AI, Consciousness, and the Evolutionary Frontier: A Buddhist Reflection on Science and Human Futures
Peter D. Hershock
Religions May 27, 2025 DOI: 10.3390/rel16050562 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism |
| Keywords | Agency Artificial intelligence Attention economy Consciousness Ethics |
| Key points | Proposes that a nondualist, nonreductionist approach to consciousness, informed by Buddhist resources, offers an ethically productive middle path for rethinking the Fourth Industrial Revolution and human–technology–world relations. |
Abstract
The technological advances and material control that have resulted from reductive and deterministic practices of science are quite real. The digitally mediated expansion of experiential freedoms-of-choice and the transformative problem-solving potential of artificial intelligence are undeniable. But for all its successes, reductive physicalism has failed to solve the so-called hard problem of consciousness. As a result, its successes are exposing humanity to an intensifying confluence of existential and ethical risks as the digitally mediated attention economy and intelligent technology facilitate a fundamental restructuring of the dynamics of human presence. Making use of Buddhist conceptual resources and drawing out their implications regarding causality and agency, this paper offers a nondualist and nonreductionist approach to theorizing consciousness and evolutionary dynamics in ways that are suited to opening an ethically productive “middle path” to critically rethinking the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution and more positively configuring the evolution human–technology–world relations.
Comparable studies
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| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |