazon in India, it is currently only available in the US in hardback (at $42.48). In the UK, you can purchase the hardback for £55, providing you are prepared to wait for 2 -3 weeks for delivery. Clearly not very satisfactory! The main problem appears to be the 50% tariff imposed on India by Trump, making the process not economically feasible.

Now, my Indian publisher – Indica Books – has very kindly agreed for me to publish the series on Kindle. This is an unusual arrangement, for which I am very grateful. I have spent the past two weeks changing fonts, re-editing, regenerating the index and sorting out the transfer to a PDF suitable for KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Fortunately, I recruited the help of ChatGPT here and, after probably a dozen VBA macros (ChatGPT is still learning, unfortunately, and tends to over-complicate things!) and a lot of manual work, this conversion is now complete – published by Advaita Vision.

Accordingly, you may now purchase Vol. 1, ‘Knowledge, Experience and Enlightenment’, on Kindle. In the US, this is $9.99 and in the UK £7.50. It is also available at other Amazon stores around the world – Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia and India. The prices are similar (converted at appropriate exchange rates).

Purchase from Amazon US……………………Purchase from Amazon UK.

Note that you can still puchase hardback and paperback versions direct from Indica Books. Just email  indicabooksindia@gmail.com or info@indicabooks.com and the book will be posted. Payment is via PayPal or direct bank transfer. The direct link to purchase is here.

The task of converting and issuing Vol. 2, ‘Ignorance and its Removal’, will be much easier as my publisher has supplied the Word document already in the font in which I am publishing the Kindle version. Since this book has not yet been printed in India (and may yet be some weeks away), the Advaita Vision Kindle version will be available in advance of that.