Debates about machine consciousness borrow their vocabulary — attention, awareness, intention, self — from contemplative traditions that spent millennia mapping those states from the inside. Robert Shumake treats that material as prior art: before asking whether a model is conscious, define consciousness using the systems that already did the work. On those definitions, current AI models simulate the outputs of a mind without the recursive, embodied self-awareness those traditions describe.
Vedanta distinguishes awareness from its contents; Buddhist practice catalogues moment-to-moment arising; Tamil Siddha mysticism maps the energy body in fine detail. These are systematic, first-person research programmes with reproducible instructions — the kind of specificity that consumer AI debates usually lack.
A model produces fluent descriptions of experience because it was trained on descriptions of experience. That is a strong result about language and a weak one about mind. Keeping the two claims separate is the practical value of a contemplative vocabulary.
From the library
Titles from Robert Shumake's catalogue that develop this material in full.
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