A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence: A Phenomenological Foundation 9815123416, 9789815123418

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A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence: A Phenomenological Foundation Authored by Algis Mickunas

Ohio University, USA; Vilnius Tech, Lithuania

& Joseph Pilotta

Vilnius Tech, Lithuania; In-Nova.1, LLC, USA

A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence: A Phenomenological Foundation Authors: Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta ISBN (Online): 978-981-5123-40-1 ISBN (Print): 978-981-5123-41-8 ISBN (Paperback): 978-981-5123-42-5 © 2023, Bentham Books imprint. Published by Bentham Science Publishers Pte. Ltd. Singapore. All Rights Reserved. First published in 2023.

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CONTENTS FOREWORD ........................................................................................................................................... i PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................ ii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ..... INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... ALGORITHMIC DOMINATION ................................................................................................ ADVANCES IN AI ......................................................................................................................... Health ...................................................................................................................................... Finance .................................................................................................................................... THE MOST PRESSING DANGERS OF AI ................................................................................ Causality ................................................................................................................................. HOW HAS PUBLIC SENTIMENT TOWARD AI EVOLVED? .............................................. Common Sense ....................................................................................................................... Co-development ...................................................................................................................... THE MEANING OF AI ................................................................................................................. Questions and Themes ............................................................................................................ THE INFLUENCE OF PHENOMENOLOGY ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ........... Hubert Dreyfus ........................................................................................................................ NEURAL NETWORKS ................................................................................................................ Francisco Varela ..................................................................................................................... AUTOPOIETIC DYNAMICS ....................................................................................................... Niklas Luhmann ...................................................................................................................... ETHICS ........................................................................................................................................... CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

1 1 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 11 12 17 19 20 20

CHAPTER 2 PHENOMENOLOGY AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH .......................................... INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF AWARENESS ................................................................ THE ROLE OF EMPIRICAL FACTS ......................................................................................... LANGUAGE AND AWARENESS ............................................................................................... LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC FIELDS ............................................................................................ CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

22 22 23 25 27 31 33 34

CHAPTER 3 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: THE TRANSCENDENTAL AND UNDERSTANDING ................................................................................................................................ INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... DISCOURSE ................................................................................................................................... HIGHER UNDERSTANDING AND CULTURAL TRADITION ............................................ COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND SYNCHRONY .................................................... THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION AND ITS LIMIT ............................................................... THE CANONS OF SCIENTIFIC LOGIC IN QUESTION ....................................................... THE HERMENEUTICAL IMPERATIVE .................................................................................. WHAT IS THE TRANSCENDENTAL POSITION? ................................................................. AN EXPLICATION OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL: THE AHISTORICAL AND ATEMPORAL ................................................................................................................................ THE TRANSCENDENTAL FUNCTION IN SCIENTIFIC PRESENTATION ...................... COMPLEMENTARITY OF UNDERSTANDING AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL .......... CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................

35 35 36 37 39 43 44 47 48 49 50 51 53

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER 4 TRANSCENDENTAL SELF-AWARENESS AND TIME ........................................ INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... METAPHYSICS OF REASON ..................................................................................................... FIELD AWARENESS .................................................................................................................... CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

55 55 56 58 68 69

CHAPTER 5 THE MAGIC OF REASON: WILD METAPHYSICS .............................................. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... ENS REALISIMUS ........................................................................................................................ IDENTITY ....................................................................................................................................... METAPHYSICS AND ONTOLOGY ........................................................................................... ATTENTIONAL MODIFICATION ............................................................................................ FORMAL REGION ....................................................................................................................... POSSIBILITY ................................................................................................................................. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

70 70 72 77 80 81 85 87 92 92

CHAPTER 6 MACHINE LOGIC AND VALUES AS A SELF-GENERATING SYSTEM ......... INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... LOGIC AND FACT ....................................................................................................................... First Thesis .............................................................................................................................. Second Thesis ......................................................................................................................... FORMALIZATION ....................................................................................................................... SIGNITIVE SPACE AND TIME .................................................................................................. VALUATIVE NEXUS .................................................................................................................... CODES OF NETWORK SOCIETY ............................................................................................. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

94 94 96 96 97 98 102 107 109 114 115

CHAPTER 7 THE INTERNET OF THINGS AND TEMPORAL REFLEX ................................. INTRODUCTION: FIRST THINGS, FIRST .............................................................................. INTERCONNECTING .................................................................................................................. INNOVATION AND TIME ........................................................................................................... SELECTIVITY ............................................................................................................................... TIME REFLEX .............................................................................................................................. TIME REFLEX AND WORLD .................................................................................................... EMERGENCE ................................................................................................................................ SPECULATION ............................................................................................................................. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

117 117 121 121 123 124 126 128 142 144 144

CHAPTER 8 CAN I—CAN YOU—CAN WE? ................................................................................. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR ............................................................................................. CONCRETE GENERALITY ........................................................................................................ CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

146 146 147 149 163 164

CHAPTER 9 THE MULTI-DISCURSIVE SUBJECT ...................................................................... 165 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 165 THE MULTI-DISCURSIVE WORLD ......................................................................................... 166

SIGNITIVE SPACE-TIME ........................................................................................................... 182 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 183 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................... 184 CHAPTER 10 THE LIMITS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE PUBLIC ............. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... ENLIGHTENMENTS .................................................................................................................... CONTINGENCY ............................................................................................................................ ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: CRITIQUE ............................................................................ CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

185 185 186 199 199 205 205

CHAPTER 11 CONDITIONS FOR PUBLIC DECISIONS ............................................................. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... UNIVERSAL CONDITIONS ........................................................................................................ SUBJECTED SUBJECT ................................................................................................................ SIGNITIVE SPACE AND TIME .................................................................................................. METHOD ........................................................................................................................................ CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

206 206 207 211 219 220 225 226

CHAPTER 12 RADICAL EMBODIED TRUTHS FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE .......... INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... TRUTHS .......................................................................................................................................... Truth 1 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 2 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 3 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 4 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 5 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 6 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 7 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 8 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 9 ..................................................................................................................................... Truth 10 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 11 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 12 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 13 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 14 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 15 (a) ............................................................................................................................. Truth 15 (b) ............................................................................................................................. Truth 16 (a) ............................................................................................................................. Truth 16 (b) ............................................................................................................................. Truth 17 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 18 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 19 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 20 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 21 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 22 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 23 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 24 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 25 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 26 ...................................................................................................................................

227 227 228 228 228 229 229 229 230 230 231 231 232 232 233 234 234 235 235 235 236 236 237 237 238 239 239 240 241 241 242

Truth 27 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 28 ................................................................................................................................... Truth 29 ................................................................................................................................... CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................

243 244 245 245 247

SUBJECT INDEX .................................................................................................................................... 2

i

FOREWORD For a long time, there has been a problem with technology. The progress of this phenomenon has been alienating. People have lost control of their work, and their employment has been threatened. Workplaces and diverse global organizations have been altered. Current reports about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) provide a testimonial to this problem. The changes initiated by AI at Amazon, for example, relate to the manipulation of workers and customers, attended by a widespread message that AI will improve the lives of everyone. In view of these conflicting trends, some critics call for the decolonization of AI. In this vein, priority has been given to the development of a human-centric AI. The key issue, according to these writers, is that technology in general, and AI in particular, has gained autonomy and dominates everyday life. So, the question becomes: How can a more humanely embedded technology be produced? Cathy O'Neil, in her book Weapons of Math Destruction, argues that algorithms are simply opinions written in code. Her point is that algorithms are not mystical, but rather, they are nothing more than human expressions. Mickunas and Pilotta contribute to this outlook with their claim that AI is a human language implanted in complex products, which are extensions of our practical abilities. It is not the AI that is in charge but the human creative autonomy that has the final say. Mickunas and Pilotta correct this misunderstanding through their reliance on phenomenology and their grounding of AI in the life-world. With the illusion of autonomy undermined, AI should no longer be able to colonize other modes of knowledge. A full range of human expression is now available, with AI representing only one modality. In this regard, Mickunas and Pilotta, consistent with Husserl’s aim in the Crisis, go a long way to resurrecting the human agency at the core of this and other technologies, showing that their alienating effects are unwarranted.

John W. Murphy Professor of Sociology AI FLOURISHING University of Miami Coral Gables, Florida, USA

ii

PREFACE The modern Western world is founded on an uncritical acceptance of Western ontology in the very effort to find something common or stable across common histories. It might be misleading, in that it presumes the traditional ontology of permanence, which is tacitly accepted by the sciences, including the sciences we call “human.” Understanding artificial intelligence means coming to understand the issues of productivity, freedom, and temporality. These are basic phenomena that cannot be designed to offer the traditional ontological conceptions of permanence or essence. They are the taken-for-granted and the covered-over dimensions with respect to the interpretations of humans as permanent. We have been immersed in our social institutions, our environment, and our mythologies, and once in a while, they incur revolutions in which we participate, through which we express our choice for a new form of political life, productive relationships, and our social institutions. We will ride the crest of freedom. Yet, after the revolutions, the leaders become either tyrants or professional revolutionaries who invoke the revolutionary laws, the ecstatic wave subsides, and we sink into daily necessities. All too often, the dream of AI is for a totally rational society which is basically an old Platonic ideal transformed into a future utopia where AI mimics the human, but also expands his powers beyond all reach. AI, as we shall see throughout this manuscript, is, in fact, hinged on productivity, which is a common central theme of politics, labor, and freedom. The human as the maker, the maker society, if you will, is fundamentally, at heart, a magical interpretation of the human. AI is prosthetic magic. Magical “interpretations” does not mean magic in the sense of witchcraft or some mystical framework. We mean it as a mode of selfunderstanding and self-interpretation of our world and the world in which we are predominantly immersed, which we call technological. Algis Mickunas Ohio University, OH, USA Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Vilnius Tech), Vilnius, Lithuania

& Joseph Pilotta Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Vilnius Tech), Vilnius, Lithuania In-Nova.1, LLC, USA

iii

CONSENT FOR PUBLICATION Not applicable.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST The authors declare no conflict of interest, financial or otherwise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Jill Adair McCaughan, Ph.D., who, as editor, requires having the sense that the author is trying to convey. She does it repeatedly.

A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence, 2023, 1-21

1

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Intelligence

to

the

Problem

of

Artificial

Abstract: Chapter 1 introduces the problem of artificial intelligence (AI) as a human doppelgänger. The logic of artificial intelligence is the control algorithm, dominated by the tradition of two-value logic. We sketch out the consequences of such algorithmic performance, which have had deleterious effects on the ecological landscape in the broad sense of the term. We also report the findings of an interdisciplinary report from Stanford University on the successes and failures of AI. The chapter ends with a discussion of the key findings of an interdisciplinary conference, sketching out the correlates of understanding. These can best be summarized by answering the questions: How do we determine if a system understands? Does a lack of understanding make AI systems susceptible to adversarial examples, and to what degree do systems need to understand in order to be able to explain their decisions and predictions? By what mechanisms do humans extract meaning from data or experience?

Keywords: Algorithm, Artificial Intelligence, Autopoiesis, Common Sense, Logic, Phenomenology, Understanding. INTRODUCTION The histories of the Greek and Chinese civilizations are replete with the history of automata. The “automata” is the law of moving parts in something we make called a “machine.” There is a relationship between machine and magic. In the hermetic sciences, mere matter could be transformed into gold, but life also could be distilled from the alchemist's retorts. Another means of creating life out of inanimate matter was through cabalistic conjurations. Small wonder that an air of mystery and magic hung over the Renaissance magus who repeatedly also gained the taint of charlatanism. John Dee, the Elizabethan scientist, is a prime example of the confusion of magic, chemistry, and mechanics. In the hermetic tradition of the Renaissance, the ancient fascination with automata took on a new life as magic and mechanics were intertwined, and an air of fear and wonder hovered over the statues of angels conjured out of earth and air. Are they alive and real or not? Are humans indeed mechanicians who can breathe life into what they have created, thereby imitating their own creator, or are they Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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merely machines themselves, working on mechanical principles? In the Renaissance, these questions were close to the surface, although enveloped in mythical and magical shapes. They were bathed at the time of the Enlightenment in the pure light of reason, and discussion of them took place in unambiguous scientific terms. Underlying the discussion, however, were the fears of the automata as posing an irrational threat to humans, calling into question their identity, their sexuality as the basis of creation and the powers of domination. Automata provoked fears, but also the promise of a creative Promethean force. The tension between these two aspects of automata is at play in various examples of the literary genre, which is quite interesting if one takes into account the “Nightingale” of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales, Mary Shelly’s creature of Frankenstein, Tick Tock of the Oz stories, the works of Karel Čapek, and the assorted robots of Isaac Asimov. One of the greatest connections of all was when we entertained the question of life along with the question of machines, and the relationship brought into question animals: Are animals nothing but machines? Are machines endowed with animality? At this particular point, we need to look at the derivative form of automata, the agency of the computer. It has been said that the logic of the computer is the algorithm, and the algorithm equals logic and control, which animates the computer. The algorithm is comprised of definitions for abstract procedures related to knowledge about the problem domain, and of data structures on which these procedures operate, while the control part is concerned with strategies for turning the logic component into an efficient machine strategy to be used for unwinding knowledge in time and space. Two things are apparent: Algorithms are thought to be separate from their environment; they can be taken and applied elsewhere without further ado. Also, algorithms—although they may process temporal data and although they need time to process that data—appear as static structures that neither have a history of coming into existence nor any providence of future transformation. In other words, in the tightness of language and cybernetics, there is no space left for a performative that goes deeper than an abstract analysis of space-time requirements. Every piece of software is an algorithm; software is developed, involves a book with a declarative specification, and quickly becomes obsolete if that specification is not executable. You cannot experiment with it. Deleuze and Guattari (1983) formulate machines as being generally understood as systems of interrupting flows in which the interrupters (or cuts) paradoxically ensure the continuity, the flow, that is associated with one and another machine, such that a machine is always connected to yet another machine, ad infinitum. In relation to algorithms, Parisi’s analysis points to a similar direction: Instead of generative aesthetics based on prediction and probabilities, she argues that there is a speculative tendency intrinsic to computation, producing genuine novelty that cannot be explained by external forces or initial conditions.

Introduction

A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence 3

ALGORITHMIC DOMINATION 1. Algorithmic oppression extends the unjust subordination of one social group and the privileging of another—maintained by a “complex network of social restrictions” ranging from social norms, laws, institutional rules, implicit biases, and stereotypes—through automated, data-driven and predictive systems. 2. Predictive systems leveraging AI have led to the formation of new types of policing and surveillance, access to government services, and reshaped conceptions of identity and speech in the digital age. Such systems were developed with the ostensible aim of providing decision-support tools that are evidence-driven, unbiased and consistent. Yet, evidence of how these tools are deployed shows a reality that is often the opposite (Benjamin, 2019). 3. Beyond the domain of criminal justice, there are numerous instances of predictive algorithms perpetuating social harms in everyday interactions, including examples of facial recognition systems failing to detect black faces and perpetuating gender stereotypes, hate speech detection algorithms identifying black and queer vernacular as toxic, new recruitment tools discriminating against women, automated airport screening-systems systematically flagging trans bodies for security checks, (Costanza-Chock, 2018), and predictive algorithms used to purport that queerness can be identified from facial images alone. 4. Many of the recent successes in AI are possible only when the large volumes of data needed are annotated by human experts to expose the common-sense elements that make the data useful for a chosen task. The people who do this labelling for a living, the so-called “ghost workers,” do this work in remote settings, distributed across the world using online annotation platforms or within dedicated annotation companies (Gray & Suri, 2019). In extreme cases, the labelling is done by prisoners and the economically vulnerable in geographies with limited labor laws. 5. A review of the global landscape of AI ethics guidelines (Jobin et al., 2019) pointed out the under-representation of geographic areas such as Africa, South and Central America, and Central Asia in the AI ethics debate. The review observes a power imbalance wherein “more economically developed countries are shaping this debate more than others, which raises concerns about neglecting local knowledge, cultural pluralism and the demands of global fairness.” A similar dynamic is found when we examine the proliferation of national policies on AI in countries across the world (Dutton, 2018): “Unless they (developing countries) wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country supplies most of their AI software—China or the United States—to essentially become that country’s economic dependent”. It can be

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argued that the agency of developing countries is in these ways undermined, where they cannot act unilaterally to forge their own rules and cannot expect prompt protection of their interests. 6. Much of the current policy discourse surrounding AI in developing countries is in economic and social development, where advanced technologies are propounded as solutions for complex developmental scenarios, represented by the growing areas of AI for Good and AI for Sustainable Development Goals (AI4SDGs). In this discourse, Green (2019) proposes that “good isn’t good enough”, and that there is a need to expand the currently limited and vague definitions within the computer sciences of what ‘social good’ means. ADVANCES IN AI As Littman et al. (2021) note at length, there have been many advances made by AI: “People are using AI more today to dictate to their phone, get recommendations, enhance their backgrounds on conference calls, and much more. Machine learning technologies have moved from the academic realm into the real world in a multitude of ways. Neural network language models learn about how words are used by identifying patterns in naturally occurring text, supporting applications such as machine translation, text classification, speech recognition, writing aids, and chatbots. Image-processing technology is now widespread, but applications such as creating photo-realistic pictures of people and recognizing faces are seeing a backlash worldwide. During 2020, robotics development was driven in part by the need to support social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Predicted rapid progress in fully autonomous driving failed to materialize, but autonomous vehicles have begun operating in selected locales. AI tools now exist for identifying a variety of eye and skin disorders, detecting cancers, and supporting measurements needed for clinical diagnosis. For financial institutions, uses of AI are going beyond detecting fraud and enhancing cybersecurity to automating legal and compliance documentation and detecting money laundering. Recommender systems now have a dramatic influence on people’s consumption of products, services, and content, but they raise significant ethical concerns” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 7). Health Littman, et al. (2021) also note the implications of AI on health: “AI is increasingly being used in biomedical applications, particularly in diagnosis, drug discovery, and basic life science research”.

Introduction

A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence 5

“Recent years have seen AI-based imaging technologies move from an academic pursuit to commercial projects. Tools now exist for identifying a variety of eye and skin disorders, detecting cancers, and supporting measurements needed for clinical diagnosis. Some of these systems rival the diagnostic abilities of expert pathologists and radiologists, and can help alleviate tedious tasks (for example, counting the number of cells dividing in cancer tissue). In other domains, however, the use of automated systems raises significant ethical concerns. AIbased risk scoring in healthcare is also becoming more common. Predictors of health deterioration are now integrated into major health record platforms” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 6). Finance Littman and colleagues (2021) also discuss the implications of AI for finance: “AI has been increasingly adopted into finance. New systems often take advantage of consumer data that are not traditionally used in credit scoring. In some cases, this approach can open up credit to new groups of people; in others, it can be used to force people to adopt specific social behaviors. High-frequency trading relies on a combination of models as well as the ability to make fast decisions. In the space of personal finance, so-called robo-advising— automated financial advice—is quickly becoming mainstream for investment and overall financial planning” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 17). THE MOST PRESSING DANGERS OF AI According to Littman, et al. (2021): “As AI systems prove to increasingly have real-world applications, they have broadened their reach, causing risks of misuse, overuse, and explicit abuse to proliferate. One of the most pressing dangers of AI is techno-solutionism, the view that AI can be seen as a panacea when it is merely a tool. There is an aura of neutrality and impartiality associated with AI decision-making in some corners of the public consciousness, resulting in systems being accepted as objective even though they may be the result of biased historical decisions or even blatant discrimination. AI systems are being used in service of disinformation on the internet, giving them the potential to become a threat to democracy and a tool for fascism. Insufficient thought given to the human factors of AI integration has led to the oscillation between mistrust of the system and over-reliance on the system. AI algorithms play a role in decisions concerning distributing organs, vaccines, and other elements of healthcare, meaning these approaches have literal life-anddeath stakes” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 9).

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Causality As Littman, et al. (2021) point out: “Current machine learning techniques are capable of discovering hidden patterns in data, and these discoveries allow the systems to solve ever-increasing varieties of problems. Neural network language models, for example, are built on the capacity to predict words in sequence, display a tremendous capacity to correct grammar, answer natural language questions, write computer code, translate languages, and summarize complex or extended specialized texts. Today’s machine-learning models, however, have only a limited capacity to discover causal knowledge of the world. They have very limited ability to predict how novel interventions might change the world they are interacting with, or how an environment might have evolved differently under different conditions. They do not know what is possible in the world”. “Aligning with human normative systems is a massive challenge in part because what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ varies tremendously across human cultures, settings, and time. Even apparently universal norms such as ‘do not kill’ are highly variable and nuanced. Most killing does not occur in deliberate, intentional contexts. Highways and automobiles are designed to trade off speed and traffic flow with a known risk that a non-zero number of people will be killed by design. AI researchers can choose not to participate in the building of systems that violate the researcher’s own values, by refusing to work on AI that supports state surveillance or military applications, say. But a lesson from the social sciences and humanities is that it is naive to think that there is a definable and core set of universal values that can directly be built into AI systems. AI systems built for Western values, with Western tradeoffs, violate other values. Even within a given shared normative framework, the capacity to function appropriately and with foresight in an environment. Like a competent human, advanced AI systems will need to be able to both read and interact with the progress being made on making AI more explainable—and avoiding opaque models in high-stakes settings when possible—systems of accountability require more than causal accounts of how a decision was reached” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 23). HOW HAS PUBLIC SENTIMENT TOWARD AI EVOLVED? “Media coverage of AI may distort AI’s potential at both the positive and negative extremes, but it has helped to raise public awareness of legitimate concerns about AI bias, lack of transparency and accountability, and the potential of AI-driven automation to contribute to rising inequality. More public outreach from AI scientists would be beneficial as society grapples with the impacts of these technologies. It is important that the AI research community move beyond the

Introduction

A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence 7

goal of educating or talking to the public and toward more participatory engagement and conversation with the public” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 8). Common Sense Finally, Littman, et al. (2021) address the issue of common sense: “These recent approaches attempt to make AI systems more general by enabling them to learn from a small number of examples, learn multiple tasks in a continual way without inter-task interference, and learn in a self-supervised or intrinsically motivated way. While these approaches have shown promise on several restricted domains, such as learning to play a variety of video games, they are still only early steps in the pursuit of general AI”. “An important missing ingredient, long sought in the AI community, is common sense. The informal notion of common sense includes several key components of general intelligence that humans mostly take for granted, including a vast amount of mostly unconscious knowledge about the world, an understanding of causality (what factors cause events to happen or entities to have certain properties), and an ability to perceive abstract similarities between situations—that is, to make analogies” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 32). Co-development Co-operation—if not AI co-development—is one potential strategy within a varied toolkit supporting the socio-political, economic, linguistic, and cultural relevance of AI systems to different communities, as well as shifting power asymmetries. A decolonial view offers us tools with which to engage a reflexive evaluation and continuous examination of issues of cultural encounter, and a drive to question the philosophical basis of development (Kiros, 1992). With a selfreflexive practice, initiatives that seek to use AI technologies for social impact can develop the appropriate safeguards and regulations that avoid further entrenching exploitation and harm and can conceptualize the long-term impacts of algorithmic interventions with historical continuities in mind. As Littman et al. (2021) note: “AI systems still remain very far from human abilities in all these areas, and perhaps will never gain common sense or general intelligence without being more tightly coupled to the physical world. But grappling with these issues helps us not only make progress in AI, but better understand our own often invisible human mechanisms of general intelligence” (Littman, et al., 2021, p. 33).

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THE MEANING OF AI Melanie Mitchell’s (2020) discussion of a symposium of interdisciplinary scholars names a number of important thematics, which AI professionals must address in order to understand the critical limits of AI. By addressing these themes, the ethical considerations which science and policymakers cannot eschew will become evident. The following themes are cited/paraphrased from her article, “On Crashing the Barrier of Meaning in AI”. Questions and Themes Mitchell (2020) addresses the most important questions and themes pertaining to AI: “• By what mechanisms do humans and other natural information-driven systems extract meaning from data or experience? Can insights from such systems be used to improve AI? • To what extent do current-day AI systems need to understand the situations they deal with in order to perform reliably, particularly in situations outside their training regimes? • To what extent do systems need to understand in order to be able to explain their decisions and predictions? • Does a lack of understanding make data-driven AI systems (e.g., deep networks) susceptible to adversarial examples? Is there a way to defend against such attacks without imbuing such systems with human-like understanding? • How do we determine if a system is actually understanding?” “In contrast, humans and most other animals are able to extrapolate—that is, to adapt what they have learned to diverse situations. This is accomplished via the ability to build abstract representations, and to make analogies mapping these representations to new situations. Abstract representations and analogy, combined with the core knowledge, allow organisms to learn concepts from a small number of examples, to imitate and generate behavior at a conceptual level, to transfer knowledge between modalities, to perform flexible planning, and to generate possible futures and counterfactuals, among other abilities central to our notion of understanding”. “Active perception, learning, and inference. Several workshop participants contrasted the ‘passive’ feedforward, and supervised nature of current machine learning and inference in neural networks with the importance of active mental

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processes in natural intelligent systems. Perception, learning, and inference are active processes that unfold dynamically over time, involve continual feedback from context and prior knowledge, and are largely unsupervised”. “Object-based, causal models. In contrast with models that solely perform classification or action selection, understanding involves building causal models of objects, relationships, actions, and entire situations, and flexibly using these models to predict and act in the world. Here, the term ‘object’ refers to any discrete conceptual entity, and ‘causal’ implies that a model captures spatiotemporal relationships of causality among parts of a situation. Such models are built on top of the core knowledge described above” (Mitchell, 2020, pp. 88-89). “Autonomous cars and vacuum cleaners have not yet achieved human-like understanding. Shared brain morphology and organization give humans, and to some extent other animals, a common structure to translate signals perceived about the external environment into an internal representation that appears essential to understanding. As one example, there is evidence that an evolved set of neural circuits underlie a human and animal intuitive understanding of numbers. The way the brain encodes numbers may explain why the number line is such an easily grasped metaphor (Dehaene, 2011)” (Mitchell, 2020, p. 89). THE INFLUENCE INTELLIGENCE

OF

PHENOMENOLOGY

ON

ARTIFICIAL

Hubert Dreyfus Hubert Dreyfus argued that, even when we use explicit symbols, we are using them against an unconscious background of common-sense knowledge and that, without this background, our symbols cease to mean anything. This background, in Dreyfus’ (1972) view, was not implemented in individual brains as explicit individual symbols with explicit individual meanings. Dreyfus argued that human problem-solving and expertise depend on our background sense of the context, of what is important and interesting given the situation, rather than on the process of searching through combinations of possibilities to find what we need. Dreyfus would describe it in 1986 as the difference between “knowing-that” and “knowing-how,” based on Heidegger’s (1962) distinction between present-at-hand and ready-to-hand (Dreyfus, 1986). Knowing that is our conscious, step-by-step problem-solving abilities. We use these skills when we encounter a difficult problem that requires us to stop, step back, and search through ideas one at a time. At moments like this, the ideas become very precise and simple: they become context-free symbols, which we

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manipulate using logic and language. These are the skills that Newell and Simon had demonstrated with both psychological experiments and computer programs. Dreyfus agreed that their programs adequately imitated the skills he calls “knowing-that”. The human sense of the situation, according to Dreyfus, is based on our goals, our bodies, and our culture—all of our unconscious intuitions, attitudes, and knowledge about the world. This “context” or “background” (related to Heidegger’s Dasein) is a form of knowledge that is not stored in our brains symbolically, but intuitively in some way. It affects what we notice and what we don’t notice, what we expect and what possibilities we don’t consider: we discriminate between what is essential and inessential. The things that are inessential are relegated ki, to our “fringe consciousness” (borrowing a phrase from William James): the millions of things we’re aware of, but we’re not really thinking about right now. Dreyfus does not believe that AI programs, as they were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s, could capture this “background” or do the kind of fast problemsolving that it allows. He argued that unconscious knowledge could never be captured symbolically. If AI could not find a way to address these issues, then it was doomed to failure, an exercise in “tree climbing with one’s eyes on the moon”. NEURAL NETWORKS Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are used in computer visualization, virtual reality, and natural language processing. Both are developments in neural networks. Both process time series and data that come in sequences, such as sentences. However, convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks are used for different purposes. CNNs employ filters within layers to transform data. RNNs reuse activation functions from other data points in the sequence to generate that which is to be next in the series. A CNN filter is a matrix of randomized number values in rows and columns depending on the use within a convolutional layer. A number of layers move through an image. The filter convolutes the pixels of the image, changing the values before passing the data on to the next layer. CNNs function technically well in “interpreting” visual data that does not come in a sequence, but they do not function technically well in “interpreting” temporal information, such as videos, static images, or texts. For example, words that come before and after an entity in a sequence have a direct effect on how it is classified. In order to deal with the sentences, algorithms

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are designed to learn from past and future data in the sequence, which is an RNN’s function. This is accomplished by activating previous and or later nodes in the sequence in order to influence the output. None of this is certain. However, the phenomenology of place and space is key to this operation, which will be taken up in Chapter 8 of this text. It would behoove us to acknowledge the fundamental critique of CNN and RNN by Dreyfus (1996). All this puts disembodied neural-networks at a serious disadvantage when it comes to learning to cope in the human world. Nothing is more alien to our lifeform than a network with no up/down, front/back orientation, no interior/exterior distinction, no preferred way of moving, such as moving forward more easily than backwards, and no tendency towards acquiring a maximum grip on its world. The moral is that the way brains acquire skills from input-output pairings can be simulated by neural-networks, but such nets will not be able to acquire our skills until they have been put into robots with a body structure like ours. (Dreyfus, 1996). Francisco Varela The following section includes direct quotations from Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s (1980) work, which has been pivotal to the concept of autopoiesis in biology, social science, computer logic, and the cognitive sciences. The development of AI presupposes the autopoietic concept of communication. “The use to which a machine can be put by man is not a feature of the organization of the machine, but of the domain in which the machine operates, and belongs to our description of the machine in a context wider than the machine itself. This is a significant notion. Man-made machines are all made with some purpose, practical or not—some aim (even if it is only to amuse) that is specified. This aim usually appears expressed in the product of the operation of the machine, but not necessarily so. However, we use the notion of purpose when talking of machines because it calls into play the imagination of the listener and reduces the explanatory task in the effort of conveying the organization of a particular machine”. “This is a very essential instance of the distinction, made before, between notions that are involved in the explanatory paradigm for a system’s phenomenology, and notions that enter because of the needs of the observer’s domain of communication. To maintain a clear record of what pertains to each domain is an important methodological tool, which we use extensively. It seems an almost trivial kind of logical bookkeeping, yet it is too often violated by usage” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 12).

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“There are systems that maintain some of their variables constant, or within a limited range of values. This is, in fact, the basic notion of stability or coherence which stands at the very foundation of our understanding of systems (e.g.,Wiener, 1950)” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 12). “The idea of autopoiesis capitalizes on the idea of homeostasis, and extends it in two significant directions: first, by making every reference for homeostasis internal to the system itself through the mutual interconnection of processes; and secondly, by positing this interdependence as the very source of the system’s identity as a concrete unity which we can distinguish. These are systems that, in a loose sense, produce their own identity: they distinguish themselves from their background. Hence the name autopoietic, from the Greek εαυτός = self, and παράγω = to produce” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 13). “An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (1) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (2) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 13). AUTOPOIETIC DYNAMICS Maturana and Varela (1980) explain at length: “1. Production of Constitutive Relations. Constitutive relations are relations that determine the topology of the autopoietic organization, and hence its physical boundaries. The production of constitutive relations through the production of the components that hold these relations is one of the defining dimensions of an autopoietic system. The cell defines its physical boundaries through the production of constitutive relations that specify its topology. There is no specification within the cell of what it is not” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 24). “2. Production of Relations of Specifications. Relations of specifications are relations that determine the identity (properties) of the component of the autopoietic organization, and hence, in the case of the cells, its physical feasibility”. “3. Production of Relation of Order. Relations of order are those that determine the dynamics of the autopoietic organization by determining the concatenation of the production of relations of constitution, specification, and order, and hence its actual realization” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 24).

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“Our approach will be mechanistic: No forces or principles will be adduced which are not found in the physical universe. Yet our problem is the living organization, and therefore our interest will not be in the properties of components, but in processes and relations between processes realized through components” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 6). “This is to be clearly understood. An explanation is always a reformulation of a phenomenon in such a way that its elements appear operationally connected in its generation. Furthermore, an explanation is always given by us as observers, and it is central to distinguish in it what pertains to the system as constitutive of its phenomenology from what pertains to the needs of our domain of description, and hence to our interactions with it, its components, and the context in which it is observed. Since our descriptive domain arises because we simultaneously behold the unity and its interactions in the domain of observation, notions arising from cognitive and expositional needs in the domain of description do not pertain to the explanatory notions for a constitutive organization of the unity (phenomenon). We shall return to this important issue very often in this book” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 6). “Furthermore, an explanation may take different forms according to the nature of the phenomenon explained. Thus, to explain the movement of a falling body, one resorts to properties of matter, and to laws that describe the conduct of material bodies according to these properties (kinetic and gravitational laws), while to explain the organization of a control plant, one resort to relations and laws that describe the conduct of relations. In the first case, the materials of the causal paradigm are bodies and their properties; in the second case, they are relations and their relations, independently of the nature of the bodies that satisfy them. In this latter case, in our explanations of the organization of living systems, we shall be dealing with the relations that the actual physical components must satisfy to constitute such a system, not with the identification of these components. It is our assumption that there is an organization that is common to all living systems, whichever the nature of their components. Since our subject is this organization, not the particular ways in which it may be realized, we shall not make distinctions between classes or types of a living system. Finally, we are pointing out from the start the dynamism apparent in living systems and which the word ‘machine’ or ‘system’ connotes” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, pp. 6-7). “We are asking, then, a fundamental question: Which is the organization of living systems, what kind of machines are they, and how is their phenomenology, including reproduction and evolution, determined by their unitary organization?... Machines and systems point to the characterization of a class of unities in terms of their organization” (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 7).

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According to Varela (1979), phenomenology is thus not a convenient stop on the route to real explanation, but rather it is an active participant in its own right (p. 344) as disciplined accounts should be an integral element of the validation of a neurobiological proposal and not merely coincidental or heuristic information. The proposition that living is cognition comes from Maturana and Varela's (1980) theory that some have taken to be the IS in this proposition as the IS of identity. “The concept of cognition is the operation of any living system in the domain of interactions specified by the circularity itself. Organized cognition effectively conducts itself in its own domain of interactions, not the representation of an independent environment. Living systems, or cognitive systems, are processes of cognition. Life equals autopoiesis. By this, it is meant that there are three criteria of autopoiesis: 1. Boundary-containing; 2. Molecular reaction network; and 3. Produces or regenerates itself, and the boundaries are necessary” (Maturana & Varela, 1980). It’s efficient for the organization of minimal life as well as the emergence of a self and the emergence of world. As Thompson (2009) explains, the emergence of the self in the world equals sense-making and perception action since: “Sense-making is tantamount to cognition in a minimal sense of viable sensorimotor conduct. Such conduct is oriented toward a subject of signification and valence. Signification and valence do not preexist ‘out there,’ but are actions constituted by the living being. Sense-making, which equals cognition, but from an autopoietic perspective, evolution involves simply the conservation of death and adaptation as long as a living being does not disintegrate but maintains its autopoietic integrity. It is adaptive because the mode of sense-making contains it as viable from the point of view of adaption. It is an invariant background condition of all life” (Thompson, 2009, pp. 83-84). “Cognition, on the other hand, is the present context, meaning the sense-making activity of the living which underlies the conservation of adaption. No sensemaking, no living, nor conservation of adaption, knows it is this way of thinking about cognition. The hypothesis about the natural roots of intentionality arises from the operational closure of an autonomous system, the paradigm of which, and minimal case, is in the autopoietic system. This extends the phenomenological notion of intentionality to biology and complex systems theory” (Thompson, 2009, p. 84).

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“Maturana and Varela (1980) explicitly identified a living system with machines and denied that the living systems or teleological living systems are physical. Idle, autopoietic machines are purposeless systems. By ‘machine,’ they clearly did not mean an artifact. They meant any system whose operation is determined by its relation or organization and the way that organization is structurally realized. Autopoietic systems maintain their own organization constantly through material change, thus being homeostatic or dynamic systems of a special sort. In Varela’s (1979) work, sense-making is not a feature of the autopoietic organization, but rather the coupling of a concrete autopoietic system with its environment. In other words, teleology is not an intrinsic organizational property, but rather an emergent relation” (Thompson, 2009, p. 86). The proposition is that life is a transcendental one and is about the conditions for the possibility of knowing life—given that we do not have biological knowledge. Consider the question of how it is that we are able to recognize or comprehend the form of a dynamic pattern. In the first place, an adequate account of certain observable phenomena requires the concept of an organism in the sense of a selforganizing whole and autopoiesis. Second, the source of the meaning of these concepts is the lived body and the lived experience of our own animate body’s existence. Third, these concepts of the biological accounts are not derivable, even in principle, from some observer, independent, non-indexical, objective, psychofunctional description (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Words I cannot understand—function with a living body except by enacting myself except insofar as I am a body which rises towards the world. The everyday lives of competent adults are accomplished by skilled and nonreflective comportment. As Protevi (2009) notes, “Disruptive social encounters, however, lead to breakdowns in such everyday coping and could lead to reflective decision-making or to the adoption of another skilled component. The neurological, correlated breakdowns fall into the background of chaotic firing, out of which emerges a new repertoire; the resolution of the differential field of widely distributed, chaotic firing forms the basis for creativity when those arising within the organism are trying for fully emergent comportment. There is no choice here as the process of arising is too fast for conscious reflection, which occurs in temporal chunks, so the formation occurs behind the back of reflective consciousness” (Protevi, 2009, p. 104). “Perhaps Varela (1979) also talks of a ‘virtual self’ or ‘meshwork of selfless selves" (Protevi, 2009, p. 104). “It is the correlate of their virtual self with its multiplicity of micro-identities, the enactive world. Here, we see echoes of sensemaking at the heart of autopoiesis. The notion of structural coupling, but with

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more ability to flush out the neurological processes at work. We see the contours in the problematic ethical know-how published in The Embodied Mind” (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). The constitution of the cognitive agent is a matter of common sense. Golden merchants of an appropriate stance from an entire history of ancient life, the key to our living system, which is always in “the next moment by acting appropriately out of its own resources, and it is the breakdown of the hedges that articulates microworlds that are the source of the autonomous and creative side of living. Cognition: once again, we have to distinguish between the two temporal scales of diachronic emergence—the moment of negotiation. The emergence with one of many potential roles takes the lead. The very moment of being, there when something concrete and specific shows up while the gap turns a breakdown. There is a rich dynamic, involving concurrent sub-identities, and agents envelop it in ethical know-how. The world we know is not pregiven. It is, rather, enacted through our history of structural coupling, and the temporal hinges that articulate an action are rooted in the number of alternative micro-rules that are activated in each situation” (Protevi, 2009, pp. 105-106). “Persons are resolutions of differentiating social fields, concretions of the social fields that formed the effective typology of the persons, the patterns, thresholds, and triggers of basic emotions or affective modules of fear, rage, joy, and so on as they interact with the cognitive typology of the person: the cognitive module or the basic coping mechanisms that make up the everyday repertoire of a person” (Protevi, 2009, p. 107). It is important to note that in Varela (1979) there is a notion of radical embodiment. There are three dimensions: “1. Organismic regulation in which affect appears at the dimension of organization is regulation”; “2. Sensorimotor coupling,” of the “transient neural assemblies” mediate the coordination of sensory-motor forces and sensory-motor coupling with the environmental constraints and modules, this neural dynamics; and “3. Intersubjective interaction, whereby the signal of the affective state and sensorimotor coupling acute play a huge part in social cognition” (Protevi, 2009, p. 108). The relations that define a machine as a unity determine the dynamics of interactions and transformations. It may undergo, as such, a unity that we call the “organization” of the machine. The actual relations that hold between the components that integrate a concrete machine in a given space constitute its structure.

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Niklas Luhmann Autopoiesis is a viable communication concept, and it is applied now to the thinking of Elena Esposito in her articles and her understanding of artificial intelligence. The following section includes direct quotations from Esposito’s (2017) work, which has been pivotal to the application of Luhmann’s theorizing to AI. Esposito (2017) notes: “Algorithms are SOCIAL agents. Their presence and role are now central and indispensable in many sectors of society, both as tools to do things (such as machines) and as communicative partners. Algorithms are involved in communication not only on the web, where the active role of bots is now taken for granted, but also (explicitly or not) in more traditional forms, such as print communication and even voice communication” (Esposito, 2017, pp. 249-250). “The participatory web invites users to generate their own video, audio, and textual contents, which they share with other users in blogs, social media, wikis, and on countless media sites. This multiplicity of spontaneous and uncontrolled contents, with their metadata, adds to institutional content and to the data provided by pervasive sensors (the Internet of Things) to generate the increasing mass (or cloud) of data available in digital format” (Esposito, 2017, p. 251). “The protagonists in this alleged revolution are algorithms (Cardon, 2015), whose advantage has always been that they do not require ‘creative’ thought in their execution (Davis, 1958, p. xv). In algorithms and in the digital management of data that rely on them, the processing and mapping of data have nothing to do with understanding—indeed, in many cases, the claim that algorithms understand would be quite an obstacle. The machine has other ways to test the correctness of procedures” (Esposito, 2017, p. 252). “In principle, the conclusion cannot be excluded that interaction with algorithms is communication, but this must be specified. As we saw above, in the definition, according to systems theory, communication does not consist of the thoughts of the participants, so theoretically, it can also include participants who do not communicate under the condition that the recipient thinks they do. It is only required that the unit information-utterance-understanding is accomplished, i.e., that the recipient understands specific information related to the communicative intention of the counterparty in that event. Not only does the recipient understand the information, he or she also knows (or thinks) that it was uttered by the partner, and that it could be different (contingent). What is artificial is the perspective of the partner that is produced by the algorithm starting from the perspectives of web users. The algorithm uses them to create a different perspective” (Esposito, 2017, p. 256).

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The communication system is a completely closed system that creates the components, which arise through communication itself. In this sense, a communication system is an autopoietic system that produces and reproduces everything that functions as a unity for the system through the system itself. Of course, this can occur only in an environment and depending on environmental restrictions. Only communication can control and repair communication, and it can readily be seen in the practice of carrying out such reflexive operations. It is extraordinarily demanding and is restricted by characteristics of the autopoiesis of communication which has no goal nor end, no imminent entelechy. It occurs or doesn’t occur. Communication can be used to indicate dissent; strife can be sought, and this depends entirely on the themes of communication of our partner. Of course, communication is impossible without some consensus, but it is equally impossible for it to be devoid of all dissent. What it necessarily presupposes is that the question of consensus or dissent can be left aside concerning those themes which are, momentarily, not topical. Systems theory replaces the consensusdirected entelechy. Another argument is that communication leads to a decision where the uttered and understood communication is to be accepted or rejected, and a message is to be believed or not. This is the first alternative created by communication and with the risk of rejection. In this respect, all communication involves a risk. The risk is a very important morphogenic factor because it leads to the establishment of institutions to guarantee acceptability, even in the case of improbable communication. It should be understood that all communication has a Gemini component: accessibility and understanding. Understanding is a critical process of the fabric of communication. Communication is itself a selectivity process. Understanding is a component of that selectivity. The selectivity of communication and the ongoing Luhmannesque notion of sense-making in terms of passive and active synthesis links itself to temporality. It must be understood that such communication processes are deeply phenomenological. It is not post-phenomenological. Autopoiesis, according to Luhmann (1996), has modified Varela’s (1979) social systems, which address these issues of autopoiesis. It must be further understood that Varela (1979) moves to the notion of enactment while he puts aside the notion of autopoiesis, limiting it to cellular boundaries. He did indicate that he was involved in something called “enaction”, a process of enacting the sensemaking process—the active/passive sides in phenomenology. Varela (1979) was also cognizant, as was Luhmann (1996), in his understanding that there are issues of permanence and flux that have to be taken into consideration. These are important if one wants to understand the full process of a communication system via phenomenology (Mickunas & Pilotta, 2014).

