The Thin Line: The Illusion of the Intelligent

Abstract

The Thin Line: The Illusion of the Intelligent offers a philosophical critique of contemporary artificial intelligence by engaging the insights of Roger Penrose, John Searle, and Alexei Losev to expose what the author terms the “cognitive mirage” of machine intelligence. Arguing that AI systems—particularly large language models—are not minds but mirrors, the essay challenges the prevailing conflation of statistical pattern recognition with genuine understanding. Drawing on Penrose’s claim that consciousness involves non-computable processes, Searle’s Chinese Room argument that syntax lacks semantics, and Losev’s view of technology as the materialisation of myth, the article contends that the attribution of intelligence to machines reflects not their capacities but our own metaphysical and cultural projections. The piece further situates AI within broader currents of market-driven technocracy, where corporate power—not philosophical inquiry—shapes the discourse on intelligence. Integrating perspectives from Eastern thought, such as Buddhist emptiness and Taoist balance, the essay warns against the spiritual and ecological costs of unchecked technophilia. Ultimately, it calls for a recovery of philosophical and ethical clarity: to distinguish calculation from cognition, simulation from sentience, and to recognise that the true crisis lies not in machines becoming intelligent, but in humans relinquishing the virtues—humility, patience, moral imagination—that define authentic intelligence.