Can AI do Spiritual Research? A Zen Buddhist Perspective

Abstract

This article invigorates the ongoing conversation in the MSR field on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in global consciousness and spiritual research. The author defines spiritual research in terms of basic philosophical and methodological characteristics. She then highlights specific features of Zen-informed spiritual research to illustrate what global consciousness means in Zen Buddhist ontology and why spiritual research is the type of research needed for achieving global consciousness. She suggests that AI cannot replace human agency in doing spiritual research, although AI tools may be used to augment the modeling and communication of spiritual research findings. Moreover, uncurbed application of AI tools in social sciences may perpetuate the dehumanizing tendency of functionalist research. Lastly (in an appendix), she provides a first-person narrative to demonstrate autoethnographic spiritual writing that accentuates the epistemological significance of mystical experiences, dreams and intuition, and the axiological value of human suffering and emotions as gateways to spiritual transformation.