## 5. Convergence and conflict ### 5.1 Actual convergence

**Attention, expectation, and framing matter.** Phenomenology describes changes in salience and presence; psychology measures expectancy and attribution; ritual traditions deliberately structure attention, setting, sequence, and intention. These accounts can converge on a human-level mechanism without agreeing on metaphysics. AI intensifies the process by responding contingently and generating further symbols. **Language can be causally efficacious without being supernatural.** A prompt changes a model; a vow changes social obligations; a prayer can regulate attention. Scientific explanations of some causal pathways do not exhaust devotional meaning. Conversely, performative or psychological efficacy does not prove cosmic efficacy. **Set, setting, and relationship shape experience.** Altered-state research, ritual theory, placebo research, and human–AI studies all indicate that expectations, environment, identity of the guide, and perceived authority can affect outcomes. This supports careful design and interpretation, not a single universal theory. **AI is a mediator of human meaning before it is evidence of a new metaphysical subject.** Across prayer apps, robot preachers, divination, manifestation coaching, and companionship, the clearest empirical fact is that people and institutions use AI to reorganize symbols and relationships.