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Our text will bring forth the issues that we have outlined in this first chapter. The following chapters may be understood as essays on the transcendental—or the conditions for the possibility of artificial intelligence. Is there a resolution to the problem with artificial intelligence? I think the issue must be more broadly understood. There is a pharmakon relationship that sort of moderates or, if you will, balances AI. AI is an extension of our instrumental rationality, as we will make clear. It is a part of the magical structure of communication. The pharmakon is the pivot of dispensing poison and as well as creating self-remediation. ETHICS The evaluation of the framework of AI conditions does not exclude a dialogue on risk. On the contrary, it makes it clear that rather improbable conditions have to be met, but they are capable of being met if successful co-operation comes about. These include acknowledging that risk is the basis of a dialogue about artificial intelligence. On the one hand, the notion of practicality and security, although buzzwords, have to be abandoned, and on the other hand, one has to be able to consider living with the risk of AI. In other words, both sides have to give up perceiving the problem as the risk/security schema. If they do not do so, there will be an inevitable divergence on the question of whether they agree. Security or not, one cannot renounce the notion. Not even hypothetical assumptions of the opposite—that it is possible to correctly step in at any point in time. Instead, there would have to be a continuous revisional position in relationship to risk and the circumstances. One is assuming the risk becomes the most important source of information, instead of naively trusting in the strength of arguments, are a really apparent evidential force of facts themselves. Decision-makers can be trusted only to be the self-constraint of one’s partner and discourse. Whenever a weak spot in society is suspected, ethics are called for, be it in research, economics, medicine, or political science. Whoever supports that fix can count on the goodwill of others. Whoever invests in ethical funds can get good money with a good conscience. Why not occupy a position that can be attacked only at the cost of losing either one’s stake or faces, such as we might find in the Gates Fund, and other kinds of goodwill ethical funds? Even a superficial overview must reveal that contact with the subject matter, that is, in the academic tradition, has dealt with under the heading of “ethics” has been lost by the sickening fact. The opposition of egoism and altruism had already been abandoned in the eighteenth century. Ethics, in general, serves as a form of reaction in problem situations, backed by undeniably good intentions. However, the professionals show remarkable restraint. Responsible conduct is recommended (Murphy & Largacha-Martínez, 2021), but how to go about it when the problem consists precisely in the fact that consequences cannot be anticipated. Or, one

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adopts a maxim that one may behave in a risky manner as long as others are not affected, but this only refers to a case that does not exist, or that, at any rate, does not exist to the extent the one sees the problem is lying in the social costs. We must remember politics as a fundamental sense-making process of communication, and that is to say, continuous synthesis of information transmission comprehension reproduces a system from moment to moment. A political system in modern society is more to be compared to a nervous system, rather than an executive hierarchy, but we have no need to turn to extremes of this sort. CONCLUSION AI has both benefits and problems in its applications and within its own community of scientists, both in regard to its purpose and in regard to whether it should mimic the human brain or some other dynamic. Hence, the way that the truths of AI can be founded in the life-world of experience is a challenge. The barriers to meaning, the confusion of how to understand the meaning, the meaning of understanding, and the understanding of understanding become critical for AI professionals and phenomenologists. The binary problem of the good and evil of implementing AI needs to be understood on a non-binary schema, which articulates the invariants and variants for the conditions of AI. We propose the adventure of understanding AI, and its conditions through the deployment of phenomenology, which is best suited for the task. REFERENCES Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: A very short introduction. London: Oxford Press. Cardon, D. (2015). À quoi rêvent les algorithms. Paris: Seuill. Costanza-Chock, S. (2018). Design Justice, A.I., and Escape from the Matrix of Domination. [http://dx.doi.org/10.21428/96c8d426] Davis, M. (1958). Computability and unsolvability. New York: McGraw–Hill. Dehaene, S. (2011). The number sense: How the mind creates mathematics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (R. Hurley, M. Seem & H. R. Lane, Trans). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dreyfus, H. (1972). What computers can’t do. New York: MIT Press. Dreyfus, H. (1986). Mind over machine. New York: Free Press. Dreyfus, H. (1996). The current relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment. The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy. https://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/1996.spring/dreyfus.1996. spring.html#29 Dutton, T. (2018). An overview of national AI strategies. Medium. https://medium.com/politics-ai/anoverview-of-national-ai-strategies-2a70ec6edfd Esposito, E. (2017). Artificial Communication? The Production of Contingency by Algorithms. Z. Soziol, 46(4), 249-265.

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[http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2017-1014] Gray, M., & Suri, S. (2019). Ghost work: How to stop Silicon Valley from building a global underclass. Eamon Dolan Books. Green, B. (2019). Good isn’t good enough. Neurips joint workshop on AI for social good. https://aiforsocialgood.github.io/neurips2019/accepted/track3/pdfs/67_aisg_neurips2019.pdf Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper. Jobin, A., Ienca, M., & Vayena, E. (2019). The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines. Nature, 1, 389-399. Kiros, L. Moral philosophy and development: The human condition in Africa. Monographs in International Studies: Africa series. Vol. 61. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies. Littman, M.L., Ajunwa, I., Berger, G., Boutilier, C., Currie, M., Doshi-Velez, F., Hadfield, G., Horowitz, M.C., Isbell, C., Kitano, H., Levy, K., Lyons, T., Mitchell, M., Shah, J., Sloman, S., Vallor, S., & Walsh, T. (2021). Gathering strength, gathering storms: The one hundred year study on artificial intelligence (AI100) 2021 Study Panel Report Stanford University, Stanford, CA. http://ai100.stanford.edu/2021-report. Luhmann, N. (1996). Social systems. (J. Bednarz & D. Baecker, Trans.). Redwood City: Stanford University Press. Maturana, H., Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 42. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8947-4] Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. (C. Smith, Trans.). Humanities Press. Mickunas, A., & Pilotta, J.J. (2014). The logic of culture. New York: Hampton Press. Mitchell, M. (2020). On crashing the barrier of meaning in AI. AI Mag, 41(2), 86-92. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v41i2.5259] Murphy, J.W., & Largacha-Martínez, C. (2021). Is it possible to create a responsible AI technology to be used and understood within workplaces and unblocked CEOs’ mindsets? AI Soc. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01316-8] Protevi, J. (2009). Beyond autopoiesis: Inflections of emergence and politics in Francisco Varela. In: Clarke, I.B., Hansen, M.B.N., (Eds.), Emergence and embodiment: New essays on second-order Systems Theory (pp. 94-112). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Thompson, E. (2009). Life and mind: From autopoesis to neurophenomenology. In: Hansen, M.B.N., (Ed.), Emergence and embodiment: New essays on second-order Systems Theory (pp. 77-93). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Varela, F. (1979). Principles of biological autonomy. Amsterdam: North Holland. Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press: Cambridge. Wiener, N. (1950). The human use of human beings. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

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CHAPTER 2

Phenomenology and Empirical Research Abstract: This chapter provides the reader with the background necessary to understanding the phenomenological perspective as it will be applied to artificial intelligence in the chapters that follow. In doing so, we explain phenomenology’s approach to empirical facts and logical reasoning, among other topics. We explain the key importance of awareness as a starting point for phenomenological understanding, as well as the key role that the “thing” plays in this philosophy. The importance of language to awareness is described, and the concept of signification is addressed in relation to the creation of meaning. This brings the discussion around the importance of applying a concept of embodiment as well as that of the linguistic field. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how these concepts relate to the theme of artificial intelligence and its relationship to the lived world.

Keywords: Awareness, Empiricism, Linguistic Fields, Meaning, Phenomenology, Signification, Thing. INTRODUCTION The value of AI—artificial intelligence—cannot be overstated. Some have claimed that it has created a world, not of billions of people or millions of factories, but of algorithms, silent computers, and smartphones, forming a prognosis that AI will add 16 trillion dollars to the global economy in 10 years. “Machine learning” seems to have surpassed human capacities. It has entered every facet of contemporary global life. While it is regarded as a neutral, technical means for communication, production, education, commerce, monitoring of public behavior, selling propaganda, entertainment, global positioning, and driverless cars, and thus empirically available, our discussion of this technology will show its phenomenological requirements of “awareness”, which is hardly “empirical” or “value free”. In this sense, to understand AI, this volume will explore the complex levels of awareness on the side of humans and the ways that such awareness is embodied in AI and taken for granted by any of its users—and that means just about everybody. To disclose such, the phenomenon of awareness requires close attendance to the arguments which are required to avoid confusion between the various levels of awareness, among which only one is empirical,

Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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and that is not even the most significant of them. For an introduction, a brief explication of the way phenomenology works must be provided. Although the term “phenomenology” has become a blanket for a multitude of views, subsuming everything that is not science in the strict Anglo-American usage of the term, it must be delimited strictly from the various views, inclusive of psychology, humanism, personalism, dialectics, sociology, interpretation theories and even ontology. Phenomenology does not oppose empirical studies and their results. What it opposes is the “reductionism” of all experience to empirical experience. It shows, for example, that logic, mathematics, and the structures of meaning, are not reducible to empirical components without a contradiction. It points out that scientists, engaged in their work, are excellent phenomenologists, insofar as they deal with logic, mathematics, definitions of the meaning of terms, and how all these factors relate to empirical experience. Yet, it objects when the same scientists proclaim that the only valid experience is empirical, i.e., direct sense perception. After all, they deal with logical and mathematical relationships, which, while not being empirical, are essential for scientific work. In many cases, scientists trust numbers more than some contingent, empirical facts. This is not to say that such relationships and structures are subjective. No descriptive analysis of subjective psychological states, or their explanation by chemical or genetic factors, can yield the logic and mathematics of sciences. While the subjective states change and are not repeatable precisely, the scientist is nonetheless capable of repeating the same logical and mathematical judgments about the logical and mathematical relationships, irrespective of the subjective states and empirical facts. This is most relevant for understanding AI, since the latter is built on mathematical constructs, and algorithms, and not on empirical tinkering with gears and pulleys. This indicates that any kind of humanism, personalism, and such, has no bearing on phenomenology. This is not to say that phenomenology cannot deal with humanism or any other kind of “ism” as its object of investigation. It is simply to say that they cannot be confused with phenomenology. THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF AWARENESS The first step in phenomenology consists of the exclusion of the metaphysical and ontological assumptions of existence. This is not to say that phenomenology doubts whether something exists or not; rather, it abstains from the thematic question of existence. The reason for this abstention consists of the phenomenological aim to decipher awareness without prejudices in the following way: In the most general sense, all awareness is prepositional. To have awareness is to have an awareness of something or other. To see, is to see something, e.g., a house. To make a logical judgment is to make a judgment about a logical

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structure. What phenomenology traces out is the “absolute correlation” between the process of awareness and its object, and it does so in order to show what kind of object requires what kind of awareness to access it. Both the awareness and the object of awareness must be analyzable objectively. This implies that the described process of awareness must be valid for anyone, anytime, and everywhere. For example, the structure of awareness of a material object is possible only if the individual can perform certain functions, such as an ability to move and thus constitute perspectives to the material object revealing the different aspects and sides of the object. Whether one is a god, a human or a demon, in order to deal with a material object, s/he will have to be able to perform certain functions, describable objectively. If someone cannot perform those functions, then, for humans, it is a subjective problem, and they will not be able to be aware of a material object, and for a robot, it is a mechanical failure. Yet, this does not abolish the objective requirements. Thus, the formation of perspectives, moving around the material object, and seeing it from different sides, is not subjective or personal; it is objectively general for anyone. We send satellites, equipped with AI “awareness” to circle planets to see them from the other side and report what they have “seen”. Whether it is human kinesthetic movement, or the movement of a satellite, both are understood in terms of a “generality” of what movement is—before “generalization”. This “before” can be understood by anyone: When a child learns how to walk around a chair, she already learns how to walk around the bed, the table, and does not have to learn how to move anew when faced with a tree, a house, or a puppy. Two important features of this initial kinesthetic awareness are: One, it does not comprise an image of the thing as its representation, and two, it maintains any material thing as an invariant—identical. The identity does not look like any feature, such as this “side”, or brown, or flat, but as a “vision”, which is maintained across all the features disclosed by movement around the thing. Any material thing we encounter and investigate will be maintained as an invariant as long as we are interested in it. The identity is a “generality” before empirical generalization. Another example would be logic. Logic has its own objective structures and relationships, which are in no wise present empirically. In order to do logic, the logician must be able to perform logical judgments, draw conclusions, and grasp connections and procedures in terms of rules which must be adhered to. Whether a particular person can perform these functions is a subjective problem. Yet, anytime and anywhere that anyone does logic, s/he must be able to perform the functions required by logic. Such functions are objective, i.e., they do not imply any subjective psychological or physiological introspection. Once again, the task of phenomenology is to investigate the correlation between specific objectivities and the required structures of awareness, which would allow objectivity to be pre-

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sent to us. The concept of awareness must be understood in terms of structures accessible to all. To speak epistemologically, human awareness is a necessary function for the understanding of the world, but in such a way that awareness is not subjective. Even reflective self-awareness is something that is given as an awareness of some event. Thus, when someone claims to be thinking, the immediate question would be “thinking about what?” Moreover, while awareness belongs to many fields, it is not derived from any of them. In turn, each field requires a proper activity of awareness, without which a given field would not be available or disclosed. Whether it is physical, psychological, logical, or physiological, such fields require specific access, and specific awareness, and the latter must be adequate for the disclosure of each field. There is no doubt that various domains are present in any given society or civilization, and philosophy has the task of investigating them all prior to asking a question as to their “reality” status, since to determine such status, the access to awareness to such reality must be secured. For example, what are the essential features of material things, and what sort of awareness is required to disclose a material thing? The same holds for other domains, such as logic or mathematics. The latter two require a very different awareness for their disclosure than a material thing; after all, to see a material thing, one has to form perspectives, move around the thing, see it from different sides and maintain it as the same thing. Meanwhile, to focus on numbers, one cannot and need not form perspectives, move around them and see them from different sides. One must learn how to count, add, subtract, and so forth, irrespective of what kinds of things one may count. Thus, we can use a variety of “objects” as examples of mathematical relationships: “two apples, three stars, one bird and four angels” equal ten. This illustrates that mathematical awareness is not derived from things and their causes, although a variety of things can be used as examples of numbers. Moreover, it is irrelevant to introduce psychology as an explanation of mathematics. Students are afraid of mathematical examinations but removing the fear will not help; they must learn the required activities to disclose and understand mathematics. Fears, associations, and courage may be various hindrances or even encouragements, but by themselves, they will not change the requirements for understanding mathematics. Thus, when counting various objects, we do not attend to their features, but see “through” them to mathematical relationships. THE ROLE OF EMPIRICAL FACTS As suggested above, the structures of awareness and their objects are accessible objectively irrespective of time and place and of any subjective states. These structures are, nonetheless, always correlated to empirical facts. In turn, every fact

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can be correlated to a structure of awareness. For example, when we say that “All facts are contingent”, the statement reveals a modality of awareness of all facts, and hence it is correlated to any empirical fact. This does not mean that the statement is derived from a cumulative addition of a series of facts; rather, it is a structure of awareness within which any fact is understood, despite the variations among facts. “Contingency” is not a generalization from particular facts to universal ideas, since various generically distinct facts can be seen to be contingent. Moreover, the statement is in excess of any fact, since we have not yet encountered all the facts in the universe. This is to say, empirical generalization is limited by the notion that certain objects have certain characteristics defining such objects. Yet, “contingency” is not a characteristic of a specific type of object with specific characteristics; rather, it is a structure of “awareness of... any empirical object”. This is the poetic and even dramatic side of awareness. We not only see empirical facts, but we also see them “as…a general something”. Take another example. To say that “I see a group of objects” does not involve generalization, although any set of objects can be seen as a group. The “group” in this sense, is an object of awareness which can be correlated to various empirical phenomena. We would not know what is meant by a “group” if we did not have an empirical awareness of a set of individual objects, yet the individuals would remain serially disconnected if we did not have a correlative awareness of a “group”. There is a “poetic vision” of a variety of objects as a group. While “seeing” a “group” of individual objects, one must be able to correlate actively various individuals into a collective unity and, at the same time to make a judgment concerning the “essence” and properties of a “group”. This requirement is definable objectively, and anyone who wishes to deal with a group of individual objects will have to perform such activities. Those activities are always and necessarily related prepositionally to objects toward which they are oriented. The objects and the activities are comprehensible only in such a correlation. The correlation between the objective sense of a “group” and the individual, empirical factors is not causal, since the changes among the empirical factors do not change the mode of awareness of them as a “group”. We can deal with a group of soldiers, a group of birds, and a group of random objects inclusive of imaginary and generically distinct objects. The facts and ideas do not cause our awareness of them as a group. Rather, our activity is a correlate which arranges the empirical factors in terms of a group. This is to say, since diverse kinds of empirical entities can form a group, the latter is not a generalization from such entities; it has its own generality, but also a “vision”. Yet, this activity is unnoticed for the most part, since it is always directed toward something objective. It becomes noticed only upon reflection, which can decipher objectively

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such an activity, and hence shows why a particular object or a set of objects is seen as belonging to a particular structure. The analysis of the empirical components requires the analysis of the objective structure under which such components are regarded and reflectively, what activities were required of anyone for such a structure to be correlated to empirical components. Such structures—whether we are cognizant or not, are incorporated in any AI, and only phenomenology is a philosophy which can decipher such structures “objectively” or, more generally, as accessible to anyone—globally. No doubt, there are numerous other general formations, such as constellations, the “Dipper” (in other cultures called the “Wagon”), and lines—including lines of trees, soldiers, or people waiting in a line for bread. An important question might be whether AI “knows” a “group” or the numbers which count the objects which human awareness gathers into a group. After all, a group need not have a pattern, such as a line or a wagon. Indeed, when we gather various galaxies from diverse zones of the universe and group them under some common feature, we do not offer their distribution in space as having a pattern, although we assign “how many” of such galaxies belong to the group. The same can be said of such notions as a “flock”, a “swarm”, or a “bunch”. LANGUAGE AND AWARENESS With any awareness, language has two fundamental axes, which are analyzable into various components. The first axis is termed the “vertical”. It means that language is always about something: when we speak, we speak about something, regardless of the level of activity and objectivity that may be required for the process of speaking (or writing). It involves a speaker who orients himself/herself toward something and selects an appropriate vocabulary from the treasury of language, to delimit or define a domain, be it a topic such as “justice” or a discussion of “systems theory” or the Big Bang Theory. Yet, principally, language embodies the process and structure of awareness, and not only the empirical domain to which such awareness and its structure and process are correlated. What this means is that terms, while oriented to the empirical phenomena, embody the activity of the speaker and his/her orientation, and the experiential object at the invariant level, e.g., “group”, “justice”, a “hypothesis”, and so on. Although the linguistic process is partially empirical, e.g., noises, and marks on paper, the empirical components express the objective sense of the eidetic structures and the correlative activities of the speaker. One does not look at the empirical characteristics of the noises or the marks, but rather sees “through” them directly to the objective sense and the speaker’s “level” of engagement with objectivity. For example, while making a statement, the speaker’s terms carry the objective sense of an eidetic structure, the empirical components to which this

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structure is correlated, and the activity of the speaker, such as judgmental, logical, and empirical. What this means is that the term “group” does not point to or signify an eidetic structure in terms of which the empirical components are experienced, but rather embodies this structure. Thus, when dealing with the empirical objects as a group, we do not use two linguistic terms, one referring to the eidetic structure and another to the empirical correlates; rather, the term “group” signifies the collection of the individuals and at the same time embodies the eidetic structure. This is why, in direct speaking, we have both the referred-to individuals and the experiential structure at the same time. Language, similar to the experiential process, is not noticed in speaking; it seems to efface itself before the signified. Yet, in that effacement, it carries the experiential eidetic structures in terms of which the individual, empirical factors are understood. This is one of the reasons why numerous scholars in anthropology, linguistics, and semiotics claim that language structures “reality”. Phenomenology, of course, does not claim that language structures reality; rather, it claims that language embodies experiential structures in terms of which reality is understood. For example, it is possible to refer to the same empirical state of affairs as a “group of objects” or a “sum of individuals”. The empirical phenomena remain the same, yet their objective sense has changed, and this precisely because the eidetic, experiential structures, embodied in the terms “group” and “sum” constitute distinct modalities of perceiving the empirical state of affairs. To extend this creative spontaneity of awareness, we can listen to scientists: Let us look at all phenomena mathematically. Mathematics becomes a mode of awareness in terms of which all phenomena are perceived—despite their radical, qualitatively categorized differences. Just as a group, a constellation, and a sum, comprise modes of awareness, so does mathematics, even if the latter is regarded as precise. All of them are “constituted” to “mean” things of the world in their specific modalities. The “meaning” is the way things are “intended” and is thus given to us in their generality, independent of empirical causation. They signify—they are signitive. Another factor of the vertical axis of language is the activity required of the speaker. We recall that the activity is always related to something other than itself: It is prepositional. This activity is precisely what constitutes the orientation to the objective sense of the eidetic structures, such as mathematics, of the empirical phenomena. This is to say that the meaning of the empirical phenomena is attained through the way in which the eidetic structures are “meant” by the speaker. This is the reason for the question: “What do you mean by this term?” Without losing its empirical correlation, the term, embodying the eidetic structure, may have various meanings “intended” by the speaker. These meanings are objective and accessible to anyone. They are not arbitrary, since they are ruled by

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the objective sense of the eidetic structure. Let us look at the “objective sense” called material thing. It requires, as mentioned above, forming perspectives, moving around the thing to see other sides, and despite these variations, maintaining the identity of the thing: I am walking around the “same” thing, given from different perspectives and as a material thing, divisible into smaller parts, equally accessible from different perspectives (even under a microscope). The language of “perspectivity”, such that each perspective “means” the “same thing” as material, is quite appropriate. But it cannot be extended into such irrational claims as “from my perspective, mathematics is…”. One cannot form a perspective toward mathematics, as if one could say that 2 + 2 = 4, seen from this side, looks one way, and then, if one walks around this mathematical structure, it will look different. Mathematics is accessible through counting, adding, subtracting, and so forth, but not through perspectives. Phenomenologically speaking, the entire postmodern swarm of “multi-perspectivists”, dealing with everything as a perspective, is nonsense. The countless cultural figures, be they divinities or goblins, cannot be seen from any perspective, precisely because we cannot walk around images. Thus, awareness of them requires a very different process. The other axis, the diacritical or lateral, stems from “horizon” of the invariant topic. This term means that any awareness is not closed upon itself, but always implies more. The awareness of a thing, such as a table, implies a table in a room, the room in a house, the house on the street, and so on. Besides this spatial horizon, there is the temporal horizon. While we see the table here and now, we shall see the street after we leave the house. Our awareness of the present implies the horizons of the past and future. The process of awareness is, therefore a spatial-temporal field which can be articulated laterally. The lateral articulation, seen linguistically, means that every linguistic term is in a field of other terms. The term not only signifies the empirical states of affairs, and reveals the embodied eidetic structures, but also assumes that each linguistic term is understandable only in relationship to other linguistic terms in the field. The terms thus delimit the range of their signification only in relationship to other terms. The meaning, in this sense, is not only the way terms signify the empirical domain, but also the way terms relate to each other. Yet, the relationship between terms is not arbitrary; it is ruled by the invariant topic, which determines which terms are relevant and which are not. To use terms of lyric poetry to form a field for a mathematically formed hypothesis would be just as nonsensical as to use such a hypothesis to “explain” lyric poetry. Terms articulate the field of awareness in various ways, i.e., they express awareness as invariant structures and, correlatively, the modalities in terms of which the empirical factors are perceived. Things are perceived in “groups”,

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“sums”, “hierarchies”, spatial-temporal “proximities”, “logical consistencies”, “successions”, “higher and lower”, and so forth. If we were to take the terms “higher” and “lower”, we would discover that the meaning of the term “high” (or higher) does not make sense without the presence in the field of the term “low” (or lower). The meaning of each is defined mutually; hence, the meaning of each emerges “between” the terms. While this is an obvious case, the less obvious cases follow the same principle. For example, in Anglo-Saxon the term “worm” articulated a field which was delimited by terms such as “Vieh”, and included everything from a worm to a dragon. This suggests that the study of awareness imbedded in language, and the empirical phenomena signified by such terms, must respect the diacritical articulation of a linguistic field and the interconnection of invariant structures embodied in the linguistic terms. We can extend this notion of embodiment to include the creation of modern technical systems: they, too, are “languages” imbedded with the created modes of awareness, such as mathematical systems. When using a computer, we “read” through its empirical features—the mode of awareness imbedded in this computer. What phenomenology suggests is: 1. The so-called empirical reality is given in terms of awareness structures accessible objectively, 2. The awareness structures are embedded in the linguistic process, which is articulated diacritically, and 3. We can no longer maintain the innocence, i.e., that linguistic terms are directly significative of facts. Facts, empirical states of affairs, are articulated as a field of awareness through language. This implies that any empirical research must respect: 1. The structures of awareness, 2. The way that these structures are meant, 3. The manner in which the linguistic field articulates and embodies the awareness structures, and 4. What kind of empirical phenomena can be used to exemplify the awareness and linguistic structures. This is to say that, whenever we are dealing with empirical phenomena, it is essential to raise the question concerning the modalities of awareness and the linguistic fields in terms of which the phenomena make sense. No researcher can

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maintain her innocence and claim that she is observing “pure empirical data”. The data are highly selected along the eidetic structures of awareness and their linguistic articulations. Hence the researcher must be cognizant of his/her own eidetic structures of awareness and linguistic process. This is not to say that the researcher’s awareness structures are subjective. As already discussed, the awareness structures are accessible to all; they can be accepted, contested, rejected, and corrected. Yet, it is to be noted that the contestation does not occur simply because the awareness structures do not correlate properly to empirical phenomena. Since all awareness structures are related to empirical exemplification, then they are at least partially covered by empirical factors. The contestation occurs on the basis of other possible eidetic structures of experience, which, while accessible to everyone, yield a different modality of seeing the phenomena and, indeed, a different way of articulating the phenomena linguistically. Phenomenology maintains that this is precisely what leads to scientific progress. LEVELS OF LINGUISTIC FIELDS The diacritical conception of language, based on Husserl’s (1964) conceptions of fields of awareness, elaborated by French phenomenologists such as MerleauPonty (1968) and others, may be articulated along three axes: 1. The linguistic articulation of what is called natural phenomena, from rocks to various living species, is quite instructive. The manner in which the linguistic fields articulate the natural phenomena is, at this level, directly accessible to empirical observation. This means that, although the linguistic terms demarcate the differences among themselves and yield different meanings by which the natural phenomena are signified, such phenomena are directly observable, and the different articulations are noticeable empirically. For example, the term “elephant” is in Lithuanian “dramblys” and in Sanskrit “dubja”. While the two latter terms articulate the fields differently, the first means “over-sagging dough” while the latter means “two-mouthed”, there is an empirical-natural experience of something over-sagging and something two-mouthed. At this level, the field differentiations take the same natural object and locate it differently in terms of some of the natural characteristics of the object. 2. The field of technical implements: In this field, the linguistic terms signify most directly and univocally, since the invented implements have specific purposes and can be designated by agreed terms. One can write a technical manual and have precise referents to linguistic terms. Although we can use various objects to pound a stick into the ground, the invention of a hammer can be associated with a specific term. The term then means primarily the specific implement and only

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metaphorically something else. Thus, in the field of AI, there is a precise construction of terms to designate specific technical implements—and each becomes a part of the global vocabulary. In most cases, technical products, acquiring a specific designation in any part of the world, will carry such a designation to all parts—despite the efforts of local language purists to protect their culture from infestation by “foreign” terms. Even the producers of a specific technology will borrow some ancient term, which would be univocal and not mixed into the given linguistic field. 3. The field of the cultural-spiritual terms: The analysis of this field is most difficult, since there are no natural or implemental empirical correlates. When we speak of “minds”, “scientific theories”, and “mathematical systems”, we find that they are not only not derivable from empirical phenomena, but that they are given in no other way except through and with the linguistic arrangement of terms. Here, the only empirical component is the manner in which the signs are arranged. Yet, the signs can be chosen at will. The most telling example would be nonEuclidean geometry. In Euclidean geometry, we still can have empirical approximations of a line, circle, square, or triangle. We can draw them on the board or at least imagine them empirically. This, of course, assumes an analytically constructed algebraic system of signs. This system does not allow any imaginary or empirical correlates; it deals with algebraic coordination of signs which are viewed in terms of pure algebraic attributes (degrees, equations, number of parts, and such). The signs are taken here purely in themselves and the manner of their arrangement. To the extent that the sign does not point to any pregiven structure of awareness and its empirical correlates, the sign becomes purely operational. The meaning of the signs is understandable purely from the relationship among signs. This is obvious in the process of proof, where we do not refer to any empirical domain, but rather deal purely with the ways that the signs can be arranged serially. The structure of signs, as empirical, is here as irrelevant as the color of a chalk we use to write the algebraic formulations. We can use letters such as a + a + a + a . . ., or we can use numbers or any other invented set of marks. What is important is that the structure of awareness emerges on the basis of: i. The arrangement of the signs, i.e., there is neither an eidetic structure which we have prior to the arrangement of signs, nor an empirical set of factors to which such signs correlate. ii. The attribution of meaning to the signs. 4. This is to say that a Euclidean, imaginable stretch is given a different meaning in non-Euclidean geometry, where the stretch is no longer imaginable but meant

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algorithmically. The “meant” is a poetically constituted vision given purely through the signs, which means the vision as non-Euclidean geometry, and only as a meant vision, since we shall never take a walk in the space of this geometry. This could be called “the poetics of space”. The empirical research at this level of awareness is reduced to the understanding of how the signs are arranged. The very domain of objectivity emerges with the arrangement of signs. If we abolish the sign-system, we abolish the domain of objectivity. What is important, phenomenologically speaking, is the logicomathematical objective activities of the subject which attribute various meanings to the signs; yet, the meaning attribution is not pregiven; rather, it also appears in and through the creative-poetic arrangement of signs, including the possibility of their variation. Since a great deal of AI construction takes place at this cultural level, then the AI researcher must engage in the study of the sign systems and the meaning structures embodied in such systems. The signs are not distinct from the meaning structures, and the meaning structures appear only in the arrangement of the signs. Here, the user of a computer sees a set of marks, just as does the computer, except the latter operates with the rules of sign arrangement, while the subject tacitly introduces the meaning, i.e., the direction of signs as signifying something. The only way that the empirical phenomena can function at this level of awareness is metaphorical. This means that the meaning structures in the sign-systems do not have representatives or counterparts in the empirical domain, although this domain can be used to construct metaphorical examples for auxiliary visualization. This is to say, the sequence of empirical marks shifts to a background and the meaning of the user of the AI technology, which the marks allow to appear, adds a world of orientations. After discussing the ontological and metaphysical conditions of modern Western philosophies, comprising the conditions for the appearance of AI, we shall offer an analysis of the limitations of AI across various levels of awareness. CONCLUSION This introductory section has hardly hinted at the complexity of the relationship between structures of awareness and the ways that the empirical domain enters into consideration; for example, to claim that there are general empirical propositions, which stem from the generalization of some empirical phenomena, fails to account, on an empirical basis, for how such empirical marks, composing a proposition, become “general”, without adding another domain of awareness which is already “general”. Thus, even the propositions, written down or stated orally, assume a given correlation between:

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1. The invariant structures of awareness, and; 2. The empirical domain providing examples. The correlations are extremely complex. Even the singular empirical phenomenon has to be delimited in terms of awareness structures, which are correlated to it. For example, the simple empirical fact as a color is given within the structuration of duration, perspectival articulation, and linguistic fields within which such color is present. This is to say that the empirical color is not just referred to by one term, e.g., blue. Blue is different in different chromatic fields. Among light greens, it is dull, among bright reds, it is sharp, and so forth. An understanding of AI must respect the structures of awareness as parameters within which the empirical data are present. At the same time, it must contextualize the empirical factors within linguistic fields. Moreover, at the level of cultural objectivity, the compositions of AI must forego the search for empirical correlates to the sign systems and deal with the relationships among the signs and the meaning which emerges between the signs. And this includes the “meaning giving” activities of the researcher, both current and past, for the understanding of the signs systems. And all this at the objective level excludes such psychological notions as empathy, internalization, objectification, and projection of subjective states on empirical phenomena and their various levels. Simply stated, our explication of AI is a venture into the domain of “transcendental, universal awareness”. REFERENCES Husserl, E. (1964). The phenomenology of internal time consciousness. (J. S. Churchill, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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CHAPTER 3

Communicative Competence: The Transcendental And Understanding Abstract: This chapter follows up on the central role of understanding in terms of the need to understand methodologically and in practical life in order to achieve AI with concrete limits. We cast this within the framework of communicative competence, which requires both understanding as well as the reciprocal relationship of the part–whole. Communicative competence sets out a criterion for our investigation and identifies a key human experience—“How did we get into this situation?” —which requires understanding, distancing from the situation, surveying the situation historically, and trying to anticipate where we go next. This critical understanding and/or critical reflexivity is needed, which is thoroughly phenomenological.

Keywords: Communicative Competence, Genesis, Hermeneutics, Logic, Meaning, Phenomenology, Synchrony, Transcendental, Understanding. INTRODUCTION The term “understanding” has many essentially different meanings; it is beset with ambiguities, equivocations, puzzles, and even paradoxes. A preview of the difficulties and the different dimensions of the meaning of “understanding” can be given in these preliminary remarks. The many different meanings of the English term “understanding”, as well as the term “Verstehen” in German, surface immediately with some reflections on what can be understood, I can understand—or misunderstand or not understand—a mathematical proof, a theory in one of the natural sciences, a myth, a philosophical system, a poem, a painting, a building, a law, the workings of a bus system, or other persons and their motives, intentions, and feelings—but also those of a non-human animal. Furthermore, we understand discourse, a foreign language, but also the use of certain practical skills. The term “understanding” seems to be coextensive with the whole realm of cognitive activities—in phenomenological terms, with all sorts of intentional acts and active syntheses. Since many such types can be distinguished, a typology is necessary to sort out the different meanings of “understanding”, as well as the types that can be meaningfully connected with hermeneutics in the sense of tradition. But still, Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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more distinctions are required to get at the roots of the puzzles and paradoxes connected with understanding. Genetic and generative foundations share some properties on the level of formal universality, but there are some material distinctions that must be kept in mind. Genetic foundations presuppose the basic structures of subjective inner timeconsciousness. These structures are the basic formal presuppositions for the very possibility of genetic foundations. Genetic foundations belong to the realm of genetic phenomenology, better called the phenomenology of the genesis of habits in the broadest sense and of the abilities to do something again, abilities that are connected with habits. The genesis can be passive genesis, i.e., habit formation without any participation of the subject, the ego. Passive genesis is habit formation in the realm of the unconscious. Genesis is active if the habits are acquired in the beginning with the aid of some subjective activity, e.g., attempts to learn how to ride a bicycle. Finally, a genesis can be generative. It is generative if it is grounded in an intersubjective activity creating forms of lived experience, life expressions in general, and fixed life expressions in culture, e.g., creating tools, buildings, poems, philosophies, social institutions, and so on. Generative foundations presuppose the structures of intersubjective time in the life-world. This time of lived experience is not the intersubjective time of natural science, but it is of significance for the reconstruction of past lived experience. There are types of basically pre-linguistic understanding occurring both on the level of what will be called “rudimentary understanding” and in practical activities of the life-world belonging to elementary understanding. The analysis of such foundations of higher understanding is necessary if the paradoxes and puzzles connected with understanding are to be avoided (Seebohm, 2015). DISCOURSE Interaction in elementary understanding is a determining factor for the genesis of grammatical structures in languages, but its own structures are by no means determined by the grammatical structures of language qua language. This point is of significance because neglecting it or denying it in the framework of some speculative lingualism immediately leads to the denial of the presuppositions of the possibility of understanding, especially understanding in methodical hermeneutics. The messages of understanding and information are bodily life expressions. Bodily life expressions are signs. But they are indexes, not symbols, i.e., they are actions followed by reactions of the other living body. There are no strict universal causal laws in this realm. The pattern of animal interaction is

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nevertheless a pattern of action and reaction, cause and effect. Information-using language in elementary understanding is different. The information refers to a context that is already in-itself meaningful, because artifacts have the character of symbols, of interpretants. Interpretants are connected with other interpretants, and the web of meaning generated by interpretants points beyond the living present of actual encounters. Language in elementary understanding is necessary to represent contents that are not present yet are implied in the meaning context of a presently given artifact. Discourse represents future interactions in commands and requests and other types of linguistic information mentioned above. It is pre-given by tradition, experienced and learned by the members of the community. But the tradition as such is not known in elementary understanding; it can be known and interpreted only in higher understanding. The creative potential of individuals or subgroups of individuals in a community given in elementary understanding first shows up in disruptions of the context of elementary understanding. The necessary repair work requires the invention of tools, but connected with it, new rules of behavior and changes in customs. The invention, in turn, requires a transition to an intermediated use of higher understanding, thematizing a whole context of elementary understanding. Human invention relevant for elementary understanding—creating new artifacts, and along with this, words for them in language—presupposes tradition, but also reveals the freedom to change it. Objective reality given in intersubjective rudimentary understanding is given as an objective reality restricted to the boundaries of a shared living present with a shared space of places. The past is present only to the degree in which it determines the protentional horizon via second-order associations. The objective reality of elementary understanding stretches beyond the living present in explicit expectations and memories. This is possible because the system of artifacts is already given as a system of interpretants that reaches beyond the immediately presently given. In this way, humans have the ability to distance themselves from the living present by living in expectation and memory. The realm of the absent is present in the living present in expectation and memory. HIGHER UNDERSTANDING AND CULTURAL TRADITION Everyday life in a life-world happens within the framework of elementary understanding. Humans act in this realm following predetermined patterns of interactions and “understanding how to do x” without understanding either the pattern whole, or aspects of the whole transcending the immediate shared living present, requirements, and its immediate expectations. This description is static and stands as an abstractive methodical reduction. It disregards the circumstance

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that elementary understanding is itself a creation of human beings and is continuously present in a tradition. Neither the pre-given pattern, the tradition represented in it, nor the nature of generative creativity steadily modifying, and a pattern is an intentional object of elementary understanding. The changes made in the pattern are generated in an interplay of elementary and/or turning to the transcending of the immediate understanding—interpretations providing higher understanding are always times and locations for such possibilities and are provided within the life-world. The use of language in discourse in elementary understanding already presupposes a semiotic system of interpretations. But the discourse creating the interpretations of higher understanding on interpretants is of a higher order. It not only presupposes the system of interpretants of elementary understanding but generates an additional web of further interpretants. It is not involved in the process of elementary understanding; instead, it is a selfcontained interpretation of certain contexts of elementary understanding. Thus, communication theory as a social science must, in order to justify itself, be comprised of more than a community of scientists. A hypothesis cannot be corroborated or falsified with recourse to “pure” observation of scientists (subjects) upon objects. But, the objects of social science are co-subjects of the social scientist who are of interest. The co-subject is not merely of interest as an entity whose behavior is to be observed and explained, but primarily as a partner in communication with each other. Therefore, social science fundamentally entails the understanding of the intended meaning. If the justification of science, in general, is recourse to a speech community, and this means that rules (norms) can be followed and reflected upon among students, then social science, given that their objects are co-subjects, must incorporate their objects into their speech community. Therefore, the social scientist operates in a participatory or a mutual interaction community. The social scientific community criterion in order to reach consensus, must incorporate society as the subjectobject of its science. Social Science and the field of communication needs to justify itself on the basis of a speech community logic in which: (a) the scientist is a participant as well as observer, and (b) the object of communication investigation is also a co-subject. To accomplish this task, we will discuss: 1. The communication competence model as the condition for mutual interaction; 2. The structure of complementarity or synchronization as a requirement of interpersonal competence; 3. The reflection process upon the structure of interpersonal competence reveals an atemporal or invariant structure of meaning and a temporal dimension of historical mediation;

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4. The structure of the transcendental (the conditions for any awareness) and tradition-mediation (hermeneutics) are requirements for communicative competence as a three-valued social research logic. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND SYNCHRONY Communicative competence has been defined by Wiemann (1977) as: “The ability of an interactant to choose among available communicative behaviors in order that he may successfully accomplish his own interpersonal goals during an encounter while maintaining the face and line of his fellow interactants, within the constraints of the situation” (p. 198). Researchers have identified consistently three dimensions of communicative competence: (1) Empathy, (2) behavioral flexibility, that is, the ability to choose the most appropriate role for oneself to play from among all available roles in one’s repertory; and (3) interaction management—the skill needed to carry off the procedural aspects of a conversation in a satisfying way, e.g., not interrupting a conversation partner. The argument advanced by the advocates of communicative competence research in our field is summarized aptly by Brandt (1979): “Proponents of the communicative competence position maintain that in order for persons to achieve social goals through communication, they must learn to enact behavioral routines which are deemed appropriate to the particular individuals and social situations where they are interacting” (p. 224). If we look across these elements of competence, we find theoretical significance qua philosophy of science. The key terms appropriate and interaction emphasize an other-orientation based on social acceptability. This means that rules are not formed in isolation but are to be based on the condition of commonality, which can be followed and reflected upon. Communicative competence also emphasizes the flexibility to choose a role appropriately. This emphasizes a self-reflexive capacity as well as a quality that we term empathic. Empathy qua philosophy of science is the attempt to “fill in” the subject-object gap. Empathy is a “filler” because it is a part of the neo-positivist tradition, which still treats the co-subject as an object. Communicative competence focuses upon the anthropological capacities of being able to learn the appropriate conduct of a community. This means that anthropologically, communicative competence as a strategy has as its goal “survival of the species”: mutual (cooperative) interaction. Therefore, social

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appropriateness reveals an intimate involvement and a synchrony that establishes intersubjectivity but belongs to neither subject. Merleau-Ponty (1962) summarizes communicative competence as a form of intersubjective behavior by pointing out that speaking subjects project through words a meaning which we apprehend bodily as an intention which our lived bodies assume: “Taking up another’s intention is not thinking on my own part, but a synchronizing of my existence, a transformation of my own being” (p. 184). Thinking, and also speech, are already intersubjective in the sense that it is bodily intentionality operative in a structure of behavior: “The phonetic gesture brings about for both the speaking subject and his hearers, a certain structural coordination of experience, a certain modulation of existence; exactly as a pattern of my bodily behavior endows objects around me with a certain significance, for me and for others” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 193). The social psychologist Ragnar Rommetveit (1974) characterized the structure of synchrony in terms of a complementarity of encoding and decoding: “The full-fledged act of verbal communication is thus under normal conditions based upon a reciprocally endorsed spontaneously fulfilled contract of complementarity: encoding is tacitly assumed to involve anticipatory decoding, i.e., it is taken for granted that speech is continuously listener oriented and monitored in accordance with assumptions concerning a shared social world and convergent strategies of categorization. Conversely—and on precisely those premises—decoding is tacitly assumed to be speaker-oriented and aiming at a reconstruction of what the speaker intends to make known” (p. 55). Rommetveit points out that anticipation is a shared temporality, and the distinction between encoding and decoding are not mutually exclusive acts but are simultaneous processes. The importance of the encoding-decoding complementarity is that it disrupts the dualism of self and other as an object of purpose, aims and affectivities. It also disallows the rubric of objectivity and subjectivity constituted by the traditional subject-object dichotomy. The structure of complementarity reveals a “commonness” or shared temporality as well as a monitoring process. The monitoring process is constituted by a common meaning. The common meaning constitutes the reiterable and atemporality of meaning which endures across temporally variant dimensions. This invariant structure of meaning is characterized as accessible to all inasmuch as it is constituted through mutual inte-

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raction. The relationship between meaning (invariant) and synchrony has relevance for cultural linguistics. We realize that the project of communicative competence has developed in the tradition of cultural linguistics and generally has been based on the pragmaticbehavioral paradigm. Hence, the interaction of linguistics and meaning within the communicative competence paradigm assumes that every utterance demands an appropriate integration into a context. Thus, any particular element of a culture inevitably refers to a whole that establishes the meaning of those elements. There is a reciprocal relationship of understanding obtained between a particular feature and the whole of which it is a feature. The expression, while transparent with the meaning, must, at the same time, co-imply other expressions, thus composing a matrix of inter-connected meanings revealing at their fundamental level the manner in which the significance comprises a unitary world. Each expression, while manifesting the basic cultural outline, implicates as well other expressions revealing the same cultural matrix. One significance reveals all significances and cannot be completely understood without them, while all significances are implicitly present in one significance. This is the basis for the understanding of cultural linguistics as well as communicative competence. A word spoken in a sentence does not gain its sense only from the relationships of the words within a sentence, rather the sense also arises within a system of a total linguistic field carried by “tradition” and present to the speaker and hearer. Each sentence implicates the entire language, and the entire language is manifest in each sentence. The entire linguistic field and all that it signifies must be present if the specific words and sentences are to be understood, and they will be understood to the extent that the linguistic field is present. This is the cultural basis for “communicative competence”. Benjamin Whorf has offered the thesis that a “grammar” of culture is reflected in and shaped by the linguistic structures of a particular group. The “power” of the word cannot be contested. In various cultures, it was invested with the divine power of creation itself. Any investigation of a particular cultural world necessitates the investigation of the “grammar” of a language used in that culture. Yet, while the logical and grammatico-structural approaches give us coherent relationships among terms and their usages and their designations, they assume that language expresses solely such relationships and designations. Indeed, such designations include not only things but also ideas, images, beliefs, values and other intangible aspects of the particular cultural world. Yet, language is more than that.

