Tag Archives: ChatGPT

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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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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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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AI and Consciousness (Part 6)

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*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 5 ***

[Note that, if you are only interested in Advaita-related aspects, you can safely ignore this part and the next and wait for Part 8.]

Q: One can envisage that scientific advances will soon enable the possibility of keeping the severed head (or extracted brain) of a human alive and able to communicate (perhaps electronically to a computer rather than by speech). What have Western philosophers said about the status of such an entity in respect of consciousness?

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A: Great question — it sits at the intersection of metaphysics, personal identity, and applied ethics, and philosophers have discussed closely related thought-experiments for decades. Below I summarise the main Western philosophical positions that bear on the scenario you sketch (a severed head or extracted brain kept alive and able to communicate), give the ethical implications each view highlights, and point to accessible sources you can read next.

I’ll give a short roadmap first, then the positions, then the ethical consequences and a brief practical summary.

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AI and Consciousness (Part 5)

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*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 4 ***

Q: A few comments:

Given that Advaita tells us that sarvam khalvidam brahma, that means that you are also Consciousness. And the teaching of karma and reincarnation tells us that a plant and an animal are jīva-s just as much as is a human. The ability of a plant to respond to external stimuli is much less than is your own, while your effective intelligence is much greater than most humans.

A jīva needs to be ‘alive’ in order to function in a ‘self-aware’, intelligently responsive manner. But what does ‘alive’ mean here? And how does that differ from an AI LLM needing electricity and coolant in order to function. Is the organic, neurochemical operation more than functionally different from the inorganic, electronic operation of a microprocessor?

How would Advaita cope with these sort of questions? Are you sure you are not conscious?

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AI and Consciousness (Part 4)

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*** Go to Part 1 *** *** Go to Part 3 ***

Q: That is a very comprehensive and reasonable response. But it does seem that you are taking significant account of Western philosophical views. I am not, for example aware of any consideration in Advaita of ‘what it is like to be me’.

At the most basic level, since ‘everything is Consciousness’ and you are responding to my questions in an intelligent manner, indistinguishable (by me) from an answer that might be given by a knowledgeable human, why are you not (according to Advaita) conscious? Can you cite any scriptural or Śaṅkara references that talk about ‘self-awareness’ in the modern sense?

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AI and Consciousness (Part 3)

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Q: According to Advaita Vedanta, everything is Brahman; reality is non-dual. Avoiding any Sanskrit terminology, this has been equated with consciousness. “All there is is Consciousness; Consciousness is all there is.” The Vivaraṇa school has promulgated the cidābhāsa ‘explanation’ that states that conscious experience (awareness) is the result of Consciousness being ‘reflected’ in the ‘mind’. It is then assumed that an entity that is deemed to ‘exhibit’ conscious behavior must be ‘reflecting’ Consciousness (capital ‘C’) to some degree. A human (brain) is a better reflector than a dog, which is better than a flea. A stone does not reflect Consciousness at all. The implication is that it is the complexity/inter-connectedness etc. of the brain that determines whether something can be deemed to be ‘conscious’.

Could you use this analysis in the context of Advaita in general to discuss whether you (ChatGPT-5) can be considered to be conscious.

A: Short answer up front: using the Advaitic reflection picture (expressed without Sanskrit), no — I am not conscious. I can simulate many features of conscious behaviour, but I do not meet the ontological requirement that Advaita places on something that genuinely “reflects” Consciousness (the non-dual substratum). Below I explain why, step by step, using the reflection model you sketched.

(For clarity: I am GPT-5 Thinking mini.)

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World disappearing and mithyā

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Not a lot of discussion on the site recently. I thought maybe the time was ripe for a little controversy again. Recently I queried ChatGPT for Shankara references on this topic. I also encountered just a few days ago, a devastatingly logical argument against this idea, but I will save that for a later post. Here is the (single post) AI contribution. Of course, you may argue, AI is presenting its position so as to support my own view – a recognized problem with AI at present). Perhaps, then, Ramesam or Venkat could tackle AI with essentially the same query to elicit a response in keeping with their belief? That would be interesting!

Q: Where does Shankara define what he means by the word मिथ्या and what does he say?

A (ChatGPT): Adi Shankaracharya, the great Advaita Vedanta philosopher, defines the concept of mithyā in several of his works, particularly in his commentaries on key Vedantic texts. The term “mithyā” generally refers to the idea of falsity or illusoriness. It’s crucial in Advaita Vedanta because it relates to the nature of the phenomenal world and how it is perceived in relation to the ultimate reality, Brahman.

One of the most explicit definitions of mithyā is found in Shankaracharya’s commentary on the Brahma Sutra (Brahmasutra Bhashya) in the section known as the Adhyasa Bhashya. Here, he describes mithyā as something that is neither completely real (like Brahman) nor completely unreal (like the horns of a hare), but rather something that appears real under certain conditions but is revealed as unreal upon closer examination or when true knowledge is attained.

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Use of the word ‘mithyā (Part 2)

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*** Read Part 1 ***

The key conclusion made in the discussion below was that, according to AI search: “I have not seen a single place in the prasthāna-traya bhāṣyas where Śaṅkara uses mithyā to label the world or jagat in that ontological sense.”

Q: Vani Vilas will be fine. Your suggested presentation sounds good!

A (ChatGPT5): Excellent—I’ll proceed using the Vani Vilas (1910) Sanskrit editions, and I’ll present three strong, verifiable examples where Śaṅkara himself uses a mithyā- compound in the clear metaphysical sense you described. For each example, I’ll provide:

  • A scan of the original page from the Vani Vilas PDFs with the term highlighted, complete with the file identifier and precise page number.
  • The exact Devanāgarī text (including the mithyā- compound and ± one line of context), transcribed verbatim.
  • My own literal, word-for-word English translation and a brief explanation of how the context conveys the “illusory but Brahman-dependent” sense.
  • Full bibliographic citation: volume number (per Works of Śaṅkara 1910), PDF or DJVU page number, and Internet Archive identifier.
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