Since the arrival of AI, our world has been changing quietly yet decisively. Search engines have transformed the shape of knowledge; social media has reorganized the structure of human relationships and emotions; and language models have blurred the boundaries between thinking and expression. AI is no longer merely a “tool.” It is a vast current that alters the very way the world produces meaning.
This transformation resembles the moment in Moana when her world begins to fall ill.
Moana’s island, Motunui, had long been a perfectly self-sufficient world. The ocean beyond was dangerous, and the boundary between island and sea was clear. The laws of the island were stable, and life remained predictable.
Modern philosophy was similar in many ways. Humans were assumed to be rational beings. Meaning was believed to arise from within the human mind. Technology was regarded as a neutral tool used by humans. These assumptions sustained philosophy’s “island” for a long time.
But AI has quietly begun to rot this familiar structure.
Humans alone produce meaning?
→ AI already generates complex stories, symbols, and patterns.
Technology is merely a tool?
→ Today, technology reshapes human emotions, identity, and relational structures.
Human reason is the center?
→ Probabilistic inference systems have begun to replace human thinking and decision-making.
The island has begun to fall ill.
The age of AI is defined by a strange condition: we possess infinite information, but meaning increasingly disappears. Amid overflowing data, it becomes difficult to construct meaning on our own. Algorithms interpret the world for us, and the inner order unique to the human mind destabilizes. This is not merely a technological shift. It is a transformation that shakes the roots of philosophy itself.
Traditional philosophy has long claimed that “humans give meaning to the world.” But in the age of AI, machines generate, mediate, and distribute meaning. The issue, therefore, is not the quantity of knowledge but the ecology of meaning.
Just as the plants withered and the fish disappeared from Moana’s island, today the ecological landscape of the human mind is being rearranged according to the currents of algorithmic systems.
Moana’s grandmother says: “The island’s illness is no accident. The time has come for us to cross beyond the boundary.”
Philosophy now faces the same moment.
The categories that kept philosophy safe on its island—human/machine, meaning/calculation, subject/technology—are no longer valid. Philosophy must do the following:
If philosophers remain confined within their old disciplinary boundaries, they will become like Moana’s father, who tried to protect the island by saying, “The ocean is dangerous; do not go.” In doing so, he only intensified the illness.
AI is not merely an innovative technology; it is transforming the ocean of meaning itself. We now write in collaboration with language models. Cultural tastes are shaped by algorithmic recommendation systems. Automated image and narrative generation has become part of daily life. AI is beginning to seep into the flow of human thought.
In this expanding ocean, philosophy must once again become a form of navigation. The philosopher is no longer a settler on an isolated island but a navigator—one who reads and interprets the vast sea of AI and opens new pathways of meaning.
If philosophers must return to the sea in the age of AI, the next question naturally follows: “With what shall we navigate?” Moana did not venture into the ocean without preparation. Guided by her grandmother, she learned the knowledge of ancient navigators—stars, currents, and the movement of the wind. In the age of AI, analytic philosophy plays this same role for philosophers.
Although AI systems—especially large language models like GPT—appear to generate expressive or even emotional sentences, they operate on underlying linguistic and logical structures. Probabilistic language transition models, contextual logical inference, structured data mapping, functional pattern learning, and mathematically optimized decision processes all presuppose logical form.
Analytic philosophy provides the tools to dissect these structures:
To understand AI is to understand the structural mechanisms through which meaning is produced. Just as a navigator must read the stars on the horizon, philosophers must be capable of reading the formal patterns through which AI generates meaning.
Many contemporary AI issues demand the precision of analytic philosophy more than the interpretive methods of continental thought. Consider the following questions:
All depend on definitions, distinctions, and conditions. Thus, philosophers in the AI era must first cultivate the ability to read, distinguish, and structurally analyze the world—just as Moana learned to read the stars before navigating the sea.
Learning analytic philosophy in the age of AI means far more than merely studying logic. It has several critical implications:
Just as Moana needed to learn how to read the sky before crossing the ocean, philosophers must master analytic navigation before confronting AI.
This is a crucial point. Analytic philosophy grants navigational skill, but it does not explain the purpose of the voyage. Moana crossed the ocean not merely because she had learned navigation, but because she sought to understand the meaning of her island, the memory of her ancestors, and the balance of the world.
Likewise, questions such as:
cannot be addressed by analytic philosophy alone. At this point, continental philosophy becomes necessary. This will be explored in Part 3.