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While indicating things and topics, language also manifests the structuration of experiences and perceptions which have a “life of their own”. Language reveals that while states-of-affairs can remain the same, their experience may change. Conversely, although empirical conditions may change, their experience, articulated in language, may remain constant. This noncoincidence between language and the empirical, between experience and the empirical, suggests that there is a complementarity between language and experience. Language plays a crucial role in experience; its grammar does not always coincide with the experiential process. There is a variation between experience and linguistic habits. This means that language may remain constant while the experience has changed, or conversely, experience may remain constant while language shifts. This also can be said with respect to things, as noted above. Hence what a propositional language cannot express, poetic language may convey, dance may reveal, or artworks make visible. All these factors must be accepted under the notion of “linguistic understanding”. Language has a “dialogical medium”. This means that the individual in this medium is shaped and shapes others. The individual’s perceptions and those of others are mutually shaped by linguistic interaction. At the level of linguistic interaction, the dialogical medium is equivalent to the structure of complementarity, which occurs at many levels. Non-verbal gestures and eye gazes are instances of mutual interaction. Moreover, interaction dimensions include the linguistic significations of past generations embodied in styles of writing, monument inscriptions, sayings and stories. Hence, language is to be understood in its broadest sense to include any expression. Language, therefore, presupposes the whole of a socio-history (temporality) and reveals itself as competent through an atemporality given to itself. The model of mutual interaction based on common meaning (invariance) and mediated by the tradition of a particular speech community provides a model of communicative competence as a criterion for social research. The model proposed incorporates the complementarity of the transcendental region of phenomenology and the hermeneutical orientation. It is appropriate at this point to offer a definitional clarification of fundamental terms employed in this book: • Hermeneutics is human self-understanding based upon the embedded tradition of a speech community. • Phenomenology is the science of meaning-structures (eidos) which are accessible to anyone, at any time.

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• Transcendental is the region of meaning, which is an invariant, atemporal structure (The atemporal is used in the Greek sense of alpha-privativum, which is an intensification of time rather than a negative-prefix which signifies a deprivation of temporality). THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION AND ITS LIMIT Phenomenology emerged in the late nineteenth century within the controversy concerning the foundations of science and logic. The explanatory power of the method of the physical sciences had assumed such a dominance that the physical sciences found themselves in the position to make claims of being the basis of all objective knowledge. Any endeavor, desiring to assume the name of science, was compelled to assume that the basis of all knowledge must lie in the empiricalnaturalistic or physicalistic approach. Following this lead, sciences such as psychology advanced the notion that since logic is fundamental to scientific work, it too, should be based on empirically observable and describable facts. The claim was human beings use logic in their scientific theories, therefore logic should be based on the empirically observable functions of human beings. Psychology, being the empirical study of human mind and its scientifically decipherable laws, should assume the burden of being the foundational science of logic. By implication, this also meant that psychology should be the basis of all sciences, inasmuch as all sciences employ logical procedures in their theoretical work. This proposed foundation means that the laws of logic and even mathematics consist of generalizations of empirically observable psychological phenomena or facts. We know that people can count, therefore numbers can be derived from the fact of counting. We know that people see empirically one color at one time and not two. Therefore, we can derive the notion that one thing cannot be blue and red at the same time. If we generalize this notion from the various observations of our empirical experience, we can derive the principle of non-contradiction: it is false to say that the same thing can have two opposing characteristics at the same time and in the same respect. This view can be completed by adding the concepts of association and causality. The present blue color of a thing reminds me of, or is associated with, the previous experiences of blue and not red, leading to the notion that past experience is a corrective for the present and the present for the past. This view is guaranteed by the notion of causality. The things and their properties leave or cause impressions in the human experience. Hence, the blue color causes one to see blue and not red, which allows one to correct experiences by rechecking the source of the impression. I thought I saw red, but actually, the

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thing is blue. Therefore, the principle of contradiction is derived from empirical observation. This relationship of logical process to empirical phenomena seems to be tenuous. For instance, when a mathematician deals with negative numbers, there are no empirical phenomena to correlate with or even a memory of an empirical phenomenon, which correlates to a negative number. Hence, the logic of mathematics does not rest on empirical-psychological observation. It appears as well that the logic of meaning in the communicative event is not based on the empirical-psychological either. The reasons are: 1. When we make the statement, “The storm is furious”, we may vary the sounds empirically, we may say it in German, Chinese or French without changing the meaning of the statement. We may say it slowly, rapidly, or we may stutter, but across these variations, the meaning remains constant. The meaning is distinct from the empirical modalities of its expression. 2. In the process of making the statement, we may have various changing psychological attitudes: we may be elated, afraid, and indifferent, and we may perform psychological associations with previously experienced storms in which we were terrified; yet these psychological variations do not change the meaning of the statement. It remains constant. 3. Even if in our vocal expressions, the psychological attitudes are manifest, such as when one voices the statement indifferently, exuberantly, etc., one does not change the meaning of the statement. We merely reveal our psychological relationship to the storm. What is primarily communicated is meaning, whose understanding is required for the understanding of the psychological states expressed through empirical sounds or gestures. Therefore, the logic of meaning is not derivable from the empirical, but it is a logic that is invariant. This meaning logic testifies to the expression “we can say the same thing in different ways”. Therefore, expression based on meaning logic is never contradictory, even if the expression is empirically varied. THE CANONS OF SCIENTIFIC LOGIC IN QUESTION Most recently, within the sciences, the fundamental canons of science, the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle have been put into question. In the field of physics, mutual recognition of particles and waves, as delineated through the Bohr-Heisenberg formulation, demands a logic outside of the traditional two-valued logic. This means that the logic of science has a rational

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exclusivity, i.e., light either appears as a wave or as a particle is not an admissible scientific statement. When the subject-object dichotomy is maintained in communication research, it leads to inherent difficulties. The attempt to account for conversational sequences as persons switch partners is really nothing more than the question of how to get dyads from individuals. I take this question to be a fundamental question in any theory of two-person interaction. It is a simple matter to characterize the individual or dyadic interaction alone, but it is no small matter to describe how dyadic interaction processes derive from the styles of the individuals who make up the dyad (Cappella, 1980, pp. 130-145). Eradication of this dualistic logic means that the dichotomy of subject-object is philosophically untenable. The manifestation of light as a particle/wave means that the particle/wave continuously and mutually explicates the phenomena. The mutual explication of phenomena is a complementarity. Complementarity introduces the principle of “indeterminacy” into our scientific logic. Indeterminacy methodologically means the world is inseparable from the view of the subject. Two-valued logic as the governing principle of cross-cultural studies has been cited as a logic which occludes our investigations. In the article “Mass Media and Politics”, Ithiel De Sola Pool (1963) comes to this conclusion: “To evaluate assertions primarily by a criterion of objective truth is not a natural way of doing things; it is one of the peculiar features of the Graeco-RomanWestern tradition. This one cultural heritage among the many in human experience has tended to make truth-value the main test of the validity of statements. And truth-value is a curious criterion. It is ruthlessly two-valued and dominated by the excluded middle, something which classical Indian logic, for example, never accepted; statement in the latter system could be simultaneously both true and false. Western criteria of truth assume further that validity can be tested independently of those doing the testing, provided that certain rituals of procedures are followed” (p. 242). Briefly, two-valued logic assumes (a) a definite point of view, and (b) a direct and unambiguous premise which proceeds to the object of contemplation. In this logic, two opposite statements cannot be true at the same time, thus there belongs no third possibility (tertium non datur). This is the famous principle of noncontradiction. The two values are: 1. Being: the existence of the object, and 2. Non-being

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But as previously pointed out, two-valued logic is suspect, limited and culturally bound. Some have pointed out that another logic is required, as in the case of the Bohr-Heisenberg thesis. Today, in communication research, we have accepted the metaphors of “openness”, “indeterminacy”, “possibility”, and “wholeness” as differentiated from potentiality and “qualitative” as desirable characteristics for the accomplishment of communication science. All of these terms suggest a power that has been hidden within the dominion of the two-valued system. These metaphors have become part of our communication/community. The aforementioned twentieth-century accomplishments in the field of human studies and in the queen of the sciences, physics, have placed new demands upon us to develop a competent logic of inquiry appropriate to our field. The recognition and formulation of the inadequacy of two-valued logic are described by Leonard Hawes (1978): “Communication is both the topic of research as well as the resource for conducting the research. The implications are fascinating. Communication research is simultaneously referential and reflexive; our work refers to entities outside of the work itself, and at the same time, the work is the embodiment of much of what is being studied” (pp. 15-16). The key terms are “as well as” and “simultaneously”. This formulation is not only a positive description of communication research practices, but this recognition demands communicatively competent research criteria, which delineates the condition for Hawes’ formulation. The significance of the preceding developments has a consequence for the science of communication. A logic of methodology is demanded in which objectivity and the researcher are inextricable. This posits society as a totality, and the scientist reflects within this totality. The whole is therefore presupposed before the analytic parts are known. What are the consequences of communication theory? Within the framework of strict empirical science, theory designates the interdependent functions of relationships which are formally interpreted as variables of social behavior. “System” and “structural” theories, in general, attempt to cover the whole social fabric. In the socio-scientific models, the deduced relationships between the co-variable quanta are seen as elements of an interdependent system. Yet these constructed systems are not identical to the developing whole and its unfolding process. The concept of the system is totally external to the analyzed as are the theoretical statements used to explicate the area. In addition, the introduction of hypothetical statements guarantees the regularity of the area investigated. Therefore, theory must be “isomorphic” to the area of application. On the basis of isomorphism, the correspondence between

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theoretical statements and ontological reality is not known. Theories are at best a schema of ordering which can be constructed at will and appear as valid for some area when the theory successfully organizes the area. Since theoretical constructions are not connected in any necessary way with the ontological region, then the connection needs a connector. The connection, according to Jurgen Habermas (1971), is one of interest (to someone). Therefore, the indifference of an objective system turns out not to be indifferent, and its application does not give us empirical objectivity. This objectivity is determined from the viewpoint of epistemological interest. For scientific researchers to become aware that they do not deal with unqualified data introduces the process of mediation. The scientific apparatus is social, and therefore, we must already understand the objects we are about to investigate in order for the categories to remain internal to the object investigated. (This is meaning of an interpretive or communication community). Therefore, a logic is needed which incorporates the recognition of the sociality of science as well as scientists’ self-reflexive awareness of this situation. This logic we may call threevalued, which is formulated by “as well as” or “both and” (being-as-well-asnon-being or both-being-and-non-being). To gain access to this logic, we will employ the language of hermeneutics and phenomenology. THE HERMENEUTICAL IMPERATIVE If the human person is social and historical, is it possible to propose a social theory which is not one of the socio-historical events? The appearance of hermeneutics proposes that human is mediated by tradition, and the idea of a detached science is in question. The researcher would be living in the sociohistorical process immersed in the environment without any possibility of explicating the environment. The hermeneutical notion of society as historical would have to see itself quite paradoxically as ahistorical. This means that it would no longer be a historical understanding but a transcendental condition for all understanding. The paradox can be represented by the following equation: hermeneutical transcendental

=

socio-historical asocial, ahistorical

=

temporal atemporal

This means that for socio-historical understanding to become a condition for selfunderstanding, it must be mediated by its precondition for its awareness; the precondition is transcendental.

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We find ourselves in a precarious situation; while seeking a hermeneutical, historical explication of society, we assume an ahistorical (transcendental) vantage point. In turn, were we to explicate the conditions of the meaningful propositions concerning social life, we would find ourselves in a position of extra-sociality in the transcendental attitude. Paradoxically, we would be engaged in using means for our exposition, which are socio-historical. Regardless of the attempts to constitute theoretical and even meta-theoretical structures of social explication, there is an involvement in a wider socio-historical region inexhaustible by the theoretical stance. The understanding of society is not completely obtainable through a socio-theoretical logic, nor is it possible to conceive of it purely in hermeneutical-historical terms. Therefore, to ascertain meaningful propositions concerning social communication, an understanding of the transcendental as well as its incorporation into scientific communication research, is necessary. The scientific-theoretical process, in my opinion, is a transcendental approach, which essentially accepts the name of “meta-theory” to carry out its project. WHAT IS THE TRANSCENDENTAL POSITION? The immediacy of experience and the mediation of this experience stands in a relationship of complementarity. In immediate experience, I am not aware that I experience, but I deal comprehensively with things and their relationships. If I reflect on my dealings, I distance myself from the immediacy of things but with the possibility of the experience of things. Every theory of epistemology must include a distancing and account for it if it is going to be an inclusive theory. Experience is anonymous. The transcendental position brings to relief the conditions; the process of meaning which enables experience to take place. Our thinking and knowledge in its “natural” orientation are at home with the things we attempt to investigate and understand. The transcendental demands a distancing from the natural immediacy; in this turn, we encounter the problem of how we reflect upon this immediacy. This is the problem we have called mediation. Transcendental understanding simply attempts to discover the meaning of experience. Therefore, as soon as we ask a question concerning the conditions of meaning, we are in the transcendental region. An articulation of how the transcendental functions within the scientific community will aid us in developing a vocabulary for scientific communication theory.

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AN EXPLICATION OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL: THE AHISTORICAL AND ATEMPORAL Phenomenology develops out of a critique of psychologism and is a part of the heritage of transcendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy is a reflection on the possibility of objective knowledge and experience in an attempt to base all sciences on the insights of the governing principles which rule each possible science. Specifically, in terms of Husserlian phenomenology, the transcendental functions in the determination of meaning (or sense-making, as it is popularly conceived). The transcendental articulation is mediated (handed down) through a community of linguisticality for each possible science. We find that the transcendental region is mediated by the “sense” or meaning of the speaker, the things in question and a historical residue. This is not convention. Conventions are already based on understanding. Therefore, a relativist position runs counter to the facts of research and to the communication of such facts to members of the scientific community and the public in general. The transcendental functions in the established maxim of cultural and crosscultural studies: all methods of cultural investigations are based on comparison, which includes such phrases as “it is different from ...” or “it can be understood as ...”. Comparison involves sameness and difference. This means that the determination of differences by which a culture is distinguished from other cultures assumes a common aspect on the basis of which the differences are seen as differences. Were this not the case, what one would have are differences without any possibility to recognize them as differences from.... To recognize differences, it is necessary either to assume one of the cultures as a base and interpret others in terms of it, or to assume common features across various cultures on the basis of which the variations are comprehensible. The first case cannot be used in cross-cultural studies, since everything would be reduced to the interpretation of the components of one culture missing the structure of other cultures. The only solution to this problem is to show that while cultures are different, they also have commonalities or a possible common dimension from which they may be understood as different. This means that absoluteness and relativity must be correlative. The transcendental functions in the identification of data. For example, only on the basis of the transcendental position can a datum be a possible explanation of laws made through repeated experimentation and subsumed under categories. The transcendental provides the limit for laws and the basis for inductive corrections or falsifications. A datum which moves in an irreversible historical flow, as in the case of field observation studies, is mediated through reflection. Here reflection is not reflection on the “previous” sense data, but on the “reiterated” data, which are

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eidetic in the language of phenomenology (We can repeat the data of yesterday only with an identification of the data in terms of a comparative). Comparing two data on the basis of a datum which is not on the same level as the ones being compared demands a community of communication with a linguistic habit. If this logic of identity is social, can we have an empirical social science as an objective science? Positivism, by subsuming this question under the logic of science, cannot be a language in either region. Both mediate each other and, in turn, are mediated. Therefore, the possibility of social science objectivity is only secured through the understanding of transcendental logic (It is impossible to transcend sociohistorical events, but signification at the transcendental level is not correlative to events, point for point). The pragmatic-behavioral model of social science, which is the dominant model in the field of communication, presupposes that meaning is identical (point for point) with behavior, or the sign = signified. If behavior is identical to its meaning, then for the pragmatic-behavioral model to be inclusive, it would be necessary to (a) reduce the observed social habits to a statistical average where truth would be the way that the majority behaves (at least for the time being); and (b) the investigators’ procedures would have to be reduced to a habitual pattern, and the investigator would have to demonstrate whether he/she fits the pattern of the majority. When signification is identical to behavior, as in the pragmatic behavioral model of competence, the consequences are: 1. It would be impossible to grasp any significance of behavior; 2. The behavior would be closed upon itself; 3. Socio-history is incomprehensible; and 4. Theory would be a behavior which is closed upon itself. THE TRANSCENDENTAL PRESENTATION

FUNCTION

IN

SCIENTIFIC

Without the transcendental, the theory would correspond to the behavior of the writer and to the “predictable social behavior” of one’s times. The significance of socio-historical events cannot be explicated in terms of the behavior of such events since it cannot be reduced to, or become identical with, the historical Anthropos nor to his/her historical praxis. This means that the hermeneutical dimension is mediation. It delimits the significations appearing historically and socially. Since the significance is the dimension of socio-historical processes constituting the condition for sense-making the understanding of historical events, then the hermeneutical process mediates the transcendental region. Hence, the

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transcendental is a condition for theory and praxis. Therefore, the transcendental is ahistorical and atemporal (Privativum means “to attain a liberation from the temporal or historical”). COMPLEMENTARITY TRANSCENDENTAL

OF

UNDERSTANDING

AND

THE

The transcendental signification would be impossible without the hermeneutical aspect and would be reduced to the notion of conditions or categories without change or influence. There would be a failure to appreciate the articulation of the human event, which, in the process of temporal self-interpretation, is also: 1. The interpretation of significance (at the transcendental level); 2. The constitution of the socio-historical; 3. The constitution of reflexivity as a ground for the emergence of inter-subjective relationships (Pilotta, 1979); and 4. The institution of a social region called “theoretical.” We must keep in mind that the self-interpretation of the human event is not identical to the behavior of a specific human being. The specific human being understands oneself within the historically mediated transcendental significance constituting the temporality and the atemporality both of permanence and flux of the individual. This means that reflection and social reflexivity are grounded in the complementarity of hermeneutics and transcendental signification. We must not fall into a naive historicism regarding the socio-historical process. Only when we gain distance are we able to see our presuppositions which carry an historical aspect of the tradition. To see our presuppositions as historical means that we do not live in the same presuppositions we formally did. To gain such a distance and to be able to relate to our former presuppositions assumes a transcendental posture. Social science research based on communicative competence takes account of its own historical processes and relates it to the transcendental region of signification which in turn displays: 1. A “vertical distance” from the historicity of events; and 2. The reflexivity for the recognition of historical events (Gadamer, 1975).

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The term “vertical” is employed to convey that the atemporal is perpendicular and sweeps the horizontal stream of the community events. When the transcendental signification is disregarded, the hermeneutical process assumes an a priori stance without being aware of itself. It assumes a particular historical period and its given events and treats it as if it were the transcendental signification of all historical periods. We must be clear that the transcendental and the hermeneutical aspects are given together. Theoretical reflections reveal one possible hermeneutic of the transcendental signification and specify, at the same time, a distance from the socio-historical processes and events. Any theory, seen in terms of its transcendental signification, is absolute. Seen in terms of its hermeneutics, it is relative to other theories. Therefore, the complementarity of the transcendental and the hermeneutical are both absolute as well as relative. Relative is a correlative to something which is absolute, and absolute makes sense only in correlation to the relative. We cannot take the mediating relationship between transcendental signification and hermeneutics as a relationship between two things. The transcendental is always something that has been or is to be accomplished through the hermeneutical means. What is accomplished is always reflected in the implications of the future or from the past, therefore, the mediation occurs outside real relationships. If this were not the case, theoretical thought would be impossible since all theoretical relationships would be immersed in affectivity, nor would we gain the necessary distance to theoretically make sense of sociohistorical events. Hermeneutical criteria are based on the human condition. Whenever we ask a question regarding the sense of social events, powers affecting our lives, or the interpersonal relations among groups, the question points to transcendental significance. This is a reflection on the question, “what is happening?” which is the genesis of the theory. The search for meaning at the transcendental level, to make sense of our sociocultural environment, constitutes tension between the interpretation of the factual and the significant. Humans dwell in this tension. Concretely, a person is simultaneously involved yet distanced from the factual. This is a movement toward the sense region revealing a particular meaning: 1. Is not experienced in its totality; 2. It has a situational character; and

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3. It is oriented which establishes the here-to-there relationship (communicability). The structure of communicability that we presume suggests that if signification were purely “interpretation”, or based purely on the school of pragmatic communication, then interpersonal communication would be impossible. Each person situated in an empirical “here and now” would always be in a different situation and would have to assume the task of repeating the behavior of the other in order to grasp the meaning of the behavior. In fact, the situation of the other has already shifted in its spatio-temporal structure. CONCLUSION Communicative competence is the condition for social science research. It is the condition which enables reflective distance and the ability to monitor the relationship between the researcher and his/her objects (co-subjects) of investigations. Every investigation presumes a complementarity between the researcher and the researched, which is mediated by their respective traditions and their movement toward the extrication of their socio-historical milieu. The movement of extrication toward the transcendental region from meaning is invariant and mediated by the socio-historical. The relationship between the transcendental and hermeneutics reveals a three-valued logic, which expands the theory of “Scientia”. The expanded theory of science is based on acceptability and appropriateness, which introduces to the communication community a social science that is oriented to the determination of meaningful relationships in social life. Therefore, the structure of the social science community is based on mutual social interaction, which demands itself to be a science of thematic determination (reflexive) and responsibility (socio-historical). Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Pilotta, J. J. (1982). Communicative competence as a research criterion. In J.J. Pilotta (Ed.), Interpersonal communication: Essays in phenomenology and hermeneutics (pp. 35-54). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. REFERENCES Brandt, D.R. (1979). On linking social performance with social competence: Some relations between communicative style and attributions of interpersonal attractiveness and effectiveness. Hum. Commun. Res, 5(3), 223-226. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1979.tb00636.x] Cappella, J.N. (1980). Talk and silence sequences in informal conversations. Hum. Commun. Res, 6(2), 130145. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1980.tb00133.x] Gadamer, H.G. (1975). Truth and method. Seabury Press.

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Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests. Beacon Press. Hawes, L.C. (1978). The reflexivity of communication research. West. J. Speech Commun, 42(1), 12-20. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10570317809373917] Littrell, W.B., & Sjoberg, G. (1976). Current issues in social policy. Sage. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. Humanities Press. Pilotta, J.J. (1979). Presentational thinking: A contemporary hermeneutic of communicative action. West. J. Speech Commun, 43(4), 288-300. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10570317909373980] Pool, I.D. (1963). The mass media and politics in the modernization process. In: Pye, L., (Ed.), Communications and political development. Princeton University Press. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781400875214-017] Rommetveit, R. (1974). On message structure. John Wiley & Sons. Seebohm, T. (2015). History as a science and the system of the sciences: Phenomenological investigations. New York: Springer. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13587-8] Wiemann, J.M. (1977). Explication and test of a model of communicative competence. Hum. Commun. Res, 3(3), 195-213. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1977.tb00518.x]

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CHAPTER 4

Transcendental Self-Awareness and Time Abstract: Chapter 4 further investigates the importance of time, and human awareness of it, as that relates to artificial intelligence, apprehending time from a perspective that emphasizes its similarities to any other “thing”. The chapter begins with a discussion of the importance of a paradigm that prioritizes rational thought structures. Thus, the discussion turns to questions of the "now" point, field awareness, and the nature of causality, based on the philosophizing of Edmund Husserl. The issues of intentionality and representationalism are addressed in relation to artificial intelligence as well as to the self, the other, and social understanding in general.

Keywords: Being, Field, Thing, Instrumental Reason, Intentionality. INTRODUCTION For scientific-technical awareness, the Western metaphor of time and space is most convenient. For our AI purposes, the discussion can be narrowed to time, since reflection upon any topic involves such questions as memory and expectation. Indeed, any Western discussion of awareness always involves questions of time. Most likely, instrumental reason itself is premised on a specific time interpretation which, as Kant (1958) noted, is a condition of any rational judgment. Even contemporary “deconstructionists” of reason immediately use Western time interpretation as a basis for their claims. In turn, there are various sciences attempting to devise means to measure the vastness of the universe, and even the possibility of peering into the “beginning of time” and thus opening the door to speculative mysticism. We do not challenge scientific claims—the latter may be true in the context of Western time awareness—rather, the task of articulating such awareness is required for the understanding of the ways that a Self becomes a reflective medium between “ontological reality” and the metaphysics of science. There is no denying that the arguments presented in this writing are also based on reason and, ultimately, on-time awareness or, more precisely, awareness of time. The latter suggests that time, as any other thing, has some features which can be disclosed, pointed to, and discussed as any other thing or event. One speaks quite freely about the passage, the flowing of time, and even the measuring of time. Astronomers are overjoyed by the inventions of the latest Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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instruments, which can “measure” fractions of a second, approaching Zeno’s quest to reach an indivisible point, the now at “infinity” (Diogenes Laertius, in White, 2021). METAPHYSICS OF REASON Many philosophers have suggested that consciousness structures are coextensive with specific space-time morphologies, not as variations of, or deviations from, an identical and forever valid space-time structure, but as diverse modes of awareness. It seems that the only space-time structure that is available to a specific culture is its space-time awareness. The latter is the basic context within whose parameters all events—including the humans—are interpreted. In this sense, one specific space-time structure, designated as objective, is available, and completely tied to the specific mode of thinking—the rational. The parameters of this space-time awareness have framed Western metaphysics and ontology, i.e., the symbolic designs of ultimate reality and of the composition of nature, and indeed set a stage for various theologies of teleological and eschatological types. This is not to say that other types of awareness are irrational; they are equally valid and are lived by members of other life-worlds. In this sense, what is known as reason must be restricted to the Western life-world. Others have different modes of awareness which are correlated to an appropriate “rationality”. Due to such parameters, metaphysical and ontological thinking became tied to specific prejudgments, above all, of thing and Being-In-The-World. This is not to say that rational awareness could avoid other modes; to the contrary, all efforts in the construction of metaphysics and ontology were and continue to be founded on the tacit and continuous presence of dimensional awareness. Yet, this presence, in its rational interpretation, led to the reification and finally to the flattening of the cosmos. Again, this is not to imply that this process was initiated by some malignant genius; rather, given the specific interpretation of time and space, regarded as rational awareness, the reduction of all events, including the human to positioned things, could hardly be avoided. This also suggests that this space-time awareness lends priority to discrete positions in which things can be regarded as stable and can be located at any position without losing their identity. The founding, permanent position is the eternal indivisible now, resulting in the ontological awareness that a thing is always now and identical with itself. Once this thing is granted permanence, then it can be at any point in time and any point in space, ending with classical proclamations that space and time dimensions play no essential role in the understanding of a thing—they are accidental for rational understanding of nature. Lending preeminence to the permanence of substantial things and their relationships, traditional reason reflects the flattening of the universe into a three-dimensional box in which identifiable things can move.

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Attributing preeminence to things—and by extension to Being—and in modernity to reified reality and the metaphysics of formal instrumental reason, allows the presumption that as things and material objects, so can the worldly dimensions of space-time be regarded as "objects", although inessential among other objects. If things are constantly in time, in space, then this very in-herence does not make an essential difference to the things that are in. It is a world not unlike a beehive in which identifiable bees can be at any location, yet such a location does not change a bee. While modern reification of nature led to the positing of atomic and subatomic building blocks, the latter is equally in space-time-movement. This form of reification was and continues to be a major catalyst for the appearance of instrumental reason as a counterpart to quantifiable matter. This will be explained shortly in this chapter. The priority of the now and the thing that allows the appearance of the world as spacial and temporal might even preclude the existence of time. The future is not yet, and the past is no longer; the present is a point between them, and hence the dimensions of the world do not exist. Yet even the now embodies a paradox: Since it is not a stretch but a point between past and future, it cannot exist; it is nothing. We are facing a curiosity: The past, the present, and the future are nothing. Hence, what are we talking about when we speak of time? How can one measure and have stretches and continuities of nothing? It is the case that when we speak of such stretches, we use a spatial metaphor in such a way that, given spatial distances, we can measure them; but how can one measure what is either no longer or not yet? We may be able to measure spatial distances to the extent that we may presume returning to the same place—even if this returning is problematic—but how can we return to the no longer? This paradox is the catalyst for the search for a locus where time can be given and measured. After all, measuring assumes that what we measure must be. Even if the no longer and not yet were to be regarded as not something that is not, but as something that is empty, i.e., empty time and empty space, we would be in a quandary to speak of directions in such an empty container. Emptiness discards the very understanding of world and returns us back to the nothingness of this world. All this leads to the efforts, as already mentioned, to locate time. In one instance, there are various metaphysical efforts to locate and guarantee the continuity of the world by some ultimate Being. Since things and their continuity are deployed in a temporal sequence of movements and locations, this very continuity must be guaranteed by some metaphysical powers that are deemed to be the glue of the succession. This is to say, since the now point has no extension, then there appears an abyss between the now and the next moment. If the continuity is threatened by fragmentation, then one introduces something tran-

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scendent to fill the gap left by the metaphysical timeless formalisms and ontological, i.e., rational, covering-over of the cosmos. Although such metaphysics avoids the pure linearity of temporal points by locating them in an eternal being, the latter, as eternal, does not allow us to understand the various modalities of experiencing time. Eternity excludes such questions. To say that it is eternal, is to say that it is opposed to temporal and thus to return to the rational mode of awareness. Such an awareness reestablishes a metaphysical way of reflecting all phenomena from the background of eternity. Thus, for the modern West, mathematical and formal definitions are eternal, and are in no position to deal with a cosmos that involves the continuity of time. While scientists and others may say that numbers do not lie, they do not have anything to say about time, unless one accepts the fragmentation discussed above. It is clear that, regardless of how many mathematical points one may add, one will not derive extension or duration from them. Thus, the mathematical measure of time is completely impossible. FIELD AWARENESS Having encountered the origins of the modern subject as the source of Western AI, the subject itself being the metaphysical source of AI, which does not belong in the scheme of natural Logos, we must raise the question concerning its ultimate constitution. We must remember that for the modern West and its atomistic ontology, the subject does not exist; if it is not physical, then it is deemed to be metaphysical. At this metaphysical level, whatever the subject constructs, it is not in the ontological, “physical” time, which is also the condition for the modern notion of causality as a sequence of events “one after the other”. Neither AI nor its progress would be conceivable without the presumption of such time. But AI requires “time awareness” which must transgress the physical time in order to be able to construct “projects” which dominate all scientific theories, methods, and hypotheses. In short, if the metaphysical modern subject is autonomous, then its time awareness cannot be a part of the physical time. In principle, AI is a conjunction of physical time and transcendental time, allowing AI to be an embodiment of atemporal discourses which “speak” to the subject who cannot be limited by any discourse manifest in any AI. Autonomy is premised on awareness which transgresses the positional, physical time. Husserl’s phenomenological method is by now well-known, even if controversial, and need not be repeated one more time. His ultimate concern is to offer an account for it as a transcendental condition of time, including the ways that the modern “subject” is the source of “scientific”, hypothetical, and many other “projects”—and the latter requires an implicit time awareness. At the outset of his lectures on time, Husserl (1964) delimits the appropriate sphere of temporal phenomena by the complete exclusion

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of every assumption, stipulation, and conviction with respect to objective time (the total exclusion of all transcending—internal and external—presuppositions concerning what exists). For Husserl, a rigorous phenomenological analysis of time begins not with the “awareness of time,” but with the description of time awareness. His phenomenology of internal time-consciousness is thus the exhibition of the immanent time as the flow of consciousness, not the progressive time of the modern, scientific world. Given this methodological decision, that distinguishes his investigations of time awareness, Husserl insists that time, as it is immediately given, is “lived” or a “living” present. The latter cannot be bracketed without a contradiction and thus must comprise a point of departure for disclosing “time awareness”. The directly living present manifests two fundamental moments—the flowing and the static. While enacting the flow, the self is confronted with the missing aspect—the permanent. The permanent is excluded from, and yet referred to, by the flow. While flowing, the self is engaged in countering a stasis. On the other hand, while the self assumes a position of permanence, it is referred to as a flow. The standing forever battles the flux. While being exclusive, neither can be given without the other. They are mutually referent. What is at issue in the quest for Self and its identity with respect to time awareness is the access to these two moments of the living present and their most diverse relationships. It is to be noted that the relationship between permanence and flux is never given in its purity; it is always mediated by symbolic designs of a given culture, such as Augustine’s notion of soul (2002). Thus, with the questions concerning self and ego, those two terms will comprise symbolic tandems of the two basic facets of the living present. First, there is the problem of the primordial, passive stream, the “Heraclitean flow” as a fundamental domain of awareness, for whose constitutive moments we lack names; there is nothing found in the flow that would be an objective identity. Names, after all, apply only to the constituted and available identities, to objectified sense units. Such units, such identities, rudimentary components of reference, are discovered only in reflection that traces something constituted in the flux, such as an identity of a color, a sound, a trace of smell, a number, or an ego. All may find themselves and be seen as identical or constant in the flow. They are apparent as stasis moments. An ego, at this level of awareness, also appears in the flow as self-same or identical. A note of caution must be added: The self that symbolizes the enactment of the flow does not encounter the permanent ego due to reflection, but due to the very composition of the flow that immediately calls up its mutual and yet exclusive referent—the stasis. At this level, the moment of stasis can only be constituted as a recognizable act of the self that is flowing away and is given a symbolic designation—ego. The ego marks a distance between the acting self and its own enactments. In their static identifiabi-

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lity, the latter refers to the flux enacted by the self, and they exhibit a characteristic that is different and exclusive of the self. This context suggests that the self cannot be exhausted by the identifiable act that is symbolized as an act of ego. And yet, the ego is present as a reflected self prior to an act of reflection. The self recognizes, in the ego, one of its accomplished acts. The identity of the self that enacts the flow is not that of the ego as a stasis—a stasis that can be discovered in the flow. In this sense, the self is not reducible to a nameable ego or even to a recognizable act of the self. The self that constitutes the flow is anonymous, and its anonymity cannot be eradicated by reference to an ego found in the flux. The problem, thus, emerges concerning the access, if any, to the primordially acting self. It was noted that the presence of the experienced ego in the flow to the experiencing self reveals a distance between them, a distance that is the very condition of such an experience. This distance must be understood within the limits of the living present and its two selfreferring features. This present cannot be understood in an ordinary, i.e., ontological or psychological sense; the present of the self is not given on the basis of a presupposed temporal position. A radical reflection also excludes the preconception of temporal succession. The present of the self, its presence, could be called ur-modal, atemporal, or self-originating. Any temporal regard requires an identifiable point of a reference appearing in the flow of awareness. If the ego marks the first identifiable act in the flow, then the distance between the self and the ego is equally atemporal. At this level of awareness, there are no traces of any memory that would hint at temporal locations. One might wonder, what does such disclosure of self and others have to do with AI? Two points: At the outset, all the explanations by various disciplines of human in terms of causes, physical, economic, psychological, physiological... would fail to encompass the subject. Additionally, communication by anyone, including the scientist, with others as equivalent to the subject, is only possible on the basis of transcendental time awareness. One talks with Newton about the laws of gravity, not because Newton is present across the table, but as an extension of the scientist’s awareness through the way Newton sees the world: mathematically, and hence prior to physical time, which has already abolished physical Newton. At this level of awareness, we are already “intersubjective,” prior to the question when and where the other is. Temporal locations arise on the basis of this intersubjectivity. Having discussed gravity with Newton’s mathematical view of it, we can raise the question: When did Newton formulate his mathematical awareness? Having addressed the question of intersubjectivity, where the Other is never absent from the understanding of the Self, we must notice immediately that the Self, in the encounter of the Other, is engaged in primal “intentionality”: it is an orientation toward someone with respect to something, some objectivity, or a

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topic of interest. The very orientation is not just a “looking at” the other as some object, but also as an “intentional” agent—Another Self who is oriented toward something. If one wants to grasp what the Other is, one must attend to what the Other is doing, what she is thinking about, how she is comporting toward something, some task, or solving some problem. The encounter of the Other is equivalent to an encounter of an oriented subject such that the orientation points to, means, something as an intentional concern. Even in cases of Self, interpreting itself as an Ego, the Self will find this orientation toward the Ego unavoidable. “How could I have done this yesterday to James at the meeting?” To understand even myself in the sense of the Other, I must understand this world orientation, this intentional correlation to something. It is necessary, then, to engage in a brief delimitation of “intentionality”. While it was discussed in the second chapter, some views about it must be clarified. It has been a part of a long history of debate about intentionality, maintaining a common claim that intentionality is a fundamental signifying function of awareness; it means something or other. The qualification of intentionality, in the context of intersubjectivity, is sense-making. A close survey of this phrase offers an added picture. The term intentionality does not designate a pregiven state of affairs, but rather stakes out a field. Thus, it is necessary to point out that the common definition of intentionality as “consciousness of” is more than the notion of “intentional action,” or “deliberate engagement”. Such designations are still burdened by traditions of metaphysical clashes between proponents of determinism and freedoms. Even if it were possible to regard intentionality as a function of wanting or willing, analyses would show that these terms presume a more “neutral” delimitation and another level of intentionality that can analyze “will” or “wants”. Such a delimitation is shaped by the discovery and analyses of a correlation between universal requirements on anyone’s part and the structure of a given object, irrespective of its ontological status. The use of the term correlation instead of relationship suggests a difference between a one-to-one, i.e., act-toobject structure and a one-to-process composition. In this sense, the object must be regarded as a constant, while the correlation to it may be variable. In turn, the correlation may be constant, while the “object” may be variable. To see is to see something, to judge the same thing, to use it as a support for a hypothesis, to employ it for practical purposes, or even as a basis of theoretical interrogation. The object need not be a “natural” entity. It can be a numerical system, an emotion, a complex state of affairs, or a problem to be resolved. All such “objects” can be maintained as identical, while our correlations to them can vary. The numerical system can be judged concerning its value for some task, or it can lead to speculative metaphysics with respect to the “whereabouts” of the existence of numbers. Such correlational variations can be subsumed under the term “intentionality”.

