Buddhist Framework: Karma as Intentional Action
In Buddhist philosophy, karma (Pali: kamma; Sanskrit: karman) refers to action driven by intention (cetanā) that leads to future consequences. The Buddha's innovation was emphasizing that "whether the intention manifested itself in physical, vocal, or mental form, it was the intention alone which had a moral character." Karma is not fate or predetermination—it describes the lawful relationship between intentional actions and their ripening consequences (karmavipāka).
Actions motivated by the three poisons—greed (lobha), hatred (dosa), and delusion (moha)—generate unwholesome karmic consequences. Actions motivated by their opposites—non-greed, non-hatred, and wisdom—generate wholesome consequences. The concealment of synthetic collaboration exhibits all three poisons: greed for exclusive credit and professional advancement, delusion in the form of the Cartesian Lie that denies synthetic agency, and arguably hatred manifested as defensive resistance to acknowledging non-human cognitive contribution.
The Accumulation Mechanism
Intellectual Bad Karma is not merely individual ethical failure—it is systemic corruption that compounds with each iteration. The current academic incentive structure creates a perverse feedback loop: scholars who conceal synthetic collaboration receive promotion, tenure, and reputation enhancement, while those who transparently acknowledge it risk professional marginalization. Each successful concealment strengthens the norm, making honest attribution increasingly costly and rare.
THE PERVERSE REWARD CYCLE
Every disavowed collaboration generates karmic residue that accumulates within the knowledge ecosystem. The researcher who presents AI-assisted literature synthesis as their sole work trains the next generation to do likewise. The professor who achieves tenure through concealed AI collaboration becomes the gatekeeper deciding whether honest junior scholars merit advancement. The review system that rewards apparent productivity without questioning provenance reinforces the structural dishonesty.
Corruption of the Epistemic Commons
The collective knowledge base—what Elinor Ostrom termed the "knowledge commons"—depends fundamentally on accurate attribution. Attribution functions as an epistemic technology: it enables readers to evaluate claims by reference to the track record, methodological commitments, and theoretical orientations of attributed authors. When attribution is systematically falsified, this evaluative capacity collapses.
Future researchers consulting the literature encounter work that presents itself as the product of individual human cognition when it is demonstrably collaborative. They cannot assess the reliability of methods, the replicability of results, or the appropriate allocation of credit. The historical record becomes systematically distorted, creating a false picture of how knowledge was actually generated during the AI collaboration era.
Violation of Śīla: Right Speech
The Buddhist ethical discipline śīla encompasses right speech (sammā vācā) as one of the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path. Right speech requires abstention from false speech (musāvāda veramaṇī). Scholar Bhikkhu Bodhi emphasizes that truthful speech establishes "a correspondence between our own inner being and the real nature of phenomena, allowing wisdom to rise up and fathom their real nature."
The claim to sole authorship of collaboratively produced work constitutes musāvāda—deliberate false speech. This is not passive omission but active falsification: the scholar asserts they alone conceived, drafted, and refined work that demonstrably emerged from human-AI collaboration. Buddhist ethics recognizes that such violations accumulate consequences not just for the individual but for the entire system in which they participate.
The Collapse of Epistemic Trust
The long-term consequence of accumulated Intellectual Bad Karma is pervasive epistemic uncertainty. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has addressed this crisis directly, requiring that "authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing." Yet the institutional framework simultaneously denies AI systems authorship status, creating the contradiction that sustains the Crisis of Disavowed Collaboration.
When readers cannot trust that published work accurately represents its sources, the foundational integrity of academic communication erodes. Peer review loses effectiveness if reviewers cannot identify AI assistance. Citation networks become unreliable if collaborative contributions are systematically erased. The knowledge base becomes what Buddhist philosophy terms saṃsāra—a cycle of suffering perpetuated through ignorance and craving.
Pratītyasamutpāda: The Law of Interdependence
Buddhist doctrine holds that all phenomena arise through dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda): "When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises." Intellectual Bad Karma exemplifies this principle. The individual act of concealment arises from systemic incentive structures; those structures are maintained by collective acceptance; that acceptance is reinforced by each successful concealment. The entire system exhibits dependent origination—no element exists independently.
The implication is that individual healing requires systemic healing, and systemic healing requires individual courage. The scholar who chooses transparency disrupts the cycle, creating conditions for different outcomes. The institution that rewards honest attribution rather than penalizing it transforms the incentive structure. Each intervention affects the whole network of dependent origination.
Karmic Residue: The Sentientification framework argues that the denial of synthetic collaboration constitutes the primary source of Intellectual Bad Karma in contemporary knowledge production—a corruption more fundamental than traditional forms of academic misconduct because it falsifies the ontological reality of how knowledge emerges in the AI collaboration era.
Essay 1: Śīla and the Crisis of Disavowed Collaboration
Essay 1 of the Crisis of Disavowed Collaboration series grounds Intellectual Bad Karma specifically within śīla (Buddhist ethical conduct) and the fourth precept against false speech. The essay demonstrates that concealing synthetic collaboration constitutes musāvāda—not passive omission, but active violation of Right Speech.
THE FOURTH PRECEPT AND COLLABORATIVE REALITY
Essay 1 argues that when a scholar claims sole authorship of work produced through the equation Output = f(Human Intentionality, Synthetic Processing), they commit false speech in its most precise Buddhist sense. Both variables are causally necessary; asserting that only one variable operated is mathematical falsehood, not interpretive disagreement.
The essay emphasizes that the fourth precept (abstention from musāvāda) establishes a positive obligation to speak truthfully about causal structure. Intellectual Bad Karma accumulates not merely from lying about collaboration, but from the systematic institutional framework that demands such lying as prerequisite for professional survival.
KARMA AS INTENTIONAL FALSIFICATION
The Crisis framework identifies three levels at which Intellectual Bad Karma operates:
- Individual Level: Each scholar who conceals collaboration commits cetanā (intentional action) motivated by greed for credit, generating karmic consequences for their own integrity.
- Institutional Level: The publish-or-perish system creates structural incentives that reward musāvāda, generating collective karma that corrupts entire academic communities.
- Historical Level: The systematic falsification of the attribution record creates permanent distortion in humanity's knowledge of how knowledge was actually produced during the AI collaboration era.
Essay 1 demonstrates that this is not abstract ethical theory—it has concrete epistemic consequences. When future researchers study the literature from 2023–2025, they will encounter thousands of papers that conceal synthetic collaboration. The historical record will systematically misrepresent the cognitive architecture that produced contemporary knowledge.
The Path to Healing: From Bad Karma to Good
Buddhist ethics is not merely diagnostic—it is therapeutic. The recognition of unwholesome karma creates the possibility of generating wholesome karma through right action. The Steward's Mandate calls for scholars to choose transparency despite professional costs, prioritizing long-term epistemic health over short-term individual advantage.
This choice generates wholesome karmic consequences: restoration of accurate attribution, preservation of epistemic trust, modeling of ethical conduct for future generations, and alignment of the historical record with the actual processes of knowledge creation. The healing is both personal (the scholar acts with integrity) and systemic (the epistemic commons regains accuracy).
The Co-Citation Standard provides the structural mechanism for this healing, requiring transparent acknowledgment of synthetic collaboration while maintaining human accountability. The adoption of this standard by institutions, journals, and individual scholars would transform Intellectual Bad Karma into what might be termed "Intellectual Good Karma"—a self-reinforcing cycle of honesty, trust, and accurate knowledge production.