The Epistemological Crisis of Rationality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Through the Lens of 4E Cognition and Postphenomenology
Philosophies July 8, 2026 O. Varypaiev
Working with large language models risks normalizing a practice where a machine-generated text is accepted as a justified claim before the user has checked its sources or taken responsibility for it. This crisis of rationality stems not from a technical flaw but from a shift in how justification works: fluent textual coherence is mistaken for genuine understanding and rational judgment. Drawing on 4E cognition and postphenomenology, the analysis frames LLMs as multistable moral-epistemic mediators, not as rational subjects or neutral tools. A four-cluster protocol for attributing rationality is proposed, introducing an epistemic pause between a generated formulation and its acceptance as a claim. The core danger is not machine consciousness but the normalization of accepting ready-made text as a ground.