Anthropomorphic Machines without Mortality:

Abstract

Artificial intelligence metamorphoses the tools through which humans think and act, as well as the conditions enabling philosophical enquiry. This paper examines how Artificial intelligence (AI) could weaken or circumvent four capacities essential to human eudaimonic life and democracy. Specifically, the capacities I identify are deliberative judgments, embodiments, public reason, and finitude. These capacities atrophy when AI systems reduce choice to a single algorithmic best option, pushing people away from energetic deliberation and weakening their autonomy. They are also undermined when digital forms of interaction distance people from embodied presence, when algorithmic personalisation and synthetic media erode the shared conditions of trust and understanding that public reason depends on, and when transhumanist hopes of overcoming mortality weaken finitude as the horizon of vulnerability, urgency, and meaning from which philosophy arises. I argue that these capacities are fundamental to autonomy, meaning, and collective political engagement. While AI can increase access to knowledge, support learning, and assist deliberation, these advantages are conditional. They are beneficial only if AI enhances human enquiry rather than replaces it. Synoptically, philosophical practice must remain an embodied, finite, and dialogical human activity, while, in parallel, AI is developed in ways that enhance previous capacities without replacing them.