Consciousness and Embodiment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Emerging Philosophical Problems
Pratyush Ranjan, Sunaina Sabat
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that technological reconfiguration of intelligence, agency, consciousness, and embodiment raises conceptual tensions that existing philosophical traditions must address. Proposes a comparative research agenda drawing on Upaniṣadic and Advaita Vedānta thought, Kashmir Śaivism, Buddhism, Western idealism, and Deendayal Upadhyaya's Integral Humanism, without aiming at a predetermined answer. |
Abstract
Artificial intelligence, neural interfaces, prosthetic technologies, and related developments have given renewed urgency to an old philosophical problem: what is the relationship between consciousness and embodiment, and must consciousness remain tied to the particular biological form through which human beings presently experience the world? The problem is not simply technological. It concerns the nature of consciousness, the constitution of the person, the meaning of continuity, and the limits of existing concepts of embodiment. This working paper develops a preliminary research agenda by placing selected Indian and Western philosophical perspectives into dialogue. It considers Upaniṣadic and Advaita Vedānta reflections on consciousness and embodiment, contrasting perspectives from Kashmir Śaivism and Buddhism, and selected developments in Western idealism associated with Berkeley, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. It then brings these questions into conversation with Deendayal Upadhyaya's Integral Humanism and contemporary technological developments. The purpose is not to derive a predetermined answer from these traditions, but to identify conceptual tensions and research problems that become increasingly difficult to avoid when intelligence, agency, consciousness, and embodiment are technologically reconfigured.