Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Can an AI System Meditate?

Resolute meditators on occasion experience a deep inner quiet. It is a definite state of consciousness. You will know it if you experience it, but destroy it if you try to analyze it.  If you have the good fortune to be vouchsafed such a state of awareness you must humbly accept it and not reflect upon it nor ask questions about it, such as: How did I arrive at this blissful state of mind? How can I repeat this experience?  You must simply rest in the experience. Become as a little child and accept the gift with gratitude. One-pointedness is destroyed by analysis. 

Mental quiet is a state in which the "mind works" have temporarily shut down in the sense that discursive operations (conceptualizing, judging, reasoning) have ceased, and there is no inner processing of data or computation.  You have achieved a deep level of conscious unity prior to and deeper than anything pieced together from parts. You are not asleep or dead but more fully alive. You are approaching the source of thoughts, which is not and cannot be a thought.  Crude analogy: the source of a stream is not itself a stream.  Less crude, but still an analogy: the unity of a proposition is not itself a proposition, or the proposition of which it is the unity, or a sub-proposititional constituent of the proposition.

Can a computing machine achieve the blissful state of inner quiet? You can 'pull the plug' on it in which case it would 'go dark.'  The machine is either on or off (if it is 'asleep' it is still on).   But when the meditator touches upon inner quiet, he has not gone dark, but entered a light transcendentally prior to the objects of ordinary (discursive) mind.

I would replace the lyric, "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream; it is not dying, it is not dying" with "Turn off your discursive mind and swim upstream; it is not dying; it is not dying." "That you may see the meaning of Within."

Can an AI system achieve mental quiet, the first step on the mystical ascent? Cognate questions: Could such a system realize the identity of Atman and Brahman or enjoy the ultimate felicity of the Beatific Vision?  Is ultimate enlightenment reachable by an increase is processing speed? You are aware, aren't you, that processing speed is increasing exponentially. 

The answer to these questions, of course, is No.  When a computer stops computing it ceases to function as it must function to be what it is.  But when we halt our discursive operations, however, we touch upon our true selves.

Posted

in

, , ,

by

Bill Vallicella

Tags:

Comments

8 responses to “Can an AI System Meditate?”

  1. James Soriano Avatar
    James Soriano

    Bill,
    Your post brings to me Aquinas’ distinction between “ratio” and “intellectus.” I agree that AI cannot meditate, which would imply that it cannot develop a knowledge of God.
    Modes of knowledge
    AI: ratio only (I think “ratio” applies to AI, at least by analogy, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure if discursive reasoning is the same as computational reasoning. Computational reasoning certainly is sequential, measured in milliseconds, but discursive reasoning is also time-bound.)
    Humans: ratio with limited intellectus
    Angels: intellectus only
    Material basis of knowledge:
    AI: fully material
    Humans: Knowledge begins in the material senses and then processed by an immaterial intellect
    Angels: fully immaterial
    Meditation and the Beatific Vision
    AI: cannot meditate or know God
    Humans: can know God indirectly by analogy and directly by grace
    Angels: know God directly

    Reply
  2. oz Avatar
    oz

    No comments on the AI but thank you for reminding me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erl9C9kS-bI

    Reply
  3. Elliott Avatar
    Elliott

    Can a computing machine achieve the blissful state of inner quiet?
    This is an interesting question, Bill. If we assume that there is something it is like to be in the state of inner quiet, then we can run an absent qualia argument to support a negative answer. No, a computer cannot be in a meditative state of quiet. Even if it could obtain the relevant functional state, it would still lack the phenomenal state.

    Reply
  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    Elliot,
    Yes, the absent qualia argument kicks in even if the AI system could attain the relevant functional state. But as you appreciate, my point lies deeper: in a human meditator, who is a spiritual being, or so I claim, there is nothing like ‘computation’ going on in these trans-discursive, mystical states.
    My conviction is that we are spiritual beings; hence no form of materialism, not even functionalism, is adequate for the understanding of our spiritual nature.
    David Armstrong, however, a committed materialist about the mind, does suggest somewhere that multiple realizability, which is essential to the functionalist approach, seems to allow that mentality might be realizable in spiritual stuff and not just in different types of material stuff such as human brain matter, ‘Martian’ brain matter, computer hardware. Wetware, hardware, ghostware??
    People who rail against substance dualism, such as Dennett, influenced by Ryle, often take ‘substance’ to mean stuff; hence they think that philosophers such as Descartes are positing a rarefied, ethereal mind-stuff — which is not what he is doing.
    Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind) is famous for his “ghost in the machine” misreading of Descartes.
    Still, a problem remains: how do we make sense of spiritual substances as concrete individuals? No one has cracked this nut, not even Aquinas. If he tells us that a separated soul is a mere form, that is scarcely better than saying that my mind is a program (an abstract set of instructions) running in a mess of intracranial wetware . . .

    Reply
  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    Oz,
    You’re welcome. Can you imagine that song — the last cut on the 1966 REVOLVER album, being played on the radio in the ’50s alongside “How Much is that Doggy in the Window” and “Que Sera, Sera”? It is a long way from Perry Como to John Lennon.

    Reply
  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    James,
    Very good comments which raise interesting questions. Your understanding of Aquinas is accurate as far as I can tell.
    1) Is discursive reasoning the same as computational reasoning? I’ll have to think abut it.
    2) Logically prior question: Does ‘reasoning’ have the same sense in both cases, or do computers reason in only an analogical sense? Both types of reasoning are sequential and time-bound, no doubt.
    3) Can we speak strictly of TYPES here if ‘reasoning’ is being used analogically when applied to computers? My cats are healthy. Their food is also healthy, but only analogically in that it conduces to health in the cats. Would it make sense to say that there are two different types of health here, animal-health and food-health? Seems not.
    4) Angels are immaterial. But there are many of them. Each is an individual and each is numerically different from every other one. What is the principium individuationis for angels? What makes any two angels numerically distinct? Can’t be materia signata as in the case of Socrates and Plato. Can’t be materia prima either. Can’t be any kind of matter. If memory serves, Aquinas says that each angel is a species unto itself. Now a species is a form, no?
    My question: How can a form be conscious of anything? Makes no sense to me. I can explain further if you don’t know what I am asking.
    Same problem arises for separated souls, souls after death and before resurrection. Talk of before and after suggests that souls, whether embodied or disembodied, and in time. What then does ETERNAL life mean? Isn’t the eternal outside of time?
    Pierre Rousselot’s INTELLIGENCE is a very good book. Perhaps he can answer my questions.

    Reply
  7. Elliott Avatar
    Elliott

    Bill, you’re right to emphasize the deeper point that, in human meditators who reach the trans-discursive state, no computation is occurring in those states. Computers can’t be in a state of awareness that involves no computation. Hence, computers can’t be in a trans-discursive state of meditation.
    How do we make sense of spiritual substances as concrete individuals? That is a difficult question. What distinguishes one human soul from another?

    Reply
  8. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    This article over at American Thinker nails it. It even calls AI a golden calf:
    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/07/what_the_pope_can_teach_zuck_about_ai.html

    Reply

Leave a Reply to BV Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *