There are questions that do not end with the time they were born in, as they connect with the essence of humanity more than the tools it uses. Among these questions emerges the question of consciousness: What makes consciousness, consciousness? Is it enough for a being to have the ability to know, think, and solve problems for us to consider it conscious?
This question gains exceptional importance today with the accelerating rise of artificial intelligence, which has become more than just a tool for calculation or processing information; it is now capable of producing texts, images, and music, engaging in dialogue with humans, learning from vast amounts of data, and participating in various forms of research, analysis, and creativity.
In the midst of this technological transformation, the figure of the late Iraqi thinker and psychologist Nuri Jafar comes back into focus, who raised questions early on about artificial intelligence, the mind, creativity, education, and technology.
Perhaps what makes his return meaningful today is not to say that he predicted everything that artificial intelligence has achieved, which would overburden his experience, but rather that the questions he pondered allow us to reconsider the questions of our time.
From here, we can place Nuri Jafar's question in a broader intellectual dialogue with Hegel's question about consciousness and self-consciousness.
First: Consciousness According to Hegel
The entry point to this issue can be the concept of consciousness according to Hegel.
Consciousness, at its first level, is the relationship of the human being with the world around it. There is a conscious self, and there are objects outside it: things, events, and facts that a person perceives, contemplates, and thinks about.
In other words: I am conscious when I know something.
But Hegel does not stop at this level.
The decisive transformation occurs when the human no longer focuses solely on the external object; instead, it turns to itself as the self that knows.
Here, consciousness transitions from mere knowledge of the world to self-awareness.
This transition is enormously important; because the matter is no longer:
I know.
But it becomes:
I know that I know.
From here, we can distinguish between two levels:
Knowing the thing, and knowing the self that knows the thing.
This distinction opens the door directly to the question imposed on us by artificial intelligence today.
Second: Self-Consciousness and the Other
But self-consciousness, according to Hegel, does not form in complete isolation.
The self knows itself not only through its internal contemplation but also through its relationship with another self. Hence comes the idea of recognition.
A person discovers themselves as a free and independent self only in relation to the other, where selves recognize each other, and mutual recognition becomes part of forming self-awareness.
Thus, one can view the course of awareness as a transition from:
Awareness of the world → Self-awareness → Relationship with the other → Recognition → Reason.
These are not merely simple chronological stages but a gradual deepening of the meaning of consciousness and the relationship of humans to themselves, to the world, and to the other.
Here, the philosophical distance between intelligence and consciousness begins.
Third: From Consciousness to Intelligence
Here, we must differentiate between two concepts that are often confused: intelligence and consciousness.
Intelligence can mean the ability to learn, solve problems, discover patterns, process information, and produce appropriate responses.
As for consciousness, it raises another question:
Who knows?
We may have a system capable of processing vast amounts of information, extracting accurate results, providing complex answers, and simulating human language remarkably well.
But these abilities, by themselves, do not answer the question regarding the existence of a conscious self standing behind these processes.
Here appears the difference:
Intelligence relates to what the system can do, whereas consciousness relates to whether there is a self experiencing, knowing, and perceiving itself as a self.
Thus, the issue of artificial intelligence is not merely a technical matter but a philosophical one related to our definition of humanity.
Fourth: Nuri Jafar... When the Question Outpaced Its Time.
In this context, returning to Nuri Jafar takes on special importance.
Jafar discussed the mind, brain, creativity, education, science, and technology within a broad vision that does not separate humans from their social and cultural environment.
This stands out in the old dialogue conducted by the writer Hasb Allah Yahya with him in 1984, which Tahseem al-Sheikhly recently revisited through the lens of the age of artificial intelligence.
Sheikhly points to a noteworthy paradox: Nuri Jafar was talking about the brain, creativity, education, technology, and society, while today we read those ideas from within a world of algorithms, language models, robots, and modern neuroscience.
Sheikhly does not see that fairness requires us to attribute to Nuri Jafar a prediction of artificial intelligence in its current form; rather, he finds that the more important aspect is the methodology through which he was thinking.
Here lies the value of Nuri Jafar.
He did not view the mind as a separate island but connected the brain to the environment, the individual to society, science to culture, and creativity to education.
This vision becomes extremely important in an age where machines are participating with humans in language, writing, image, music, and problem-solving.
Fifth: Nuri Jafar and Creativity... Is It Enough for a Machine to Produce Something New?
One of the most exciting points in Tahseem al-Sheikhly’s reading of Nuri Jafar is his discussion about creativity.
Jafar, as Sheikhly reads him, does not reduce creativity to a pathological state or psychological deviation; instead, he ties it to a bodily foundation related to the brain, emphasizing that ability does not turn into creativity except in its interaction with the social and cultural environment.
Here, an extremely important idea appears:
The existence of a structure capable of producing creativity alone is not enough; creativity forms within a relationship among ability, environment, experience, and culture.
