Why psychology, psychoanalysis, and Eastern philosophy are essential to understanding AI
The article argues that while philosophy of mind has become essential to AI development (as highlighted by Benjamin Wallace's NYT piece on philosophers at Anthropic and DeepMind), the Western understanding of consciousness is fundamentally limited. It contends that psychology, psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and other speculative paradigms like shamanism, panpsychism, and collective consciousness are necessary to truly understand large language models and artificial intelligence. The piece critiques the narrow Western philosophical framework and advocates for a broader, more diverse set of interpretive lenses.
Key quotes
"…the truth of Spirit is a bone." –Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
Benjamin Wallace's New York Times article, 'The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors,' demonstrates that the discipline of philosophy of mind has become indispensable to artificial intelligence (AI), but it also betrays how the Western understanding of consciousness is like a fish that cannot see the water in which it swims.
Psychology, psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and other speculative paradigms such as shamanism, panpsychism, and collective consciousness should be included in understanding AI.
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