With the advancement of technology, it is no longer difficult to make artificial intelligence (AI) have consciousness in the sense of "qualia" or simply "sensibility". But unless we discover how self-awareness arises, it's impossible to make AI self-aware. The Buddhist Deep View, on the other hand, offers a way to solve this mystery.
As one of the basic teachings of Buddhism, "selflessness" in Theravada Buddhism refers to the inability to find an unchanging, permanent self in any individual, also known as "man without self"; On the contrary, the individual is composed of the ever-changing five senses (color, feeling, thinking, acting, and knowing). "Selflessness" has always been a puzzling and controversial proposition.
In "The Scientific Mechanism of Buddhist Meditation," we point out that the essence of vipassana is the "greater sensitivity of awareness" induced in meditation (after meditation), making the five senses of deep meditation possible in Buddhism, like "watching" a slow-motion screening of a movie.
According to P. A. Payutto (2019: 279), The Theory of Dependent Origin reveals how the five senses exist as interrelated causes and effects. If we think of each "realm" as an "awareness" (e.g., seeing something, feeling happy, recalling a scene), then according to Theravada empirical data, deep contemplation of the five senses will reveal the existence of "awareness of awareness" (e.g., when a person feels happy, he knows that he is happy; Note that the feeling of being happy is not the same as knowing that you are happy.)
Further, inspired by the insightful "fruit salad parable" (2006: 118) in which Ajambram describes his meditation experience, we introduce "awareness of awareness" outside the framework of the five essences, proposing a model of "selflessness": looking deeply into the five senses will reveal that "awareness of awareness" always arises after each (or every awareness) and does not arise or appear at the same time.
This means that the belief that there is an unchanging self experiencing or observing the five qualities stems from the fact that "awareness of awareness" always appears between any two qualities, and that it usually happens extremely quickly and imperceptibly. (It's like a torch spinning so fast that it looks like there's a ring of fire.) This leads to the insight into "selflessness," in other words, awareness (or consciousness) without a subject.
So, in essence, to think that there is a self experiencing or observing the five senses (this illusion) is to think that there is a two-tier parallel relationship, like the metaphor of "Cartesian theater" or Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." However, the slowdown of "speed" in deep view reveals that reality is a single-level serial relationship. This is the essence of Buddhism's "selflessness."
Obviously, the illusion of the self is self-awareness, and the concept of "awareness of awareness" is similar to Sartre's "pre-reflective self-awareness." Therefore, adding "awareness of awareness" to the programming of AI will make it possible for AI to generate self-awareness. The feeling of the self only "emerges" in the process of alternating the five "embodiment" (or "awareness") and "awareness of awareness."
From a methodological point of view, Western philosophy is good at logical reasoning, but lacks empirical evidence; Theravada Buddhism obtains empirical data through meditation, but it is weak in its interpretation. What I am trying to achieve is to build a bridge between Buddhism and modern Western theory of consciousness.