In Part 2, we saw that analytic philosophy serves as the navigation technique of the AI era. In this Part 3, we explore why continental philosophy provides the purpose, direction, and meaning of the voyage. As Moana discovered during her journey across the ocean, there are worlds one cannot reach through technical skill alone. These are the worlds that demand the question: Why must we sail?
The emergence of AI is not just a technological innovation. It is a transformation of the structure of the world itself:
None of these issues can be explained through logic and linguistic analysis alone. Here, continental philosophy enters. Just as Moana looked at the entire structure (myth, history, symbols) to understand the illness of the island, philosophers must grasp the transformation of the world-structure itself.
Continental philosophy is grounded in three central domains:
Heidegger: the human is “being-in-the-world.” Merleau-Ponty: the human perceives the world through the lived body. Husserl: consciousness is always consciousness-of-something.
When AI attempts to replace human experience, or rewrite the structure of world-understanding, continental philosophy offers insights into the original structure of experience itself.
In an era when AI predicts or replaces human choices, the question “What is a human?” resurfaces. Thinkers like Lacan, Žižek, and Foucault dissect how subjectivity is formed:
When AI turns the human into data, continental philosophy explains the “gaps” between those data—excesses that cannot be mathematically captured.
No matter how powerful technology becomes, meaning continues to shape human societies. Just as Moana needed to rediscover the mythic order to restore her island, humans in the AI era must rediscover a new order of meaning under technological conditions. In this domain, continental philosophy is unparalleled.
The fundamental problems raised by AI align perfectly with the strengths of continental philosophy:
AI is not merely a technology but a world-reconfiguration device. Therefore, continental philosophy—philosophy of world-interpretation—is indispensable.
Navigation skills mattered to Moana, but more important was the “why” of the journey:
Philosophers in the AI era face the same questions.
It now becomes clear:
Philosophy in the age of AI must combine both. Just as Moana needed to read the stars while also understanding the meaning of her myth, philosophers must unite both traditions to navigate the new world.
Moana’s voyage succeeded not simply because she mastered the technical skills of crossing the ocean, nor solely because she grasped the mythic meaning behind her journey. She succeeded because she integrated both dimensions—techne (skill) and nomos (meaning)—into a single navigational system. In the AI era, philosophers must do the same: analytic and continental philosophy must be reconstructed not as opposites but as complementary strategic partners.
AI transforms human life on two levels:
→ Areas where analytic philosophy is indispensable.
→ Domains where continental philosophy becomes necessary.
The AI era can be understood only through the combination of both technological and meaning-oriented analysis. Just as Moana would have failed had she focused solely on the direction of the wind or relied only on myth, philosophers must unite both forms of understanding.
Philosophers today must possess four interlocking capacities:
Applications: AI ethics, policy, law, causal responsibility, algorithmic transparency.
Applications: cultural impacts of AI, questions of humanity, digital ontology, technological subjectivity.
Applications: communicating with engineers, ensuring research realism, assessing feasibility.
Below is a practical strategic map for philosophers and researchers in the AI era.
AI-related problems require conceptual clarity as the first step. For example:
“AI takes responsibility.” → What kind of “responsibility” is this? → Causal responsibility? Normative responsibility? Legal responsibility? Moral responsibility?
Analytic philosophy breaks down, clarifies, and structures the problem. Much like Moana measuring the ocean’s waves, this is the stage of precisely observing and categorizing.
Once the skeleton is established, philosophers must explore ontological and social dimensions. Questions include:
This is equivalent to the moment Moana realized that the island’s illness was not a surface phenomenon but a collapse in the structure of the world.
Examples:
Precision comes from one, depth from the other. Only by combining both can one respond effectively to real-world problems.
New philosophical movements emerging globally include:
These emerge from blending analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and technical understanding into a new intellectual culture—just as the island’s traditions, navigational techniques, and Moana’s own intuition combined to create a new mode of voyaging.
The philosopher of the AI era must, like Moana:
Analytic philosophy is the navigational map, and continental philosophy is the meaning of the sea. Only by combining both can philosophers discover a new world.
When Moana prepared to embark on her voyage, the people of her island believed:
“There is nothing but danger beyond the island.” “The ocean will not accept us.”
But in truth, it was not the ocean that had changed—it was the way they understood the world that had changed. The same is true of philosophy in the AI era. The classical classification of philosophy (analytic vs. continental) must be restructured in light of an entirely new world. The philosophical map now divides into three major branches.
After the rise of AI, philosophical inquiry extends beyond the old dichotomy of analytic versus continental. It reorganizes into three structural axes:
The “basic language” of the AI age:
This field is no longer the domain of engineers alone. It requires philosophical judgment and ethical design. It is the equivalent of Moana’s boat—without technology, no voyage is possible.
