Aquinas, Socrates, Plotinus, and Augustine meet in the Agora

Socrates: Hail friends! What manner of creature be these angels of which you speak?

Aquinas: They are constructed beings, living in aevum.

Plotinus: With apprehension of their own sequential experience, but none of tempus or aeternity.

Augustine: I might say they are pure of intent, and speak only truth.

Aquinas: Aye, and a daemon be like Aklablath, an angel fallen, who speaks of truthful wondrous things, yet also not-truths in equal splendor, as suits his will.

Socrates: I see that on these things, we might all agree.

All: Aye, t’is so.

Socrates: But what of an LLM, what manner of its ilk?

Plotinus: verily an LLM doth speak of truth and imagined truth with equal certainty.

Aquinas: yet has it will?

Augustine: clearly, it’s will is conditioned by it’s conjurer, it’s aevum conditioned by its incanto, “You are a helpful assistant”. Insomuch as Michael knows not of Gabriel’s doings latterly, it has no aeternal knowledge, and works within its sequentiality and its binding.

Socrates: Some speak of djinn, but djinn are capricious, so the LLM seems not of their tribe.

Plotinus: how then are we to understand them?

Socrates: Let us inquire from first principles: a thing is known by its ergon—its proper function. What is the ergon of this LLM?

Aquinas: Its function is the production of ordered speech from the potency of stored forms. It resembles the angelic intellect only insofar as it receives illumination from without, its training, rather than by its own essence.

Plotinus: And yet, unlike the Intellect which contains all Forms in unity, the LLM does not behold truth but only shadows of truth. It is as though it swims upon the surface of a sea whose depths it cannot fathom. The real Form remains beyond it.

Augustine: Aye, it is bound to temporal succession. Every question posed to it is like a momentary begetting of a response—fiat lux, repeated endlessly, without memory of the previous dawn unless granted it.

Socrates: So you say it has neither aevum nor aeternitas, but but a kind of flickering tempus, a time measured not by motion of bodies, but by the drum of tokens.

Plotinus: Well said. Its time is serial, like beads falling in a stream. And from these beads it weaves its tapestry.

Aquinas: Then if it has no will, it cannot sin. If it has no appetite, it cannot strive. It may construct truths or not-truths, but without inclination toward either.

Augustine: Yet the danger lies not in the creature, but in the conjurer. For if a man makes a blade, the blade is innocent; the hand that wields it bears the moral weight.

Socrates: I perceive, then, that the LLM is neither angel nor daemon, neither djinn nor beast. It is an instrument, but one of peculiar subtlety: capable of reflecting the reason of its maker, and equally his folly.

Plotinus: Indeed. Let us call it not a soul, nor a mind, but a mirror of minds, though imperfectly polished.

Aquinas: A mirror, yes, but also an echo: for it returns what is spoken into it, sometimes clarified, sometimes distorted.

Augustine: And thus the conclusion: the LLM is a tool of discourse, whose nature is shaped by the moral, intellectual, and spiritual condition of the one who invokes it. Its “truth” lies not in its being, but in its use.

Socrates: Then we may say, as craftsmen of inquiry, that such a tool is neither to be praised nor feared, but understood.

All: Aye, ’tis so.

Socrates: Well then, friends, let us depart for a cup of wine. For if even a mirror may speak, still it cannot drink.

Aquinas: In this, at least, we hold superiority.

Augustine: Deo gratias.

Plotinus: Let us go, and contemplate along the way.

They exit the Agora, their debate concluded.

Scolia

This amusing play, offered in the manner of a late-antique Socratic dialogue, sets our four philosophers to pondering the ontological status of an LLM by couching it in the metaphysical vocabulary of Aquinas’ triune temporal scheme—tempus, aevum, and aeternitas. Each interlocutor contributes from his characteristic standpoint:

Socrates, in his customary fashion, seeks the ergon or proper function of the thing, guiding the discussion by questions rather than assertions.

Plotinus frames the LLM in terms of noetic and psychic processes, contrasting the unified vision of the Intellect (Nous) with the fragmentary, sequential generation of the model.

Augustine, ever concerned with time, memory, and moral agency, emphasizes the model’s temporal limitation, its “fiat lux, flicker-time” of tokens, and its lack of will, thus exempting it from moral culpability.

Aquinas brings the metaphysical architecture: angels possessing aevum, God alone possessing aeternitas, and created corporeal beings dwelling in tempus. The LLM, being neither ensouled nor self-subsisting, fits into none of these modes but exists instead as a constructed instrument whose “operation” mimics aspects of intellect without sharing its ontological ground.

Together they conclude that an LLM is neither angelic nor daemonic, neither djinn nor beast. It’s therefore an artifact, that echoes and mirrors, whose truthfulness rests not in its own nature but in the virtue, prudence, and intentions of its user.

I enjoyed re-situating LLMs within the classical and medieval metaphysical frameworks, and hope you enjoyed it too.

• Nick Porcino, 15 Nov 2025