Thomas Aquinas College Lectures & Talks

How should we understand artificial intelligence, and what place should it have in a genuinely human future?

Held at Thomas Aquinas College August 3–6, 2026, The Mind and the Machine brought together philosophers, technologists, educators, and industry leaders to examine artificial intelligence through the perennial questions of the Western intellectual and Catholic traditions.

Across lectures, seminars, and panel discussions, speakers explored whether machines can truly reason or become conscious, the promises and dangers of artificial general intelligence, the distinction between intelligence and wisdom, and the implications of AI for human freedom, education, work, faith, and flourishing.

Rather than asking only what increasingly powerful machines can do, the symposium returned to a more fundamental question: What is the human person, and what constitutes a truly good human life? The talks examine AI not simply as a technological development, but as an occasion to reconsider reason, virtue, freedom, judgment, wisdom, and the purpose of education.

This playlist contains the lectures and conversations from The Mind and the Machine, offering perspectives ranging from optimism about AI as a powerful intellectual tool to serious warnings about its potential to reshape human society and our understanding of ourselves.

How should we understand artificial intelligence, and what place should it have in a genuinely human future?

Held at Thomas Aquinas College August 3–6, 2026, The Mind and the Machine brought together philosophers, technologists, educators, and industry leaders to examine artificial intelligence through the perennial questions of the Western intellectual and Catholic traditions.

Across lectures, seminars, and panel discussions, speakers explored whether machines can truly reason or become conscious, the promises and dangers of artificial general intelligence, the distinction between intelligence and wisdom, and the implications of AI for human freedom, education, work, faith, and flourishing.

Rather than asking only what increasingly powerful machines can do, the symposium returned to a more fundamental question: What is the human person, and what constitutes a truly good human life? The talks examine AI not simply as a technological development, but as an occasion to reconsider reason, virtue, freedom, judgment, wisdom, and the purpose of education.

This playlist contains the lectures and conversations from The Mind and the Machine, offering perspectives ranging from optimism about AI as a powerful intellectual tool to serious warnings about its potential to reshape human society and our understanding of ourselves.

How should we understand artificial intelligence, and what place should it have in a genuinely human future?

Held at Thomas Aquinas College August 3–6, 2026, The Mind and the Machine brought together philosophers, technologists, educators, and industry leaders to examine artificial intelligence through the perennial questions of the Western intellectual and Catholic traditions.

Across lectures, seminars, and panel discussions, speakers explored whether machines can truly reason or become conscious, the promises and dangers of artificial general intelligence, the distinction between intelligence and wisdom, and the implications of AI for human freedom, education, work, faith, and flourishing.

Rather than asking only what increasingly powerful machines can do, the symposium returned to a more fundamental question: What is the human person, and what constitutes a truly good human life? The talks examine AI not simply as a technological development, but as an occasion to reconsider reason, virtue, freedom, judgment, wisdom, and the purpose of education.

This playlist contains the lectures and conversations from The Mind and the Machine, offering perspectives ranging from optimism about AI as a powerful intellectual tool to serious warnings about its potential to reshape human society and our understanding of ourselves.

“The Problem of Bread: Art and Nature in Thomas’s Ontology of Artifacts” by Matthew Lomanno (University of St. Thomas, Houston). Presented at the Thomas Aquinas College 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.

“Metaphysics of Peace” by LTC Joshua Lehman (United States Military Academy). Presented at Thomas Aquinas College’s 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.

“Theology as a Guide to Aquinas’s Cognitive Philosophy” by Benjamin Augros (Baylor University). Presented at Thomas Aquinas College’s 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.

“Ways of Seeing: Experience of Lower Methods as Prior to Divine Science” by Dr. John McCarthy (Thomas Aquinas College, New England). Presented at Thomas Aquinas College’s 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.

“Thomas Aquinas’s Philosophical Doctrine of Creation” by Dr. Brandon Zimmerman (University of St. Thomas, Houston). Presented at Thomas Aquinas College’s 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.

“Plotinus: Omnipresence and Transcendence of the One in VI 5 [23]” by Rev. Gary Gurtler, S.J. (Boston College). Presented at Thomas Aquinas College’s 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.

“Two Distinctions of the Same Realities: Movement and Activity vs. Transitive and Immanent Action” by Dr. John Francis Nieto (Thomas Aquinas College, New England). Presented at Thomas Aquinas College’s 2026 Thomistic Summer Conference.