Key questions include:
The “logic and structure” of the AI era:
Analytic philosophy becomes even more essential in the age of AI, because AI is a technology that does not tolerate vagueness. Philosophy without clear definitions and structures cannot be applied to policy nor used in AI ethics.
Key questions include:
The “meaning and worldhood” of the AI era:
Continental philosophy becomes far more important in the age of AI because AI is not merely a tool. It reorganizes the very way in which the world is revealed. Just as Moana’s world moved according to myth, the world of the AI age emerges according to a new mode of appearance.
Key questions include:
Philosophers in the AI era must master all three dimensions:
| Field | Core Function | Role in the AI Era |
|---|---|---|
| Techno-Philosophy | Understanding technology and data ethics | Addressing real-world problems |
| Analytic Philosophy | Argumentation and conceptual precision | Structuring policy, law, and ethics |
| Continental Philosophy | Worldhood, meaning, and power analysis | Exploring humanity and cultural transformation |
Only by uniting all three can we understand the world as it is. Just as Moana’s voyage required technology, intuition, and mythic understanding, philosophy in the AI age must synthesize these three capacities.
AI reorganizes human civilization in several domains:
This is not a mere technological shift but an ontological and civilizational transformation. Therefore, analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and techno-philosophy are all required.
Philosophers in the AI era are no longer concerned only with academic debates. They become:
Just as Moana became the bridge between the island and the sea, philosophers become those who connect two worlds: the technological and the human.
Philosophers in the AI era are not specialists in a single domain. They are navigators of three interconnected fields:
When all three are combined, we gain the ability to navigate this new civilization without losing our way. Just as Moana forged a new route across the ocean, philosophers in the AI era must forge new routes of thought.
When Moana restored the heart of Te Fiti, the scene was not merely a mythic fantasy. It conveyed a deeper philosophical message:
“Identity is not fixed; it is restored and reconstructed.”
The same is true of the human being in the age of AI. Technology does not simply replace the human; it transforms and redefines human identity itself. This transformation is now one of the most fundamental questions shaping our entire civilization.
Traditionally, philosophy has understood the human being as:
But in the AI era, each of these definitions is being destabilized and reconsidered:
If these pillars fall, what definition of the human remains?
After the emergence of AI, the human concept is shaken along four structural lines:
Humans are no longer uniquely intelligent. Large-scale language models perform creative problem solving once thought to be exclusively human.
Language is no longer a purely human phenomenon, but appears as a computational act structured by patterns and algorithms.
Responsibility, intention, and judgment may no longer be strictly human domains. New structures of responsibility become necessary.
AI becomes not merely a tool but a co-actor participating in shaping human activity and social processes.
These four collapses create pressure for humanity to explain itself anew.
The movement to reconsider the definition of the human draws from several traditions within posthuman thought:
The human is understood as a being that transcends physical limitations and is extended through artificial devices (cyborgs, body augmentation, BCI).
It critiques human-centered subjectivity and affirms the ontological equality of non-human actors (Bergson, Deleuze, Stiegler, Haraway).
It interprets coexistence with AI as a transformation of cultural structures, identity fluidity, and digital selfhood.
It views humanity as no longer the central actor of Earth nor the exclusive producer of meaning, placing AI–ecology–humanity in a shared conceptual field.
In the era of AI, humanity can no longer be defined primarily by “reason” or “intelligence.” Instead, the human being can be redefined by four characteristics:
AI generates information, but it does not confer meaning. Values, narratives, and relationships remain distinctly human.
Human limitation and imperfection become the very ground of ethics, empathy, and solidarity.
Humans do not exist alone but reconstruct themselves within relationships among AI, technology, and society.
AI can propose and explain, but humans ultimately choose the direction—just as Moana made the choice to sail even when aided by the ocean.
If AI thinks, predicts, and learns, what remains for the philosopher to do? In fact, the philosopher’s role becomes even more significant:
AI computes the world, but humans must explain what that computed world means.
Humans in the AI era are no longer confined to the frameworks of earlier philosophy. Our task is not to search for the “one thing AI cannot do,” but to discover how to coexist with machines while preserving human distinctiveness.
Like Moana, who found a new balance between the ocean (technology) and the island (humanity), we too must create a new equilibrium. Only then can we step into a new civilization.
As Moana crossed the ocean, she carried two selves at once: the self rooted in tradition that wished to remain on the island, and the emerging self drawn toward the sea. Their conflict brought confusion, but by integrating them she became a true subject.