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There is a methodological requirement to deflect any opposition from culturally committed explanations with claims that awareness is either shaped by a cultural sign system or by some psychological states inherent in the human natural constitution. After all, some would argue that “intentional analyses” belong to the mind or internal states, which, while not regarded causally, are at the base of human understanding. We want to show that such reductionisms miss the point of their own positions to the extent that they assume a diversity of types of intentionalities and their correlation to distinct kinds of objects, including the object called to mind and its meant internal composition. This is to say, we can show that transcendental polycentric awareness is more objective than the positions offered by its cultural opponents. The sense of a specific type of objectivity sets the parameters for the structure of intentionalities, and both can be regarded purely objectively. In short, the structure of the object is decisive concerning the objectivity of the intentional functions correlating to it. No doubt, this correlation can be highly complex, requiring careful analyses, yet in principle, such correlation is objective. It could be said that this mode of analysis of intentionality is a non-speculative and non-reductionist positivism. An objective analysis initially extricates two levels of intentional correlation: the matter of fact and the various ways of accessing the essence of the factual. Essence, here, is not ontological, but a structural feature of a sense-making process focused on the factual, comprising, at the cultural level, selected means of expressing the factual. The cultural meanings must not be confused with generalized matters of fact—without denying them—since such meanings disregard the boundaries of typological designations of matters of fact. Thus, “I see a group of objects” disregards the general features of matters of fact, since the group can consist of generically diverse objects. Yet, it is not an a priori concept in a posited entity called mind. Not to speak of the irresolvable dilemmas concerning the “application” of the a priori concepts to singular cases, there is equally a sticky problem of reintroducing the question of “meaning” as inherent in the culture. How could one presume that a variety of individual objects could, in a flash, assume a “meaning”? These difficulties could be avoided with a turn to an intentionality capable of accessing cultural aspects as intentional meanings of transcendental constitution of awareness. For example, a particular arrangement of objects, without regard to their generic characteristics, may be seen as a group, as a sum of individuals, or as discrete entities. Neither is a generalized category but a transcendental mode of signifying. It is neither a particular nor a universal, and yet, it has its own generality accessible to any communication researcher. It should be obvious that intentionality, regarded in this manner, is not representational, imagistic, or conceptual. This is to say, it does not copy the object, does not look like the object, and is in no particular state of substantively

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conceived awareness. This avoids a type of psychological assumption—modern representationalism that, as a part of modern Western cultural language, is a block to understanding intersubjective awareness. Such a thesis requires that you and I guarantee that both of us have the same internal states expressed in different languages and causally related to the “same thing”. In brief, my image in me and your image in you must be accessed as alike before we can claim mutual access to one another or to the topics and objects to which we refer. Hence, there are inventions to fill this intersubjective and even personal gap: one speaks of empathy, of similar physiological, biological, and such constructions, of being part of the evolution of the same species. Activities of awareness, correlated to given objects of intersubjective awareness, as ways of addressing matters of fact, are neither inner nor outer, neither similar to the objects under consideration nor their inner counterparts or images. They are correlational. Such a correlation extends all the way to theories as modes of anyone’s awareness accessible to all. One can say, “Let us regard the world as a sum of material parts” or “as a projection of ideas” without raising the question of which of these regards is true. Both can be deemed to be ways of making sense and accessible for debate, so well manifested in the debates across various historical periods among numerous figures—debates in which we still participate with regard to the “emergent” qualities of living forms in evolution or in social settings. This kind of understanding of correlation excludes presumed distinctions between mentalism, such as a conscious activity in contrast to motoric and even unconscious activities, and received materialism. Intentionalities understood in this way can be seen metaphorically as vertical: They are directed, in complex shifts, toward the subject matters, starting with matters of facts, and ending with cultural modes of signifying such facts: Let us look at things “ethically,” “theologically” or “aesthetically” or even as constructions of “stories”. Verticality has neither temporal nor spatial topoi; we can look toward future events, predicted by science, expected in daily engagements, or attend to galaxies “above” us. Whether such intentionalities were enacted by ancient Chinese or Mayan astronomers, or contemporary scientists, the enactments can be reiterated by anyone and at any time. Thus, vertical intentionalities are not correlations to something from a position of above toward the below, from left to right, and from forward to backward, but toward given states of affairs. Vertical intentionalities are, in principle, appositional and thus accessible to anyone. No scholarly work could be done if our awareness was temporally stuck or localized. When a scholar of civilizations claims that all are determined by the discourses of a given civilization, then she too is either determined or is aware of diverse civilizations without being stuck in her own civilization. She is already claiming that anyone can investigate and compare civilizations in terms of their discourses without imposing the discourse of her own civilization on all others. In turn, she is already

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intersubjective with simple awareness, such as the difference between Confucian and Zen awareness of the things of the world. We find ourselves at the level of time awareness which allows us to debate with Confucius’ views present in texts in a different language and the way he is aware of the world. Even if we disagree with him, as we might disagree with Ptolemaic epicycles, we are aware of the way both saw the world—one in ethical, the other in astronomical terms. No doubt, there are numerous cases in which a particular mode of awareness is rejected as inadequate, even false; the fact remains that we understand such a mode as mistaken or even non-sense. Yet, in all cases, the intersubjective field is given, both as a horizon and a depth. Temporal locations emerge not with the passive constitution of the flux, but with an active engagement of the self that, in the first instance, attempts to identify itself with the ego. Thus, the very effort positions the ego in relation to, either something that has been done as an act of the self, or something that is to be done. Here emerge the overlapping distancing phases which provide a ground for subsequent locations of the ego, and the distinction between acts of memory and expectation. If the flow is structured temporally, then the active engagement of the self already takes for granted the distance between itself and the ego. This is such that the enactment of temporal phases intimates tacitly a rule of selfawareness. This rule can be called permanence maintenance. By constituting the temporal phases, the self maintains the distance from, and the identity of the ego. In turn, this suggests that the enactment of the flow, as having temporal phases and ego locations, may be seen as sense making. The latter is the first mode of awareness that is premised on temporalization, since sense is a basic expression of directionality. Experience without directionality lacks sense. In other words, temporalization is coextensive with sense-making. Regardless of the linguistic designation, the original activity of the self is the source of sense. Thus, the self is traceable as the endlessly repeatable “this makes sense”, and is granted in correlation to temporalization that establishes locations in the stream of lived awareness. Yet, any reflection on the sense-making, on the primal function of the self, reveals it as a located ego in the context of temporal phases. In the very enactment of the flow, the self is traceable as the source of the sense of this enactment in an atemporal mode. The ego is different and distant from the self. The tracing of the present of the self reveals it to be an atemporal presence of sense-making in transformation—a transformation that is a permanent enactment of sense-making flow—a transformation which nonetheless appears as an identifiable ego, in a context of already structured atemporal phases. This analysis yields evidence of the life of the self as constant stasis in flux. The best that can be attained is its constant self-reference from another—from a stream that contains the traces of the original enactment of sense. Thus, the insight into

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the sense of temporal phases (prior to temporal loci) and simultaneous reflectivity that reveals the self as an ego, leads phenomenology to experience its ultimate, critical, and apodictic foundation. According to this experience, the temporalizing self is grasped as already temporalized ego. This is adequate to the extent that we regard the ego in the flux of temporal phases as a trace of the self, as enacting the permanent sense making that is present in all the differentiations of, and locations in the flux. At this juncture we encounter the first layer of self that is involved with the distancing ego, not as a mere sinking away, but as a mark of identifiable permanence that must be maintained and enhanced. Thus, the first rule relating the self and the ego is permanence maintenance. Yet, this rule also opens the possibility of marking a temporal locus for the memory of any object and for the sense of otherness. Marking a “temporal” distance from the self, the ego is a condition for reflection. At the same time, and despite the gap and hence a division, a mutual reference between them ought not to be lost. In order to reflect, the self must refer to the ego in the flow of temporal phases, not by becoming one with it, but by maintaining its permanence. While reflective reference is adequate to establish the identity of the ego, it is inadequate to provide self-identity of the flux-enacting self. In what sense can the functioning, the acting self, obtain its identity from the encountered ego as a distancing in the flux? Is the just enacted given as an ego or merely as an act? If it is given as an ego of a particular act, then the currently reflecting and acting self is more than the just enacted ego. The former contains all the possibilities of enactment of sense, while the latter is exhausted in the act that is attributed to it. But if the just enacted is an act, then it cannot be fully identifiable with the currently acting and reflecting self, since the self is reflecting from the just performed act. Here appears an asymmetry between them. Such asymmetry is a condition both for distancing and even disassociating the self from the ego. While this is a condition for dissociation of the self from an ego, and indeed from a variety of egos, it is equally a structural condition for the possibility of the self to collapse into an ego and to become dissociated from the self. The latter possibility can occur when the currently sense-making self is no more than the sense-making act which is flowing away, and in this flow, it can be attached either to the self or the ego. In this sense, there appears to be an equivalence between the self and the flowing ego. Even if there is no guarantee of their identity, this equivalence comprises the basic condition for surrendering any priority of the self over any specific ego. This condition results in the self that is identical to a set of dissociated egos. Such an array of egos appears as a normal state of affairs in our social understanding. We play different roles in different settings and become the sum of our social roles: Who we are, thus, depends on our role models. This intimates that the self has become ineffective in integrating the various activities and the various egos attached to such activities. This is a place where Augustine

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(2002) would recognize the way that the self gets “scattered” and lost, holding on to one, then another, and many other identities, which are “other” than the self or soul. This mode of self-scattering could be called permanence disruption. How can such a scattering be overcome? It appears that the self that is reflected from the ego grasps itself as acting. For the reflecting self, the distance between the act being performed and the just enacted is seen as bridged. Reflection experiences unity in separation, identity in difference. The reflecting unification with itself, constituting the experience of bridging the distance and keeping an identity of itself at the present, is given since the self enacts a constant streaming. The possibility of self-reflection emerges on the basis of the constancy of streaming, as well as on the basis of the streaming constancy of the self as it is traced by the ego. In inner reflection, the self has unified itself with the ego, and bridged this distance in its streaming. This is the original passive and active constitution where the transitory synthetic presencing of the self to its egological traces occurs. Thus, all inner reflection is self-presencing of the originally functioning self before temporalization. In the transitional, synthetic unification of the living present, the self connects with itself before this unity is grasped in reflection. The pre-accomplished presencing of the self in its traces is the selfactualizable reflectivity of the self with respect to its own egological traces: It is the functioning of “reflection in inception”. The dynamic of the living present is experienced as atemporal preaccomplishment of passive and active transitional syntheses are equivalent to selfpresencing. Thus, in each recouping refection, the self of the pre-temporal living present encounters itself as the streaming, self-temporalizing stasis traced in the ego. There is no self-presence which is not presencing and thus self-presencing. In this sense, the self is never a pure self, never a pole without distancing objectivity. The self has itself as an object and as a sense of first transcendence, otherness, such that a pure self requires self-transcendence and a self-tracing in the ego. The notion of a self that constantly establishes a stream of conscious life is relativized to the extent that all direct awareness requires a sense of the other. This sense is the first experiential moment that allows us to grasp the world as transcendence, as different from the experiencing self. The latter is recognized with a sense of otherness within the very composition of the self. The very distancing of the ego from the self and their partial unification opens the sense of the ego as temporal and worldly and yet as an index to the enactment of the flow of the self. This state of awareness is explicated as the always and already pregiven ground of the history of self. The history of the self is located at the level of first distancing and breaking out of the immediate self and establishment of self as other. In other words, the pre-reflective synthesis as traced with the primordial flow of the ego

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and its constitution of the ground for differentiation, is at the same time a constitution of the history of the self. One must note that this history is not yet in time; rather, it is the basic condition that allows subsequent locations of activities and other egos. All this is prior to any objectified mediation: The self is present to itself in a reflective form without becoming objective, without mediation. But still one can point out that this already shows a presence of objectifying distance; the very naming of reflection distorts immediacy and assumes a differential field which is, in principle, intersubjective prior to physical time, but a ground of our “historical” time as a field and depth. The difficulties in the delimitation of the anonymous and atemporal life of awareness come to the fore with respect to time. Since all temporal designations originate with traditional metaphysics and ontology, they not only fail to enlighten, but are most misleading. Hence, it is necessary to exclude various temporal preconceptions. Both, the theoretical-linear and the psychological-polar cyclical constructs of time ought to be avoided, as well as their opposites, eternity and duration. Also, the various spatial and linear metaphors and mythical regions are to be bracketed. What is left consists of such possibilities as “everywhere and nowhere”, fixed once and for all as “all time” or “all temporality,” and “all temporality of the identical being as the universality of its past, present, and future”. Since the term atemporal seems to be most neutral and yet encompassing, it has been used to designate the living present in this writing. It states a position between eternity and time. Atemporality avoids diverse metaphysical prejudgments concerning fixity and the ontological assumptions concerning time. Thus, the relationship between the experience of permanence and flux, or the passive and the active, can best be designated as a transition between them. It could best be seen as permanence in transition. Permanence in transition is indeed more appropriate for the constitution of the ground of the self and ego relationship. It offers an access to the sense of otherness. All the theoretical constructs of apperception, associative pairing, appresentation, and empathy, assume a priori sense of the other. Thus, the origin of the experience of the sense of the other is already given in the atemporal activity of the self. This can be maintained not only on phenomenological, but also on logical, grounds. Since the self is anonymous to itself and its apodictic evidence of itself, then it cannot claim to be more certain of itself than of the sense of another. If the self is an anonymous life, then it cannot have the slightest power of disposal over itself. In this context, it is difficult to say which activities are of the self and which belong to an ego as distancing from the self, as the sense of otherness. Thus, even at the anonymous level, there emerges the first connection between a self and an alter-ego. This emergence is necessitated by the slippage, the stance in transition. The reflective recouping of the self in that

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transition is a direct recognition of itself as other and self. Original selfconstitution of a streaming awareness of the anonymous self is coequal with other constitutions. Thus, the “other functioning” is, at this level of anonymity, not yet distinguishable from self-functioning. The only difference is the sense of self and other, and the first- and second-person designation. These are, of course, dependent on linguistic traditions. Once again, then, if all temporal attributes are inappropriate in any attempt to describe the absolute flow, then it cannot be said of it, as can of an enduring tone, for example, that its phases proceed in succession. Nor can it be said that, if they are not consecutive, then these phases must be simultaneous; the absolute flow is the ground of both simultaneity and succession. It would not even be accurate to say that a certain phase of the flow is actually present and other phases past, because this would be to regard time-constituting phenomena as objectivities constituted in time. The only option for Husserl (1964) is to claim that the flow is in principle, absolute transcendental subjectivity that either scatters itself among the numerous acts, named as egos, or maintains its permanence in transition. Having reached this position, we must be aware that the original “acting” self is still “more” than any enactment, and thus, the latter is one moment of reflection suggesting that while the “ego” might be regarded as a reflection of the self, the latter does not look like the ego or any socially or culturally designated function. The close analysis of the transcendental self is required to ensure that, no matter how scientific constructions of AI discourses and their embodiment in various technologies, the self is always in excess of such inventions. CONCLUSION Having suggested that sense-making as a mode of awareness is “objective” does not imply that such sense is a thing “out there” for everyone to see—a sort of characteristic or a feature of someone or something; rather, it is any composition of awareness which anyone can “inhabit” or “enact” and thus assume a mode of awareness coextensive with the other. To access metaphysics in mathematical form does not mean to look for features of some mind, psyche, or brain physiology, but primarily to learn how to count, add, multiply…and thus “see as the other does”. One, of course, could ask which mathematics—they are various and might depend on some postulate; in short, two plus two is four need not be absolute. Granted, but we are invited to “look at” the different axioms and then learn what conscious activities we must enact in order to “see” such mathematical formations. In turn, having seen such formations, we can turn around and say that some domain, seen in terms of this specific mathematical formation, can be given to anyone. The same holds for other domains, whether they are languages, fairy tales—after all, some historians, such as Heidegger (1971), claim that the world is

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not made of atoms but of stories—we can access them by enacting the mode of awareness composed in a story—just as objectively as we enact the requirements of any mode. No doubt, brain physiologists, psychologists, geneticists, and numerous other scientific disciplines are looking for where such activities reside; but to look for them, we must already know what mode of awareness was and is required to “see” such acts in correlation to what field—all such research is somewhat too late. In the final analysis, what has been shown is that the self cannot be subsumed or surpassed by any AI product. Thus, the crucial question: Can AI be intersubjective and an equivalent to other, which involves the AI recognizing itself as different from another subject? Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Mickunas, A. (2014). Modern West: Two life worlds. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2015). The Project Europe. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2016). Lithuania and Globalization. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. REFERENCES Heidegger, M. (1971). On the way to language. (P. D. Hertz, Trans.). New York: Harper and Row. Husserl, E. (1964). The phenomenology of internal time consciousness. (J. S. Churchill, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kant, E. (1958). Critique of pure reason. (N. Kemp Smith, Trans.). New York: Modern Library. St. Augustine. (2002). The confessions of St. Augustine. (W. Watts, Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. White, S. (2021). Lives of eminent philosophers: An edited translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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CHAPTER 5

The Magic of Reason: Wild Metaphysics Abstract: No doubt, instrumental reason seems to be well-suited to creating progress in all areas, and it is regarded as beneficial to various peoples globally. But a question of its attractiveness, despite all the negative consequences for the environment, rapid transportation that can spread any virus, or displace people due to lost jobs, is not answered. Resultantly, we must open another dimension of awareness which is as ancient as human understanding of the world and the way we relate to it. In this chapter, we address the ways in which magical structures (in the Gebserian sense) pervade modern rational thought and serve as a basis for artificial intelligence. The contemporary importance of the concept of identity is addressed, and its logic is disclosed as it plays a fundamental role in forming the background of the magic of reason, which we suggest is a needed correction to the idea of “instrumental reason”. The magical aspects of modern society and metaphysics are explained with examples taken from Christianity, the imagery popular among the Nazi movement, and even modern sporting events. These concepts are then applied to the current movement towards globalization.

Keywords: Embodiment, Image, Identity, Magic, Mathematization, Metaphysics, Possibility, Reason, Signification, Thing. INTRODUCTION A few decades ago, Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock (1970) was made into a documentary showing interviews with scientists from different disciplines posing a background question: What do you want? Do you want babies whose eye color would be green, while the skin would be a deep tan; do you want enhanced memory—a micro-chip in your brain; do you want to change your mood for the day—a chemical pill will do the trick. The promise: science can fulfill all your wishes. At present, such promises include “biological liberation” or even “biotopia” (biological utopia). The presentation is designed to explicate the “logic” pervading such promises, and it includes a very specific kind of “creativity” and its resultant “economy”. In philosophical terms, this “reason” can be called “metaphysics gone wild” (Volkmann-Schluck, 1965), and in cultural terms, it is a dimension of awareness that is magical (Gebser, 1986). Such metaphysics and its promises are poetic in the sense of a shift from “discovery” to Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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“construction” such as constructing new algorithms as if by magic, out of “nothing”. The poetic visions of “biotopia” or “tech utopia” are premised on created processes which defy any social or psychological awareness. After all, we have designed non-Euclidean spaces—purely “signitively”—which are completely inaccessible to our awareness as Euclidean beings. To speak with the poetic language, we create combinations and sequences of marks or sounds which “signify” a poetic “vision” which, as any other poetic vision, has no place in our Euclidean world, although it is embedded in visual and daily phenomena, e.g., the computer used to put marks on the screen which “signify” the vision of the designers of this computer. But this utopian promise must be constantly delayed, unfulfilled, and for two fundamental reasons: 1. The more control we gain over nature and ourselves, the more promises we fulfill, such as longevity and easement from drudgery, and the more we open possibilities and expectations: If we can live to be 90 years old, why not 120? If 120, why not 200? 2. The more AI technologies we establish, the more we require new technologies to master the previous technologies; this makes matters more complex. We can no longer be interested in mastering nature through our technologies, but in mastering each other, mastering our own technical products through novel technologies, and the latter through still more novel ones. A mechanical heart, a marvel of technology, needs other technologies to make it function, calling for constantly improved mechanisms and their controlling systems. 3. Some researchers are claiming that the modern-global society is moving away from the production of commodities, i.e., transformation of the reified nature into products, but we are increasingly moving to “service” processes, and information markets, requiring very little raw material, but a vast system of data processing, of possibilizing, of the complex management of time. We shall address this time issue which is at the base of the poetics of magical reason. Reason, and above all, scientific reason—the pride of the modern West—is viewed as a solution to all human problems. This philosophical claim calls into question various contentions concerning the overcoming of metaphysics by modern rational thought and scientific practice. The appearance of being ignorant of metaphysics might be a way that metaphysical thought not only dominates human actions arbitrarily, but is also mediated by consciousness structures that modern reason was thought to have abolished. One of these structures belongs to

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the magical world, which also composes modern multi-disciplinary sciences. This chapter will correlate the modern scientific reason to this hidden metaphysics and the modern constitution of will—the latter being a most primordial mode of magical construction and mastery of the world. The correlations will provide access to a specific ontology, metaphysics, and magical awareness. Moreover, modern reason bears within itself post-modern functions appearing in the guise of discursive magic. After all, there is a constant appeal to “discursive power” and the notion that the world is composed of discourses or, as the assumption goes, “the world is not made of atoms but of stories”. Of course, we shall have to correct this statement due to the fact that the modern ontological “story” maintains that the world is made of atoms. No claim is made that the rationale is discarded. Rather, its basic composition becomes transparent as “metaphysics gone wild as creative poetics”. But then, who is the creative poet? ENS REALISIMUS In our daily life, we follow a classical understanding that all things and events—all reality—is present to perception in terms of their limits, and the limits demarcate an essence of a given thing, marking a difference between one type of thing from another. In this sense, an entity, such as a human, appears in the world limited by its essence, and any transgression of it is “unnatural”. One variant of this understanding became a theology, such that the things of this world are dependent on the will of the “creator” and thus could be otherwise if they were willed differently. The will is absolute, while the things are contingent. Subsequently, we shall see the creative magic of this understanding, which allowed theologians to speak of the world as imago Dei: all beings are imbued with specific essences—divine standards; All natural beings reflect the limits imposed by the transcendent creator—an ultimate “subject”. Current “cultural wars” include this “creative subject” under the guise of various divinities, confronting Western immoral secularism. It is important to note that while the medieval theologies claim that the natural world and its divinely imposed laws cannot be transgressed, this claim includes an ambiguity between the creator as a lawgiver and a will. First, the creative act is an act of will, and second, the creator can change the course of nature by all sorts of willful miracles. This lends priority to the will. Such a view will be accepted by modernity at the human level, giving priority to the metaphysics of will over the ontology of reason. It is a unique conception in human history, leading, according to Mickunas (2012), to a self-evaluation of the human as omniscient and omnipotent. We shall analyze the ontological and metaphysical grounds for this claim shortly. Meanwhile, it is obvious with writers such as Bacon (1900) and his conception of knowledge, not as something that is interested in the understanding

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of nature, but in the effort to change it, to control it, to submit it to human power, and to remake it in accordance with human rules. This is a hint that the theological and human primacy of will might coincide. Bacon’s Physical and Metaphysical Works (1904) promises human domination over nature. His moral dictum becomes: Happiness is either the stupidity or death of others. He is even fond of an old saying: No serpent can become a dragon until it devours other serpents. This is, of course, already the Hobbesian (1967) notion of a struggle of all against all, and the emergent social morality bolstered, subsequently, by scientific technology. This morality holds a view that what is unpleasant or unacceptable in the environment can be changed or abolished. Here comes the “pleasure principle” of utilitarian morality. To understand the demands of Bacon, Hobbes, and many others, we must first disclose the appearance of the modern preoccupation of a human “mind” with its own reflection upon itself as a challenge to the classical notion of human essence as a limit. Such a challenge is possible with the transformation of ontology—what are the basic features of reality—and of the metaphysical rules which structure such reality? Given the modern turn toward a reflecting “subject” as the decisive factor with respect to modern ontology, there is also a reflective question: Who is, in the final analysis, this subject? Although there is a continuity between the classical and modern traditions with respect to freedom, modern understanding discards the classical concept of limit, and, thus, an inherent essence that would determine the human to be a specific kind of being. The modern ontology of nature rejects the essential limits of natural beings, and thus rejects a specific ultimate being which creates the world as an imago Dei: all beings are imbued with specific essences—divine standards; all natural beings reflect the limits imposed by the transcendent creator. The process of transformation from the “old-classical” to the “modern” stretches from the late medieval period through the Renaissance. Yet, the issue is basically one: the emancipation from all traditions, from the environment, and building the future without hindrances, either from the past or from previous philosophies turned into theologies. Each generation should be free to repeat the break with the past and to create its own world and itself in accordance with its own willed designs. While initially, there were still debates concerning man’s fragility, contingency, and even classical fallibility, subsequently, such views were pushed aside. Thus, Pico della Mirandola, in his work Oration on the Dignity of Man (1956), proclaims that man is magnum miraculum, and he extends this notion to Theos Anthropos. Pico develops the divinization of man from three basic assumptions:

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1. There is no specific human nature, 2. The human can make of himself what he wills, and 3. The wonder in this world is the human who, in his reflective self-determination, can become divine. As an unconditional source of reason and will, he is identical to the common definition of the divine. The way Pico depicts the creation of humans reveals the modern assumption of complete human freedom and his destiny to control the world. According to Pico’s depiction, the creator told his “new son”: “I have not assigned to you any fixed place, nor have I given you a specific form. I have not given you any talent that would be appropriate to you alone. You will have to determine your place, your form and your talents in accordance with your wishes and your measure. I have created you neither as heavenly nor as earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that you could freely create yourself from your own power, shaping and transforming yourself to a form you wish to acquire. You can reduce yourself to an animal or elevate yourself to a divinity” (p. 63). In principle, the human has no natural form—once seen as the mainstay of human natural limit—and resultantly, he can be a maker of himself and, indeed, of his world. This undefinable human is a modern self-reflection, allowing the constitution of numerous views of the human about himself and his world. It is no wonder that the “post-modern” story tellers—even unbeknownst to themselves—are followers of this modern transformation—a rejection of “essentialisms” and thus categorical limits. No male-female, no high-low, no subject, no author, but every possible self-invention, and as many divinities as one’s discursive stories can produce. Pico’s view places the human in a light that favors the human—even over gods. The latter is fixed by their nature, while human can become anything. Pico stresses persistently that the human can become what he wills. This is the “wonder man/woman” of modernity, forming philosophical anthropology to fit the modern age. Without this anthropology, it would be difficult to understand the development of the autonomous, free being who is a maker of himself and his world. This is the modern revolution. By the eighteenth century, one had an enlightened view and an enlightened man. Condillac (1974) no longer has any questions but that the human creates and exists from himself. One of the initial interpretations of this self-elevation was “naturalistic” in the sense that the human follows his rational self-interest. The world was reinterpreted as a geometric

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machine to be arbitrarily manipulated by human interests. Condorcet (1955) regards the Modern Mind as true, rational and scientific and the classical as mistaken, non-sensical, and illusory. The rejection of the old is not a loss but a gain over errors and illusions. The previous humanity was a youthful stage, while the modern man has reached maturity and needs no longer be in error. It is not even a question of whether current human activities are good or bad, have good or bad consequences, or have value or disvalue; rather, each activity is justifiable if it replaces something old with something new, something “progressive”. This is one of the sources not only of progress, but of the view of truth as historical. Whoever lives today is superior to those in the past because he is more modern and novel, has acquired a greater mastery over the environment and, resultantly, more truth. Not only is the novel truer, but also better—an improvement of humanity through science and technology. As Schabert (1978) points out, the literature of the Scientific Enlightenment is replete with this narcissistic view of the human. According to him, not only Galileo, but Bacon, and even Newton, repeatedly emphasize their conviction that the new filosofia naturale will place man in such a superior position over nature, that the human will have power even over himself—an affirmation of human as self-created, resulting in biotopia. It should be obvious that the human, as the source of rules and power over the environment, has replaced the traditional divinity as Ens Realisimus—the ultimate being as creator—and took its place: Now the human is Ens Realisimus. Of course, the omnipotence to control the world requires that humans acquire a complete knowledge of the mechanisms of reality. Without such knowledge of the “hidden secrets” human dominance could not be complete; without the equivalence of his power with nature’s, the human could not dominate the world effectively. As long as something escapes human control, man is still “inferior” to nature; hence, the task is to uncover all the secrets in order to subsume them under human, technical designs. The new cosmic center, the modern subject, is the sole source of value and beauty. As Buffon (1791) proclaims, the human is capable of transforming the nature brute into nature novelle. As he ponders the world, he suggests that, if we look at the world where no human has yet settled, we find the brute nature to be ugly and dead. It is I, solely I, who makes nature attractive and living. Everything changes only through me, and a new nature comes from the hand of man. Man, the master of all regions, has changed and renewed everything in this world, and his right is founded on nothing other than his right as a conqueror. Nature is the “raw material stuff” and humans can shape it according to their wishes. This ego inflation is a self that has assumed a specific position, requiring more fundamental arguments for its appearance. This will be presented shortly.

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Given this direction, there is an admixture of scientism and freedom. One is free to use science in order to master and control nature; yet, in turn, the human, too, can become part of the natural environment and hence must submit to the controls of sciences. And this is one of the major attitudes emerging with the view of mastering everything through science. Hence, Bacon has no question but that even politics could be reduced to physics. It is instructive that Bacon, one of the fathers of modern scientism, had persistently opposed the then-emerging Political Enlightenment and its rejection of all political absolutisms. In the well-known case of Bacon and Coke, Bacon (2000) supported the absolutism of monarchy and its power against Coke and the “superstitious population”. It is up to the new science to control all human affairs without any need to respect the views of the population. While human is now in charge of the scientific reconstruction of the world, only some of the humans, the ones in the “know” i.e., the scientists, should be the rulers over the masses—of course, for the “benefit” of the masses. All sorts of variants follow from this thesis of elitism where only the self-selected group can run the affairs of the unenlightened “masses”—Marxism, Capitalism, and other ideologies fall into line. Man is no longer in essence “fallible”. This modern elitist subject is best expressed by Heidegger (1962). After all, he rejected the classical concept of categorical “essentialism” in favor of “authenticity” and followed the metaphysics of Ens Realisimus in the form of a self-created German leader: In his inaugural address as the new rector of Freiburg University, his general tone was that it is Hitler and Hitler alone and his laws which are the sole reality of Germany. Within a couple of years, there was a modern, technical marvel of a film, Triumph of the Will, with Hitler as the source of this triumph. The concentration of power in the hands of the human calls for a specific attitude: distance from nature, i.e., making nature into an “object”. One cannot rule over something if one remains a part of what is being ruled. One must be a nonparticipating observer. This reflective distance allows the human to survey all nature indifferently, from no particular vantage point, and thus from no particular place. In this sense, the human has no specific place in the world and must establish a place in accordance with his methods. Pascal (1995), in fact, suggests that the modern man has lost his appropriate place in the order of the cosmos. He becomes the Archimedean point from which the world can be mastered. According to Descartes (1983), Archimedes still conceived of a point from which he could move the earth, yet the only certain point we have is the reflecting and acting ego. Only from the ego can one develop a philosophie practique as a means of domination and power over nature. The reflecting ego is the Archimedean point outside of nature which, as self-certain, can think, will, and remake the world. In principle, this is the birth of a modern, self-creating, divine poet, identical with any traditional self-creating divinity.

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The shift from the power of nature to the power of the human is almost complete. From this external point, nature is determined as a copy of a primordial archetype designed by the human. By the nineteenth century, there was no longer any question concerning the superiority of the human, specifically the human will. As Fichte (1982) announced, nature is the servant of the ego. Everything must correspond to my thought and will, and I will work in accordance with a freely projected aim. This will is ultimate and is not determined by anything higher; it rules the body, by virtue of which the ego constructs the surrounding world. I will to influence the world in accordance with my powers, while the surroundings cannot have any influence over me. I am the Archimedean point from which the world is moved—I am the sole power—omnipotent. As Schelling (1988) announces, if you are a being in itself, then no opposing power can change your condition and limit your freedom. Thus, you must strive to become a being in itself, absolutely free to subordinate every power under your autonomy, and through your freedom, strive to extend your freedom to absolute, unlimited power. The human is Ens Realisimus, while nature becomes an appearance, an actualization process of man. This is the principle of the human as totally self-determining. To be selfdetermining is to be autonomous. This is the result of the conception that the human has no pregiven nature, no essence, and that by establishing an appropriate method, he can be a master over nature. As Marxism would have it, the material nature, and the material man, must be humanized. In the background appears an awareness of time as a future possibility, i.e., as human projects to be fulfilled by human action. All philosophies of the twentieth century are grounded in the reflection from the temporal horizon of projected possibilities. There is no escape from modern philosophy without overcoming this self-projection, comprising a horizon from which we understand our current position and even the way that being is disclosed in its temporality. IDENTITY Euripides (1996) once suggested that the world was once together and that his mother told him that it was rent asunder and brought forth all things. This suggests something more fundamental: the being together, the identity of things prior to their separation. Numerous stories, stemming from all cultures, point to an awareness of such an initial identity of events, including human artistic creations. This is to say, each event can be identical with every other event; every saying, sketch, or dance can be the said, sketched, or danced event. Understanding this process requires a depiction of space, time, and movement that comprises one way of having a world.

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Let us begin with the meaning of poetic sayings that are designed to be identical to what they say, with the very appearance of all things and events. What we call “poetic” is, at one level, associated with the architectonic production of the ways peoples have a world. The poet’s words set up the structure of the world and all events in it; it prescribes the ways that peoples live and die, love and worship. Indeed, they establish the places of all that are sacred and profane, human and divine. It is by now known that initial language was—and continues to be—the power to be identical with, and thus to make, the very events which the language speaks. When the shaman performs a rain dance, the dance is identical to the power of rain. When a tribe performs a ritual of killing a sketch of an animal, the sketch is the very power that is identical to the powers of the animal. And, when the members of the tribe consume the animal, they become the powers of that animal. All creation stories are the same: When a supreme authority pronounces, “Let there be…” things appear. “Let there be stars, lions, humans” and they appear. That is why theologians call the world imago Dei. Everything is an image of the pronouncements of a divinity. And we find such pronouncements in poetic texts which, in most cases, are regarded as “eminent” and to be lived and embodied. While our modern age is enlightened, our ritualistic practices still presume the world of magic identity. The sayings and ritualistic practices have remained intact. Again, numerous examples can be offered. If there is a dry season, our shamans—the priests, ministers, presidents, governors, call the public to pray for rain. The prayer consists of sayings that are identical to the power of rain, or the power of some maker of rain. When a modern shaman, such as a priest, minister, rabbi, or an herbal dispenser, say “Eat of this—this is my body; drink of this—this is my blood” they offer a ritual which says that you will be identical with the body and power of the founder of a cult. For some major personality cults, such as Christianity, not only the sayings but the statues and the paintings are not representations of some entities but are identical to them. People kneel before them, kiss their feet and implore favors; the paintings and the statues are carried in processions and, at times, accused of not making events happen that the population wants and, resultantly, are beaten. Here, the identity of words, whether poetic sayings, such as prayers, or statues and paintings, are identical with the very events. Clearly, this identity is not one of representation, but of the very presence of the thing or event. The statues are the divinities, the saints, and the chanted words are the health, the curse, all the way to the stories of creation: Some “highest” entity spoke, and the things appeared. Word here is the power to make everything happen, and thus to deploy everything in terms of verbal magic. The first being spoke, and the world appeared—let there be a lion, a rabbit, a tree, and stars—and they appeared with their identities of the pronounced word. In all civilizations, this basic notion of verbal power to make is ever-present, and the

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making is “the will” of the one who possesses this making power, all the way to language as the house of being. The identity extends to human individuality. Note how people claim to have an identity on the basis of verbal designations: I am a president, or I am a Christian, I am a socialist, or I am a priest, and so forth. Identity is gained from the very function, event, or entity one enacts, speaks, and literally embodies. Unless we are accused of using too many poetic and aesthetic imageries, this identity is at times enacted in more mundane events, from television advertisements to sports events. Every advertised product is surrounded by pictorial and musical imagery in order to make the product identical to that imagery. If you buy these shoes, you will be a sports star; if you use this cream, you will be Lady Gaga. Nonetheless, the imagery and sound comprise the poetic ritual that gives the simple shoes and the overpriced cream the power to make you identical with such imagery. One has only to consult the literatures of revolutionaries and the storyline such literatures disclose. For example, the Marxian story line of an initial “paradisical” society, without social divisions, that failed and “fell” from its perfection into corruption and evil ways, and history, with its “dialectical laws” is progressing to overcome the evil ways and to return to a “higher” level of society where everything will be mastered by the “scientific discourses” to provide all human needs and to allow humans to be one with the paradisical/utopian, poetic visions of the Marxian story. Entire societies were subjected to this story, full of minor discourses of “making a new man” by the power of scientific socialism. Just look at the literatures and arts emanating from the Marxian storyline: romantic and erotic collective farm poster proclamations, such as Olga Meets Her First Tractor, where a milkmaid on a collective farm is promoted to be a driver of a new socialist tractor—she and the tractor are totally impassioned, and the passion spreads throughout the collective farm and the entire region. Again, look at the statues of the heroes—faces turned toward the glorious future, aglow with joy, revealing the presence of the poetic vision of a “utopian tomorrow”. The same is present in news media, radio programs, theaters and movie houses. On the political left, there is an accepted norm that an entire tradition of labeling and/or even classifying persons, makes them what they are; therefore, we must disallow the use of certain words or labels to designate some groups since such a designation has been detrimental to them. Traditional racial terms are to be abolished; ethnic labeling is to be avoided; gender terms should be changed; thus, there cannot be negroes, Gypsies, midgets, gays, women, men, boys, girls, or even the disabled—all are politically incorrect. If we are to believe post-modern rhetoric, the magic of language is the entire world. “Discursive power” is a phrase to announce that words make things for us the way things are perceived, and the

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clash of civilizations is a clash between different discourses, extending into “cultural wars”. Words are equivalent to divine magic, wherein it is said that things appeared with the speaking of their names—“let it be” as if by magic. We shall see that even practical rationality has not left the alluring magic that promises to make the world over through our poetic, magical formulations and their technical embodiment. Nineteenth century rhetoric promised to transform not only the world, but the human subject into a totally new “future man” present in poetic vision. METAPHYSICS AND ONTOLOGY Although frequently confused, the terms metaphysics and ontology cover different domains. Metaphysics is concerned with the formal, invisible, meaningful, and repeatable, while ontology focuses upon the nature of things of this world. No doubt, at times, the latter is interpreted equally as invisible and is presumed to be metaphysical in character. This character depends on the ways that metaphysics assumes preeminence over ontology, and thus is placed in a position of defining what nature is. There is a protracted Western history of the relationship between them, manifested usually in various dualisms: the formal and the material, the mental and the physical, the subjective and the objective. What is important are the ontological and metaphysical modes of awareness and the relationship between such modes: in short, how we look at “nature” and how we access such nature. To grasp this relationship requires a multi-directional and multi-layered exposition of culturally developed logics. The latter need not be identified with formal systems, but with ways of opening various problems and options which relocate functions and activities in specific combinations and relationships. Classical thought understood things from their limit, and the latter could be deciphered by an awareness of the “essential”—qualitative characteristics of a given thing—e.g., a human. Is the latter a sum of material parts and their properties, or does he possess essential properties as a whole, as a human being? In modern terms, the question appears in a variety of proposals to explain human life and, above all, awareness, in terms of genetics, biology, chemistry, physiology, economy, and even social causality. What then is the most basic issue? The problem of the whole and its parts are concerned with the question of the ontological priority of the whole over the parts, or of the parts over the whole. This question includes the issue of the attributes of the parts and the whole: Does the whole possess attributes of its own as a whole, or do its attributes equal the sum of the attributes of the parts? The modern resolution of this issue comprises the ground of instrumental reason and, indeed, of the technological conception of the environment and—finally—of the human. The classical, basically Aristotelian, notion of a substance as a thing requires that a whole must possess its

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own attributes, beyond those of the attributes of the parts of which the whole is composed. This can be regarded as the natural awareness of things in our environment, each with its own essential characteristics that define the limits of what something is. If this understanding is rejected and the ontology of the primacy of parts is accepted, then we are led to the position that what we see, hear, and touch, including such traditional qualities as being human in distinction to being a tree, is placed into question. Simply stated, if parts in the whole retain their characteristics, then, inevitably, the whole is an aggregate, leading to the conclusion that the perceived qualities of the whole do not belong to the “things themselves” but must be illusions or appearances—mere phenomena. The world is a sum of smallest parts, called by Greeks atomos. Everything is an aggregate of atomic or smallest parts which, in contemporary jargon, are called “the building blocks of the universe”. The perceived characteristics of the whole have no objective basis. They belong to the senses. This means that the ontological constituents of the world are not available to perceptual awareness, and no experienced qualities offer any access to the fundamental reality; the thing in itself is perceptually unknowable. What is perceived directly must have a “place” and this place is called the subject, containing the secondary qualities, while the real objective world was composed of primary particles having quantifiable magnitudes—atoms. At this juncture, there is the birth of the modern subject, a container, so to speak, of appearances that have neither status nor place in “physical reality”. As discussed above, this subject, being outside the newly interpreted reality, is the Ens Realisimus. It has assumed a metaphysical status whose denial, in the modern West, is its affirmation. ATTENTIONAL MODIFICATION In a previous chapter, it was noted that awareness can be modified quite spontaneously: Let us look at mathematics, at language, and then shift to look at the world mathematically or linguistically, and thus change the ways the world appears as if by magic. The appearance excludes other modes of awareness as irrelevant or inadequate. Thus, all the perceptually given things in terms of their essential and qualitatively differentiated categories become redundant. The argument for the latter is premised on the various ambiguities; creatures might appear different, but their essential structure is the same, just as cats and dogs have the same organs, body composition, and so on. Hence, the categorical discourse and its theologically interpreted creator are no longer trustworthy, and the experienced things cannot be its adequate images. We enter a new world. While the resolution of the part-whole controversy led to atomism and the subjectivation of perceptual experience, the question that must be answered is

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concerned with access to the “imperceptible” reality of the atomic parts. There is no other avenue except through the subject, who must posit a method and do so self-consciously and reflectively. Descartes (1961), in his ultimate doubt, expresses this search for a method which is not derivable from the vagaries of perception, but which must be certified by a mind reflecting upon itself. Such a method must exclude perceptual-qualitative imprecisions. These ideas and this methodology are quantitative, i.e., metaphysical in the form of mathematics and, in accordance with modern ontology, must be mental and inevitably subjective: 2 + 2 = 4 are not atomic phenomena to be found under a microscope. Despite its objective “nonexistence” the subjective mind is the site of metaphysical discourse such as mathematics and as a source of all explanations. The method for achieving truth is mathematics. There is nothing in the world, including divinities, that are not submitted to the laws of quantification. With the latter, the motive for mastery and the conquest of nature reaches an almost lyrical stage that allows the human to equate himself with divinity. The world is material, atomistic, and mechanical; it functions in accordance with mathematical laws; hence, if humans can decipher such laws, their knowledge becomes equal to divine knowledge. This must be emphasized: Galileo (1974) and others already make a claim that the world is created mathematically. The ultimate being created the world mathematically, and thus, according to Galileo, there is no qualitative difference between human and divine knowledge. If we know a mathematical rule by which the world is constructed, then our knowledge is equivalent to divine knowledge. As Galileo exclaimed, we are so great, we should envy ourselves. With this equivalence, we acquire another elevation of the human over nature subtended by an intention to master and have power over all. If human knowledge is absolute, then man is in the position of a creator of the world. Here, the divine and human discourse coincide: There is an identity between the modern human as Ens Realisimus and the creator. Meanwhile, the old divinity and its categorical world of essences, including man with his essence, are dead. The result is that whatever is deemed to be real must be established, synthesized, worked over, and shaped by the various activities of the subject. Some aspects of this trend are obvious in Kantian (1958) synthetic thinking, in the Lockean (1948) and even Marxian notion of the labor theory of value, and even in the Hegelian conception of the absolute idea as working itself through history to self-realization (Mickunas, 2012). What, then, is the object of science? An understanding of an answer to this question rests on a specific constitution of the given seen as transcendence and inaccessible to direct intuition. The configuration of the given requires a precise deformation of qualitative awareness, its exclusion, and, resultantly its reduction to the immanence of the subject. This immanence is subsequently designated in

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terms of psychology and physiology. This form of exclusion can be called the Cartesian skepsis. As has been shown in numerous works, the modern revolution designates reality to be a reflection of the metaphysical constructs of quantification. It must be measurable and thus a composite of material or atomic parts, not accessible to perceptual experience. Following this, the mental structure of awareness is borne by a prejudgment that what is beyond doubt is a constitution of a precise reflective metaphysics capable of universal, impartial, and objective access to a specifically constituted reality. It is presumed that the latter consists equally of a universal, impartial, and homogeneous materiality correlative to the precise structure of quantitative metaphysics. For modernity, according to Husserl (1970), mathematical or quantitative procedures are not only methodological, but they are foundational for all theoretical thought. The specific composition of such procedures suggests that no intuitive, that is perceptual, content is correlated to them. They contain structures and rules which can be formulated without any relation to perceptual qualities. Moreover, any concrete function that such structures acquire is not dictated by these structures. In other words, the function is a matter of will, but in such a way that the will is not compelled by such structures; they have no causal force. The implications of such non-necessary connections will be analyzed subsequently. In order for these procedures and structures to acquire any validity, the objective world must be constituted in accordance with these procedures. First, the procedures are indifferent with respect to perceptual intuition; they treat all events as if they were essentially homogeneous. Second, the perceptual domain of intuition, directly present to live awareness, is transcended in favor of metaphysical propositions and the posited homogeneous materiality. We ought not to be misled by the concept of homogeneity. The latter might seem to have geometric associations, and hence be capable of being given in perceptual intuition; the problem revolves around the practice of substituting geometric formations, the translation of the forms into a mathematical set of signs which do not offer any semblance or intuitive comparison to the geometric domain. The geometric understanding would still offer a field posited as matter yet with the mathematization of geometry, and if one were to take the next step toward the formalization of mathematics, one would be able to regard the geometric as quanta, as numerical points, sums, and divisions, arranged in accordance with formal structures. Irrespective of the levels of the quantitative-formal constitution, there is posited only one fundamental-transcendent reality. The problem of the constitutive processes, both of metaphysical and the transcendent domains, leads to a particular contradiction which cannot be solved within the limits of the metaphysical postulations. Quantitative metaphysics is deemed to be universal,

