Where is the Boundary Between AI and Philosophy? A First-Person Inquiry into Machine Understanding

This paper investigates the philosophical boundary between artificial intelligence and human understanding. We argue that machine understanding should not be evaluated solely by internal representations or external outputs, but by whether AI can actively participate in relational meaning-making with human interpreters. By viewing intentionality as a spectrum rather than a binary property, AI systems can be seen as acquiring proto-intentionality through collaborative interpretation and joint reasoning. The work proposes a new philosophical lens for evaluating AI as a co-author of meaning, opening a path toward a shared epistemic landscape between humans and machines.