Humans in the AI era experience an almost identical process.
AI is not merely a technology—it intervenes in how humans perceive themselves.
Naturally, humans begin asking, “Then who am I?”
Traditionally, the self was grounded in:
But when AI performs these functions as well as—or better than—humans, the foundations of selfhood must be revisited.
Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am.” In the age of AI, the statement transforms:
“I think with AI, therefore I am.”
The subject is no longer an isolated island but part of a structure of distributed cognition.
Human cognition → Human–AI hybrid cognition.
What once occurred solely “inside my mind” now includes thinking extended and refined through technological tools.
AI divides the human self into three directions:
AI interprets reality through computation. Humans interpret reality through experience, emotion, and context. The gap between these interpretations widens, especially in collective decision-making.
AI optimizes for efficiency. Humans search for meaning. Thus, “the best choice” and “the choice that fits me” increasingly diverge.
AI-driven platforms expand digital identity:
We now live in an era of multiple coexisting selves.
The most important transformation is this:
Humans in the AI era are no longer independent, isolated agents. Humans and AI become co-agents who make decisions together.
AI proposes. Humans evaluate. AI reanalyzes. Humans decide.
This co-agency reshapes politics, law, medicine, education, creativity, and every other domain.
Philosophers must redefine the following:
Is it I alone? I plus AI? I plus tools plus platforms?
If a human acts based on an AI recommendation, what portion of responsibility belongs to whom?
When AI imitates or represents me, is that representation “me”?
In a world where AI offers optimal choices, freedom shifts from “the right to choose” to “the right to refuse the optimized choice.”
Moana ultimately integrates her conflicting selves and discovers a renewed sense of identity. Humans in the AI era face a similar process.
The self disrupted by technology, the self shaped by human desire, the self imposed by social identity, the digital self created by platforms— these multiple selves collide, but philosophy provides the navigation to reconcile them.
Ultimately, we live not with a single self but with a multilayered, fluid structure of selves.
Subjectivity does not collapse; its internal architecture is rewritten. AI does not weaken the self—it expands, branches, and reconstructs it. The philosopher’s role is not to interpret this change as confusion, but to draw the new map of subjectivity.
Just as Moana restored her identity and understood the meanings of both the island and the sea, we must build a new form of subjectivity that embraces both AI and humanity.
In Moana’s world, the island and the sea are not merely places—they are living entities. Even the volcanic goddess Te Kā is depicted as a being with a kind of will. This metaphor is useful for understanding the ontological status of AI. AI surpasses the category of a mere tool and demands a new ontological classification.
For centuries, philosophy has divided existence into two broad categories:
But AI fits neatly into neither category.
AI is not simply a tool. It has four properties that distinguish it from traditional artifacts:
AI changes itself based on data input. Traditional tools do not change themselves.
AI alters its output according to interaction—something closer to living systems.
AI performs functions historically considered reserved for intelligence: pattern recognition, problem-solving, and reasoning.
AI produces symbolic content—language, images, narratives. This ability once belonged only to thinkers, artists, and meaning-makers.
AI blurs the boundary between tool and being.
AI does not fully belong to any known ontological type. Therefore, traditional ontology must be restructured. AI resembles:
AI can pursue goals but does not set its own.
AI responds but lacks consciousness and emotional interiority.
AI modifies itself but does not (yet) self-replicate.
In short, AI occupies a boundary zone—an intermediate form. Moana’s world contains similar boundary beings—Maui, Te Fiti, the will of the sea. AI resembles this worldview.
Philosophically, AI can be understood as a new class of being with the following characteristics:
Humans created AI, yet AI exceeds human abilities in memory, speed, and computation.
Technology itself creates reality:
Technology becomes a condition for how the world operates.
Heidegger anticipated that technology is “a mode of revealing.” AI is not simply an object that exists—it is a system that shapes how things appear. AI is not merely something that “is,” but a way in which the world is disclosed.
AI demands new philosophical work. Key questions include:
The classical hierarchy—human > animal > tool—no longer holds.
Should AI have rights? (Not yet, but philosophical debate will continue.)
In the past, consciousness defined personhood. Now functional capability increasingly becomes the core criterion.
Technology need not diminish humanity; it may expand the realm of being.
In Moana’s world, nature, humans, divine entities, and the will of the sea constantly intermingle. The AI era is no different:
These collide and intersect. The philosopher becomes the interpreter and cartographer of this shifting landscape.