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all-inclusive, and in a position to explicate all phenomena “objectively”. Thus, the subject who calculates, and formalizes, must be either subsumed under this metaphysic, or be the condition for the constitution of this metaphysic. If the former assumption is accepted, then metaphysics must be granted a position of supremacy over the subject, i.e., be objective; this metaphysic permits only one kind of “reality”: homogeneous matter. Yet, this metaphysic is not matter but ideality and indeed a necessary ideality. If the latter is taken for granted, then the ideality of metaphysics has no “place” in the subject—if the subject is interpreted as part of the contingent physical world and thus cannot be a basis for the metaphysical, mathematical, and formal necessities. All kinds of disciplines, from physiology to genetics, attempt to make the subject contingent. In either case, the metaphysical-quantitative composition is something other than the posited transcendent reality, and the latter is not something given to perception. The morphologically constituted and directly given world, a world of shapes, pathways, axes for practical activity, multi-leveled interconnections, is regarded as a complex phenomenon that is not identical to the strict homogeneous reality. This non-identity precludes the possibility of deriving the metaphysical formalisms from the phenomenal morphological composition of what Husserl (1970) called “the lived world”. As a result, the former is neither correlative to the intuited world of morphologically composed things and their interconnections, inclusive of the “real” subject, nor are they derivable from the posited homogeneous world. On these terms, the transcendent world, the world of theoretical objectivity, is not given and cannot be a source of mathematically constructed theoretical-methodological compositions. The world of various shapes and forms is given to perception, and yet, neither is it a source for the understanding of the transcendent homogeneous world, and neither can it account for the metaphysics and method of the modern sciences. And yet, the metaphysical composition is regarded as given, and indeed with full evidential necessity. What kind of necessity? Purely quantitative and formal constructs have their own rules and procedures, whereas the morphological and material sides are completely contingent and arbitrary. With respect to the rules of the formal domain, the morphological and intuitive side of shapes, sizes, and relationships, is arbitrarily selectable and changeable. This is one of the more fundamental and initial designations of the formal as necessary and the perceptual and material as arbitrary. This suggests that the connection between them is not direct, not immediate nor given, but must be intended by an entirely different act. While it is possible to posit perceptual acts, and even motives, that can constitute this connection, such as interest, they are excluded a priori. There must be, therefore, a specific act that has to be deciphered in its own right. This act is concerned with the conjunction of two radically distinct domains: the theoretical-methodological and the transcendent. To repeat, the former is regarded as necessary and given,

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while the latter is regarded as transcendent, material, and contingent, although not given. FORMAL REGION As already noted, the theoretical-methodological, or termed otherwise, the quantitative-formal, is not within the domains of the contingent world, posited as transcendent. It is not found even in the directly intuited morphological composition of the lived world. It is regarded as different from these domains. They belong to the immanence of the subject. The immanence assumes an ambiguous status: It is the container of the theoretical-methodological formal necessities, and yet it is a factually contingent substance. This contingency is expressed in two ways: First, the formal composition must be found in the subject without absolute necessity; there might be different formal systems. Second, if there can be other systems, they are most likely constructs. In this sense, the mathematical, formal domain swings in the ambiguity between necessity and will, rules and choice. The importance of this “indecision” consists precisely in the option to either regard the formal as a priori given or as a construct of the subject. Various expressions are offered at the dawn of the modern age to indicate the shift toward the latter option. The notion of nature as created in accordance with mathematical laws comprises one such expression. When this notion is coupled with the view that even the mathematical-formal domain is subject to a will, then the result is obvious: The emphasis is on the primacy of the creative construction of the formal systems. They, too, are chosen, although they cannot be regarded as contingent in the sense of the contingency of the material world. Their emergence requires unique intentions that must be regarded as capable of formal construction and of arbitrary signification. Moreover, such intentionality must include the possibility of extending and proliferating formal compositions and divisions at will, and of disregarding the perceptual, intuitive content. While there are many complexities in the constitution of the quantitative-formal modes of theoreticalmethodological “thought” in principle, this thought does not offer any possibility of correspondence between theoretical-methodological compositions and the perceptual world of shapes and structures. The formal can still be regarded as “necessary” and the selected expressive material as contingent (although with the previously mentioned ambiguity), yet what leads the process is the possibility of increased formalization of propositions, resulting in the concept of formal systems which can be differentiated into formal sub-systems and/or splitting up of systems into distinct formal systems. To emphasize again: what is at issue at this level is the choice of formal and quantitative rules over qualitative categorical distinctions. Since both are by modern definition subjective, then there is no inherent criterion as to why one

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would be more objective than the other. We must look for an account within the very composition of those invented rules. First, it can be argued that it is impossible to gain any advantage over the environment on the grounds of categorical, qualitative distinctions. Second, it is also the case that formal and quantitative rules comprise their own structures and techniques for transforming the material environment. This way, the choice of formal quantitative rules already implies the choice of instrumentality and the possibility for application. Thus, modern science, whose theories and methods are framed within formal and quantitative structures, is, in principle, technical. This is the reason why any scientific discipline that cannot be technically tested or practical is not regarded to be scientific. In principle, if one knows how to define a circle mathematically, one knows how to make it. We have reached the point where the construction of methods that have no other criteria apart from being technical requires the process of the application of quantifiable methods. While we have such methods, they must be connected to the material homogenous world. This connection is provided by various theories, yet all theories assume body activity as a mediation through which scientific methods are applied. At this level is born a modern human as a tool maker, as homo laborans, as practical man, including the primacy of pragmatism. Since the homogeneous world has no value, and values are subjective, then any entity in the environment assumes value because we do something with it—an activity accepted both by capitalists and communists under the common rubric: “labor theory of value”. This is to say, body becomes a site which must be constituted in accordance with the abilities required of scientific application. Such bodies must slowly become technical, productive, efficient, rule-bound, and perhaps fragmented into diverse functions. At the outset, we may note that the medium as body activity takes precedence over body as a simple physiological object. The latter will be judged on the basis of his abilities or inabilities to perform technical functions. The next step is a question which is concerned with the “realization” of the reflectively calculated possibilities. How do these quantitative, ideal manifolds become thing-like, real—metaphysical visions made into visible reality? Precisely when the transcendent, mathematical rules can be used for the possibility of the production of the calculated entity. As mentioned, mathematical procedures are at base technical in so far as they contain within themselves the rules of their own construction and, when applied, of the “production” of quantitatively conceived reality. The real objects lend themselves to human calculations and manipulations; by calculating and arranging material processes, the human is in a position to calculate and predict the results of such processes. Obviously, this procedure requires human physical intervention in a reified nature. The quantified

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arrangements of “matter” allow for the quantitative calculation of “material” results. We should be reminded of the fact that by the eighteenth century, reality was no longer defined in terms of its being, but in accordance with “the conditions for the possibility of being”. What possible, calculated material conditions do we establish, and what calculated results we achieve. Reality is not what one experiences, but a calculative possibility of material conditions and predictable results. In turn, if we project possible results, calculate their material aggregation, then we can calculate and set up the material conditions and achieve the calculated results. What leads the process is the possibility of increased inventions of novel, mathematical-formal systems, new algorithms, which can be differentiated into formal sub-systems, and of splitting up of systems into distinct “scientific disciplines”. Thus, we have physics, macro- and micro-physics, physical chemistry, biology, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, genetic biology, psychology, psycho-genetics, mechanical genetics, social genetics, psychochemistry, behavioral chemistry, micro-chemistry, and on, and on, each in a position to define its mathematical domain and to make events happen by producing the required conditions. In other words, in modern understanding, there is inevitable multi-discursivity wherein all events are defined in numerous ways and realized as visible technological reality—be they cars, computers, smartphones or spaceships. We even speak of “possible worlds”. POSSIBILITY There is hardly any need to mention the irrelevant proclamations that science is value-free. This claim might look good as an adornment to give science an innocent look and therefore allow the modern and, above all, the contemporary “philosophers” to defer all truth claims to science, i.e., to be handmaidens to scientific truths. At a more fundamental level, the constructed theories and methods point to a different ground: The construction of formulas in terms of metaphysical methods is a valuation for projected possibilities; one can construct a variety of mathematical theories and methods, neither of which point to anything. Hence, the criterion for choosing one over others is its value for what it can make. There is no escape from the value language, ranging from the value of science to the value of the everyday environment. The glittering shopping malls have nothing else to sell but values: old and new values for sale, reduced values and improved values, family values and cultural values, religious values and secular values, moral and political values—one cannot find any restful region in the environment without it becoming designated as a value. And everything can be made into anything. All parts of the world can replace any other part. Liquid can become as hard as steel, plastic can become a heart, metal can become a replacement for bone, a computer chip implanted in the brain can become intelligence, a chemical pill can become love.

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On the assumption that we can reflectively establish discourses that define “reality” and realize these discourses through human physical activity, the selection of which discourses we shall “apply” to intervene into the material world, requires the function of will. Will is the projective intentionality that swings between the metaphysical quantitative and ontological atomism. In technological thought, a will is required, not as a function, which accounts for choices among “realities” but more fundamentally for: 1. Projection of future empty purposes as possible results; 2. Selection or invention of required calculations, which can yield the projected result; 3. Selection of the materials and their combinations to yield the result and the selection of human physical activities as part of the material conditions to fulfill the results. By now, it is obvious that the will’s intentions are creations of possibilities that nature, left to itself, could never “invent”. It must be equally obvious that the variety of philosophies, including the notion of awareness as a temporal horizon—or we are always projected ahead of ourselves, and even a future possibility of our “non-being”—are minor wrinkles in the grand sweep of modern Western reflection from its future horizon and its metaphysics of the will to become a creator of the world. The various great thinkers of the twentieth century had one thing in common: “future possibilities”. With Sartre (1956), every judgment we make depends on “projected possibilities” while for Heidegger (1962), the human is the place where the future possibilities of the being of things are manifested, or for Husserl and Fink, (see Bruzina, 2004) possibility as a cosmic horizon of horizons—and all of them are founded on the modern Ens Realisimus as the will who projects such future possibilities. There is not a single human public and scientific activity which is not founded on possible “projects”. Even artists “project” their concepts and feelings on canvas, or in their music, or theatrics on an otherwise bleak material environment. Any project presupposes, as its condition, the distinction between the real and the temporally possible or, as Luhmann (1982) terms it, the modalized. Thus, a particular social history does not vary only in terms of the presently given and selected facts, but also in terms of constitutive conditions of selectivity based on possibilities which are temporal. The insight into the selectivity of facts in any social process is a key to the constitution of the relationship between social facts, their structures, and the temporal horizons or possibilities. Thus, the fundamental condition for possibility and for the selectivity of facts within a social process is temporality. This means that the condition for the possibility of a social system as

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a process is a modal generalization constituting the temporal horizons—in both temporal directions—of such a system. The consequence of such a modalized conception is that all selectivity and all delimitation of facts are based on a system’s structure, conditioning, in its turn, the horizon of possibilities out of which events are selected. This selectivity is a process of reflexivity in that it allows a distance from the present and its evaluation in terms of the various possibilities of the future. As a condition for the possibility of reflexivity, the temporal horizon offers a distance from the immersion into facts and opens the various options in terms of which the present state of affairs could be evaluated. Yet, it must be stressed that the options are not absolutely open. The social system itself may be used to reflect upon the horizon of possibilities and indicate the limitation of such a horizon: Here emerge the socially possible and the socially impossible. It could be maintained, according to Luhmann (1982), that more complicated social systems require more extensive, abstract, and more differentiated temporal horizons for reflexivity than the simpler systems. They reach a higher worldcomplexity, richer with options of norms and valuations, which in their stead, constitute a basis for a more refined selectivity of living and acting. Such reflexivity from a horizon enables the synchronization of inner-social histories of systems which are divergent (e.g., moral systems) with systems of economic production, education, and others. Yet, it must be said that complexity is a multidimensional quality of a system which, too, is constantly systematized with shifting temporal possibilities. At the outset, it must be obvious that it is too simplistic to assume a one-dimensional, linear advancement of relationships between the complexity of social system and temporal horizon. The growth of more complex social systems does not have a more complex history; rather, on the basis of the complexity, they neutralize history, illuminate it by differentiated selectivity, and in many cases, reject its lessons. When history becomes relevant in more complex societies, it becomes, at the same time, contingent; it becomes memory and forgetfulness, detailed interest and indifferent neglect of a conquered past; all these coexisting possibilities comprise the situation which correlates to the complexity of the changing system. The temporal conditions for reflexivity are quite complex, although they can be managed by higher levels of reflexive inclusion. By this, Luhmann (1982) means that modalized aspects can be again modalized under more inclusive possibilities and wider horizons. One can discuss the possibilities of reality, and the reality of possibilities, or even the possibility of possibilities, necessities, contingencies, and so on. The complexity of the temporal condition of reflexivity can be characterized in the following way: There can be a present future which must be

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distinguished from the future present even if only on the grounds that the present future contains more possibilities than is possible for future presents to become reality. One must also distinguish between future presents, present presents, and past presents, between the present of the past as history and the past present. If one begins with the two temporal horizons of the present, namely past and future, which in each point can be seen as presents with their own pasts and futures with further possibilities of reiteration, then one begins to constitute the conditions for the possibility of all possible processes of reflexivity. This suggests that the indefinite modalizations of time horizons can be seen as temporal reflexivities in time. The immediate future can be reflected by a more remote future, and both, in turn, by a still more remote and perhaps encompassing future, yielding the structure for the reflexivity of possibilities in possibilities. The judgment of current events, environment, or facts is a judgment from a horizon of time and its possibilities, requiring no hierarchal arrayment either of values or of norms. This free-ranging reflection of the time in time and possibilities in possibilities is the condition upon which all reflexive processes are based. For our purposes, it is not necessary to deal with further complexities of Luhmann’s (1982) theory of time reflexivity as a condition for social reflexivity, which may be institutionalized to allow the complexity and management of an indefinite multiplicity of events. Suffice it to say that such reflexivity allows for the possibility of projects within projects of various metaphysical constructs and their realization. Central to this reflective logic of temporal possibilities are the constantly constructed formal means, embodied in various technologies. The latter allows for an increased ability to offer more possibilities in possibilities, but above all, to calculate what conditions are required for achieving the latest projects such that the latter will also become means for more complex projects as possibilities and their embodiment, ending up where AI can become the calculating means of possibilities. Any huge project, such as a space telescope (equally an AI) will require five years to complete, but the possibility of this telescope requires a realization of various projects, whether production of computing power, or “seeing” and “scanning” instruments, and these will reflect the possibilities of a novel means of production of energy conductivity, and so forth. This temporal process of reflection of temporal possibilities in temporal possibilities overlaps with countless projects, from electronic means in every area, from medical technology to video games, and also to research means in other areas, such as chemistry, biology, economy, education, and the military. In this sense, the above-mentioned “biotopia” is a construct of algorithms which can calculate indefinite varieties of materials, from physical through chemical, and genetic, to micro-viruses, to construct living humans in a way that any natural combination could not achieve.

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It would be redundant to explain the above process in terms of “needs” since the latter is part and parcel of the possibilizing procedures and become at the same time needs and fulfillment. We can make it, therefore we want it, and since we wanted it, therefore, we made it. We can make clones, and therefore we want them, and we want them, therefore, we make them. This suggests that the process of increased contingency and arbitrariness as sources of power comprises a selfreferential domain. There are no restrictions for the “search for truth”. After all, such a search has lost any boundary and any distinction between physical knowledge and its metaphysical construct. Even in social understanding, the relationship between the formal and material processes are determined by “science” i.e., the very self-articulation of methods and the production of material truths. One, thus, cannot find any trans-scientific criteria to check this process. And, no domain has a built-in reason to stop the proliferation of its own form of knowledge and praxis. There are no physical reasons to cease making more physical experiments and refinements, no economic reasons to stop the economic “growth” no biological reasons to stop remolding the living processes along new combinations, no genetic reasons not to produce “improved” cucumbers, and so forth. Any limitation would be regarded as an infringement on the autonomy of research. Any science which would proclaim that it has become complete would cease to be a science in the context depicted above. The increased submission of events under human controls to yield more technical means to increase power for increasing controls comprises the modern notion of progress. Progress does not mean an acquisition of greater wisdom, but an incrementation of technological-material means to yield projected material results; the latter can also become a technological means or a quantity of material force to yield further results, and so on. The shaping of matter into new technologies opens a demand for other technologies and discoveries. If a technological means makes material discoveries possible, the new discoveries will call for their technological implementation to suit their needs ad infinitum. No achieved technical stage is adequate; every stage calls for new and improved technologies to yield new intrusions into the material domain to yield new results. What is peculiar about progress is that it has no “subject” which would progress. Its aim and its subject are itself, and thus it is self-referential. Progress is its own destiny. When we build something, such as a house, we have a purpose which tells us when the progress of building is achieved. In brief, if we live in terms of purposes, we can understand progress in its limitation by reaching the purpose. But if we raise the question concerning the purpose of the modern notion of progress, we shall find a quandary. As we have discussed above, we set possible future results as an empty purpose to be fulfilled by material constructs. Once this purpose is achieved, it becomes a means for other possible purposes, and once they are achieved, they, too, become means for other purposes—without any end.

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All that is left is progress for the sake of progress—the purpose of progress is progress. Modern Western metaphysics and ontology establish the well-known conception of reason: instrumental. It is not designed to present the world, but to form metaphysical visions as representations which become reality. Progress for the sake of progress includes us; we can live longer and better lives, which will be constantly improved and extended, led by the poetic vision that, given an infinite temporal horizon of possible constructs for improvement of improvements, we shall live forever. CONCLUSION No doubt, numerous thinkers of this century, specifically in hermeneutics, semiotics, and linguistic analysis, have rightly argued in favor of the priority of language and its power to designate. The task of this chapter was to explicate the conditions for the possibility of such views. The conditions are neither epistemic nor ontological, but more fundamentally based on a metaphysical subject and its ability to create magical means—discourses—which make the world, whether in categorical, or, above all, mathematical ways. Here, we encountered the production of our environment on the basis of metaphysical projects, forming a poetic vision of what the world ought to be, and what it ought to be is also a value embodied in the empirical products of our environment. All the modern implements we use, from trains and planes to AI automobiles, running on embodied algorithms, are metaphysical visions constructed by the modern subject, the Ens Realisimus, which has become global. Thus, all other civilizations take for granted that their discourses are constructs, which “make” their worlds as if by magic into what they are. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Mickunas, A. (2014). Modern West: Two life worlds. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2015). The Project Europe. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2016). Lithuania and globalization. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. REFERENCES Bacon, F. (1900). The advancement of learning. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bacon, F. (1904). The physical and metaphysical works of Lord Bacon including The advancement of learning and Novum organum. London: G. Bell and Sons. Bacon, F. (2000). The essays or counsels, civil and moral. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Bruzina, R. (2004). Edmund Husserl & Eugen Fink: Beginnings and ends of phenomenology. New Haven: Yale University Press. [http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300092097.001.0001] Buffon, G-L.L. (1791). Natural history, general and particular. (W. Smellie, Trans.). London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell. Condillac, E.B. (1974). Sketch for historical picture of the progress of the human mind. (J. H. Stam, Trans.). New York: AMS Press. Condorcet, J.A. (1955). Sketch for historical picture of the progress of the human mind (J. Barraclough, (Trans.). New York: Noonday Press. Descartes, R. (1961). Essential works of Descartes. (L. Bair, Trans.). New York: Bantam Books. Descartes, R. (1983). Principles of philosophy. (V. R. Miller & R. P. Miller, Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Euripides, (1996). The Bacchae. (N. Rudall, Trans.). Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. Fichte, J.G. (1982). Science of knowledge. (P. Heath & J. Lachs, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Galileo, G. (1974). Two new sciences: Including Centers of Gravity and Force of Percussion. (S. Drake, Trans.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Gebser, J. (1986). The ever-present origin. (N. Barstad & A. Mickunas, Trans.). Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper. Hobbes, T. (1967). Leviathan. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. (D. Carr, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Kant, E. (1958). Critique of pure reason. (N. Kemp Smith, Trans.). New York: Modern Library. Luhmann, N. (1982). The differentiation of society. New York: Columbia University Press. [http://dx.doi.org/10.7312/luhm90862] Mickunas, A. (2012). The divine complex and free thinking. New York: Hampton Press. Pascal, B. (1995). Pensées and other writings. (L. Honor, Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pico della Mirandola, G. (1956). Oration on the dignity of man. (R. Caponigri, Trans.). Chicago: Gateway Editions. Sartre, J-P. (1956). Being and nothingness. (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). New York: Philosophical Library. Schabert, T. (1978). Gewalt und Humanitaet. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber. Schelling, F.W.J. (1988). Ideas for a philosophy of nature as introduction to the study of this science. (P. Heath, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. New York: Random House. Volkmann-Schluck, K.H. (1965). Einfuehrung in das philosophische Denken. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann.

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CHAPTER 6

Machine Logic and Values as a Self-Generating System Abstract: Scientific practice, both in the broad sense and in the specific case of computer science, cannot demonstrate how the constituted logic of a given consistent system translates into an empirically constructed system without the assumption of other conditions which may also be logically constituted through modes of praxis that are already technically available. Computer science is premised on a technically laden life-world and, indeed, on an interpretation of the entire environment as accessible to technical management. In this sense, there is a pre-understanding that allows a given population to regard both science and computer science as “value free”. Yet, it is precisely the technologically interpreted environment that is imbedded in valuations. In this chapter, we explicate: (a) the principles that establish scientific objectivity on the basis of the objectivity of logics; (b) how those logics are connected to the resources of the environment; (c) how the environment itself is technical and valuative; and (d) how a particular modern value context pervades the technical, logical, and scientific enterprises.

Keywords: Information, Life-world, Learning, Machine Logic, Network, Perception, Space, Time, Understanding. INTRODUCTION Several questions emerge in the modern/post-modern world. For instance, within the contexts of codes and network society, do questions of identity and history make any sense? What effects does a network society have on the culture of democracy? How dramatically will communication be affected in light of this information? What is the effect and function of the globalized transparency of communication (that is, e-commerce)? In order to address these questions, we must address the scientific thought of modernity. Our approach is decidedly based on contemporary phenomenological thinking, which is interested in the “necessary condition” of the formulation of computer science and the condition for the possibility of its efficacy. Here our argument becomes quite obvious: Computer systems are embodied metaphysics of signification and hence have the power to increase the complexity Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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and the efficiency of both signitive creations and of their applications for the transformation of the so-called physical environment. Thus, talk of the new generation of “more powerful computers” is not idle speculation, but it must be taken literally. As signitive constructs, these computers are in a position to rearticulate and, through application, to transform events in a given life-world, and, in many cases, to rearticulate the life-world itself. Indeed, they are part of the events that they transform—to the extent that they are interconnected laterally with all other events, from economic, through political, to cultural. They are the very fabric of the current “culture of information” and information, in principle, is signification. Throughout the course of the twentieth century, scientific thought was in a quandary concerning its own basis: Science, with its theories and methods, wanted to be logical, precise and rational; on the other hand, it also wanted to make ontological claims concerning the structure of the world. The latter has been deemed to be physical-empirical. Indeed, the latter is regarded as the sole possessor of the name “reality” and it is the “objectivity” on which everything rests, by which everything must be explained, and from which all other modes of presence are derived. All else is subjective and must be excluded from scientific consideration. Moreover, science is value-free, and any valuation belongs to the subjective realm. It is our contention in this chapter that the case is more complex, to the extent that science—above all computer science—assumes the objectivity of something that is not derivable from any empirical facts. The first condition of science—being logical—is not accessible from any empirical position; second, the notion that science—and indeed logic—is value-free is equally mistaken, given that there are various logical and self-consistent systems. The selectivity of one system over another is a matter of valuation—and above all, social valuation. Social valuation belongs to a life-world that consists of intersections and overlappings of events; each points one to the other in complex ways, and each bears various social meanings (Greimas, 1987). In this context, science is one such set of meanings that must be located in its function in terms of its social, practical, cultural, and technical significance. This suggests that even technical inventions are not just entities, but that they comprise a complex system of lifeworld interconnections, such as values, economy, productivity, education, politics, and even ideologies (Mickunas & Pilotta, 1998). This, of course, will have to be shown in a detailed and precise manner. It is also the case that the current life-world is interlaced by multiple scientific and technical discourses and practices. One cannot buy a cereal box without being exposed to multiple languages and quantities of biochemical, nutritional, and caloric codes, implicating productive, normative, and even legalistic interconnections as aspects of a life-world. The scientific and technical discourses

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and practices do not overlay some primordial life-world, but rather they constitute our understanding of the way our world and we are, live, and relate. Mass media are equally filled with reports of scientific studies and reports of inventions and progress, and even of protests against some scientific inventions and technical innovations—all understood as aspects of our life-world. LOGIC AND FACT In this section, we will address the question of scientific objectivity in terms of the understanding of facts as contingent. “Contingency” means that every given factual state of affairs could be other than it is. States of affairs have no necessity, yet science is designed to connect empirical facts by necessary rules. In principle, even if those rules are distributive, facts are read as statistically probable; the very logic of probability is necessary. This implies that there is an essential difference between the scientific rules of probabilities as necessary and the calculated empirical facts as contingent. The former cannot be derived from the latter. Moreover, any scientist, despite the claim that empirical objectivity is the only source of truth, will also demand respect for the objectivity of scientific formal rules and logic as necessary and objective. This means that science accepts logic to be another domain of objectivity—without being able to account for it on the grounds of the presumed empirical reality (Husserl, 1973). First Thesis To avoid other confusion, we add other variations of the difference between logic and fact. According to methodological logicians, such as Thomas Seebohm (1962), a Kantian scholar, there are several theses regarding the explanation of logic. Psychologists argued that, since empirical (that is, physical) facts are the only reliable source of knowledge, everything else is subjective and psychological. In this sense, the theory proposed is still maintained. Since logic is not an empirical objective fact, then it must be a subjective fact. In turn, since psychology claims to be the science of subjective facts, it also claims that logic can be understood psychologically. Logical formulations of science can be derived from psychological facts. Obviously, this is a contradiction since every psychological fact, as empirical, is radically contingent and cannot imply any necessary rules or laws. Moreover, if psychology were the basis of logic, it would then be the basis of all sciences. In this sense, even logically framed laws of physics would be derivable from psychological facts (Seebohm, 1962). We are certain that no physicist will grant such an absurd theory. Other sciences, such as sociology, have made claims that all theories, including logically framed theories, are social constructs. They can be explained by social interests (Habermas, 1971), whether such interests are economic or power-

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oriented, and therefore, the analysis of social conditions would imply scientific theories and their logic. This is a variant of the psychological theory to the extent that, instead of deriving science from individual psychological facts, we presume to derive science from collective social facts. As such, we are simply postponing the issue without resolving it. Moreover, a description of social facts as collective activities and interests would not imply the logic of social sciences. The latter, as a science, will already presume to be able to arrange social facts in the framework of scientific rules. The rules will not respect the differences between social facts, psychological facts, or physical facts. All would be regarded as universal and necessary. Second Thesis Another thesis that is currently in vogue is one of evolutionism. This thesis assumes various forms, such as historicism, pedagogy, and cumulative effect, all claiming that, while our current scientific knowledge is vast, it was slowly accumulated through historical learning transmission, and ultimately through the pressures and needs of life. In one sense, what we know now is what we have learned from our predecessors, adding, in turn, our own empirical experience, thus providing a continuous process and evolution of knowledge. We do not doubt that cumulative empirical experience is transmitted from generation to generation, providing subsequent generations with a more complex understanding of themselves and their environments. However, such an accumulation is equally contingent and does not imply the logic of science. The point is that empirical experiences, no matter how vast, can go on in their accumulation without ever leading to the formulation of logical rules. We would even argue that the notion of cumulative empirical experience is contingent, threatening the very notion of accumulation. After all, contingent experiences of contingent facts cannot lead to necessary accumulation. The environment changes, and we change. That which was relevant yesterday may no longer be relevant or true today. In this sense, the constitution of scientific logic plays its role at another level and requires another mode of access besides the empirical. This means that the constitution of the logical domain does not in any way suggest a connection to the presumed empirical facts. There is no resemblance between these two domains. Contingent empirical facts cannot be an imitation of necessary logical rules (Mickunas & Pilotta, 1998). Given the problematics of the current explanations of logic—from psychology through the accumulation of factual experience, we can argue that there is a difference between the two main domains of objectivity, such that every explanation will presuppose these two domains. In this sense, the scientific domain becomes translated into technology and finally into computers as one of

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pure signification—with its own rules and implications that, in many cases, defy our own abilities to master such rules. At least for the modern age, this means that sciences of all types are subject to this signitive domain. If one were simply to consider the constitution of various formalized geometries, one would become convinced that the psycho-physiological beings that we are could not possibly access such geometries. This requires another epistemic layer, one that is correlated to formalized systems whose parameters are vectors of signification (Husserl, 1973). FORMALIZATION There are theoretical notions that something is either given as a fact or as a proposition that is derived from a number of facts—a general proposition. Assuming that the move from facts to general propositions is even possible, such a move will not account for our disregard of the meaning of general propositions and their use in the context of formal demonstrations. The general propositions would turn out to be inadequate to demonstrate formal conditions. Hence, our argument is that there is no connection between generalization and formalization. Formal operations employ rules that need not respect the truth or falsity of general propositions. In this sense, formalization is a signitive process that correlates to rules, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in arithmetic, or the rules of implication, inference, and deduction in logic. These rules do not reflect anything that is available in generalized propositions. Thus, we can operate by excluding both empirical facts and the general propositions derived from them, constructing, in turn, empirical facts based on formal requirements. In brief, we can formulate mathematical rules and use any empirical fact to instantiate such rules. Moreover, using rules, we can transform empirical facts through our practical activities in a way that the facts will be directly constructed on the basis of the formal rules. This is one level of the rise of material technology. In principle, technology is, at this level, a transformation of the environmental givens in terms of formal rules. Factual objectivity, transformed in this way, is a system of formal signitive relationships. The modern conception of the environment is that it is the sum of material parts that are qualitatively and essentially indifferent. Such materiality can then be used as a condition for any possible reconstruction on the grounds of formal systems. It is no wonder that there were various modern metaphysical systems, including Hegel’s idealism and the Marxian telos, which constantly promised to change the material world in terms of ideal requirements. Our point is simpler than such grand metaphysical projects because we take for granted what modern science and logic have taken as a given: Formal systems and the homogenous material world, when applied, will construct the material world in

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accordance with the formal requirements (Mickunas, 1983). But in principle, the formal systems already have a subtext: They themselves are technologies for the reconstruction of the material environment. Therefore, if one knows the formal rules of the circle, one knows how to make a circle. If one knows, in principle, the formal rules of how to make a new human being, one should be able to construct the various genetic, psychological, and social conditions to yield this new human being. What we are pointing to is that, despite scientific claims of a basis on empirical facts, the practice of science, which assumes the objectivity of formal systems as a condition for doing science, is a process of application that treats the formal sciences as techniques that require the reconstruction of the environment in the very manner that the formal techniques imply (Schabert, 1978). While we grant the technical side of formal systems, which has also been granted by modern sciences, we have not yet shown the connections between these formal systems and the material facts. Science takes this connection for granted—without explicating the connection between the formal systems which science uses and the facts from which the formal systems cannot be derived. Yet, one constantly talks about applying sciences to reality in order to test whether the application is warranted or not. In a superficial way, this is known as testing the hypothesis. Obviously, testing the hypothesis does not simply mean opening one’s eyes and looking, but rather using highly sophisticated technical means. The latter is already constructed on the basis of formal requirements as a mediation between the so-called physical material world and the logic of science. In this sense, the very testing of a hypothesis presupposes the background of formal systems that are embedded in material techniques. Regardless of how far we extend the notion of scientific testing, we should have to include the technological background as a condition both for the testing of hypotheses and as one for a scientific praxis that must translate every formal requirement into material conditions. Perhaps to our surprise—although it may not be surprising at all—there emerge phenomena that are self-generating and which are beyond anyone’s control: 1. Formal systems which have no cause and no empirical base, and which disregard any empirical generalization, and, therefore, can be used at will; 2. The empirical environment is reduced to an indifferent material substance that does not imply any qualitative differences (Nietzsche, 1968); 3. Any qualitative generalizations do not imply the formal systems; and 4. The view of the formal systems as hypotheses to be tested in the factual world implies that the factual world will have to be drawn into the signitive process of

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the formal systems. Yet, as we said before, this is technology—the formal systems are reified into instrumentalities. This logic of “self-generating” formal systems that are directly translated into material implements implies that even the material facts are co-extensive with the signitive domain of formal constructions (Jonas, 1981). Formal constructions that have no empirical ground and therefore are not being caused by any psychological, social, evolutionary, or metaphysical components, may be regarded as a self-constituted, and, therefore, as autonomous processes. In signitive processes, a specific formal condition will imply its consequences irrespective of any causal requirements. Very low causal conditions will not correspond to the variation of formal conditions, and conversely, formal-signitive implications are not of the same order as causal connections. The transformation of materiality into signitive conditions implies that the social environment is a life-world structure, consisting of a system of multiple implications. In a limited sense, all social factual phenomena are not merely factual, but already signitive. In this sense, we live in a social, historical, scientific, and technical world of multiple signitive vectors, constituting a lifeworld. At this juncture, we no longer have to be worried about the mind-body problem, where signification is somehow subjective, and what is not signitive is objective. The very practice of science has abolished this dichotomy, despite scientific metaphysics. Thus far, our argument grants that signification as meaning and/or sense-making is already available at the formal level, which is understood by anyone engaged in scientific venture and in applying this venture to environmental material conditions. Once those conditions are “realized” and science is verified, we acquire a construct that purports to be not only explanatory but self-explanatory. The reason for this self-explanation is the valuation which is in the background, and grants formal systems the practical value to transform the environment in favor of “human needs”. Once again, what is theoretically at issue is that human needs, as empirical, be they psychological, sociological, or economic, do not imply formal-signitive systems. Therefore, the latter will have to be constructed and selected as values to correspond to those needs. We must note that the selection of the formal systems as valuable for fulfilling the needs has no direct connection with such needs. The latter are psychological, biological, social, and economic, while the former are signitive. In other words, one is premised on empirical generalizations of various needs, while the others are formal systems that must be connected to such needs by way of technical implementation.

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Therefore, the selection of the formal systems that would be relevant will have a criterion that has to be translated into formal systems. This means that the criterion will be some evaluative principle that will facilitate the decision as to which formal system will be adequate to apply for the fulfillment of which needs. This is another way of saying that formal systems have to become techniques to fulfill the criteria of empirical needs. However, the process is still more complex: The needs themselves are also selected in terms of their significance in a given life-world, and hence are not mere observations and generalizations of empirical phenomena. Our point is that formal systems as signitive are valuative to the extent that they can fulfil the desires that are equally articulated in terms of socially, psychologically, and economically signified needs. The very needs are significant by social—and not by empirical—definition. Not every psychological wish or biological drive will be regarded as socially significant. In this sense, only the significant needs will be granted value. What emerges here is a question of multiple valuations. The types of valuations there are—and the kinds of formal systems—must be constituted to translate the material environment in order to fulfill the valuation of needs, depending on the complex intersignification of a given life-world. Our life-world is pervasively technological, technocratic, and bureaucratic, as well as political-economic, and hence it requires a simplification of complexities. The signitive logics which pervade the life-world with its valuative selectivities are also in the background of the cybernetic revolution. While the cybernetic revolution brought in computer science, it is at the same time included as a background of the self-generating process of formal systems that are translated and reified into the technical environment. The computerized logic, as formal, has no regard for anything that is environmentally or qualitatively differentiated. Its own logic does not need to respect the so-called “natural-qualitative” differentiations. Any living, working, suffering being in this logic of indifference, which transcends such a being, can regard all events in terms of mutually replaceable variants. Social, economic, pedagogical, cultic, and cultural givens are, in this logic, equivalences in normative exchanges. Whether something is labor, power, artwork, or mysticism, it must subject itself to the requirements of the formal rules of quantification. Quantification must become information in order to be transmitted globally. While previously televisual globalization was available and this globalization depended on the valuative selectivity of large media organizations, the computerized globalization offers any arbitrary access to any selectivity. This means that rhetorical propositions, as translatable into practices, will be equivalent to other propositions. No external judgment is possible apart from an appeal to other computerized information, whose credibility is simply the

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appearance in the global network. Computerization opens up a domain of any space and any time accessed without history—without places and without times. It is a synchronic instrument that is premised on signification that is everywhere and yet not localizable. The age of the computer opens up a world of signification where there is no place and time and, conversely, where all places and all times are equivalently accessible. Therefore, our task is to explore the domain of all places at all times. SIGNITIVE SPACE AND TIME Regardless of the arguments given by positivist historians and anthropologists, the simple access to the past is not read as empirical, but conversely, every empirically discovered datum is read as a text that means. That is, what we call the past is not accessed empirically since, in principle, we cannot be there empirically, but we can access those events by reading texts and monuments, not as empirical data, but as various systems. Time and space, wherein we locate empirical events, is accessible only as a signitive framework of sense-making to which everyone, in principle, has access. Given that we have no time machines to go from now into the future or the past, the only access we have to both of those temporal components is the immediacy of meaning and sense-making awareness (Mickunas & Pilotta, 1998). The globalizing process of cybernetic revolution is based on our ability to communicate irrespective of place and time on the globe, because we know or understand what the others mean. This suggests that, in dealing with computer technology, we are presented with immediate access to the entire world, not because of our capacity to be empirically everywhere, but because of the technical capacity to make present signitively constituted events, no matter how far or near in so-called real space and time. We are not suggesting that signification is something eternal, given beyond space and time; rather, it is contingent to the extent that sense-making systems are embodied in, and maintained through, the various technical means as carriers of such systems. When we speak of systems, we are in the same domain as logical or mathematical systems, assumed as given by any modern science. In this sense, when one reads computer messages, one does not question the presence of such messages, despite the empirical fact that those messages originated ten thousand miles away (Pilotta & Mickunas, 1990). One reads signification as temporally and spatially indifferent. Prior to the question of where and when, there is an awareness of what the message means and the sense that it makes. In our argument, we note that the reading of a message is prior to and pervades the empirical means that transmit the message. The computer, as a technological

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means, is a spacio-temporal entity, but it is designed to carry the presence of significations that have no specific space-time positions. This would be analogous to the construction of non-Euclidean space. The latter has no empirically given intuitive component. It is a pure system of formal constructs that do not point to any material, mental, or other “realistic factors”. Yet, non-Euclidean geometry is regarded as an important way of articulating (if not actually constructing) other dimensions capable of transforming a life-world environment (Stroeker, 1987). This kind of non-positional objectivity is a condition for computerized communication to the extent that it does not require either the senders or the receivers of messages to have the same mental-physical experience. As we suggested above, there is a variation between the empirical and the signitive such that it is possible to have different empirical factors making the same sense, as well as one empirical factor with diverse senses. Since the major level of computer signification is logic, then there is a constructive connection between this logic and various life-world facts, and in turn, such facts can be articulated and reconstructed by different computer logics. Our analysis focuses on two intentionalities that have comprised modern conditions, allowing for the appearance of one level of linguistic power, namely modifications both in deconstruction and in politically correct discourses. By the term intentionality, we do not mean a subjective state, but rather a mode of relation to the world. A metaphor of vertical and horizontal relationships to the world is used to explain how modern scientific rationality assumes principles that exclude vertical or direct access to the perceptual qualities of objects and events. This exclusion leads to the acceptance of the priority of the formal, linguistic, and logical as the bases of scientific thought. The result is a conception of a theory and a method subtended by a process of the transformation of signs, leading to the empowerment necessary to master the material world. If not deliberate, there is a specific “bracketing” that was performed by the philosophies and sciences of the modern age that allowed the attribution of power primarily to linguistic articulations. The result of this development is manifested in the current claims of the semioticians and the deconstructionists that language or discourse is the primary power in all domains of human experience and praxis (Barthes, 1977). Although at first sight outlandish, this claim is more than justified by the subsequent analyses of modern ontology and its metaphysically laden scientific method. Our approach is to trace this “bracketing” and show what phenomena have become discarded and what phenomena remain in order to be constitutive of power. The appearance of the irrevocable transition of signs and their power rests on a specific constitution of the given: It is regarded as “transcendent”, beyond experience, and inaccessible to sense perception. The composition of the given

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requires an exclusion of qualitative awareness and its reduction to the immanence of the subject. This immanence is subsequently designated in terms of psychology and physiology. This form of exclusion can be called Cartesian skepticism. As has been shown in numerous works, the modern revolution deems reality to be a material extension of atomic parts that are inaccessible to sense experience, although manageable by a method of quantitative manipulation (Mickunas, 1983). Following this, the entire modern view is borne by a prejudgment that what is beyond doubt is the constitution of a precise, reflective method capable of “univocal, universal, impartial, and objective” access to a specifically constituted “reality”. It is presumed that the latter consists equally of a univocal, universal, and impartial rationality correlative to the precise structure of methodology. There is a need to show the ways in which both the methodology and the “reality” are constituted, correlated, and assumed to be isomorphic. For modernity, according to Husserl (1970), mathematical or quantitative procedures are not only methodological, but are also foundational to all theoretical thought. The specific composition of such procedures suggests that no intuitive—that is perceptual—content is correlated to them. They contain structures and rules that can be formulated without any relation to perceptual qualities, requiring vertical intentionalities oriented essentially to the domain of direct awareness. Moreover, any concrete function that such structures acquire is not dictated by these structures. In other words, the function is a matter of will, but in such a way that the will is not compelled by these structures, which have no causal force. The implications of such “non-necessary” connections hint at the instability of signs, at their transitional composition. In order for these procedures and structures to acquire any validity, the “objective” world must be constituted in accordance with these procedures. First, the procedures are indifferent with respect to perceptual intuition; they treat all events as if they were essentially homogeneous. Second, the perceptual domain of intuition, directly present to live awareness, is transcended in favor of theoretically or methodologically posited homogeneity—that is, posited in accordance with methodological requirements. The transcendence in this context is minimally twofold. First, it is required that one disregards the awareness of the qualitative sphere, deemed to be subjective. Second, one must regard the homogeneous domain as transcendence, as a reality in itself and independent of the perceiver. Thus, awareness has no access to this transcendence. Its “reality” can be secured by a theoretical and methodological postulation. The latter is the source of the conception of a mathematically idealized nature as a homogeneous mathematical manifold. We should not be misled by the concept of homogeneity. The latter seems to have geometric associations and hence be accessible to perception. The problem revolves around the substitution of geometric

