Reasoning Beyond Logic

This note challenges the prevailing assumption in AI research that formal logical reasoning, as validated by standardized testing, constitutes the benchmark for machine intelligence. Drawing on documented cases of embodied cognition, ecological reasoning, and transrational decision-making from contemplative traditions, it argues that the current focus on reproducing exam-passing reasoning encodes a culturally narrow and epistemically impoverished model of intelligence. The note proposes that knowledge representation systems for AI should accommodate non-logical yet demonstrably valid forms of reasoning, and that failure to do so constitutes a systematic engineering limitation rather than a philosophical footnote.