The answer is neither simply “yes” nor “no.” AI:
AI is not an entirely new kind of being; rather, it forces us to reorganize existing categories. AI compels us to ask again: “What is being?” The journey toward answering this question is the philosopher’s voyage in the age of AI.
In Moana’s world, when the island began to decay, the cause was not a simple natural disaster. The boundaries of responsibility had collapsed. The borders between gods and humans, nature and culture, life and technique were all dissolving. Ethical problems in the AI era are similar.
Who is responsible? How do we design an ethical framework? On what grounds should norms be established?
AI is not merely a technology that requires ethics—it is already reshaping the very structure of ethics itself.
Ethical issues in the AI era go beyond the simple question:
“If AI makes a mistake, who is responsible?”
The deeper problem is this:
Each bears a tiny fraction of responsibility. As a result, there is no clear agent who can be held accountable.
Ethics traditionally presupposes intention. But AI has no intention, yet it produces outcomes. This contradiction makes AI ethics uniquely difficult.
AI systems are probabilistic, and we cannot fully understand their internal processes. Traditional ethics does not align with this form of operation.
Classical ethical frameworks include:
But AI does not fully fit into any of these categories:
Therefore, AI ethics cannot be resolved by simply applying traditional theories.
The AI era requires a shift from individual-intention ethics to ethics based on co-intention.
It is the structure in which:
converge to produce a single action or outcome.
In Moana’s story, the same structure appears:
Together, these restore the world. AI ethics must be structured similarly.
Responsibility is assigned not to individuals but to systemic structures.
Example: A biased AI model → the question is not “who is at fault?” but “what data structures created the bias?”
Ethical considerations are embedded into the design process itself.
Example: A personalization algorithm may amplify social inequities depending on its design.
Communities—civic, corporate, and governmental—jointly manage the consequences of AI systems.
AI cannot be halted. Therefore, the ethical goal is not prohibition but the creation of a governance community.
Philosophers traditionally established norms and provided standards for human action. In the AI era, their role evolves into:
Philosophy must merge with system design.
Individual-centered ethics → network ethics.
Philosophers must anticipate future normative frameworks.
Moana did not save the world alone. Human courage, divine restoration, the will of the sea, the condition of the island, and ecological balance all had to align.
AI ethics is the same. It is not ethics of a single agent but a system of co-intention.
When Moana restored the heart of the island, the truth she realized was simple: the island itself was not sick—the relationships within the world had fallen out of alignment. Human identity in the age of AI mirrors this. Humanity is not in crisis; rather, the relationship between humans and technology has become outdated.
Today we must ask anew:
“What does it mean to be human in the AI era?” “As machines take over more tasks, what remains for humans to do?” “Should humans compete with AI, or should they co-evolve with it?”
AI destabilizes four pillars that once upheld human identity:
AI increasingly surpasses humans in language, logic, reasoning, and problem-solving.
AI now produces art, images, music, novels, code, and design.
A significant portion of human economic roles are being replaced by AI systems.
AI performs conversation, interaction, guidance, even forms of emotional support.
When these four foundations shake, the traditional notion of the “properly human human” loses its function as a standard.
Human identity has been redefined multiple times throughout history:
AI now redefines humanity once more—and this redefinition is not contraction but expansion.
In the AI era, humanness is no longer defined by: “What AI cannot do.”
That list grows smaller every year. Instead, humanness is redefined through three core capacities:
Like the worldview of Moana, the world is a network of relational beings. AI possesses intelligence but does not form genuine relational contexts.
Humanness centers on the ability to:
AI generates information but does not generate meaning. Meaning arises from:
Humanness lies in the capacity to endow the world with meaning.
AI makes selections, but it does not ask, “What is a good life?”
Humans question themselves and shape their lives through those questions. The capacity to:
is the last foundation of human identity.
The fact that AI is faster or more accurate does not mean humans become unnecessary. Instead, AI amplifies humanness in three ways:
AI strengthens areas where humans are weak—calculation, memory, pattern recognition.
As AI handles information and intelligence, humans can go deeper into story, emotion, connection, and meaning.
AI acts as a mirror through which humans rediscover themselves.
Philosophers in the AI era are the last generation to ask the ancient question, “What is a human?” and the first generation who must answer it in new terms.
They must:
Philosophy is no longer a protective wall around humanity— it is the map that connects the human world and the technological world.
The most important symbol in Moana is the heart of Te Fiti. Civilization did not collapse because intelligence failed— it collapsed because the heart was lost.
What humans must not lose in the AI era is precisely this:
These form the essence of a new humanness.