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formations—the translation of the forms into a mathematical set of signs that do not offer any semblance or intuitive comparison to the geometric domain. Geometric understanding would still offer a field posited as “matter”, yet with the mathematization of geometry. If one were to take a next step, toward the formalization of mathematics, one would be able to regard the geometric as quanta—as numerical points, sums, and divisions—arranged in accordance with formal structure. Irrespective of the levels of quantitative-formal constitution, there is posited only one fundamental—transcendent reality. The problematics of the constitutive processes, both of the theoretical-methodological domain and the transcendent domain, lead to a particular contradiction that cannot be solved within the limits of the theoretical-methodological framework. The method is proclaimed to be universal, all-inclusive, and thus able to subsume all phenomena “objectively”. But the subject who calculates or formalizes must either be subsumed under the method or be the condition for the constitution of the method. If the former assumption is accepted, then the method must assume a position of supremacy over the subject—that is, it must be objective. Yet, this very method permits only one kind of “reality”: that of homogeneous matter. The method does not matter, but it is an ideality and a necessary ideality. And yet, if the latter is taken for granted, that is, if the subject is also to be submitted under the method, then the ideality of the method has no “place” in the subject because the subject must be contingent, contradicting the notion that there are logical and/or formal necessities. Although the conception of the homogeneity of transcendent reality can be described by geometrical structures, corresponding to the morphological and perceptually intuited world, the shift from the geometrical signification to the mathematical and formal abandons any kind of intuitive correspondence between the shapes of geometry and the morphological compositions of the lived world. Hence, any theory of representative correspondence—that is, that there is a copy of the world in the “mind” substance—has to be abandoned. The signitive symbolisms of quantitative and formal compositions do not offer any intuitive counterpart in the perceptual world apart from the sounds or marks that are selected arbitrarily. But these marks, although part of the morphological world, in no way reflect or resemble the theoretical-methodological composition; they simply provide the arbitrary means for perceptual expression. Although there are many complexities in the constitution of the quantitative-formal modes of theoretical-methodological “thought” in principle, this thought does not offer any possibility of correspondence between theoretical-methodological compositions and the perceptual world of shapes and structures. Yet, anyone dealing with the scientific issues of observation assumes a transition from the signitive to the morphological modes of signification. This transitional domain is an unannounced

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background that provides a silent nexus between otherwise disconnected domains. This, however, is beyond the scope of the present chapter. Given the computer’s non-positional logics, and given that they can be carried by appropriate technologies, then, in principle, it is possible to select and to transmit the sense of any event as if it were immediately present to anyone. What is at issue is the process of selectivity that is not implied by the constructed logics and by the empirical events that such logics frame. Here, we encounter the question of selectivity as valuation. Among the numerous events signified in a life-world, some are regarded as important and valuable. At this level, valuation does not have any rules that could be derived from either domain, the formal-logical, or the events of the life-world. What is required by our analysis are the value conditions that connect signification and such events. The point we have reached is the previously mentioned requirement of connecting logic with fact, mathematics with data, and sense-making with events. Since the systems of signification are constitutable at will, they themselves do not imply which of them are relevant to the social, economic, pedagogical, or cultural aspects of a life-world. Resultantly, the very constitution of signitive systems requires a value criterion which would say: 1. Which formal systems among all possibilities should be applied to which aspects and events; and, 2. The criteria for the constitution of specific formal systems must be part of a society—a political society, a political economy, and a political economic ideology—which can provide a clue concerning that which is relevant among possible formal systems. In fact, we would argue that the very construction of computer technology which is based on logical signification is a technology that embodies valuation. That is, we elect to build this technology instead of another. This is simply to remind us that technology embodies valuative conditions, and it therefore cannot be regarded as a mere empirical fact. What is appropriate to the theme of space and time is that the technical means that embody the formal logic and its valuative subtext can be produced and set up anywhere at any time around the world. Yet, it is to be noted that such a set-up carries with it the social-cultural, economic, and technical life-worlds. Thus, the “First World” transfers the latest technologies to the “Third World” in order to help "develop" the local populations, to make them aware of the rest of the world, which means making them signitively accessible, as well as enabling access to events no matter where and when. Therefore, this globalizing transference of technology brings with it non-positional space-time to all who can afford the

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technological means. We must remind ourselves that those very global means are not mere empirical data or facts, but that they carry with them valuative conditions. For modern Western understanding, values are deemed to be subjective, in contrast to the objectivity of the empirical, and as we have argued, to the logical-signitive domain. Yet, the very selectivity of certain logics over others, and of their connection to the events is valuative. Exporting computer (and other) technologies also includes the export of values embedded in technologies (Pilotta & Widman, 1984). VALUATIVE NEXUS All along, the ideology of science has been that there is a difference between value and fact, and that science is value-free. We have argued that the required connection between logic and fact introduces a third component, which at the base is valuative. The very application of logically framed theories or hypotheses introduces a selectivity among various hypotheses and a selectivity between the domains in the environment which are relevant for application and hence technological reconstruction. The reconstruction is activity premised on human purposes and on various levels of valuation which can be interpreted in several ways, such as sociological, psychological, economic, ideological, and even mythological. Since, scientifically speaking, values do not belong to objectivity, they are then part of the world as intersubjective proposals. We are not contending that such proposals are totally arbitrary, based on individualistic desires, but we are contending that even when they are interpreted socially, they still are primarily values. Even if we quantify values and claim to have gained objective data, we have not, therefore, abolished their value function (Luhmann, 1981). This leads us to the understanding of computer rationality as purposive, valueladen, and, therefore, premised on individual or social purposes. We shall argue that computer rationality consists of layers of value systems, and in the final analysis, valuations that both promote autonomous selectivity and invention, and in turn, place demands on individuals and groups. Engaging in the continuous proliferation of increasing efficiency and circular creativity requires that any logic that is translated into material implements becomes, in turn, the means to create more novel, encompassing, and efficient computer logics. This is the subjecting process wherein one is compelled to constantly engage in research that is not only designed to discover new facts, but also to invent new ways to establish logics that would become factually efficient. What we are pointing to is a magic circle. The more we constitute new logics that are translated into material implements, such as computers, the more we are capable of using the same computers to open up new logics for their own material implementation. But the point of this magic circle is an increase in possibilities of valuative selectivity. The latest computer

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machines can perform calculations that previous logics were incapable of performing. In this sense, the latest machines can instruct us about the possibilities of new logics (Jonas, 1981). There is an available dogma that computer science is objective and has no need for any values; after all, anyone can learn the latest computer programs and the required use of the technology. No doubt. Whether in China or Guatemala, the computer will be regarded as a means to process and transmit information. Thus, the view is that computers are purely technical and indifferent means, usable by anyone, and therefore their only value is that which particular groups or individuals want to give them. This is like saying that there are trees, and whatever people want to make of them will give those trees their value. But this is a false analogy because the computer systems are themselves information, and indeed, selected information: • The imbedded information is a particular logic of the computer (that is, the software). • It has a specific material design (that is, the hardware). • It has an economic system of values and modes of production. • It creates suggested options and supplants other options. In this sense, the objectivity of the computer embodies various levels of valuations. Those who acquire the latest machinery do not only acquire means of processing and transmitting messages, but they also acquire the messages of computer logic, embodiment, economy, and perhaps an entire life-world and its social systems. Moreover, the logic of the programs is designed to process information in specific ways. While the user is told that he or she is free to access information, the information is mediated by the logic of the program, the economy of affordability by a specific group in a specific part of the world, and its purposive rationality that would dictate the programs and the messages that the given population will access. In brief, the objective claim that computer rationality is merely a means for anyone dealing with messages is restrictive to what computer logic is all about. The points of our concern are: • The objectivity of computer logic is selective. • The selectivity is imbedded in the production of the software.

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• The software is restrictive to the extent that it prescribes and, we suggest, interprets the messages to be received. • It constructs socioeconomic parameters for the usability and affordability of this so-called value-free instrument. • The logic of the latest software demands the reproduction of hardware, leading to a constant rush for the latest technology (Otherwise, the latest software will be in the hands only of those who can afford the latest hardware). In this sense, vast populations of the world may be able to afford the outdated hardware, and those so-called objective systems are split into the populations that can match the latest hardware with the latest software, and those who depend on the outdated hardware, or have none at all, and therefore cannot engage in receiving, producing, or processing the messages provided by the latest software. This is the paradox: As we have mentioned before, one requires a constant subjection to the efficiency and reconstruction both of the logic and of the hardware that implies socio-economic valuation and the capacity to acquire what would become, or for some has become, the “newest”. The implication is obvious: Vast populations of the world would be called upon equally to engage in valuation. Do we want the latest hardware to match the latest software? Or, do we want to protect the environment, to educate future generations, to provide decent housing and medical care? It is the case that all things cannot be accomplished at once, and buying the “newest” hardware may have to be postponed in favor of other human purposes and, therefore, to forego the receiving of messages that are deemed to be objectively accessible for everyone. We are suggesting that the introduction of the computerized systems around the globe is not an innocent presence of means to acquire information, but rather the valuational requirement of peoples and their governments to deal with questions as to what is of greater value in a given society. We are not rejecting computer logic and its objectivity; we wish to show that it belongs in various value contexts. At the center of this valuative complexity, there is also the understanding that currently the valuations are computer-mediated. They are systems of signification that are accessible to anyone and anywhere. Valuation here is part of the global selectivity, and the question is: What type of value significations are currently prevailing? (While there are counter-arguments to this, those counter-arguments do not deny the basic principle). CODES OF NETWORK SOCIETY The advent of multimedia ends the distinctions between audio/visual media and print media, popular culture and high culture, entertainment and information, and

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education and business. Every cultural expression, from the least to the best, comes together in a digital universe, creating a type of hyper/super-text library, blurring the distinctions of past/present/future—a new symbolic or coded environment, making virtuality our reality. .

As Barthes (1977) and Baudrillard (1981) have indicated, our forms of communication are based on the production and consumption of signs. What seems to be present in our communication system is the organization around the electronic integration of all modes of communication into a synthetic sensory modality integration. It is not merely a virtuality but rather a real virtuality. Critics of electronic media often argue that the new “coded” environment does not represent reality, often referring to primitive, “uncoded” experiences as the really real. “Real virtuality”, according to Manuel Castells (1996) in the first volume of his acclaimed three-volume work, Rise of the Network Society: “…is a system in which reality itself (that is, people’s material/Symbolic existence) is entirely captured, fully immersed in a virtual image setting, in the world of make-believe, in which appearances are not just on the screen through which experience is communicated, but they become the experience” (p. 373). What characterizes the new communication system based on the networked integration of all cultural expression? “All kinds of messages in the new type of society work in a binary mode: presence/absence in the multimedia communication” (Castells, 1996, p. 374). The effects of the new multimedia network communication system are a radical transformation of space and time: “Localities become disembodied from their cultural, historical, and geographic meaning and reintegrated in function and networks, or image collages, including a space of flows that substitutes for the space of places. Time is erased in the communication system when past, present and future can be programmed to intersect with each other in the same message. The “space of flows” and “timeless times” are the material foundation of a new culture that transcends and includes the diversity of historically transmitted systems of representation; the culture of real virtuality where make-believe is belief in the making” (Castells, 1996, p. 375). Castells hypothesizes that space organizes time in the network society (p. 376), which is a reversal, he claims, of classical social theory in which time dominates space.

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Time/space issues are not new to modern theorizing, as Anthony Giddens (1990) has also called attention to this issue in The Consequence of Modernity. He sees characteristics of modernity in a time/space distortion, becoming contingent. This change does have a global effect on the entire range of human action by means of “reflexive monitoring of action”, by way of the recursive networking of action determinants in other actions or possible action, and the consequences. Local environments determine life less. Giddens attributes this distancing primarily to expanding communication technologies. (Hence, modernity would begin with print… not a satisfying explanation). However, we may be getting ahead of ourselves here—in regard to action/network society codes. In Castells (1996), the codes of transformation, “making the make-believe” and “the becoming of present/absent” are significant clues to what he affirms, however devastating in what it denies. For Castells, space is crystallized time (p. 411), invoking David Harvey’s work, The condition of postmodernity (1989), as a clear formulation of his position: “From a materialist perspective, we can argue that an objective conception of time and space is necessary created through material practices and processes which serve to reproduce social life—It is a fundamental axiom of my inquiry that time and space cannot be understood independently of social action” (p. 294). Castells concludes, therefore, that “space is the material support of time-sharing social practice”; space brings together practices that are simultaneous in time (1996, p. 411). Therefore, our society is organized around flows: flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, and flows of organization interaction: “Through the new space of the network, society is the space of flows: The space of flow is the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows. Flows are purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction physically disjointed positions held by social actors in the economic, political and symbolic structure of society” (Castells, 1996, p. 412). The content is constructed by electronic impulses; nodes (or hubs) are the dominant managerial elites. A network is defined as a set of interconnected nodes, nodes being points at which curves intersect themselves. Networks are thus open structures, able to expand without limits, and integrate new nodes—as long as they are able to communicate, and share the same values or performance goals (codes). Codes viable for capitalistic society are: ownership/non-ownership, legal/nonlegal, decentralization/centralization, flexibility/inflexibility, adaptability/non-

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adaptability, good/bad. Switching is the connecting of the networks and the privileged implementers of power codes: switch/non-switch (on/off, open/closed). Castells’ analysis indicates that recovery is organized around networks of capital, management, and information, with access to know-how. A new division of labor is formed on the attributed properties of each worker, rather than on the organization. It is still capitalism, with two new features—it is global, and it is centered on a network of financial flows organized around a zero-sum game, where losers pay for the winners in a global casino. The new dominant form of space and time develops a meta-network that switches on and off non-essential functions, subordinate groups, and devalued territories. The meta-network is distributed for the social, where value is produced, cultural codes are created, and power is decided. It is perceived as a disorder. Culture now is self-referenced and supersedes nature, where nature is revived as a cultural form: by environmental movement. As we have indicated, the problematic of timeless time and the placeless place is a signitive power which is accessible and translated via a non-positional logic of anytime/anyplace. If we follow Castells’ logic, then the following obtain regarding the new communication technology: The “network society” presupposes the disappearance of the local in favor of the spatial. Delocalization means the insertion of the logic of the new communication technologies within universal history, understood as rationalization. This logic is not new. Reason’s claim to universal validity implies homogenization. Anti-Oedipus locates universal history in this “deterritorialization” and finds its “universal truth” within capitalism, which comes into being at its own inception (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). The technical utopia of a society decentralized by telecommunications signifies a spatialization of communication so that all localization becomes impossible. This means the final dissolution of all ties and places that symbolically structured our modern society. Within the networks of the new communications, all places are equivalent. They become interchangeable to the extent that they are all, in principle, equally accessible. Delocalization takes the form of a circulation supposedly expressing ideal or transparent communication and glorifying generalized exchange, unlimited communicability, and commutation. Yet, even the previously mentioned optimistic interpretations, still cling to the hope of a “good social use” of allegedly neutral technology. Delocalization concerns position not only in space but also in time. Thus, in the case of numerical images, there is no longer a before or an after. The different image-moments (the instantaneous ones) of this time are interchangeable; they do

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not follow a temporal hierarchy. That is why delocalization coincides with derealization: “Reality” is never an empty homogeneous space, but a set of singular places. Like delocalization, derealization is a function of computer logic’s claim to universality and takes on a new character with the twist that capitalism gives to rationalization. With the “invention” of the general equivalent, the condition of exchange, all things become interchangeable, deprived of their particular qualities, and therefore de-realized. The move to digitization is the decisive step in derealization. Any message, whatever its nature (voice, fixed, or animated images), may be treated, stored, and transmitted according to the same procedures. But, above all, digitization paves the way for the manufacture of synthetic voices, music, and images. Thus, fiction and reality become interchangeable, even when one takes the data from a real object, since the computer can produce an infinity of Leibnitzian images from them. The numerical image exemplifies “transparency” in that it is predicated on the abolition of the object’s opacity. This generates an ambiguous phenomenon: the disappearance of form, but it also generates the constant invention of new forms—morphisms. In the dimension of time, the image is no longer the metaphor of a model or the symbol of an ideal model to which it refers or with which it could ideally be related. Morphisms refer one to the other without entailing any unique, original, or final referent. The significance of simulation is missed if it is seen as an imitation. The simulation does not imitate; it transforms. The instantaneization of operations by high-speed computers simulating real-time does not make information more “concrete”. On the contrary, it abolishes the distance between reality and nonreality: We have entered the “era of simulacra”. Knowledge is no longer a reproduction, nor is it analogical or equivalent: It is rather a model manufactured from all sorts of pieces and with no origin other than its own operational matrix. It precedes the real and engenders it. Accordingly, it is a representation without referent, and that is why the era of the simulacrum truly means a loss of all referentials. The new communication technologies deal with written language solely as a technical procedure of coding and decoding that conveys a transparent world. In spite of this, it is important to remember the distinction: Interaction is not reducible to spoken language. Within such a model, the message is entirely dependent on the code, and its reception is also reduced with respect to it. The very principle of the code is performativity, which substitutes control by pure operationality for rule-based

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social control. The man-machine hybridization in expert systems is an attempt to introduce another concept of “dialogue” and “communication”. In other words, “expert systems” reformulate the famous “positivism debate” and in the process, attempt to avoid the question of the social determinants of “protocol sentences”. If this question is not asked, the “information” that circulates in the medium of the new technologies is seen as totally desocialized: undifferentiated, ordinary information, emptied of all social significance, grasped just on the level of its potential reduction to a sequence of binary signals. In the extreme, “information” is everything that can be made into an object of numerical processing. In the final analysis, interactive use turns out to always be strategic. A game of strategy begins between the generating program and the subject. This is an extreme example, but it is crucial in helping reveal the displacement of the social by the cognitive and the strategic. The claim of interactive experience to reconstitute the social bond, or at least to build a bridge between the realms of social exchange and of the rapid and autonomous development of communication technologies, seems to rest on a truncated definition of “communication” which differs from information by the fact that it involves reciprocity. Understood as activity constitutive of an intersubjective community, communication presupposes meaning. The uncodable meaning results from an irreplaceable localization and of a sociohistorical context that, simply put, the new technologies bracket or even destroy. In traditional societies, or in their local relics, this meaning is not the object of any objectification. Customary usage is tacit respect for rules that seal the pact of membership in a community in which one is “always already” a part. It is this dimension that is threatened by the privilege of the cognitive and the performative. What is important is to keep this distance which still characterizes meaning. It generates an opacity whose disappearance signifies the reduction of communication to information. “The transparency and the obscenity of space in the promiscuity of the networks”, to quote Baudrillard (1981, p. 93), dissipates the opacity in which there is no communication. CONCLUSION While current literatures are still talking about economic and material interests, psychological securities and insecurities, and desires of populations to become part of modern history, we contend that these designations are surface appearances of Western modernization, with metaphysical and ontological grounds that have been unrecognized. While we are not the first ones to suggest

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that formal and mathematical processes are involved in articulating the world, our claim is that there has not been a recognition that the formal-quantitative procedures are, at the base, metaphysical and, therefore, free from the constraints of space and time, and that they have assumed priority over the material. We contend that the conditions for the possibility of globalization are not economic, psychological, or even ideological, but rather they are signitive. The reason for this claim is that, before a particular person in a global economy will acquire the economic conditions to better their lives, they have already been informed signitively of what is the better life. And the better life is the possession of modern technology—specifically information technology, such as computers and their logic, and above all, the value preferences imbedded in this logic. This logic, in turn, is the end of temporality, the end of history; it is an all-encompassing logic that can transmit its values to any village with promises of the production of anything that the logic signifies in a global (or a local) economy. Of course, the villages would be able to access the information once they have accepted the latest computer—to access this information. The latter is laden with value offers, specifically with images of the “good life” that will require the materialization of this signitive power. We see the images, and then we buy into the global economy to materialize those images in the forms of beauty, sunglasses, jeans, Kellogg’s cereal, and sundry overproduced and overpriced cheap commodities. The computer is the metaphysical logic that has the power to accomplish this task. On this, we shall not make a judgment as to whether this accomplishment destroys or saves the multiple ways people have lived or want to continue to live. Will they be absorbed into the metaphysics of transformation of their environments in order to join the global nexus? Or, will they be able to maintain their own difference by virtue of the mass means provided by the acquisition of computers and their logic? These questions subtend the entire discussion of multiculturism, environmental protection, and even the rights of peoples to self-determination. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Pilotta, J. J., & Mickunas, A. (2000). Life-world: Computer logic and values as a self-generating system. New Jersey Journal of Communication, 8(2): 105-128. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870009367384 REFERENCES Barthes, R. (1977). Image, music, text. (S. Heath, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulations. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society (Vol. 1). Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Giddens, A. (1990). The consequence of modernity. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.

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Greimas, J.A. (1987). On meaning. (P. J. Perron & F. H. Collins, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests. (J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1973). Experience and judgment: Investigations in a genealogy of logic. (L.Landgrebe, Ed.). (J. S. Churchill & K. Amerik, Trans). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Jonas, H. (1981). Philosophisches zur modernen technologie. In R. Löw, P. Koslowski, & P. Kreuzer (Eds.), Fortschritt ohne Maß: Eine Ortsbestimmung der wissenschaftlich-technischen Zivilisation (pp. 73-96). München: Piper. Luhmann, N. (1981). Societal structural conditions and problems resulting from scientific and technical progress. In: Löw, R., Koslowski, P., & Kreuzer, P., (Eds.), Progress without Maß: A localization of the scientific-technical civilization (pp. 113-132). München: Piper. Mickunas, A. (1983). The essence of the technological world. In: Embree, L., (Ed.), Essays in memory of Aron Gurwitsch (pp. 97-117). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Mickunas, A., & Pilotta, J. (1998). Technocracy vs. democracy. New York: Hampton Press. Nietzsche, F. (1968). The will to power. (W. Kaufmann, Ed.). (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books. Pilotta, J., & Mickunas, A. (1990). Science of communication: Its phenomenological foundation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pilotta, J., & Widman, T. (1984). Overcoming communication incompetence in the global communication order: The case of technology transfer. In: Mickunas, A., Murphy, J., & Pilotta, J., (Eds.), The underside of high tech (pp. 159-175). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Schabert, T. (1978). Gewalt und Humanitaet. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber. Seebohm, T. (1962). Die Bedingung der Moeglichkeit der transcendental Philosophie. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag. Stroeker, E. (1987). Investigations in philosophy of space. (A. Mickunas, Trans.). Athens: Ohio University Press.

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CHAPTER 7

The Internet of Things and Temporal Reflex Abstract: Uncovering the temporal reflex of the Internet of Things within the organizational environment affirms the transformational mode of our technological life-world. We live in an atemporal reflex, which involves more than the combination of past, present, and future, and more than the mere interconnectivity of a series of nodes, but it is a self-pacing system, creating some possibilities which are unintended consequences. The unintended consequences can be anticipated in what may be foreseen as a type of foresight of what can be next. Such fore-knowledge allows risk mitigation at all levels of society: organizational, interpersonal, cultural, and, of course, civilizational. Temporal reflexivity is the link or hinge of human-machine co-operation and complementarity.

Keywords: Emergence, Perception, Relevance, Re-presentation, Selectivity, Significance, Things, Time Reflex, World. INTRODUCTION: FIRST THINGS, FIRST Social progress cannot be arbitrary but rather is dependent on the implications of the world of things. The embodiment of a symbolized sensibility contains more than the intention of the subject or a group of subjects because it is an objective perspective on things. Sense implies more than the particular intention of the subject because it does not depend upon the subject’s projection. The subject correlates him/herself to it and expresses it through activity. Only if the symbolized sensibilities are stored perceptual sensibilities of things with their own implications can social productions direct the subject to future development. Based on intersubjective foundations, the subjects in each society create their world and determine the kind of reality each social order has. But there is no criterion provided between advanced or culturally richer times and culturally inferior times. Hence, each social order and its age are equally absolute. This is not a satisfactory perspective. History has shown that social orders differ. How is this possible for us—embedded in a particular culture—to understand other cultures? In terms of our discussion of the consciousness of perceptual sense, limited perspective and totality, we can present a criterion of the advancement, differentiations, and development of societies. Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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Every society, by developing certain perspectives of the world of things, is open to the implications of future development, or the more. In our view, the same world of things can be expressed in many ways, dependent upon an adopted perspective. This allows us to understand different societies from the perspectives of the subjects of other social orders. We can enter their perspective and interpret ourselves in terms of it. We have determined that the possibility of our understanding of other societies indicates something common between them: the commonness in the world of things, with its different perspectives and characteristics. A methodological problem which phenomenological social science must face is this: If one theorizes that the subject is a product of his/her society, then the theory one holds about societies cannot be generalized as applicable to all societies. If, as we claim, societies depend on the perspectives of the world of things in terms of which the subjects within a given society interpret themselves, then it is evident that subjects from one society are capable of understanding those of other societies. The possibility of viewing the world of things from that other perspective opens our own horizons and presents new possibilities for self-understanding. Hence, a multitude of societies—or realities, or “world views”—does not deny the necessity of ontological things. In short, based on the sensuous universal thesis, multiple world-views or multiple realities are nevertheless views of the same world. Based on this criterion of one-world, we can indicate that the changes in humanity throughout history have depended upon the different relationships humans have had toward the world of things which, correlatively, reveal different human possibilities. The ontological thing is a necessary prerequisite for the explanation of the coherence of cooperative experience, which is fundamental to species-being. The thing can be grasped from an unlimited number of perspectives. Hence, the subject can act in terms of a perspective, which correlates to the affective qualities of things. The subject relates to things as a total being. The total subject is a conscious being with an indefinite set of capacities that manifest the subject from a particular perspective. While manifesting the subject, the capacities are correlates of the perspective of things and thus present the different characteristics of things to the conscious subjects. Thus, the total subject is a process of: 1. The manifestation of the subject in and through his/her actualized capacities which are expressions of the subject; and 2. The actualization of the subject’s capacities, which correlate to the particular perspective of things, expressing the things to the subject. The process of the

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subject’s self-manifestation in and through an increasing number of capacities “totalizes” the subject’s self-expression of things to the subject. Totality is a process toward the maximum self-expression of the subject in terms of the maximum expression of the world of things to the subject. The subject, acting in terms of a thing from a particular perspective, expresses oneself as a whole in a limited manner. The idea of totality is not merely a direction for cognition. It is inherent in subjective activity, which is a mediation between the conscious subject and the things with their total implications. It drives human action from its limited character, as perspectival and partial self-expression, to the more. These more (or indeterminate) possibilities loom, so to speak, on every horizon of the subject’s life and indicate one’s present limits while continuously implying other possibilities. We have claimed that the thing manifests itself in and through its perspectives. Perspectives are the temporal manifestations of the unified thing. The thing becomes in and through its perspectives. The thing is a synthetic unity that is in the process of self-manifestation in correlation to its context. The present perspectives of the unified thing stand on a horizon of consequences. The sensible is not one perspectival meaning of the thing, but also the implications to the past, the future, and to the thing’s context. In short, we have a field of sensible perspectives or expressions of the thing which are implied in the present perspective. These are not formal implications, but content implications. The principle of relevance indicates the relevance of the context in which things exist. Whatever action we may attribute to the thing through its perspective, we cannot conceive of it outside its context. From this viewpoint, we observe a horizon-like fusion between the thing and the action which the thing undergoes from other things. We can say that the thing undergoes actions and transmits them. For things, the distinction from every other thing is never perfectly realized. They possess relative unity and independence. The thing supports itself on the multitude of things surrounding it. The individual thing is a relative subsistence. The thing exists within a context, and the implication of its context is identical to the relevance of the context for the thing’s existence. It must be clear that not everything within the context is relevant to the thing. Relevance indicates what is needed for the thing’s continuation in existence. For example, equality is symbolic “of the need for more” of something in the situation. Relevance in phenomenology is relevance to the subject. From the social phenomenological viewpoint, relevance denotes a relationship in which the concrete objects are relevant to the subject’s plans and designs (Schutz, 1962-

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1966, pp. 227-228). A particular thing is relevant not to other things within a context, but to the subject and his/her projects. Such a view is not acceptable. If relevance were not basically a contextual relationship among things, then it would be impossible to determine how things could be integrated into a system of relevance for the subject. We must remember that on the basis of the sensuous universal, sense inheres in things. The principle of relevance can be explicated further through meaning. It must not be assumed that the context makes the thing ultimately meaningful as though the thing were a conjunction point of a system of sensible relations. As we recall, the thing as a whole is a synthetic unity, and the qualities express the sense of the thing in a particular way or from a particular perspective. This particular perspective is expressive of the thing and is grasped by perceptual activity as “perceptual sense”. It is the unity of the thing which gives unity and synthesis to its manifested perspectives and correlatively gives unity and synthesis to the perceptual meanings. The context actualizes the thing’s specific sense from a perspective through which the relevance of the context is indicated. It can be said that the specification of the sense of the thing, within its context, depends upon the perspective of the thing which is revealed by the context. This means that the complete knowledge of the unified thing requires the knowledge of the manifestation of the sense of the thing in differentiated and relevant contexts. Although the particular manifestations of the thing within a context do not totally determine what the thing is, they present a perspective of the thing correlative to the particular context. For example, a building is not seen only as a building, but also as a courthouse, implying a total context relevant to it: it relates itself to trials, police enforcement, judges, lawyers, and such. The relevant context is thus correlated to the particular perspectives of the thing. The manifestations of the thing, within a particular context, yield a perspective of the thing. With the principle of relevance, we determine that each thing in context implies its context, and things of the context imply their own context; therefore, there is a continuity toward totality, which means that sensibility is self-referencing. Things imply their relevant context and other things, which in turn imply their contexts. The continuous implication of things and their contexts means that a particular thing implies a totality, and correlatively a thing leads the subject in his/her cognition toward the cognition of the totality implied by the thing and its context. Hence, relevance is not merely a centripetal movement but a centrifugal one as well.

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INTERCONNECTING The framework of electronically connecting just about any person and anything to one another, thereby improving interaction with and within diverse industries and households, is called the Internet of Things (IoT). The trend makes us think differently about time and space as we experience them, for instance, on the shop floor of a manufacturing enterprise like General Motors or Proctor & Gamble. Some of the factors that are and/or will be transformed relating to time and space include: a. Near and far will “feel” the same. Nothing will be “remote”. b. There will be no top or bottom viewpoint of what is happening inside the facility. c. Who is to be let into the network (and who and where to leave out) will be a tough decision. Suppliers to the company can help; will customers’ access be helpful? The meaning of trust will arise. d. Managing closeness. Human interaction with connected “things” will be a part of the data stream in the workflow. No one will be able to hide; personal space and privacy will have to be defined to keep the climate from becoming invasive. Also, people connected with their collaborators on cloud-based platforms will have to assert their identity and personality in these interactions. e. Data will flow quickly across the network, which will wash away many beginnings and endings which determine a product’s lifecycle. Instead, a cycle of redesign, re-engineering, updating, and revisioning will keep many products “like new” for as long as the end user wishes. A swirl of relentless innovation and evolution is possible. INNOVATION AND TIME In any innovation, the present includes a future horizon of expectations of relevant possibilities providing an orientation for experience and research activity. The relevant possibilities, belonging to the present project, are part of the project in the mode of the future horizon. The past horizon does not vanish into oblivion since it is required and retained for the comprehension of the future horizon. The present is thus a temporal field consisting of active past and future horizons constituting a field of orientations of action and experience. Hence, each activity occurs within a temporal field where the coming future and retained past are co-present and are manifested in the activity within a given project. What has been accomplished by others and what is being done with the project continues to be present for the

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understanding of what is being done and what is about to be done. Moreover, what is about to be done is a condition for the understanding of what is being done and was done. For innovation, such temporal awareness is relevant to the extent that students and teachers will learn from the innovations of the past. How innovations were accomplished, what transformations in thinking and application were relevant to surpass the achievements of the predecessors, and what possibilities were signified by such achievements. In this sense, this time of learning and experience is a field. If human actions are based on a temporal field, then humans are not only temporal, but also historical beings. This means that, through actions, humans make their history, and since history arises through human action, then the very being of a human is the history she makes. This means, furthermore, that although we may analyze “natural facts”, their properties, and their temporal orientations, we shall discover that facts function and assume orientations within a context of significations, and this is more so with respect to the “facts” invented by humans through education. In principle, such “facts” are the results of innovations from which one can learn how subsequent innovations can be achieved. Not all events play a role in human activity; they are selected and interpreted according to their significance in the context of a particular project and its horizons. Conversely, the horizons are also present selectively: significant possibilities are selected, and insignificant ones are rejected. In biotechnologies, Americans have been innovating in the area of genetically engineered food products, but learning about such innovations by European young people requires the placing of this technology in a European life-world where genetically engineered vegetables are contested, and thus the horizon of possibilities of innovation in this area will have to be postponed. In addition, arguments must be presented, on the basis of values that would have to change, if genetic engineering is to be a domain selected for education. Thus, past values play a role in the future selectivity of what innovations will be possible. Although our process of selectivity may leap over events, their historical continuity consists of their significance within the temporal field. Even if the events are past and causally no longer efficient, their significance is still present. This does not mean that the significance of events follows a linear succession; rather, the significance of the past event belongs to the present temporal field and its horizons of possibilities. It either expands or contracts the horizons by permitting the selectivity of more or less remote events as relevant within the present temporal field of learning. It is also clear that the present field is multilayered and thus replete with options such that certain options are taken up while others remain present in a tacit mode—to be activated if the horizon discloses their relevance and value.

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The expansion of a past horizon does not imply that the entire significance of history may be captured. There may be events whose significance and the truth will manifest themselves only in the future. Truth itself is historical and reveals itself in historical times. The teacher of science is also a historian who knows how to read events—not as facts, but significatively; the teacher may see the relevance of some past events reflected on the future horizon. In brief, the significance of an event transcends its present toward the past and future and the mere factual description of the event. The same holds true for past and future events. Moreover, the future horizon may reveal a hitherto unnoticed significance of past or present events and add to the constitution of continuity and unity of social events and their historical development. SELECTIVITY An in-depth investigation of the temporal field of activity is by itself inadequate without an extensive study of life-world structures as limitations to the selectivity of significant and relevant events and possibilities. In the context delineated above, Luhmann (1982) has contributed extensively to the understanding of the relationship between the temporal field and social structures. His suggestions are crucial for any progress in this area. Luhmann accepts the differentiation between the temporal field and the theoretical-linear time, and he adds a qualification with respect to the selectivity of events. Past, present, and future events assume significance and orientation, not only within the temporal field of learning but also within the horizons, views, concepts, and prescribed selectivity by a lifeworld. Consequently, the structure of the temporal field of learning is limited by the life-world and its selected-selectable possibilities. Moreover, the open horizons constitute the region of possibilities outside the ken of the social structure: In terms of the social structure, they are impossible. Yet, precisely such “impossible-possibilities” define the limit of a life-world and its horizons and predelineates the orientation for fundamental innovations. An awareness of the limits of a life-world and its possibilities is required for any fundamental innovative activity. And yet, the awareness of such a limit assumes a presence of a possibility by which to judge the limit and toward which to orient the fundamental learning of innovations. Precisely at this point, the dialogical process in education becomes the sharpest—debating such limits, discovering what meaning factors are at play, and how those can be challenged and transformed. It follows then that, within a life-world context, not all possibilities are equal; some are more remote than others, and thus not all are equally significant. It could be said that the socially impossible is socially unrealizable; socially, it is an impossible possibility and reveals the limits of a life-world. Of course, the interrelationships between the possible and impossible are quite complex. What

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may be possible politically may be only remotely possible or even impossible economically; what is possible economically may not be possible technologically. Thus, certain events may be excluded for the time being and become past for the social system. (Religions have become a private matter and no longer mix in political-public affairs). Yet, they may be reinstated as significant for the social future provided a shift in the life-world signification of events and temporal horizons have occurred. (Thus, more recently, the same religions have assumed political meanings and have shifted the interpretation of events, thus transforming what is significant for today and for the future). Of course, such a shift requires an understanding of “time reflex” as a means of relating the social system to its possibilities and these, in turn, to the temporal field of action. The required complexities of time reflexes cannot be developed here, but they will be reserved for the next section. Fig. (1) shows the modalization of the internet experience, whereas Table 1 lists the combinations of temporal moments which can be experienced. Table 1. Foresight and temporal landscapes. -

Past

Present

Future

Past

Past Past

Past Present

Past Future

Present

Present Past

Present Present

Present Future

Future

Future Past

Future Present

Future Future

TIME REFLEX Although there are two major aspects constituting the time reflex, their structures are similar. Hence, we shall deal with one and refer to the other when necessary. The limits of the socially possible constitute a temporal horizon for a particular society which reflects the process of current events. Such events are temporal, and their orientation, selectivity and significance are reflected from both the future and past horizons. This is the first “time reflex”. Since events are temporal, then the time reflex is also temporal, with constantly shifting possibilities at the limits of the socially possible. The limits of the socially possible are manifest only with respect to socially impossible possibilities. These constitute the open horizon of the temporal field of learning, which is the basis for the historical development and orientation of a social process. This is the second time reflex. It reflects the limits of the socially possible. Since the social selectivity process of events requires temporal horizons of the socially possible, then the temporal field constitutes a prerequisite for the understanding of the social processes, their limits and historical transformations, showing, at this point, the innovative achievements. Were we limited to the current social conditions and socially

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predelineated possibilities, as sociologists conceive that we are, then no fundamental scientific transformation could occur. This is not to deny the limitations constantly imposed by a life-world and its possibilities; nevertheless, such limitations are not absolute. We remain open within the temporal field of education which manifests the limits of the social structure and the possibilities of its transformation. Hence, the temporal field is fundamental both for social transformation and for the relationship between social structure and its temporal development and orientation. This relationship can now be described as “time reflex”.

Fig. (1). Temporal Experience.

Any innovative learning functions within a life-world and time, consequently assuming the temporal field. In fact, as already noted, such learning is totally correlated to the temporal field and its horizons. Hence, let us take as an example the activity of inquiring into society and its temporal process. The investigation is correlated to the selected events and possibilities of a given social structure; yet, the investigation requires a limit from which a life-world may be seen. We know that a life-world as a system reproduces its own memory of the history of selectivity, of experience of the environment. A life-world, in its complexity of meanings, limits which experiences will count as relevant and valid and also which factors of the environment will be relevant for learning and innovation. Yet, beyond this, it reconstructs a world-history of unaccomplished selectivity required to grasp the limit of its selectivity and introduce fundamental innovations that would change not only technologies, but also signify all other factors in a life-world. Europe is facing a quandary of legal issues with respect to the speed of technological innovations. The laws that are available cannot handle the meaning and value of all the novelties implying a horizon of possibilities of novel laws, either as restrictions of technical innovations, or their delegation to specific areas

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of a European life-world. Thus, the “impossible possibilities” in a life-world must be considered with respect to what they imply integrally across all other meaning levels of a life-world. This complexity is part of the curriculum for innovation, and the benefits for society are vast since the innovators will learn not only the ways to advance their field, but also what the advancement means for all other domains: economic, legal, valuative, moral, health, educational, and political decisions. In brief, the temporal field horizon has an indefinite depth of temporal possibilities which reflect the temporal horizons of life-world possibilities, their limits, and innovative transgressions. Hence, time reflex, while relating a lifeworld structure to the temporal field of learning, provides a fundamental context for the activity of innovative learning. During the learning activity, the present shifts from one event to another that include shifts not only in the horizons of the present, but also in those of the present of the past and the present of the future. Shifts in the present of the present include shifts in its horizons and correlatively call for shifts in the horizons of the presents of past and future. Yet, such a call is possible on the basis of the time reflex. The present temporal field, due to its time reflex, extends and overlaps with past and future temporal fields. What were still future possibilities and even impossibilities for the present of the past, may be realized in the present and even establish our future horizon of not-yet-realized possibilities and limiting impossibilities. This appears in various ways. For example, in a legal domain of a life-world, a constitution written in the past may be articulated at present for its possible reinterpretation as to what it might have meant in the past and what such reinterpretation might mean for future cases involving previously unimagined innovations. TIME REFLEX AND WORLD The concept of world is critical to the enterprise of founding a communicationbased theory of the social and cultural. The relationship between meaning and the world can be described as the concept of decentering. As a meaning, the world is accessible everywhere: in every situation, in any detail, at each point of the scale from concrete to abstract. At the same time, the world is more than a mere sum comprehending all possibilities, and all meaning references. It is not just the sum, but the unity of these possibilities above all; this means that the world horizon for every difference guarantees its own unity as difference. It sublates the difference in all perspectives from individual systems, in that for every system, the world is the unity of its own difference between system and environment. Efforts to view technology, politics, and culture set in motion a quest to reconsider the

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cultural/political categories of history, individuation, praxis, and power in concrete phenomena. Such reconsiderations of these categories have been cast in a pure communication structure of dialogic undermining cherished glosses of communication praxis, dialectical historicism, culture, and text as interpretive explanations of concrete political life. However, the concept of world needs to be explored as a universal presumption. Therefore, world as the concrete fundament of life appears through presentation and de-presentation and concrete possibilities. The way of world cannot be encountered in the context of human-world relationships. Only in a non-thinking moment can we think of human-world relationships as an encounter between two things. The dominant in the model is inner-worldly relationships. Each inner-worldly thing has an identity of self and other-relatedness, where the sense of identity demands the sense of difference: Identity and difference belong together. It is one of the basic ontological aspects in the Western tradition ending in Hegel’s dialectic (1966) of identity and difference. And the human, seen as inner-worldly, is destined by “self” and “other” relationships. The question is whether such a destiny, a de-termination, makes sense without a much deeper and accessible way pervading the human. World is not the most extreme limit and boundary of inner-worldly things; it is not a framework or a container. Humans do not take residence in the world as worms in an apple or money in a bank. All the trusted modalities of “being-in” of things are not applicable—not even metaphorically. World is not an object or a region, a time of all times, regardless of our evocations of finitude and infinity. Neither is world the sum of all humanly known objects and subjects. The sum of such knowledge is no less remote from the world than the knowledge of an individual. We, while in the world, encounter things and others, yet nowhere do we encounter the world as a thing, an object, or an other. Rather, the world is an openness to things and of things. After all, the various regions of things, the living, the dying, the tactile and the remote, have not been exhausted—and perhaps are not exhaustible—and only our meager knowledge is limited. World understanding must encompass the notions of being, context, consciousness, and the self-understanding of the human. Thus, we must consider how it is that the inner-worldly ways transmute into objects for consciousness. Husserl points to the main sail of cosmological thought: the differences between the world-lending of and the inner-worldly objectivity-subjectivity (and their relationship) of events (see Bruzina, 2004). Events appear either in themselves or for us. But is this all that there is: the appearing things, the things and their appearance to us? What of timing, spacing, lighting changing, and so forth? Intentionality falls short. Timing seems closer to world. This may be the joining of human openness for world and world’s self-constitution—the joining where timing and world-time are not yet distinct. If this is the case, then reflection is a

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temporalization of a temporalization with pre-given distances and nearnesses of time and space, of significative dimensions assumed both in pre-reflective moves and reflection upon such moves. Reflection is, therefore, basically a world reflex, allowing a movement of temporalization within time, and time as such must here be understood a-temporally (alpha privative). It is possible to glimpse now, although in a sketchy manner, world-time, or at least to suggest a way more akin to world-time. Let us think along the worldexpansive present, the way it may lend motion, and the presence of all things and events. We must think of the world-expansive dimensions and how they lend the motion of emergence into presence and demise into absence. EMERGENCE Our discussion points out that the unified thing contains more potential than is manifested by it at any given moment; the manifestations depend upon a given context. Within a specific context, potentialities actualize and manifest the thing from a particular perspective. Scientists experiment with things by introducing them into different contexts in order to discover the characteristics that are not manifest. In fact, without the “more” as potency, we would be unable to account for the phenomena of coherent change. Because there is more in movement than in successive positions attributed to the moving objects, more in becoming than in the forms passed through, the latter can be derived from the former. In short, there is more to the thing than in the manifestation of the present perspective. It is the aspect of “more” which requires potentiality to be one of the fundamental ontological categories. Modern science, philosophy and social science have the tendency to view “reality” as wholly actual. That precludes becoming; so, we would be precluded from saying a child “becomes a woman”. If everything is actual, then “becoming” means “becoming that which already is actual”. To say the actual child is already an actual woman is totally unintelligible. Potentiality is part of the a priori correlation of intelligibility. It is “the something more” which is constantly being revealed—only, it is never exhausted. The “something more” is potentiality in the sense of “that which is not yet actual, but which—given certain conditions—will become actual”. The thing could have had a different history if the circumstances of its existence had been different. It could have displayed other characteristics, and could have affected environing entities in different ways. The unified thing acts in terms of its context and contains the capacity to readjust itself to varying contexts. From this discussion, we can move to the ontological principle that is required for an explanation of the world of things.

