CAP Talk Series
PHENOMENOLOGY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: CONVERSATIONS WITH AFRICAN PHENOMENOLOGY AND BEYOND
at the Centre for African Phenomenology, University of Fort Hare, South Africa
Convenors: Amara Esther Chimakonam and Jean du Toit
Description
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just a technical or technological problem; rather, it transforms how experience, embodiment, temporality, and intersubjectivity may be understood. This talk series aims to promote discussion at the intersection of phenomenology and the emerging technology of AI, specifically from the perspective of African phenomenology, but also in conversation with Eastern and Western perspectives.
African phenomenology does not reduce the problem of AI to a localised case study; instead, it enables the generation of new phenomenological concepts that are valuable in the contemporary debate. Moreover, AI opens up new avenues for thinking through the relational ontologies central to African phenomenology and the non-dualist contours of Eastern thought – in contrast to the individualist models of subjectivity that dominate Western phenomenology.
The talk series focuses on two main questions. First, what new insights can (African) phenomenology offer to AI, including machine perception, artificial intentionality (self-awareness), artificial lived experience, synthetic cognition, and an intersubjective AI agent? And second, how does AI challenge or change core phenomenological concepts (including African phenomenological understandings) of lived experience, relationality, intersubjectivity, authenticity, consciousness, perception, embodiment, lifeworld, temporality, and spatiality?
We invite lectures from scholars in philosophy, AI ethics, medical AI, machine ethics, computer science, cognitive science, and related fields. As a Global South project, we place particular emphasis on non-Western contributions from African and Eastern philosophy as a counter-voice to Western conceptualisations of phenomenology and its relationship to AI.
However, all are welcome to engage in a dynamic conversation under the auspices of this crucial question of our times.
Talk Arrangements:
To run from the start of the second semester (July) in 2026.
Each session will bring together three scholars from African, Eastern, and Western philosophical traditions, each with a distinct approach to phenomenology, to discuss the intersection of phenomenology and AI, with the aim of challenging mainstream views.
Each session is structured as:
1 keynote (30mins)
2 respondents (30 mins)
Open dialogue (30 mins)
Duration: 1:30 mins
Publication Output:
This talk series will be published as a special issue of the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, by Taylor & Francis, on “African Phenomenology and AI: Global Conversations on Lived Experience and Technology”.
Publication Structure:
Each lead talk → paper
Include paired responses
Being a Speaker:
Interested speakers should please submit a 150-word abstract to the convenors at Amaraesther35@gmail.com and JDuToit@ufh.ac.za
Being a Respondent:
If you are interested in serving as one of the respondents for this CAP talk series, please send an expression of interest to the convenors at Amaraesther35@gmail.com and JDuToit@ufh.ac.za, using “CAP talk series: Respondent” as the subject line.
