Beyond the Prompt: Epistemic Negotiation, Intellectual Sovereignty and Human Flourishing in GenAI-Assisted Doctoral Research

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Abstract
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly embedded in doctoral research and writing, raising important ethical debates on plagiarism, authorship, and the boundaries of permissible use. This article develops a reflexive account of sustained GenAI use, principally through ChatGPT, to examine how the ethical and epistemic significance of GenAI is constructed through practice. Drawing on social constructionism and a capability-oriented understanding of technology, it conceptualises GenAI as an interaction-dependent epistemic environment in which generated outputs function as knowledge potential requiring human evaluation rather than being considered authoritative answers. The analysis develops an integrated process architecture linking epistemic negotiation with intellectual sovereignty and proposes framework-guided GenAI use, illustrated through the Integrated Human Flourishing Model, to support theoretically and normatively informed evaluation of generated possibilities. It further distinguishes verification of factual accuracy from conceptual verification and develops an epistemic audit trail to make consequential interactions, revisions and judgements more traceable. The analysis also identifies a doctoral-writing-specific productivity paradox in which efficiencies in generation and reformulation coexist with intensified evaluative, verificatory and interaction-management labour. Overall, GenAI is shown to reorganise rather than replace intellectual work, with its scholarly value depending on critical, theoretically grounded and accountable human engagement that supports intellectual agency and human flourishing.

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