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Required: 1. An intrinsically unified thing, which manifests itself in and through its temporal perspectives. It is more potentially than the combination of its characteristics or perspectives at any given time. 2. The unified thing is dependent on its context for the manifestation of its specific perspectives. The thing, while interacting with its context, tends toward the preservation of its being as an actualization of its potentialities. The actualization of the potentialities indicates that the end toward which the thing tends is intrinsic to it: self-actualization in the process of interaction with the relevant things of its context. We shall briefly discuss the above two points in terms of evolution because of the predominant influence of the theory of “emergent evolution” in complexity theory, chaos theory, and Deleuzian evolutionary theory. Emergent evolution’s basic position is that it is a fact that the emergence of novelties cannot be reduced to pre-existing events. This is the foundation of emergent evolution. We can agree. Yet, the emergent theory claims that novelty emerges from that which was not there. With that claim, we cannot agree. If new characteristics emerge, then there must be a unified thing which contains within itself the potentiality for the new or novel characteristics because they relate themselves actively to other things in terms of which they reveal or manifest the novel characteristics. Emergent theory cannot answer how emergence is possible because it does not account for a unified thing which is more than the present characteristics. It attempts to derive the “more” from the “less”, and at the same time, it wishes to claim that the more is not reducible to the less. If there is nothing more in the unified things than the presently manifested characteristics, then there is no emergence, but a change or a succession of different phenomena. An intelligible theory of emergence requires an assumption of a unified thing that evolves, which is more “potentiality” than any given evolutionary process or emergence state. We do not have a set of phenomena derivable from or reducible to previous phenomena, but a succession of manifestations of the potential of the unified thing. Furthermore, the relevant context which evokes the actualization and hence the manifestation of the thing’s potentialities must consist of things that have their own intrinsic unities. Without these unities, the context would not retain the required stability, and hence there would be no orientation to distinguish between “relevant” and “irrelevant” contexts. In short, we require an intrinsic unity of both the given thing and the things constituting its relevant context. The relationship to a particular context

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actualizes the potentialities and gives rise to the emergence of novel characteristics of the thing. There cannot be an emergence of novelty unless the novelty is an actualized potency of the thing; otherwise, we would get more from less without an explanation of how it is possible to transfer the less into the more. It is preferable to call “emergence” the unfolding of potentiality contained within the a-temporal level of the unified thing. Novelty, if not based on the principle of unity and potentiality, loses its meaning and becomes mere change. If novelty is not based on these principles, then human striving for knowledge is doomed to failure from the very beginning. In fact, it would not even be possible to distinguish between failure and success. Signification is already sedimented, already given in corporeal, linguistic gestures, in institutions as a surging-forth of a “pre-history”, a temporally nonlocalizable event, yet an event which is manifest in the corporeal “here and now” (Mead, 1932, pp. 212-213). This event is, of course, one of signification, and significance without temporality is always given in a modality of corporeal, institutional, sedimented rooting, lending the significance a localized modality, which is immediately transcended because the signification leads facticities “vertically” into the future and the past. The historical, social, and individuated significations crisscross intercorporeity in its inner dialectical process. If corporeity is the sedimentation of modes of signification, both novel and institutionalized, then it is also historically intercorporeal. It is everything that is acquired through our collective history, everything that the factually manifest significations of historical events communicate in and through our speaking, our gestures, and our silence. This means that corporeity is more than can be grasped empirically and intellectually. If the body is the background by virtue of which the world is there for us—the signification and openness toward the world, the medium of world possession—then its traces can be found inscribed in all institutions and human achievements and can be identical with such institutions. The corporeal, the built institutions, comprise just as much a locus of the sedimented depth of historical and institutionalized meaning, sweeping across our very gestures, and prolonging themselves in our corporeal movements. They propagate themselves in our speaking and are, in turn, supported by the very gestures which signify such institutionally sedimented significances, giving them a new shape, a novel configuration to be sedimented and manifest in gestures of generations to come. This is the historical process in a concrete intercorporeal sense.

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The inner dialectical region consists of the traces left by the other in everything we encounter: in the books we read, the presence of the other is given; in the food we buy, the other is implicated; in the implements we employ, the labor of the other is communicated. At the same time, the implementalities have their own anonymity. They communicate with one another and draw the very subject into their system of interconnections. Recall that a house implies a family, the family a socio-economic system, its history and all the configurations of experience, perception, and modes of being. Our paradigm of the limited-transcendent has shown how the world became visible. On the basis of concrete corporeality, implementalities “communicate their sense” one to the other, and the participants with the implementalities communicate with one another along the system of significative interconnections inscribed in such implementalities. This is also valid for all institutions—inclusive of our own modes of comportment, moving along the historically interpreted notion of the world. Thus, the inner dialectical region is all-inclusive. Humans need not seek to demonstrate the existence of “other minds” but find the presence of the other in institutions, implementalities, and their “inner dialectical” interconnections, which reveal the shape and the work of the other. The “depth” of significance is visible when transcendence becomes a dimension of the human world. The species-nature of human experiences is transmitted through successive generations, but it is mediated through present experience. Yet, universal history requires an act of simultaneity, an all-at-once, or an a-temporal experience of history. Therefore, a universal or trans-historical sense of history is required to realize the Marxian project. Human sensibilities have a history, and it is through this history that we may become aware of it. Therefore, the introduction of the history of sense also demands that humans must have a sense of history. This double awareness must be clarified. Let us recall the phenomenological understanding of experience. Experience is always an experience of sense, of signification, of the meaning of things and of an implicit generality, typology, or style, and thus of something relatively permanent in the flux of facticities. The sense, the style of the real encountered in experience correlates to specific experiential processes such as judgment, wondering, predicating, and distinguishing, wherein the real appears as this kind, this nature, this style, and this orientation. The question is thus: “What kind of experiences is required per se in order for a particular kind of being or a particular type of event to be present?” This means that the question concerning the types and kinds of beings, their sense, becomes a question of experience and the mode of experience wherein such kinds, types and senses are constituted. Experience is thus

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conceived as an activity of sense-constitution wherein being of a particular kind or type is signified. Sense designates universal structures comprising a matrix for the experience of entities of various kinds, types, and styles. Yet, this matrix is not abstract from the events and facticities embedded in the matrix. Everything that is perceived has a background of the past (no-longer) and the future (not-yet). This is present as co-continuous with what is being perceived in terms of significative implications in a continuous process of experience. This constitutes a horizon which is not only background, but is also such that each experienced thing has a horizon to be pursued indefinitely, a continuity of significative implications and clues which are constantly sedimented in experience and manifest in our gestures, language, and institutions. These continuous significations are given in accordance with generalities and typologies indicating the kinds of further experiential acts and orientations one must perform. The social world is thus encountered inner-dialectically as a collective concept of these indices of possible orientations of experience and the senses of things and events. It is an allencompassing horizon of the possibility of experiencing, containing sedimented modalities in our institutions and pointing to novel typological possibilities yet to come (Pilotta & McCaughan, 2012, pp. 131-133). This worldly motion of lending emergence and demise should not be identified with the world-expansive everyday world transition. The everyday world and the world-time must be distinguished in terms of cosmological differences. It must also be noted that, as things and events have an expanse from not-yet, present, and no-longer, the inner-temporal phenomena must also be thought of temporally. It has been an old habit to think that the things and events must be given—or better, show themselves—only now. The past is no more, and the future is not yet. But, if things and events are not essential but temporal, then we cannot think of an event without the everyday horizons and the transition from one to the other. Thus, the appearance of something or an event is basically an appearing, and also a disappearing. (An appearance here must be understood as a temporal formation of something or an event whereby phenomena are lent their configurations along the transition of the world-expansive, everyday dimensions of not-yet, present, and no-longer). There is not only a tension, but also a forming/deforming. This means that one cannot validly proclaim that the thing or event has a form, or had a form which it lost, since the loss is a losing and, at the same time, a formation along the traces of deformation. The deformation is a formation tracing the deformation in itself; this is one aspect of depth-time since the formation is not after the deformation but is the depth of the no-longer tracing itself in the deformation. The formation and deformation and the deformation-formation have a transparent depth. The depth is possible if we understand the notion of events, but as a self-formation of

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temporal configurations; temporal depth is the very transparent visibility of things. If we were to think along the three temporal dimensions, we could have a way where there is a formation-deformation-formation identical with those temporal dimensions whereby the present formation is an inscription of temporal configuration and is at the same time a deformation transparent through the formation as its temporal depth “toward the past” and a formation transparent with its “temporal future”. In brief, every phenomenon is not merely an appearance of a thing or an event as a property, but more fundamentally, transparency of the dimensional depth of time, not “one after the other”. Hence, the world-expansive transition lends things and events their face, but the face is also a worldly face and not merely a thing-appearance—beyond things in the world. The inner-worldly appearance is the “transition” across the time dimensions. The problem of world-time lies in the way that it “lets phenomena be”, that is, the phenomenality of the appearance. What lends appearance to their phenomenality is the dimensional shift, the formation-deformation-formation as dimensional time-depth inscribing the appearance of things, which is not identical with the new characteristics of things. Yet, the phenomena here are not appearances unto the subject; at best, the subject is identical to the shift of the temporal dimensions. Nevertheless, we can have an initial glimpse, even if it is still in terms of the everyday world dimensions, into the world-time as not successive but as all-pervasive. It must be noted that here the ontological status of the traditional notion of appearance is lost. The appearance was a topological study—line, plane, mapping—but missing depth as a critical dimension. In this case, it is neither; phenomenon, although attributable to a thing or an event, is ultimately a dimension, lending things their “while” and apparition. The worldly appearance is time-lent. It is temporal and spatial: space-lent. All everyday spaces, such as place-space, thing’s expansive space, everyday distances, distantiations and kinships, are only in a world-space, which is neither a big space nor a place of all places, nor can it have a stretch since all stretches, distantiations, and places are pervaded by world-space. The world-space is a spacing of the everyday world of things in distances, places, and expansive spaces, and hence their casting of shadows across each other, which gives coloration, resonance, and touch to all temporal phenomena. Space, in spacing, lends things their size, weight, expanse, and location, but in such a way that spacing vibrates across all things and events without being identical to them. Thus, both world-dimensional time, as lending phenomena their phenomenality, and space, as spacing the everyday things and events in their locations, affinities, and remoteness, have a “movement” which is not one of the inner-worldly

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movements, and which cannot be understood in the categories of traditional philosophies. It is a cosmological motion. If we are to think of this motion as a transition from the future to the present and from the present to the past, we would be using the notion of transition and time in an inner-worldly, everyday way—a way of succession and a successive movement. How, then, are we to think about this worldly movement? We must think of the world-dimensional present, past, and future, back to the timing of the world where the transition occurs—not from the future to the present and the past, but the way of world-timing where such differentiations falter without being lost. We must think of transition intransitively. The non-ontological presence of past and future is not simply an absence of things or even nothing but rather has a temporal sense, a sense that is quite difficult to capture. It cannot be thought of in terms of absence since absence is prepositional. With Aristotle (1936) and Augustine, (1953), there emerges a further question: How is it that, in explicating time, they employ a spatial model, specifically when Augustine established a total disjunction between space and time? Space is external; time is in the soul. When Augustine points out that “a while” can either be long or short and since only entities can be long or short, then he operates with a model of spatial stretches, such as a path. Whatever is extended in space may not change its extension although it has changed time. The “road stretch” is still there, although yesterday is no longer. Hence, we must reconsider whether time is a stretch. We must ask whether there is a present time and whether it can be long or short. We, of course, speak of the time stretch in terms of the present century, present year, and may call them a long stretch of time. But how is the past hundred years the present? Obviously, it is not given contemporaneously as a stretch in space, i.e., as a stretch of the road. We speak of the present century as “ours”. Only the present year is present, but obviously, even this year is not “present” since most of it is gone and some of it is yet to be finished. If we push this kind of notion of the present, we shall end up with the Zenonian and Aristotelian division of time into an infinite point (see Diogenes Laertius, 2021). But such an indivisible point is never encountered. All attempts to consider time as present slip away into past and future. Therefore, we cannot think of the present as an extension. When we attempt to think the world-movement, then we have to trace back from the transition of world expansive dimensions of not-yet, present, and no longer to the world-space-time movement. To add a different turn, to think the world means to show how the world-movement manifests itself in, and makes possible the appearance of, the dimensional future, present, and past, namely so that the emergence of the future, present, and past are possible—a possibility constituting the appearance of phenomena. It could be said that all everyday “whiles” are

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contained within the world-expansive dimensions, although this metaphor must be de-spatialized. However, we cannot say that the world-expansive dimensions are “in” the world, nor can we say that the world-expansive time is an infinite “while” since the infinite stretch smacks of a line from “now” in both directions. From my “now” I stretch the “whiles” or even array them endlessly in both directions. Neither can world-time-space nor movement be infinite since we would revert back to an inner-worldly every day. In the timing of the world across the worldexpansive dimensions, the world-time is neither a “while” nor a duration since all “whiles” and durations are in the world; hence, the world-time would not endure. How does the world “time” cross all world-expansive dimensions? How does the world-space “space” all inner-worldly events and things? How does the world institute the movement of spatio-temporal dimensions? How are we to think of the world-depth? For phenomenology, the experienced elements such as chromatic qualities or audial durations are no longer the qualities of things or qualifications of the subject-soul. They belong to experiences, which can be said to be worldly in the sense that they are more akin to the traditionally neglected world than to subjects and objects. The same can be said of time and space. Time and space are certainly not “in” the subject, neither are objects described phenomenologically “in” time and space. The fleshly present things of our surrounding world constitute the region of our perceptual field. In diverse ways, we are tuned to the surroundings in terms of use, misuse, valuation, interrogation, wonder, and habit. In all this, we are related to the surroundings perceptually; thus, the perceptual field and we are co-present. Yet, in the perceptual field, we find that things—our surroundings—are not closed from moment to moment. We find an aura, a horizon; our perceptual island is neither objective nor subjective, nor is the aura that spreads “beyond” the island. Yet, the aura is given differently than the present perceptual field. It is given as re-presented, as absent in the presence. But we must note that the re-presentation must be interpreted in the worldly sense. This means that we cannot speak here of re-presentation as an act of consciousness, but as a temporal event of time-intime. This means that we are not concerned with the protentional act or the retentional capacity, but with a time arc, a time curve upon itself. Although we may be re-presenting things of the past, what makes the re-presentation possible is the past’s presence and the future’s presence exactly in the perceptual field, which has an aura, not spreading toward the past and future only, but coming from the past and the future toward the perceptual present. In the phenomenal field, the field of perception and its aural significations, we are related in presentational and re-presentational modalities. We relate presentationally to the things in our surroundings and re-presentationally to the aural significations in terms of remembered and expected surroundings. Thus, we have an immediate stance on our surroundings as presented and re-presented. Both belong to our world. In

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terms of the notion of presentation and re-presentation, we must ask: What is the relationship between presentation and re-presentation to world-time? (Pilotta & Mickunas, 1990). Before we can answer such a question in any manner, we must gain a closer understanding of the notions of presentation and re-presentation within the transcendental region. The essential aspect of “presenting acts” consists in their being oriented to the “intentional objectivity”. The thing shows itself in its corporeity. Their presence is related to the living present and is to be understood as “presenting”. In contrast, the “re-presenting acts” do not show the object as bodily present but as re-presented. The relationship of the re-presentational act to the presentational act is understood by transcendental phenomenology as a “modification” of the act and the object of the act. When we re-present a perceived something, the perceiving is co-re-presented without thematization. A re-presentational act, relating to a presenting perceptual act, has the character of “simultaneous occurrence” (Gleichsam Vollzug). In the re-presentational act, there is constituted the re-presented perceptual object and the co-re-presented perceptual act. Yet, as an act it too has its own temporality. The essential moment of a re-presentational act—regardless of what sort of re-presentation—must be seen in the “inner-penetration”. The inter-penetration of a dual lived presence: the presence of re-presenting and the imagined presence of the imagined perceiving; the presently re-presented something and the imagined presence of the imagined perceived something (See Pilotta, 1979). The basic kinds of re-presenting acts are determined in terms of temporal horizon: • Re-presentation in the time horizon of the past is recollection. • Re-presentation in the time horizon of the future is pre-recollection or expectation. • Re-presentation in the time-horizon of the present is present-recollection. The manner in which the co-re-presentation, i.e., a-presentation, corresponds to a time-horizon is to be explicated shortly. While the presenting perception is oriented to the bodily-perceptually present, the recollection relates to the nolonger present and expectation to the not-yet present; the present recollection relates to the present not given in perceptual corporeity. Recollection points to the “having been at the present” as in presentational perception, which “has been” for the person. It intrudes into one’s conscious past; it actualizes the in-actual memory constituted from retentional consciousness phases. In recollection, we must differentiate between an actualizing re-presentation from not-yet-actualized

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memory awareness and the recalling of something forgotten. The forgotten is such that it itself was once in actual memory knowledge. Before we turn to a phenomenological analysis of the temporal constitution of the perceptual objects and their temporality, in order to lead them toward cosmological reinterpretation, let us briefly depict perception and the perception field by employing some of the important insights of Husserl (1964). In perception, we are related to something that is corporeally present and is already displaying itself. The perceptual field is correlated to perceptual sense. The sense which lends an obvious perceptual fullness is the facing-sense with vision as one of its aspects. There is a distinction between distant-sense and near-sense. Distant-sense consists of facing-sense with vision and hearing as its aspects; the near-sense consists of tactility, taste, and smell. The notion of distant-sense means that the experienced must be spatially separated from the perceiver. Near-sense means that the experienced must be without spatial mediation. Each perceptual sense has a specific sense-field, and an analysis of perception must describe the various sense-fields. We shall not, at present, describe the various sense-fields. Hence, by the perception, we shall mean “a limited notion of perception in terms of face-perception and its temporality”. We shall nevertheless note that Husserl’s analyses of time are grounded in the hearing-field, since, for him, audiality, such as tone or melody, constitutes temporal events par-excellence. The perceptual field of face-sense not only includes the immediately present things, the near things and events, but also the distant things and events. The institution of nearness is grounded in the un-thematized null-point of the body; but the body, as an inner-penetration of full perceptual fields is a constant kinesthetic formationdeformation of various fields and nearnesses-distances. Hence, body has a most significant play in the constitution of the perceptual fields. However when we are speaking of perceptual fields at this stage of our considerations, we are not speaking about subjective processes, nevertheless, one of the references in the field is the null-point, which we may call “body”. It must be noted that the nullpoint need not assume a privileged position; any point may be called “here” and the point need not be spatial; it could be dimensional, e.g., when we say “right here in this town…” or “here on Earth…” Any point may be taken as an orientation point in the perceptual field. In attempting to avoid something, we are riveted on that something as a point from which our body orients itself, i.e., inscribes various configurations of avoidance, such as going around it, going out of the way to avoiding it, crawling, tiptoeing, and so forth. The perceptual field can be “attached” to anything as its “center” although such an attachment is eventually unnecessary and, in fact, impossible if the substantive attitude and spatial points are secondary phenomena, i.e., if we cannot discover any point which is not itself dimensional and things which themselves are not figurative.

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But in order to understand the perceptual field, we return to the body as it functioned in early phenomenology. We find here two descriptive orientations: on the one hand, the way we experience our bodily movements in the perceptual processes, and on the other, the dependence of the perceptual field and the way that things show themselves on the positionality of the body. The first orientation is called kinesthetic, and the other has to do with the shadings (Abschattungen) of the spatio-temporal things. The objects toward which our perceptual ray is oriented show themselves in their corporeal presence. The significance of this Husserlian notion suggesting the original givenness—the original presence of entities—shows that the corporeity of the given is related to the perceiving body. Within the process of bodily perception, there is the “corporeal present”. We can have the corporeal presence of things only insofar as we are corporeal. This situation can be shown in terms of both of the descriptive orientations suggested above. Husserl (1973) calls material things Aistheta insofar as they are related to the body and its Aisthesis. He calls the body “the means of all perception” which “is present necessarily in all perception”. The perceptual processes of experience, such as the seeing or touching of things, involve the body not only perceptually but also with respect to the “accompanying series of kinesthetic”. The kinesthetic “impressions” may be localized in the bodily member, such as hand, eye, and so forth. The kinesthetic series constitute the manner—the field—in which our body is “by the things”. The perceptual thing is present in accordance with our bodily position, the position of the eye, the movement of the head, the movement of tactility across the hand. At the same time, the body assumes a null point as a point of orientation within the perceptual field. From this, there emerge the orientations of the surrounding world toward the body. They are on the right or left, behind or to the side, low or in front, high or parallel to me. Thus, the orientation of things to the body and its fields of perception are ruled by perspectives and partial views, i.e., shadings. One sees the thing’s surface, runs across it with a hand, and thus constitutes various perspectives; one does not, at present, see the other side, the bottom or the three back legs; yet, one means the entire table. The unperceived aspects are, to speak with Husserl, given apresentatively. One can bring them to presence by varying one’s position; yet, one is always present to one or the other side, while the non-present sides are apresent. In each perceptual accomplishment, there is continually a partial section of something. All the aspects not given presentatively constitute the horizon of the a-presentatively given. If one goes around the things, one continuously penetrates the horizon of the a-presentation, and the just-perceived aspects of the same thing sink into a-presentation. The world-time does not possess an attribute of being an all-encompassing something to which we relate from a particular “point”. Now, we can bracket the protentional-retentional and notice that there is distancing and nearing (we have

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not yet said that it is distancing and nearing) into a particular temporal orientation, such as past or future. It has been assumed for too long that, if it is distancing, then it must be sinking into the past, and if it is nearing, it must be coming from the future. But something could be distancing into the future, such as a goal that yesterday was near, and which today is much more remote. The same thing is true with the past. Some unholy deed “in the past” is finally catching up to someone—it is nearing. Prior to temporal localization, there is the depth. Thus, the present does not emerge from a primal impression; rather, all impressions emerge, approach, and distance without any assumed temporal orientation. Thus, if there is a “time-understanding” it is not derivable from the Anthropos. Terminologies, such as “experienced time”, “lived time”, “projected time” and such, add nothing to the way “we are” temporal. The present is a way that all events are, including “us” by instituting all the gestures we subscribe to the depth of the present and a field of presence. In this respect, when we speak of the nolonger and the not-yet, we are not necessarily speaking about the past and future, but rather about the present depth; were we to say that something is coming to me from the future, we would be merely saying that it is traveling on a line from Paris to me, traversing space, and it has not yet traversed sufficient space to reach me. Yet, that traveling is present and is not coming from the future; as I sit awaiting, the traveling is already occurring, and the traveler will simply emerge from the horizon which is neither the future nor the past. The present is not an impressional moment but a depth that can be best articulated, at least for now, in the Husserlian terms of determinable indeterminacy, rather than in the Heideggerian notions of nearness and distance, which smack too much of spatiality. The above notion of indeterminate-determinable depth contains not only depth articulations but also horizon articulations with determinable indeterminacy. Of note here is the loss of a temporal event from the future to the present to the past. Take sound, which always played a role in the Husserlian analysis of a temporal event, and we shall hear that the temporal continuation of sound is not given, nor is it given as a rhythm, although sound can be articulated as a rhythm. It is more akin to a dimension with depth and indeterminate indeterminable limits within which both continuation and rhythm constitute specific articulations. The same can be said of visual area. Although we still use the term horizon, it also carries a notion of a spatial expanse, so to speak—where the sky meets the earth. This implies a sphere with more spatial fullness and Parmenidean being than the temporal horizon. But if this is spatial, then what is the temporal horizon? A horizon toward which these spatial horizons move? But that would simply suggest a sphere within a sphere. This would lead us nowhere. The time depth mentioned above still contains the notion of depth, which may hint at spatiality; yet, let us live with it for a while and connect with our earlier descriptions.

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Coming from the depth is not coming from the future; hence, when something shows up on the horizon, it has its presence in the depth. If I say that Joe Biden is coming from Washington, D.C., but he is not yet here, he does not sit there perched on a future horizon; he is present in the expansive world presence, and the “future horizon” is merely a modulation of the present. What is suggested is that the horizons are articulations of the present depth by anything, perception or consciousness being only one modality among others, such as sway of a sapling in the wind, which corresponds with the protentional-retentional consciousness. It must also be noted that, with each sway, the “previous” are not in the “past” but rather constitute the continuously self-configuring depth. The horizons also move in depth with the continuous sway by constituting the indeterminate determinable limits of the sway, of protention/retention, of memory and expectation. Hence, Joe Biden’s coming from Washington, D.C. is a movement of the present with horizons, such as farther and nearer, and so forth. Of note is that the horizons may be “parallel” with the depth, yet they, too, have horizons of determinate indeterminacy, each of those having its own depth. How are we then to announce this depth? Let us listen to the irrupting presence echoed by sound welling into a dimension without any successive localities or continuations, since continuation is traceable within it only as one of its modalities. The analysis of the linear continuation of sound or time shaded by sound lacks a dimensional depth given cosmologically. Let us look at the irrupting time shaded by a flicker of light: it inscribes constantly waning protrusions which are immediately pervaded by others, dominated by intersections, thus building a constantly spreading depth which is not complete but is intersected, pervaded, and re-dimensioned by other irruptions; it is not light that pervades light, but time dimensions which pervade time dimensions, which are temporalizations of time. We are apt to think that the light pervades and dominates or manages space and time in some dimensional way, but this is somewhat short since it assumes that darkness is space to be shaped by light; but the contrast is just as valid; darkness protrudes and pervades the light, and this simply means a play of temporal dimensions which cannot be oriented. Rather, it is a play of building of depths, not from me toward the depth, but from a depth that wells with light and darkness, sound and silence, as colorations and echoes of time. The “edge” of this upwelling of a particular time dimension constitutes a horizon which may be called a-consciousness-horizon; it is to be noted that this horizon is no longer future or past, but a dimension of depth which is pervading another dimension that includes me; I am in darkness, and the dawning light, inscribing a depth of sky, begins to well and intrude into the darkness wherein I had my residence. These metaphors are mere colorations of a more fundamental sway.

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The present is a dimension with depths, horizons, pervading configurations, and defigurations, but it is also world-wide; all spatio-temporal intrusions, upsurgences, and diffusions are present. It must be noted that what once were called “things” are now, perhaps, slower spatio-temporal configurations than are flashes of light or audial explosions. Nevertheless, every “expression” of the thing is a spatio-temporal configuration in motion, spreading a depth and a horizon. Hence, we can no longer speak of the place of a thing as its outer limit or of its space in terms of other spatial things—since every aspect of the thing is intentional with incessant configurations and defigurations. The question that emerges is whether the sum of the self-configuring depth with its intertwining auras and intrusions is identical with the all-pervasive present. If we were to understand the sound as “flowing”, we would be thinking in terms of horizons of time within which the flow takes place. Moreover, we would understand this temporal event as an inner-timely—and not a timely or worldly—event. Even if we were to assume that the sound is continuous, as if on a line, we would also be present to a silence which is not identical with the continuation of the sound but present “before and after and during” the sound, and in such a way that it is not only the sound that breaks the silence but also that the silence resounds in various ways in the sound. The sound thus ceases to be a continuous flow of the future into the present and into the past, but already implicates a silent dimension of the present, which is not continuous but irrupting in the very sound. Whatever we now would call the conscious-flow of audiality would be a complex trace of the world-depth: the protentional-retentional is now identical with the continuous layering into depth of the sway of the tree in the wind. Consciousness thus begins to vanish in favor of identity with the world traces. The vanishing of the subject is a gain of the world, but no longer in the sense that the subject somehow mirrors or reflects the world and thus becomes anonymous, whereby the anonymity could be discovered by reflection; reflection would not find a subject, but rather the world traces with the added attraction of reflection which may simply be a delayed continuation of the traces. Let us take the protentionalretentional (past-future) consciousness in its ultimate a-temporal sense and note that it names a constant, changeless shift, and in such a way that the shift does not pass, but builds an expansion with continuous deepening, and this expansion and deepening are not articulations of a pre-given temporality or a field, but are rather identical with an emergence of the field. That is why the a-temporal protentionretention are nowhere to be found, and the instituted protending acts and retending acts are at best secondary; it is nowhere and at no time because it is the very presence of emergent and self-articulating temporality manifested, or given a presentational value, by what we call consciousness. In terms of the present, it

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could be said that “by the time” the sound emerges for consciousness—comes within the consciousness horizon—it has been welling up in its silence, and consciousness constitutes its continuous articulation. It could be said that consciousness is one modality in which sound becomes audible. Here again, we encounter a clue comprised of consciousness, which points to the horizons, but in such a way that these consciousness horizons are a way that the upwelling sound sifts through, pervades, and encompasses the consciousness and indeed constitutes it; with its depth, it institutes a limit called consciousness-horizons, and by emerging with depth-articulations, it constantly transfigures the horizons and thus constitutes consciousness articulation, called “temporalization” which fundamentally is the sound’s articulation of time. Consciousness, as constant retending-protending, sinking and drawing, is identical to the emergence of time echoed by sound, or shaded by color. This is what allows transcendental phenomenology to talk of the empty form of time; it is the silent upsurge that wells into horizons of sound; strip away the sound, and what remains is “pure time”, except that its conscious horizons are an articulated limit; a trace across the depth, and a constant waver from horizon to horizon is identical with the tracing of that depth. The present then has a world-wide depth, which does not come toward consciousness, but which is always through consciousness, and when consciousness covers its self-temporalization, it also discovers itself in an “incessant streaming”. This streaming is one articulation of the presence shaded either in the chromatic endurance or echoed in some tonicity; but it is to be noted that such a chromatic endurance and echoed tonicity may “temporalize” everything. The temporalizing of cosmological difference gives the “world depth” and allows us to abandon the unconscious as the repository of desires, myths, and magic in/of world dimensions. And it is within some degree of possibility that we are de-essentialized through temporalization. Thus, we may be able to state with methodological and conceptual clarity that every “body”, to the extent that it is conceived spatially, is nothing but a solidified, crystallized, and materialized time, which requires the formation and solidification of space to unfold. Space here may be construed as a field of tension of principles: the latency of space and the acuteness of the intensification of time. SPECULATION • Instead of three horizons of time, we suggest there are four: 1. Present; 2. Past; 3. Future—as the time of actuality; and

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4. Possibility. • Time is a fourfold unity of the severing of past, future, possibility, and field intentionality (present). • Possibility, as the fourth horizon, means world constitution, as the unity of the saving of time and the filling of time. The four temporalities allow for the following: a. Networks select different nodes (persons, organizations) relating to structural couplings with systems and environments. With respect to information, it seems to be the image of a “new” world which is most intense to meet on the net, anytime, anywhere, anyone and with anonymity and without ever meeting others. b. Consumers have engaged for a while now in “time shifting” —in delaying, postponing, and recording media in a non-sequential order, anytime, anywhere. The world of the net embodies a fascinating characteristic which is almost a freefloating communication that is only loosely coupled to “actors” who are trying on multiple identities. The time horizon of sound tech/media is quite malleable. This is starting to be demonstrated in the analysis of networks. c. Network analysis started gaining force as the “Net” became available in about 1990. Currently, globalization and mobile telephony have perforated the interest and research into “Net”/network. Time stretching and time-space compression have been descriptions of the globalization process and communications/information/entertainment and so forth. A new ecosystem has arrived with the smart phone, decentering the centrality of the siloed industries mentioned above. Visualize the industries above as pieces of fruit in a still-life painting. The fruit is not lined up horizontally, side by side, but they are overlapping each other horizontally, or they can be vertically overlapping each other, in a mobile phasing in and out in every direction. Each piece of fruit is a node and edges are the relating to the other pieces of fruit which align as neighbors, with differing neighbors and clusterings of neighbors. Until recently, network analysis was based on a static network perspective, in which links and nodes are assumed to exist at any “point” in time. Recently it has been found that high-complexity networks are not active continuously but occur in specific temporal patterns. In recent investigations, the fact is in many realworld systems the next interaction of a node is not independent of the node it has interacted with shortly before.

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Also, it has not been recognized that complex systems, particularly social technical systems, are a layering of networks in which the interactions within each network and across each of the layers pass through each other. The dynamism of layered systems demonstrates the non-linearity of temporal relationships and needs to be measured in between the relational preference of nodes. Intra-network and extra-network are compressed neighbors. CONCLUSION The IoT (Internet of Things) works to demonstrate the temporal reflex, which is one of the keys of AI beyond the simple combination of past—present—future. Understanding the temporal reflex is more than an interconnecting of a series of nodes, rather, it is a self-process/autopoietic system creating various possibilities which can have unintended consequences. However, the unintended may be anticipated. Such foreknowledge allows for the mitigation of risk and deleterious consequences at all levels of the social, the organizational, and the cultural. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Pilotta, J. J. (2015). The Net and the world of time travel. Social Technologies 5(1), 44-61. https://doi.org/10.13165/ST-15-5-1-04 REFERENCES Aristotle, (1936). Physics. (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bruzina, R. (2004). Edmund Husserl & Eugen Fink: Beginnings and ends of phenomenology. New Haven: Yale University Press. [http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300092097.001.0001] Diogenes Laertius. (2021). Lives of eminent philosophers: An edited translation. (S. White, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hegel, G.F.W. (1966). Science of logic. (W. H. Johnston & L. G. Struthers, Trans.). New York: Humanities Press. Husserl, E. (1964). Phenomenology of internal time consciousness. (J. S. Churchill, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husserl, E. (1973). Experience and judgment (L. Landgrebe, Ed.). (J. S. Churchill & K. Amerik, Trans). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Luhmann, N. (1982). The differentiation of society. New York: Columbia University Press. [http://dx.doi.org/10.7312/luhm90862] Luhmann, N. (1996). Social systems (S. Holmes & C. Larmore, Trans.). Redwood City: Stanford University Press. Mead, G.H. (1932). The philosophy of the present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pilotta, J.J. (1979). Presentational thinking: A contemporary hermeneutic of communicative action. West. J. Speech Commun, 43(4), 288-300. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10570317909373980] Pilotta, J.J., & McCaughan, J.A. (2012). The sensuous difference: From Marx to this…and more. New York:

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Hampton Press. Pilotta, J.J., & Mickunas, A. (1990). Science of communication: Its phenomenological foundation. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Schutz, A. Collected papers. (Vol. 1-3). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. St. Augustine. (1953). Earlier writings. (H. S. John, Trans.). Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

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CHAPTER 8

Can I—Can You—Can We? Abstract: Chapter 8 aims to fully address the question: What is the mode of awareness which frames the building of the pragmatic world, and what are its “passive” transcendental conditions? As such, the discussion turns to the issues of the signitive cosmos of space-time-movement, the practical domain, and the abstract versus the concrete. The concepts of significance and understanding are brought to bear on a discussion that relates perception and praxis to kinesthesis and embodiment, requiring an exposition of the logic of analogy. This leads to an explanation of the importance of the vital-kinesthetic, which has, up until now, been obscured by the primacy of Cartesian dualism in Western thinking. The dualism appears between the postulation of a “mind” as a thinking subject, and a body as a material mechanism, which functions as a reaction to specific stimuli. There is no self-initiating movement, which would explore the environment, have orientations or even any sense of what is forward or backward, up or down, left or right. Yet, our kinesthetic body understands all these orientations, and in fact, they become the coordinates of our practical world.

Keywords: Abstract, Concrete, Instrumentality, Kinesthesis, Phenomenology, Universal. INTRODUCTION In the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is a scene of a gathering of scientists at a station on the moon, where a renowned scientist cautions others not to reveal the discovery of an obelisk because such a revelation will cause global disorientation. In an earlier scene, a group of anthropoids also discover this obelisk, and, having touched it, become “wiser”, giving birth to “tool users” and extending their power over all other species. Modern philosophers and even evolution proponents are in agreement: The human species emerged as tool users and makers—resulting in homo laborans and pragmatism. The scene in the film shows an anthropoid learning how to use a bone to smash things and beat another “tribe” of anthropoids, and finally, the bone is flung upward and turns into a sophisticated “tool”—a spaceship on the way to the moon with the help of AI and robots. Indeed, the spaceship is an AI discourse. Phenomenological research does accept the technological world, but rather, as discussed in previous sections, it wants to decipher the modes of awareness in correlation to the ontological status of the world. The question: what is the mode of bodily awareness which frames the builAlgis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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ding of the pragmatic world; Without such a body, no mathematical calculations of material events could ever be arranged and oriented toward production of a hammer – not to speak of AI. As discussed so far, the practical domain is designated as multi-discursive, including the scientific discourses in their technical efficiency. We also disclosed transcendental time awareness as a field of intersubjective time horizons and depths, with their scientific discourses forming projects and their “realization”. This seems to suggest that such discourses are the most immediate and concrete features of the lived world. Upon closer analysis, the explanations are completely abstract from daily discourse and awareness although a specific and most basic mode of awareness is required to use and understand them. This is one of the unique claims of scientific thought: It purports to deal with the concrete, and yet it offers radically abstract and formalized systems. The answer, of course, is in the demonstration that such systems are applicable to concrete activities and practical purposes. This claim lends credence to the views that an understanding of situations and contexts is a socio-historically learned adaptation of rules, of interpretations of normative and theoretical structures, resulting in a conjunction of theory and concrete actions. Such claims are possible on two traditional assumptions: First, an application spells dualism between form and content, thought and reality, structure and manifestation; and second, the conjunction is possible in an instrumental sense, i.e., science is not a theoretical explanation, but an instrumental system for the mastery of nature in favor of human purposes. In both cases, the outcome of this conjunction is metaphysical virulence, i.e., metaphysics, as a normative construct, embodied in a mathematical mode of awareness, is used to change the world to fit the metaphysical constructs. In this sense, the abstract, formal mathematical systems assume an inordinate preeminence against the concrete experience since they become technical reality. As most serious researchers have seen, science no longer explains but rather makes events happen. UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR There is, in fact, a current tendency, resting, perhaps, on the modern conception of the instrumentality of science, toward a practical basis and explanation of human activities. Most diverse theories, from neo-Marxism, through communicative competence, to postmodern conceptions of the production of truth, assure us that their theories are praxis-laden. These theories equally claim that human activities are imbedded in a human world with its historical horizons. One specific characteristic shared by such trends is the claim that their conceptions of praxis are based on concrete historical contexts, allowing for an interpretive discourse of scientific thinking and formal rules, and that such discourses offer a concrete

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domain that can avoid the pitfalls of some of the transcendental phenomenological trends. The latter is deemed to be idealistic and solipsistic. If communication is possible, then its basis stems from historical situations, particular forms of language, interpretation, and understanding, extended to scientific explanations by the latest mathematical models—once more, a mathematical mode of awareness. It is argued that phenomenology’s focus on the “objective” given disconnects the given from its context, its social and historical interpretations, and assumes that such a focus offers universally acceptable claims. Moreover, the presumption of objectivity leads to the view that the individual is in a position to observe the given without any relationship to others and without any introduction of interpretations by historically acquired languages. The charge against phenomenology states that one cannot be a pure observer of the given without any admixtures of others and various intermediaries, such as language. Only the historically and socially acquired common usages and practices frame the understanding of given phenomena. The actions and practices of the individual are examples of the common practices, customs, and usages, i.e., he is a representative of something intersubjective and common. In terms of our discussion of the AI mode of awareness, dealing with social research, the individual would be a concrete case in a statistical distribution—and even statistically given by his individual DNA. Despite the phenomenological arguments for the primacy of signification, of meaning as phenomena of awareness, the attacks on phenomenology insist that meaning is linguistic, and the latter not only transcends the individual, but allows him to make sense of himself. Moreover, the phenomenologically perceived object, with its space-time horizons, is deemed an inadequate point of departure, requiring a historically effective consciousness, and an objective spirit, encompassing institutions and individual activities. The individual lives and acts, thinks and feels in the sphere of commonality of rules, plans, and customs, reaching into individual motivations. Thus, every plan, every explanation, is group-specific. This supposedly comprises a more encompassing and concrete domain, specifically in light of the “empirical” presence of products and implements. The individual activity is a situational application of the modes of prescribed activity. The sense interconnections of a tradition appear in a common praxis, constituting a form of life and a life-world, and they precede the individual. It follows, then, that the genesis of awareness inheres in the common forms of historical life, institutions and traditions that have far surpassed the individual. Without them, human activity would be blind, and with them, it is directed by an authority of a tradition. The intentional activities of the individual are situational specifications and individuations of a historically and socially pregiven intersubjectivity and life-world. The latter is the subject, while the

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individual is their determinate object. In the previous chapter, we mentioned the circularity of the claims to the universality of a tradition and the specificity of the individual. Yet, we did not articulate the presence of a more basic issue of individuality in the context of general intersubjective awareness. This awareness is also required to explicate dimensions which AI assumes but cannot account for. After all, intersubjective awareness is not transmitted from subject to subject telepathically—so to speak, a Cartesian mind sending direct signals to another mind that two plus two is four. CONCRETE GENERALITY The presumption of the primacy of the intersubjective, the social, and the historical over the individual fails to account for a number of important issues. First, the practical engagements and the concrete contexts cannot be understood by reading the meaning of terms in texts, or by giving calculations of the size of stones or building blocks; second, the singular, the individual, becomes absorbed into a domain which he can neither survey nor manage; and third, the awareness of the other is taken to be self-evident, without providing an account of what makes one different from the other. Yet, this awareness is most complex and difficult to decipher. In previous sections, we have argued for a practical domain wherein the self and others acquire their mutuality and differentiation, comprising individuation within a unity. This domain was suggested to be corporeal and coextensive with the systems of meaningful activities and abilities. Yet, the latter are not facts but systems of kinesthesia, possessing a generality that is neither a universal abstraction nor a singular datum. The generality, moreover, is an orientational schema. While the physiological body might be located in a homogeneous space and consist of a symmetrical structure, such a body and space cannot deal with orientations. In the mathematical mode of awareness, space consists of indifferent points which cannot be assigned such meanings as “herethere”, “up-down”, and so forth, unless one borrows such meanings from a functional body. The latter is the condition for the possibility of structuring and communicating a world of places and locations, of ups and downs, lefts and rights, forwards and backward. The asymmetry of the functional body disrupts the homogeneity by communicating directions, orientations, and thus instituting a practical world. The functional directions are not exchangeable. What is upfront, reachable by a forward movement, is distinct from what is in the back, and the latter can be reached best by a reversal of directions. The same can be said of leftright, up-down compositions. Yet, anything we encounter and anything we make includes such orientational conditions. We rotate the Hubble telescope to “face” a specific galaxy which is “there” and which, measured from the “here” of the telescope, is 1.3 billion light years “away”.