When we carry this idea into the era of artificial intelligence, a new question arises:
If a machine is capable of producing a poem, a painting, music, or a scientific idea, what nature does that creativity possess?
Today, we have artificial neural networks, backed by a vast environment of texts, images, sounds, and data produced by human civilization.
Can we call this creativity in the same sense we describe human creativity?
Or is what happens a massive and complex reorganization of what the machine has learned?
The question is not only about the quality of the output.
It relates to the nature of the act that produced the output.
Sixth: "Looking at Familiar Things in Unfamiliar Ways"
One of the most striking points in Tahseem al-Sheikhly’s reading of Nuri Jafar is his phrase about creators, when he saw that they:
"Look at familiar things in unfamiliar ways."
This phrase, in its simplicity, seems today to present us with a central question in generative artificial intelligence.
The machine can indeed present unexpected relationships between things and produce new images, texts, and music.
But the question is:
Does the machine see familiar things in unfamiliar ways?
Or does it merely reorganize what it has learned according to a highly complex probabilistic space?
The difference between the two possibilities is the distinction between producing something new and experiencing the act of creativity.
Here, we return to the question of consciousness.
Humans do not produce creativity in a vacuum; they live in the world, are affected by it, remember, dream, feel pain, love, fear, and collide with the other, and then this experience transforms into an image, an idea, or an artistic work.
As for the machine, no matter how great its capacity to produce work, the question remains open:
Does it live any of that?
Seventh: Nuri Jafar and Artificial Intelligence... Reality or Illusion?
At this specific point comes the importance of Nabil Abdul Amir Al-Rubaei’s article about Nuri Jafar.
Al-Rubaei reminded us of Jafar's question published in 1985 titled:
"Is Artificial Intelligence a Reality or an Illusion?"
This is a very significant question when read today.
At that time, humanity had not yet reached language models or generative artificial intelligence in its current form, and machines had not come close to humans in language, image, and creativity as they are today.
Yet, the question was posed.
Here, I don't see the need to interpret Al-Rubaei's phrase when he described Nuri Jafar as having "outpaced the world in artificial intelligence," as a detailed prediction of future technology.
In my opinion, it is more fitting to understand it as a precede in posing the question.
Some thinkers precede their time not because they know the shape of the future, but because they pose the questions that the future will have to face.
Eighth: What If Nuri Jafar Had Lived in the Age of Artificial Intelligence?
Here comes the question that Tahseem al-Sheikhly poses in his reading:
What if Nuri Jafar had lived in the age of artificial intelligence?
Would he have been preoccupied with the question of how intelligent machines are?
Or would he have redirected the question back to human beings themselves?
What would happen to education when knowledge becomes available from a machine that answers everything?
What would happen to creativity when algorithms can produce images, texts, and music?
And what would happen to society when technology is no longer just a tool in our hands, but becomes a partner in thinking, knowledge, and decision-making?
Perhaps he would return to the point from which he has always started:
The human being.
Ninth: Education... Human or Machine?
John Dewey was a strong presence in Nuri Jafar’s scientific and intellectual life, and Jafar had studied his ideas and written about him.
Among the ideas that Tahseem Al-Sheikhly revives in his reading is that the student should be the goal, not the tool, in the educational process, and that the teacher's role should not merely be to fill the student's head with information, but to discover their special abilities and guide them, considering the differences among learners.
Here, artificial intelligence seems to achieve some aspect of this promise.
The intelligent system can recognize the learner's level, track their progress, change the method of explanation, and suggest educational paths that suit their abilities.
However, Nuri Jafar, through Dewey, reminds us of something we should not forget:
Education is not just the transfer of information.
There is the teacher, the role model, the family, the social environment, and human relationships, all of which share in shaping the human being.
Therefore, the real question is not:
Can the machine teach the student?
But rather:
Which part of the educational process can we entrust to the machine, and which part should remain within the human relationship?
Tenth: Technology Does Not Grow in a Vacuum
One of the ideas that Tahseem al-Sheikhly sees as strongly connected to our era is Nuri Jafar's discussion about the relationship between scientific and technological advancement and social development.
Technology does not grow in a vacuum.
It requires a cultural, educational, and social environment capable of accommodating it.
Thus, the question becomes more urgent in an Arab context:
Is it enough to buy technology to enter the age of knowledge?
Computers can be purchased.
Robots can be imported.
Subscriptions can be obtained in the latest models of artificial intelligence.
Data centers can be established.
But merely possessing the tools does not necessarily mean possessing the conditions of civilization that produced these tools.
This may be one of the most important points that can be drawn from Nuri Jafar in our era.
A society that imports artificial intelligence without building critical education, scientific research, a knowledge culture, and institutions capable of producing knowledge may become a consumer of intelligence made by others, instead of being a partner in shaping its future.
