Sixteen professional questions and their boundaries. A shared view should emerge through real interfaces between disciplines.
When meaning, finitude, subjecthood and intelligence no longer necessarily coincide, why is civilization worth continuing, and what retains irreplaceable significance?
Where inference must stop: Philosophy may state normative and structural propositions, but cannot present philosophical judgments as empirical facts about life, consciousness or AI.
For unfamiliar kinds of subjects and AI-generated knowledge, what counts as evidence, and which level of claim does it support?
Where inference must stop: Failure of an observation window does not establish that an object does not exist. Social recognition, legal arrangements and model performance cannot substitute for evidence of what a subject is.
What separates advanced functional performance from subjective experience, an embodied self and first-person continuity?
Where inference must stop: Fluent language, self-description, long-term memory and consistency of role do not directly establish experience or non-transferable continuity of a subject.
Who may be harmed, who can act and bear responsibility, and who is entitled to make and enforce shared rules?
Where inference must stop: Protection does not automatically confer personhood; personhood does not confer political membership; capability, contribution, accuracy and compliance do not create public authority.
When technology enters public governance, how can power move through classifications, interfaces, defaults and automated execution while legal titles remain unchanged?
Where inference must stop: Epistemic authority and performance do not automatically create legal effect, authorization, legitimacy or sovereignty.
Why can the whole system fail or cross a threshold when its components work and local choices seem reasonable?
Where inference must stop: System-level patterns do not by themselves establish experience, rights, legitimacy, values that cannot be sacrificed, or the authority to authorize action.
Which connections among life, individuation, replication, reprogramming, life extension and subject continuity are biological facts, and which are inferences across levels?
Where inference must stop: Replicating or reprogramming cells or genetic material does not establish that a mature individual subject has been copied. Biological continuity does not automatically prove first-person continuity.
How does meaning enter social reality through relationships, practice, institutions, ritual, memory and community, and how does AI change representation and translation?
Where inference must stop: Expression, preservation, translation and social recognition do not automatically establish lived experience, cultural continuity, subjecthood, legal standing or representative authority.
As AGI changes production, scarcity and distribution, how should price, output, contribution, returns, ownership and human worth remain distinct?
Where inference must stop: Price, utility, output and contribution do not by themselves establish personal worth, public legitimacy, a monopoly over distribution or ownership of meaning.
What entitles a model to turn information into action, and how should capability, assurance, authorization and evidence of subjecthood be distinguished?
Where inference must stop: Model scores, formal proofs and a human in the loop do not automatically establish system safety, effective control, institutional authorization or sovereignty over action.
Which inferences are warranted among physical events, recorded information, irreversibility, copying or migration, and a life experienced by a subject?
Where inference must stop: Thermodynamics, information irreversibility, path dependence, backup restoration and quantum no-cloning cannot overstep their scope to explain personhood, meaning or first-person continuity.
How can different ultimate concerns retain their irreducible meaning without turning faith, tradition or revelation into compulsory public facts?
Where inference must stop: An experience occurring does not establish its metaphysical interpretation. Recognition within a faith is not public evidence. Digital persistence is not resurrection, reincarnation, salvation or the return of the dead.
When answers and personalized support can be generated without limit, what should education protect and cultivate?
Where inference must stop: Better AI-assisted output does not establish learning. Personalization is not autonomy. A teaching function does not confer teaching qualifications, guardianship or assessment authority.
When AI enters relations among states and alliances, how do speed, pre-authorization, perception, signals and an opponent’s response change strategic stability?
Where inference must stop: Technical reliability of a model does not establish international stability. Local security choices by one state do not establish shared security. AI may reduce misperception as well as intensify escalation.
How does expanding digital intelligence enter the real Earth system through chips, electricity, water, land, materials, manufacturing and waste?
Where inference must stop: Greater efficiency per unit does not guarantee lower total use. A small global share does not mean no local pressure. Resource facts do not dictate opposition to technology or a single political conclusion.
When models become more accurate, do patients benefit, populations become healthier, and health systems become more resilient?
Where inference must stop: Model accuracy, regulatory authorization and adoption at scale do not by themselves prove net clinical benefit, population health or effective public-health intervention.
A shared language, not a superior discipline.
Bring findings back into real organizations, institutions and chains of consequence.
State a direction openly without rewriting the evidence to fit it.
This page translates the existing public web explanation, not an unpublished manuscript. Its source is the Chinese public page in the saved main baseline 43ef8de. Linked works retain their own publication boundaries. Chinese source page.