What Ifá, Buddhism, and the Siddhars say about machine minds
Robert Shumake argues that debates about machine consciousness are older than computing. Buddhist philosophy already treats mind as a process rather than a thing, Ifá already models distributed intelligence and agency beyond the individual, and the Tamil Siddhar tradition already asks what continuity of self survives a change of substrate. These frameworks reframe the AI consciousness question rather than answering it with hardware.
Mind as process, not object
If mind is a process of dependent conditions rather than a substance, asking whether a model 'has' consciousness is the wrong grammar. The better question is which processes it participates in and what obligations that creates.
Agency beyond the individual
Traditions that already recognize distributed and ancestral agency handle networked intelligence more gracefully than frameworks that assume a single bounded self.
Books on this subject
Guru Rinpoche's Law of Attraction: The 8th-Century Secret to Manifesting Wealth, Power, and the Great Liberation — The Tibetan Buddhist Science of Mind and AbundanceGoogle Play ↗
Shiva Shakti: The Cosmic Love Affair: The Sacred Union of Consciousness and Energy — The Law of Attraction, Manifestation, and the Tantric Path Where Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern TransformationGoogle Play ↗
The Buddha Was Black: The Lost Origins and Forgotten Lineage of Buddhism — Siddhartha, Padmasambhava, Bodhidharma, Nagarjuna, and the African and Dravidian Roots of the DharmaGoogle Play ↗
The Art of Zen: The Black Prince of Kanchipuram — The African-Dravidian Origins of Zen Buddhism and Shaolin Kung FuGoogle Play ↗Frequently asked questions
Can AI be conscious?
Robert Shumake's position is that the question is poorly framed. Traditions that treat mind as process rather than object shift the inquiry from whether a machine possesses consciousness to which processes it participates in and what duties follow.
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