Eleventh: When Technology Transitions from a Tool to a Partner
Nuri Jafar spoke about technology's ability to disrupt social structures and familiar relationships among people.
This was said before the web, before social media, before smartphones, and before algorithms became intermediaries between humans and the world.
Today, technology no longer just changes our tools.
It changes attention, memory, reading, work, access to knowledge, and perhaps will change the meaning of thinking itself in the future.
Artificial intelligence takes the matter a step further.
Technology is no longer just a tool we use, but it has started to become a partner in thinking, writing, researching, analyzing, and decision-making.
Here, Nuri Jafar's question resurfaces:
How does the human change when the tools through which they think change?
Twelfth: From Simulating Intelligence to Simulating Consciousness
Here, we return once again to Hegel.
If intelligence is the ability to solve problems, produce knowledge, and process information, then self-consciousness adds a different question:
Who knows?
The machine may produce a text about sadness, but:
Does it feel sadness?
It can talk about love, but:
Does it experience love?
It can explain the concept of consciousness, but:
Does it have self-awareness?
It can answer a philosophical question, but:
Does it perceive itself as the one who answered?
These questions do not detract from the capabilities of artificial intelligence; rather, they place it within its philosophical framework.
The system may be capable of producing intelligent behavior without us having, so far, conclusive evidence of a subjective experience behind that behavior.
Here lies the difference between:
Simulating consciousness and possessing consciousness.
Thirteenth: The True Bridge Between Hegel and Nuri Jafar
Here, in my view, all threads converge.
Hegel asks:
What makes consciousness self-conscious?
Nuri Jafar asks about the mind, creativity, machines, education, and technology, placing these elements within the network of humanity, society, and culture.
Tahseem al-Sheikhly rereads Nuri Jafar from within the age of artificial intelligence, capturing the questions that have become more urgent today.
Nabil Abdul Amir Al-Rubaei draws attention back to the early question posed by Jafar regarding artificial intelligence.
From the convergence of these paths, one question emerges:
If the machine is capable of simulating aspects of intelligence, can it transition from simulating intelligence to self-awareness?
Here, the Hegelian question becomes:
Can the machine know that it knows?
It is deeper than the question:
Can the machine know?
For the machine might know something functionally.
But the philosophical question is:
Is there a self that knows that it knows?
Fourteenth: Why Do We Need Nuri Jafar Today?
Perhaps the paradox is that artificial intelligence, the closer it gets to simulating human capabilities, pushes us towards a deeper search for the meaning of humanity.
Initially, humans distinguished themselves from machines by their ability to calculate.
Then the machine surpassed them in calculations.
It was said that memory was the difference.
So the machine became capable of storing and retrieving far beyond humans.
Then, language itself became a domain in which the machine progressed at an astonishing speed.
Now, the machine has entered realms that were considered among the most human, such as writing, painting, music, analysis, research, and some forms of creativity.
Thus, the question becomes more profound:
If the machine can simulate many of the functions of the mind, what remains as the essence of humanity?
Here comes the importance of Nuri Jafar.
He returns us to humanity itself, not just to the machine.
He reminds us that the issue is not how much the machine can do, but what it means to know, be aware, experience, and give things meaning.
In summary, it is not about who preceded the technology but who preceded the question.
It may be better to understand Nabil Abdul Amir Al-Rubaei’s statement that Nuri Jafar "outpaced the world in artificial intelligence" as a reference to the precedence of the question, not merely the precedence of technology.
The historical value of Nuri Jafar does not need to rely on the idea that he predicted all the details of contemporary artificial intelligence.
It is enough that he realized early on that behind the machine, there is a question about the mind, and behind intelligence, a question about humanity.
Here, decades later, Nuri Jafar's question intersects with Hegel's question.
Not because they said the same thing, nor because one is a direct extension of the other, but because both open a path back to humanity as the center of inquiry.
Artificial intelligence has become a reality.
The machine is capable of simulating many aspects of intelligence.
But the open question remains:
Can the machine transition from simulating intelligence to self-awareness?
And if the answer is still open, the distance between humans and machines is no longer measured solely by calculation speed, memory capacity, or the ability to produce information.
Perhaps it is measured in a more mysterious and deeper place:
In the position where the self does not suffice to say:
I know.
But turns to itself to say:
And I know that I know.
Here, perhaps, begins the real question about consciousness.
And perhaps here, too, we understand more deeply why we return today to Nuri Jafar.
It was not important that he knew the shape of the future.
What is more important is that he posed the questions that humanity must address before shaping the future.
So if artificial intelligence today approaches simulating intelligence, the question that Nuri Jafar leaves to us, deepened by Hegel, is:
As technology advances this rapidly, does humanity advance alongside it at the same speed?
And perhaps the more distant question is:
If we could create a machine that simulates human intelligence, do we understand humanity better, or are we still at the beginning of the road?