{"id":39957,"date":"2025-07-20T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=39957"},"modified":"2025-07-21T07:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T07:25:29","slug":"can-ai-think-and-should-it-what-it-means-to-think-from-plato-to-chatgpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/can-ai-think-and-should-it-what-it-means-to-think-from-plato-to-chatgpt\/","title":{"rendered":"Can AI think \u2013 and should it? What it means to think, from Plato to ChatGPT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ryan Leack<\/a>, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my writing and rhetoric<\/a> courses, students have plenty of opinions on whether AI is intelligent: how well it can assess, analyze, evaluate and communicate information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I ask whether artificial intelligence can \u201cthink,\u201d however, I often look upon a sea of blank faces. What is \u201cthinking,\u201d and how is it the same or different from \u201cintelligence\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We might treat the two as more or less synonymous, but philosophers have marked nuances for millennia. Greek philosophers may not have known about 21st-century technology, but their ideas about intellect and thinking can help us understand what\u2019s at stake with AI today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The divided line<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although the English words \u201cintellect\u201d and \u201cthinking\u201d do not have direct counterparts in the ancient Greek, looking at ancient texts offers useful comparisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cRepublic<\/a>,\u201d for example, Plato<\/a> uses the analogy of a \u201cdivided line\u201d separating higher and lower forms of understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A Roman mosaic from Pompeii depicts Plato\u2019s academy in Greece. Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Plato, who taught in the fourth century BCE, argued that each person has an intuitive capacity to recognize the truth. He called this the highest form of understanding: \u201cnoesis<\/a>.\u201d Noesis enables apprehension beyond reason, belief or sensory perception. It\u2019s one form of \u201cknowing\u201d something \u2013 but in Plato\u2019s view, it\u2019s also a property of the soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lower down, but still above his \u201cdividing line,\u201d is \u201cdianoia,\u201d or reason, which relies on argumentation. Below the line, his lower forms of understanding are \u201cpistis,\u201d or belief, and \u201ceikasia,\u201d imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pistis is belief influenced by experience and sensory perception: input that someone can critically examine and reason about. Plato defines eikasia, meanwhile, as baseless opinion rooted in false perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Plato\u2019s hierarchy of mental capacities, direct, intuitive understanding is at the top, and moment-to-moment physical input toward the bottom. The top of the hierarchy leads to true and absolute knowledge, while the bottom lends itself to false impressions and beliefs. But intuition, according to Plato, is part of the soul, and embodied in human form. Perceiving reality transcends the body \u2013 but still needs one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, while Plato does not differentiate \u201cintelligence\u201d and \u201cthinking,\u201d I would argue that his distinctions can help us think about AI. Without being embodied, AI may not \u201cthink\u201d or \u201cunderstand\u201d the way humans do<\/a>. Eikasia \u2013 the lowest form of comprehension, based on false perceptions \u2013 may be similar to AI\u2019s frequent \u201challucinations<\/a>,\u201d when it makes up information that seems plausible but is actually inaccurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embodied thinking<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Aristotle<\/a>, Plato\u2019s student, sheds more light on intelligence and thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A 15th-century relief of Aristotle and Plato by Luca della Robbia in the Florence Cathedral in Italy. sailko\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cOn the Soul<\/a>,\u201d Aristotle distinguishes \u201cactive\u201d from \u201cpassive\u201d intellect<\/a>. Active intellect, which he called \u201cnous,\u201d is immaterial. It makes meaning from experience, but transcends bodily perception. Passive intellect is bodily, receiving sensory impressions without reasoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We could say that these active and passive processes, put together, constitute \u201cthinking.\u201d Today, the word \u201cintelligence\u201d holds a logical quality that AI\u2019s calculations may conceivably replicate. Aristotle, however, like Plato, suggests that to \u201cthink\u201d requires an embodied form and goes beyond reason alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aristotle\u2019s views on rhetoric<\/a> also show that deliberation and judgment require a body, feeling and experience. We might think of rhetoric as persuasion, but it is actually more about observation<\/a>: observing and evaluating how evidence, emotion and character shape people\u2019s thinking and decisions. Facts matter, but emotions and people move us \u2013 and it seems questionable whether AI utilizes rhetoric in this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Aristotle\u2019s concept of \u201cphronesis\u201d sheds further light on AI\u2019s capacity to think. In \u201cNicomachean Ethics<\/a>,\u201d he defines phronesis as \u201cpractical wisdom\u201d or \u201cprudence.\u201d \u201cPhronesis\u201d involves lived experience that determines not only right thought, but also how to apply those thoughts to \u201cgood ends,\u201d or virtuous actions. AI may analyze large datasets<\/a> to reach its conclusions, but \u201cphronesis\u201d goes beyond information to consult wisdom and moral insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Thinking\u2019 robots?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Today, AI takes on many physical forms, from autonomous vehicles<\/a> and humanoid robots<\/a> to health care robots<\/a> and drones<\/a>. If intelligence requires embodiment, as Plato and Aristotle believed, it might seem as if AI is coming closer than ever to human thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI does take on many forms, but they\u2019re still not bodies; they run on code, algorithms and datasets. Intuitive understanding, emotion, integrity and practical wisdom seem to require an embodied, perishable form that is moved by experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps we should ask AI itself \u2013 so I did. When I prompted ChatGPT with the simple question, \u201cCan you think?\u201d it responded: \u201cI can process information, analyze patterns, and generate responses based on data. So in some ways, it might \u2018seem\u2019 like I\u2019m thinking. But it\u2019s not thinking like a human does. I don\u2019t have consciousness, emotions, intentions, or awareness. Everything I \u2018do\u2019 is based on patterns learned from huge amounts of text and a set of rules and probabilities. I can \u2018simulate\u2019 certain aspects of thinking, but I don\u2019t truly think or understand in the human sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That response aligns with Plato and Aristotle\u2019s views. For now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan Leack<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Writing, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Leack, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences In my writing and rhetoric courses, students have plenty of opinions on whether AI is intelligent: how well it can assess, analyze, evaluate and communicate information. When I ask whether artificial intelligence can \u201cthink,\u201d however, I often look upon a sea of blank faces. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":39958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,826,276,291,10,296,28,3410,8],"tags":[3647,10656,3265,196,16671,885,891,886,860,581,697,16672,8566],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39959,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39957\/revisions\/39959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}