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We contend this is the more basic conception of “history in the practical making” than the history that is continuous only at the theoretical level. The former contains all sorts of discontinuities, intersections, resumptions, and multiple depth horizons, while the latter is regarded as a linear purposive teleology. Indeed, the notion of discontinuous history, offered by Foucault (1970) and by various postmodernists, is based on the history of active engagements that need not have continuity; certain actions are abandoned, and others, at times seen as revolutionary are initiated. Neither Foucault (1972) nor Deleuze and Guattari (1983), and indeed not even Sloterdijk (1987) has offered any grounding of their claims about body parts and their various surface circulations and interactions. They merely postulated a body as a thing without accounting for all the ways that bodies with other bodies work, build, make implements, build pyramids, and find their way in the world of things, locations, and themselves. At one level, our task is to outline those prevalent theses and to show that they, too, have assumed, as their basis, an active intercorporate, and the life-world whose current constitution in the West is technical. While being writers, they have sedimented their bodily activities to accommodate the current “practical implements” for their writing. Thus, the phenomenological conditions for their possibility of offering their theses are equally the acquired corporeal abilities in correlation to what the current practical implements require of their bodies. In this sense, we shall introduce a life-world of praxis that not only includes intercorporate, but also the scientifictechnical, practical world that calls for certain corporeal activities. The world “out there” is not an objectivity “in itself”, but an instrumental structuration that requires a “pedagogy” of action in correlation to these complex structurations. While our analyses of the concrete conditions of “awareness” have been offered in different contexts, our points are designed, not to deny or negate the current breakthroughs by the theoretical trends we shall articulate, but to open the passively assumed activities which are inter-corporeal and “interinstrumental”, comprising awareness that subtend and/or pervade the discursive analyses of strategies, and the constitution of surface flow of vagabond nomads. Interesting as such nomadic bricolage may be, the actors, who interact with each other at this level of surface contact, must first “move” i.e., constitute kinesthetic awareness. As we shall see, the latter is one of the conditions that is granted, even in its cultural variations, as a “tacit” dimension of awareness in all life-world instances. Westerners, Easterners, and Africans tend to cross a street by moving. Only metaphysicians have posited either mind or language as possessors of signification and meaning, while reducing corporeity to a body mechanism in a space-time continuum. Phenomenology, in contrast, has opened the active corporeity as being “prior” to any speculative metaphysics and historicisms. What we propose, then, is the primacy of the “I can” over the “I think”. The “I” does not

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stand for a continuous identity but is an indication of the abilities that are correlated to concrete tasks with others. By now, it ought to be obvious that the analyses at this level will require a concretization of the primacy of dialogue. The bodily interaction with the environment and others in the face of tasks is also a mutual understanding of the corporeal gestures concerned with what we are doing and how it is to be done. No doubt, there are cultural phenomena that are unquestioned and structure all other levels, yet our contention is that even these cultural phenomena are grounded in the directly engaged awareness of corporeity and inter-corporeity. These engaged modes of awareness are the transcendental conditions for the awareness of the functioning of powers and discursive practices. In order to make sense of discourses, specifically under the assumption that they are implicit power imperatives, there is a more basic awareness that consists of a system(s) of lifeworld orientations, vectors, composed by particular corporeity. The latter, as a structure of concrete awareness, makes sense of the abstract, discursive power logics. The basic discursive terminology that involves a prescription for action is a terminology that is not derived from discourses. Rather, the discourses themselves must follow the corporeal practical conditions as ways of making sense of discursive strategies. What we suggest is that one cannot understand terms such as “history has no continuity or direction” as Foucault (1970) would have it, unless one has a corporeal understanding of directions, orientations, and constitutions of practical spaces and times in order to understand the discourses. Discourses, as power strategies, would not be able to articulate what someone must do, where someone must go, or when someone must be somewhere, unless one is already an oriented body. More concretely speaking, even the language of economy cannot be understood as a discursive practice of a capitalist or communist power unless the worker and the ruling elites understand the body orientations in the workplace in correlation to the specific implements requiring concrete corporeal actions in the face of tasks. The problematic could be restated in other terms. The basis for which Husserl (see Bruzina, 2004) seeks is to be absolute, and yet the question of the individual is not answered purely on the transcendental arguments for an ego. Individuality is to be sought elsewhere. It is precisely such a search that leads to the absoluteness of the corporeally engaged factual individual and inter-corporeal relationships: contingent absoluteness. How is this contingency to be understood? Earlier discussion would have suggested that it is a fact correlated to an essence, but such a correlation turns out to be impossible since every fact is already a constituted system in a field. In addition, reflective thinking cannot determine the limits of the facticity of passive activities and hence correlate them to essential insights. Neither facticity nor essentiality will do, specifically if an experienced facticity of

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self in an activity does not yield any substantial identity and predicative characterizations. The factual process is not experienced as a brute and dumb fact with characteristics to be subsumed as an exemplar of an eidos, but as a system of dynamic abilities, deployed from a here and a now, not in the sense of being inserted in a geometrical space-time, but from which the world is opened in action. The null-point is the corporeity from which all actions unfold, but in such a way that the null-point itself is apperceptive and located in the process of shifting and intersecting activities comprising a field and not a position. Our contention is that this field and its field nature is open in its factual life as a constant activity and a structuration of the perceptual world. The ego is an achievement of factual abilities that are not factual data. In this sense, the ego is absolute fact. Its necessity is neither essential nor contingent. Both are subtended by the acting corporeity and its systematic engagements with practical affairs. What follows from such an absolute fact is that any essential and contingent determinations of it are inadequate. In this sense, it is without ground. One could claim that the activities are both constitutive of and constituted by the phenomenal field. Given this, it is now possible to take the last step toward tracing the question of individuality and inter-subjectivity. Bodily activities constitute an ineradicable facticity that is not dumb but an articulated process that does not emerge into the foreground—specifically since it is not entitative but constitutive of spatial and temporal patterns. The latter are neither interior nor exterior; hence, reflective awareness is inadequate to grasp it. Rather, it is a taken-for-granted point of departure for any investigation of the lived world and a field of history. Each gesture and movement are accomplished spontaneously and recognized in correlation to and distinction from others. From childhood on, there is a vital-kinesthetic exploration of the world and the constitution of corporeal abilities. The latter is neither inner nor outer, but they are primarily effective. One can reach something, move something, pull, push, lift, and throw. This effectivity comprises its own domain of cognition. Before “conscious” reflection, corporeal movements constitute their own selfreflexivity and self-reference. In a missed attempt to reach something, the attempt is immediately repeated. The missing comprises an instance of movement which reflects back upon itself and calls for a variation of itself in a second attempt. There is a direct kinesthetic question: “Can I do this?”—revealing at the outset an already articulated field of abilities and tasks with possible variations that never offer a final, factual limitation. Here, one builds recognition of oneself in terms of what one can do. This self-recognition is coextensive with the recognition of the abilities as mine, not because the abilities are mirrored in a psychological interiority or in a mirror, but because they are kinesthetically reflexive and at the

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same time coextensive with and differentiated from those of others. “I cannot do this” means that not only have I tried and failed, but I have seen others perform it. The correlation of abilities and inabilities is an inter-corporeal experience present in the handling of tasks and undertakings. Corporeal abilities comprise an understanding of commonalities and individuating differences. The commonality has two components: First, the common task in which we are engaged, and second, the continuity of activities that differentiate themselves into variations. We lift something, but you do it from that side, and I do it from this. While the end you are lifting is heavier, you can, and I cannot, lift that end, yet I can lift this end, and thus discover a common activity and its corporeal differentiation. This constitutes a polycentric field of activities and includes others who are not present at the task. “If only Joe were here to lend us a hand” includes the abilities of Joe as coextensive with, and differentiated from, our capacities. Or, “Lucky that Mike is not here; he certainly likes to lend a hand, but he tends to be more of a hindrance than help”. At the active level, the term empathy can be modified by “filling in”. It is quite a common notion; we do fill in for someone at the job, by taking over a function, or by putting our shoulder to the task from another side. All these functions suggest a commonality and a variation. This is corporeal individuation and inter-corporeal field that is neither a simple fact, nor an essence; it subtends both. Concurrently, there is a level of reflexivity, of direct apperception of the self and the other on the basis of activities that both undertake. Her ability to reach something, and my lack of such an ability despite my efforts, reflects directly our corporeal commonality of reaching, and our differences. Thus, the “I can” is prior to the pure I, since the former is individuated and differentiated from others, and yet is directly aware of them as well as of itself. It should be, by now, somewhat more obvious that the ground of history is neither historical nor constituted by a logic of continuity of time, but is the very process of inter-corporeal making, comprising an interconnected field of bodily activities such that the activities, constituting a systematic engagement in tasks, are individuating and coextensive with others. Yet, this leads to the reinvestigation of the “factual” tasks and objects to which such tasks are related. The factual states of affairs, correlated to our activities, are equally prior to essentiality and brute factuality. Rather, they have an open explorability and generality, specifically with respect to their practical functions. It is to be noted that history is not thought but built, and made, in practical engagements. Such engagements reveal another aspect of activities that could be called dimensional, leading to corporeal analogization of the field of praxis. The active handling of objects does not exhibit a one-to-one correlation between activities and the objects. Each activity can range over various and typologically distinct objects and tasks. The hand can pick up a stone, a hammer, or a stick and use any of them to pound a stick into the

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ground. And this constitutes a primal analogization in two senses. First, one can perform similar activities and recognize them directly anywhere and anyplace prior to sequential temporalization, and second, the activities perform a passive analogization of objects by using them interchangeably in the face of a task. The hammer, the stone and the stick are analogates by virtue of the generality of our abilities. In this sense, the “I can” is a factual generality that cannot be reduced either to a closed essence or a brute fact. One can then claim that the historical field is recognized by the interchanging functions as analogous to one another, capable of filling in one another, and equally by the facts as systems, not revealing essentialities, as was shown at the outset, but analogical interconnections among categorically diverse objects, recognizable corporeally. It is this that allows an archeologist, a historian, a scientist, an archeologist, a builder of technical means, and an anthropologist to reconstruct the so-called past on the basis of some handy find. This is to say, these scholars and researchers do not have to date the find in a preconceived temporal sequence—this comes as an occupational tandem subsequently—but to encounter it as an analogate of what they could do with this object and imply that we too already recognize that we could equally do similar things. This means that there is no necessary interconnection among all activities; some are continued, others discontinued, and still others postponed, thus constituting varied time structures and task compositions that prohibit any teleological direction to history. With such a prohibition, any quest for history as something that is unidirectional and above the activities and tasks that build it, ceases to make sense. The activities are, of course, interconnected in various ways, inclusive of the above-delimited commonalities and differentiations, yet they comprise a field without a telos, without a direction and hence a continuous building, but not in any sense a temporal building. It is rather an intersection of a field of activities wherein the convenient theoretical constructs called past and future, come too late. In brief, the lived world of praxis does not admit either essentiality or facticity; rather, both are coextensive with what Stroeker (1987) describes as “primordial techne”. Any given society, in its practical tasks, also composes specific sedimented bodily activities that comprise a background concrete consciousness. This sedimented inter-corporeity allows for foreground activities to be focused on specific tasks. When Deleuze and Guattari (1983) speak of the modern production, such as capitalist production, where the owner of a production line only buys the worker's hands as an attachment to a mechanical productive process, they fail to note that even kinesthetic composition of the hands not only correlates to the tasks to be performed, but also assumes a field of kinesthetic sedimented corporeity as a background. This is to say, body must stand or sit in a particular posture in order to make the hands a foreground to be able to perform, such that the worker would say, “I can do this job”. Assuming

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that Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari (1983) have argued that transcendental subjectivity as some sort of universal consciousness is not attainable, they have forgotten or neglected the more fundamental transcendental condition of kinesthetic inter-corporeity as practical awareness prior to being elevated to some sort of consciousness of reality or of objectivities. Society, then, is a field of tasks requiring inter-corporeal awareness of how we do things in this place, and that means already a tacit or passive awareness of whose background various functions are comprehensible. Excellent phenomenological and critical analyses of the functional body are available in the just-mentioned work by Stroeker and need not be repeated. It is a fact that such a body is a setting for practical understanding, and its functions are involved in numerous linguistic conceptions. A brief indication of such functions ought to suffice. We note, for example, that many linguistic expressions in politics and mythologies, in sciences and daily activities, are structured by left-right orientations. Leanings to the left or right, to the radical right, to the extreme left, are common in daily discourse, and yet, without a functional body, such terms would have no sense. One can easily trace an entire history of this bodily function in numerous expressions and, indeed, in the most important locations of human figures. The same could be said of the vertical orientation, up-down, or high-low. When we speak of social status, degrees of significance of theoretical functions, designate offices and their hierarchical ranks, and deploy cultural figures on the vertical axis, we are constantly using the language of an uprightly functioning body. There are persons of “high rank” and “lower status”; there are theologically designed places with “heaven above” and “hell below”; the “ideal world” is above, while “the material world” is below. In short, without the “upright” posture and its movement of standing up or sinking down, the just-mentioned linguistic designations would make no sense. Perhaps the most preeminent corporeal function, appearing in linguistic form, is one of the differentiation between the forward and backward movements. The forward movement is most favored in practical activities. Indeed, the practical activity is most preeminently a forward activity, even if minimal backward movements are called upon as compensatory requirements, and it does not contend with objects behind as with those found in the lateral and forward regions. The language of means, aims, and goals is dominated by concrete forward activity. It must be understood that it enters not only into space terminology but also into temporal conceptions. We are leaving the past behind us and are moving forward toward the future; we look ahead to better days, participate in the forward march of history and progress, and face the tests and goals of tomorrow. Our hypotheses are ahead of their time—and are higher than the current ones. The language of overcoming, transcending, and surpassing is a

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forward-oriented language. This suggests that the very conceptions of history, the rules of language, the interpretations of significances, hierarchies and ranks, and even the contexts, assume the concrete meaning of an asymmetrically functioning and active corporeity. Such a corporeity is the concrete context and thus escapes being a singular fact subsumable under a universal rule, and it possesses its own generality. In language, this generality appears in all space-time contextualization, and hence it is even the ground of concrete understanding from history to astronomy. The application of discursive rules, images, and customs makes sense in a situation because the situation itself is a meaningful corporeal context with a functional body and general, oriented differentiations. Even “perspectivity” is premised on “seeing” from the “here” toward the “there”, from our planet toward the distant galaxy of Andromeda. These concrete discursive modes of perception require a practical domain of oriented places. Useful objects and functions, inclusive of bodily activities, have oriented places. The places depend on customary conveniences for activity. Something useful is found “where it belongs” and is easily accessible. Useful objects are not found in a point of a homogeneous space, but in a place with a slack that allows changes without the object leaving its place. It is on the desk, in front, and a little to the right, and is accessible to correlations with other objects in the vicinity. They are interconnected significatively and function under the practical taking over of one function by another. Places with their slack include dimensional corporeal activities that lend and open the accessibility of objects. The latter cannot be too far, out of reach, or too close, crowded, and obtrusive, and thus a hindrance to activities. The practical world of oriented places is much broader than the situation structured by the direct activities of the body. Every place of practical objects can be available as an oriented and flexible structure in correlation to other such places, comprising an oriented system of flexible and functional interrelationships. Things have a place on the desk, the desk is in the house, the house is in Chicago, and so on. The movement in this flexible system of places is communicated on the generality of bodily functions. One leaves someplace “behind” and goes “ahead” to another place, and if one is in a hurry, one avoids excursions to the “sides”. Regardless of how vast the places become, they never lose the corporeal system of functional orientation: We are leaving the coast of the United States behind, and we are heading toward Europe. Obviously, we should not confuse functional orientations with some inner bodily-subjective psychological characteristics. Orientations are completely intertwined with the practical world and correlate to the places and systems of interconnected and oriented objects. The corporeal orientations constitute an “in-between” domain wherein even the physiological body is located and articulated.

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No doubt, awareness means, signifies and provides an interconnected, sensemaking process. Thus, the awareness of a physical object, appearing from various sides, requires a practically orienting body. Objects “in themselves” do not have sides, tops, bottoms, and ends; they appear as such on the basis of bodily orientations. The desk has a top because we are upright and sides because we assume a corporeal position and action from a particular vantage point. While the theoretical modes of awareness are available and can be transmitted by an intersubjective, historical tradition in texts, they assume a concrete, yet general system of practical activities that already makes sense and allows the “reading” of the transmitted conceptions. Thus, one may learn the formal rules of playing chess, but such rules are understandable only in the context of functional orientations: Forward movements, diagonal movements, retreats, and advances are bodily orientations. The theory of the lived world as a “language game” with learned rules and grammatical sequences would be completely incomprehensible to a being who did not structure its practical world along our functional systems of action. A sequence of grammatical composition, whether from left to right, right to left, or top to bottom, can be communicated and applied because of the tacit awareness of the practical body. In fact, our unquestioned experience and discourse concerning the social architectonic, inclusive of routes of communication and commerce, are modeled after the functional body. Houses have fronts, sides, and backs; we sit in the front or back seats of vehicles; the latter has forward and backward movements and locations; our numbering of houses on streets is “up”. Phenomenology contends that our practical awareness as bodily orientations is one of the most fundamental domains in the comprehension even of the “higher” theoretical constructions. Given the level of practical activity and its oriented and flexible system of places, there is equally a flexible and oriented system of time which is also fundamental to understanding discursive systems. In our critique of the preeminence of traditional and historical conceptions, we have suggested that historical time need not be based on an abstract and theoretical concept of continuity; rather, if we build history, then historical time must also be built on the basis of activities. The dialogical interaction, even at the linguistic level, is not composed of a sequence of words or statements, but rather is made possible by a structuration of a common theme across passive-active-passive phases that unite and differentiate the dialogical partners. Such phases constitute a flexible temporal field that offers options and possibilities. The possibilities appear within contexts of relevant events, and the latter signify options for possible changes. This is to say; the field has horizons wherein events signify possibilities of activity and handling of such events.

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As with places, times are equally structured in accordance with practical activities and corporeal orientations and are divisible into various articulations of what is near and remote within the contexts of tasks. Something will take a day to do, something will require a month, and functions and events are assigned their locations within the allotted temporal field. Some options are excluded as too time-consuming, some are modified, and others may be combined. Such structuration is a highly complex awareness, and language is inadequate to follow its complexities. Our activities reflect one upon the other in practical terms of what we can and cannot do, what can be repeated, and what is not worth the effort. Such reflexivity takes for granted temporal horizons. While undertaking a task, we set a temporal field for its achievement, such that the “future” possibilities of completion reflect upon the selection of activities at present. One cannot take up another task today, or one cannot take three days off, because such options, reflected from the possible completion of the accepted task, must be excluded. In turn, within the temporal field of action for the completion of the task, there arises an “inner-reflexivity” of possibilities of selection of actions and of numerous objects and instrumentalities for the task. If one must finish the task in one month, then one must accomplish the requisite actions in two weeks to get to the end of the task, but this means that by next week, certain things will have to be in place if the second week's work is to be attained; all this leads to the reflexivity of time-in-time, of complex possibilities within possibilities, comprising a depth of temporal field of action. One does not perform an action at present and then another action at the next moment; each action, and every implement, object, and event, have complex temporal interconnections that structure those actions, objects, and events significatively. In short, practical activities are composed of a practical system of flexible places and temporal horizons, and they belong to this system of corporeal interaction. Obviously, any sort of location of an event “in history” presupposes the event’s concrete location in the oriented world of places and times, of options taken and options rejected, and not in a world of homogeneous space and unilinear time. While we might assume that trees in a forest have locations in a homogeneous space, such locations are, as a matter of fact, unavailable. If we face a forest, some trees are to the left, others to the right, and some are behind one another—because we also stand in a specific location. Once we move, what was to the left will be behind, and what was behind will be to the right. In short, with our movements, things get “relocated” just as much as we. I am here because I am standing to the left of a tree and if I move, some trees will change locations and will relocate my position. And yet again, we encounter particular phenomena, previously described as concrete yet general, given, yet not given as a brute fact or a datum. These phenomena were called “eidetic” because of their concreteness, and at the same time, because of their generality. The flexible and interrelated systems of places

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and times are concrete and completely coextensive with and intertwined in corporeal activities and tasks, and yet they have an eidetic generality that is accessible to everyone. Whether one points to something and thus establishes a direction from here to there, or whether one says that a certain activity should be postponed until tomorrow because other things have to be done today, one is communicating concretely and in a sufficient generality that can be loosened up, made more flexible, complex, tightened up, without reaching any geometric or digital precision. Indeed, in the world of action and practical communication, such precision is comprehensible in a context of places and times, tasks and possibilities, and hence constantly situated and transgressed toward the field in which it makes sense. Surface dimensions shift to depth dimensions, and conversely. Three-dimensionality and temporal linearity are only abstractive constructs. The inexactitude and the flexibility are the initial awareness composing the factual systems, i.e., even every empirical fact is a system of explorations, implications, and interconnections. And such explorations are given in the context of the general fields of oriented body. There is an entire open forward field, left, right, and upward fields which can explore any empirical fact by narrowing, concentrating or expanding its features. While engaged in his mathematical mode of awareness, the astronomer will face the entire region, will focus his AI telescope on this “quadrant” of galaxies to be explored, combined into clusters, given one next to the other, slightly to the left and almost behind another, and all assuming the oriented, kinesthetic body, also built into the orientations of his AI telescopes. Such systems exhibit characteristics of things that are “loose”. While focusing on this galaxy, at this location and distance “from here”, the astronomer will explore this galaxy also in its temporal depth “from now” and find that he will never reach the mathematical point of a homogeneous space and time without introducing corporeal field awareness and its kinesthetic, tacit background. The ideal, geometric and mathematical worlds do not picture or represent anything in the practical world. Although they can deal with enumerable facts, the understanding of such facts is contextualized in practical systems and thus assumes an awareness which is a play, both from looseness toward exactness, and from ideality toward pure datum. If the ideal systems are to be situated, they assume the awareness of field features of sizes, shapes, comparative differences, sketches, outlines, and contours that have singular and factual generalities. We speak of oblong, rectangular, egg-shaped, flat or wavy, straight or curvy, smooth or rough, spiral and scattered characteristics; they are accessible to corporeal and active processes, and have fitting, unfitting, appropriate, or inappropriate relationships. We can say that the table is too big for the room, that the pot is too heavy for the stand, without going into precise measures. Their being “between” ideality and pure datum allows for flexibility that can range from broad generality

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to increased specificity without a loss of their “morphological functions”. Obviously, such flexibility is important in the practical domain where things have to be adjusted in their places and relationships, from kitchens to galaxies. We should avoid confusion by stressing the distinction between facts, idealities, and morphological characteristics. Facts are located in homogeneous space and time and have two levels of characteristics: the immediate-qualitative, given through the so-called five senses, and the quantitative, given by the system of measurements. Idealities, as measures, can be understood without any specific relationship to things; we can deal with numbers, geometries, and logic without referring to anything in the world of direct perceptual processes. Morphological features are completely intertwined with corporeal fields of exploration that do not coincide with impressions or with ideal structures. One cannot speak of an ideal egg-shape, or a perfectly rough surface, or an absolutely crooked street. The looseness of such features is what allows for communication in the practical domain. Indeed, one’s awareness of something egg-shaped, spiral, or clustered is very specific, and yet its generality is sufficient to warrant a commonality that accommodates unique differences without a loss of a given morphological composition. Finally, the practically-oriented world is peculiarly relative, yet its relativity has its necessity—eidetic inevitability. The practical, oriented awareness seems to be the locus that provides the intermediary, the in-between domain that does not demand an abstract “lingua universalis” or its reverse, a sum of facts for a successful understanding, but rather a flexible, yet comprehensible, process, involving functional corporeity and its structuration of contexts. When we speak of relativity, we must also speak of these corporeal functions in relationship to the morphological features of practical things and surroundings. If we ask about the experienced size of a thing, we must understand that the size is not a property of the thing alone, but is a functional relationship between the body, the thing, and the surrounding context. The object looks big because we are next to it; if we move away from it, the object looks smaller, and if we climb a hill, the object looks “insignificant”. This suggests that phenomenology does not give absolute credence to objects and their “inherent” qualities, but rather it is very keen on the practical and hence the relational and morphological characteristics that belong in concrete settings and engagements. Such settings are sensible, and corporeal awareness in practical action provides the already-assumed meanings of factually interconnected events and actions within whose contextual generalities the historically, scientifically, and intersubjectively transmitted conceptions assume their concrete places and times.

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The claims that there are institutionalized discourses which require individuals to subject themselves to those discourses must assume a corporeal and intercorporeal awareness of movement, space-time awareness of places and times and, therefore, a system of corporeal orientations as a condition for using the discursive strategies. The discursive logic is two-dimensional; without a multidimensional, multi-field body which, as a dynamic mode of awareness, is coextensive with the signitive movements of vectors of spatiality and temporality of a life-world, discursive awareness could not be implemented; it would not make sense. When we are talking about corporeity and inter-corporeity, we are not suggesting something psychological, individualistic, or physiologicalscientific. These notions are metaphysical, since they try to reduce intercorporeity to an entity in a pregiven space and time. Anyone who is engaged in any strategic discourse in any culture will also accept passively the awareness of kinesthetic corporeity and inter-corporeity as actions in correlation to tasks to be performed in a cultural, socio-economic, productive setting. Given the assumption of the discursive practices, there is no way to understand why there should be a discontinuity in history. After all, discourses of any type, including scientific and mathematical, are significations that imply a continuity. Even modern AI technical metaphysics—quantification—are without time and can be continuously repeated any time. But, that the breakdown of continuous history, including the building of AI technologies, can be discarded, obsolete, and junked is possible on the basis of what we do and what we stop doing, of what we build, and what we destroy. Architecturally speaking, one mode of building is discarded and becomes a relic for tourists, while other modes of building become the current style. The previous one does not imply, nor does it necessarily continue, the current one; they can be different and discontinuous. This is to say, the previous acquired corporeal activities of building or even producing are discarded, and new ones are constituted in the face of new tasks. Thus, the previous “I can” is no longer required, and a new “I can” is constituted. In this sense, there is no necessity for a continuous historical subject. Those who cannot acquire the abilities required by the new tasks to be performed are designated as incapable and maybe inferior. In short, their sedimented activities, which constituted their self-identity as “I can” are no longer required for the current tasks. Hence, they lose their position, status, pride, dignity, and so forth, because they “cannot do” the required activities. It is obvious that the “menial” activities are taken over by a great variety of AI performers. If we regard Western modern globalization, which extends technologies of mass production, we shall see that this globalization requires very different intercorporeal activities than those that were acquired by indigenous peoples. In the period of postcolonialism, it is not sufficient to understand modern discursive

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strategies in opposition to indigenous discursive strategies as cultural confrontations. Rather, more primordially, there is a required reconstitution of the inter-corporeal transcendental conditions that would be necessary for functioning in the Western modern setting. This is the ground for “cultural discontinuity”. Given the reconstitution of the life-world of a given people by globalizing modernity, there is also a reconstitution of what people do concretely and corporeally in this new life-world. If a life-world is a system of concrete intercorporeal signitive structures and implications, these significative implications appear only in the background of inter-corporeal awareness. I know what I can do, and I know what we can do, in the face of given tasks, but now I must learn how to do in the face of very different tasks, laden with technologies. No doubt, the constitution of corporeity is social and cultural; nonetheless, the prescriptions assume that a corporeity can take on a structuration process as an acquisition of abilities of “I-we can”. Bodily activities constitute an ineradicable field which is not dumb, but rather an articulated process that does not emerge into the foreground—specifically since it is not entitative but constitutive of space and time patterns as fields. The latter are neither interior nor exterior; hence, reflective awareness is inadequate to grasp it. Rather, it is a taken-for-granted region of departure for any investigation of the lived world and a field of history. Each gesture and movement is formed spontaneously and recognized in correlation to, and distinction from, others. Those social requirements comprise a field of inter-corporeal activities where what I can do is read directly what the others are doing. Let us take a soccer game where each player reads the body directions and movements in correlation to the entire field of the game. This is to say, where my teammates are and in what directions they are moving, and where the opponents are and how they are positioning themselves, will also constitute my kinesthetic requirements as to how I must move toward my teammates and opponents, comprising the entire formation of space and time and kinesthetic field. In this sense, what discursive proponents claim about discursive practices as a clash of powers, requires the most basic awareness of where, when, and how one must act in order to practice the discursive strategies. The passive constitution of space-time signitive corporeal engagements is lived prior to any understanding of what the discursive strategy means. While the above illustration we offer seems to apply to the field of sports, all social activities engage in the performance of tasks which also constitute a body that is an inter-corporeal field body. What is at issue for the now-accepted globalizing Western modernization is the compelled reconstitution of corporeal and inter-corporeal practices. The latter must be constituted in terms of the technical modes of production that require an

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increasing fragmentation and militarization of activities. This is the condition for the modern conception of the division of labor and Foucault’s (1970) conception of modern militarization, not to speak of the behaviorist conception of the one-toone correlation of atomistic stimuli to localizable responses, or what MerleauPonty (1962) called the “constancy hypothesis”. This is to say, even the science of human behavior, being globalized by psychology, consists of a radically fragmented corporeal set of activities, such that none know what the others are doing. But as is well known, even this psychology is a technique of behavioral modification, whether industrial, clinical, educational, social, or criminal. And all of them are “floating” on an understanding of what I—You—We can or cannot do. CONCLUSION The background awareness as a body in action requires the rejection of the modern Western metaphysical dualism of “mind/body”. The mind thinks and is identical to metaphysical consciousness, while this consciousness directs the mechanical body in a mysterious way—debated by an entire materialist and idealist tradition. There is the subject “inside” of which there is a mind, “inside” of which there are feelings and concepts, and all “insides” are “inside” the body. Up until now, debates ranged on how this “inside” the body subject, with all of its “insides” connects to the body to get “outside” of it. Thus, all the resolutions of this dualism have resulted either in making everything “mental” or reducible to the mechanical body. The way the latter relates to the world is mechanical—some sort of stimulus-response, or causes which propel it into action. As phenomenological arguments would point out, such a body could not find a kitchen from a dining room; after all, there are no stimuli from the kitchen to cause such a body to go and look for something “there”. And yet, we do go and look for something before stimuli in an open field of space-time horizon. The very kinesthetic activity of going there to find something is “consciousness”, despite the fact that it is not located inside the body. After all, a movement around a table is neither “inside” nor “outside” and yet it is the “awareness” of the table appearing through perspectives formed by the movement. None of these features are either objective or subjective, and yet they are the very composition of “consciousness” of the table. And this consciousness as a dynamic system of corporeal activities is “written” in every AI construct accessible to all, including a Soviet collective farm maiden who meets her first tractor, advertising the progress made by the party leadership. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following:

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Mickunas, A. (2014). Modern West: Two life worlds. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2015). The Project Europe. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2016). Lithuania and globalization. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. REFERENCES Bruzina, R. (2004). Edmund Husserl & Eugen Fink: Beginnings and ends of phenomenology. New Haven: Yale University Press. [http://dx.doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300092097.001.0001] Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. New York: Pantheon Books. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. (C. Smith, Trans.). New York: Humanities Press. Sloterdijk, P. (1987). Critique of cynical reason. (M. Eldred, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stroeker, E. (1987). Investigations in philosophy of space. (A. Mickunas, Trans.). Athens: Ohio University Press.

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CHAPTER 9

The Multi-Discursive Subject Abstract: Starting from the premise that formal-mathematical modes of awareness are “discourses”, this chapter traces the connections between postmodernism, the rise of the instrumentalist mode of thinking that has enabled the creation of artificial intelligence, and the attack on the notion of identity, the combination of which tends to strip away the humanity from the modern “subject”, which is apprehended as “selfcreating” from this perspective. It then describes how nations and cultures are sucked into the all-encompassing technologization trap through the promise of better living through technology, reinforced by the trends of globalization, even if that means accepting the poison pill of dehumanization on an individual level. What follows is a discussion of “traditional” cultures which reject this ideology of self-creating subjects in favor of their traditional religious beliefs. We then discuss the value of transcendental subjectivity in opposition to both of the afore-mentioned ideologies, pointing to the ways that this mode of awareness embraces multiplicities and rejects the totalizing or encompassing mathematization of experience. The chapter concludes with an exposition of the importance of meaning-making—that is, the signitive—to all these modes of perception, and its actual foundation in transcendental subjectivity.

Keywords: Communication, Discourse, Globalization, Instrumentality, Logic, Meaning, World. INTRODUCTION The quantitative mode of awareness has become global and fragmented into multiple disciplines. By now, such disciplines have their own formalmathematical modes of awareness, and such modes are regarded as “discourses”, resulting in multi-discursivity. Thus, modernity is, at the outset, multidiscursive—at least within its accepted metaphysical parameters expressed mathematically. We suspect, and even accept objections to, the designation of the modern mode of awareness as “metaphysical”. After all, the scientific method is regarded as empirical and objective. Let us recall what the modern structure of “reality” is. It is an atomistic, materialist, homogeneous aggregate of “building blocks” or the “ultimate particles”—and everything outside of this reality has no claim to existence. If such a claim is made, then it is metaphysical—i.e., beyond the physical. And it is precisely the modern subject which occupies this physically non-existent region. Since mathematics is discovered in this region, it has no Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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claim to be a feature of “objective” reality. Thus, it belongs to the subjective metaphysics. Given that the latter has no real, “objective” characteristics, whatever comes from it is an Artificial Construct, a poetic creation, and, when applied to construct the ontological reality in the form of technologies, the latter also becomes AI. Thus, the feature of this globalized AI phenomenon is “discursive power”. If we can define something mathematically, then we can make it, and what we make embodies our discourse. The empirical—technical product—is an “imago hominis”. The magical discourses embodied in high-tech seem to be our own creations, but, like all creations, they have escaped us and any implement we use; the AI creates more such discourses and demands of us that we learn how to speak or become discarded as outdated. There are programs and lessons for “older” persons to learn “computer language” in order to have a minimal capacity to live in this AI world. This discursive power was appropriated by many other Western trends, including postmodern proponents of multidiscursivity. Since there are no external criteria to determine which discourse is correct, then all of them must be given an equal right to speak. THE MULTI-DISCURSIVE WORLD The claims by postmodernists to multiple discursivities, and therefore multiple discursive powers, is a continuation and maintenance of the modern metaphysical mathematical universalization of multi-discursive AI disciplines. First, postmodernity is a continuation of modernity and has in fact, globalized itself under the claim that it can save other cultures from Western metaphysical modernization. It is no wonder that various regions of the world that want to acquire identity in the pretended context of modern globalization are constantly appealing to being postmodern. Second, the various claims to cultural selfidentity, in contrast to modern universal atomistic individualism, is a variant of individualism at the cultural level. The notion of individuality, at whatever level, and its identity remain intact. Third, modern universalization and the postmodern challenge to it follow the same logic and therefore impose individuality and its extension to cultural individuality and rights. Postmodern texts, inclusive of deconstructive rhetoric, have proclaimed the death of identity and, specifically the identity of the subject. The latter is regarded as one modern discourse having no universal validity. Add to this the prevalent reduction of all phenomena to material explanations—chemical, biological, physiological, evolutionary—and the subject becomes a cross-section of multiple discursive constructs. Morality is genetics, love is chemistry, and knowledge is brain cells. The problem is that the abolition of the modern subject fails to account for the background subject which has no pregiven definitions. The modern subject, which has been universalized in various pronouncements, including the

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United Nations’ proclamation of universal human rights, both individual and cultural, and postmodern claims that demand respect for different cultural styles of self-determination, and the invention of novel formal discourses, are premised on a “subject” as self-generating. At the dawn of Western modernity, Pico della Mirandolla (1956) announced that humans have no nature, no essence, no rules by which to live, and therefore whatever nature humans will possess, whatever rules will be followed, whether scientific or political, will have to be invented as if “out of nothing”. This is an initial suggestion that the modern ultimate subject intends to be self-created without any other conditions, including theological, scientific, and ontological, to the extent that the very distinctions between those terms are equally invented without precedence. This is the intentionality that comprises the background for the articulation of what humans are as self-created. Therefore, there is no pregiven subject that can be used as a criterion to determine the human subject. The subject is posited as totally self-constituting without any conditions: an unconditional subject. This self-creative subject is totally autonomous, and in its autonomy, it creates unconditional methods and theories that then, through an autonomous will, can create its own environment. One aspect of this creation is a scientific mode of awareness that is in a position to create AI, with abilities that, seemingly, surpass its creator, envisaged in Sci-Fi, where robots rebel against humans as inefficient, emotional, and redundant. The efforts to deconstruct and abolish this kind of self-generating subject fail on two counts: First, the modern subject at the outset does not have any identity, and second, the claims to its deconstruction, abolition or reduction are the performances of such a subject. The multi-discursivity, multiple technical disciplines, are premised on the modern autonomous subject. This is equally obvious from the claims that discourses, including mathematics, have no causal, natural, or supernatural necessitation, but are pure constructs. Even Foucault (1972), with all his social histories to rely upon, could not escape his invention of all sorts of monuments, “meaningless” functions, as an anonymous subject. This means that all such claims still accept the self-creation of the modern subject as a creator of its own logic for mastery of its own world and for self-definition. It is impossible for any culture to claim that it has an identity without having accepted the logic of choice between the right of every individual to make his/her own identity, or the right of a particular group to respect its own identity. What is at issue here is that the globalizing universality of the modern subject is being proliferated by postmodernity and, in a narrower sense, by multi-disciplines and their fragmentation into other disciplines. The autonomous self-creating modern metaphysical subject has become universal. Before entering the question concerning the “tension” between AI in its various forms and the subject, some attention must be given to the reasons why the

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modern Western metaphysical mode of awareness, in its mathematical form, is so attractive. After all, it seems to be a danger as it sweeps across the globe, homogenizes the environment, and runs over indigenous cultures and traditions. Despite their varieties, they are, in accordance with Western “objective” ontology, subjective. Why would “the others” accept their own demise and join “world history” which is a pure appendage to progress for its own sake? The problem is that it is no longer possible to back out of globalization; its technical efficiency and promise of a “better” life is part of the awareness of every culture. Their members see themselves in relation to this efficiency, productivity, and liberation from natural calamities and necessities, as part of their lives. This creates internal tension within various cultures and a dual self-recognition. One still maintains his own cultural discourses, yet also judges those discourses in light of the global imagery of the “good life”. Hence, one sees himself, his position, and life-world from another—global—life-world. Just as important, global technical media make available a great variety of cultural life-worlds, placing one’s own as one among many, and no longer the most significant, leaving the modern global world as the only shared world. In this sense, the creation of experts for global tasks allows them to be “at home” in any culture without commitment to any. Such dual consciousness frames the struggles within various cultures, forming the background for nomadic civilization. The modernizers, who claim to be part of their own culture, want to transform that culture into one that is “civilized”, practically efficient, objective, and beneficial to individuals, liberating them from their own ignorance, superficially clinging to the uniqueness of their own culture. In one sense, there is a demand to use the environment in a “desacralized” homogenized manner, purely for the purpose of the benefit of social members: health, employment, and increased wages as signs of the good life. In another sense, there is a wish to claim that we in our culture have spiritual values which do not allow one to reduce the environment, including the human, to mere resources. Within this tension, the adjudication cannot be had on the basis of some criteria, stemming either from one or another culture or from the process of globalization, which is more true. Thus, the only criterion is: which is more beneficial materially? The contemporary solution to this tension is power. We witness many confrontations between groups within given cultures that promote modernization, and at the same time, fundamentalists, nationalists, and traditionalists resist modernization. This means that a given culture is split into those who propagate the need to become globalized and modern and, at the same time, those who, recognizing the necessity of this modernization, propose a battle against it as an imposition of an alien culture. In principle, they claim that we may use the efficiency of modern technology to resist the very system that this technology imposes on us. In this sense, globalization constitutes a power confrontation, all

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the way from holy wars to so-called passive resistance. The dual awareness discloses a temporal horizon of possibilities in such a way that one possibility is regarded to be the recuperation of the past, while the other is offered as the future. Politically speaking, the rhetoric states that the one from the past is conservative and traditional, while the other is liberal, individualistic, open, and even humanistic. Whether this designation is true or false is not our concern. At this point, a specific conception of the world is divided into a closed past and open future. Yet, the basic issue is: The “past” seems to demand a human, qualitative awareness pitted against AI, designed to completely discard such qualities and even design algorithms which can circumvent any biological, chemical, and physiological traits and create a “new man” who would be an embodiment of AI discourses. The idea is that the future should be controlled by the combined will of the people of this planet; after all, it is the future that we want. The extolling of AI does not mean that the latter will get smarter than its creators, but that we shall voluntarily surrender the very transcendental awareness that we are—our curiosity, creativity, autonomy, all qualities such as compassion, eros—to a narrow, algorithmically driven vision of what is “essential”. The question: Is the autonomous, self-created subject abolished? Will it remain in the background of the discarded cultures and their qualitative awareness and remind us of who we are and what we have lost? While this option might seem plausible, there is an issue, mentioned above, concerning the “death” of the subject in the context of multi-culturalism. Different cultural discourses define humans in their own ways, and hence there is no universal anything which would point to a subject acceptable by all. Quite the opposite: Members of other cultures not only do not have a “subject” but reject it as an imposition of Western globalization. One can readily see this in various cultures where the self-creation of a subject, and its creation of the environment, including human life, is an insult to some symbolic designs where “man is created” by a supreme authority. Indeed, such self-creation is relegated to man’s demonic pride and his modern life-world as the Great Satan. This context seems to deny any possibility of finding an essential counterweight to AI. In principle, AI either subjects all under its mode of awareness, or it fragments and discards other cultures as subjective and thus non-existent. While initial AI seemed to be simply mechanical and under our control—machines could lift more, move faster, dig deeper—discarding our shovels—now they will put us in the back seat and drive the cars in order to prevent “human mistakes” until finally they will take over our “thinking” functions with greater speed than us, the deficient carbonbased units, and calculate what materials to use and invent for our increasing diverse projects. The AI, of course, have our modern mode of awareness: They see everything mathematically. Even a forklift “sees” how many pounds it can lift at what angle and how high. Who needs us, inefficient, slow, carbon-based,

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fallible weaklings? If we are to escape this sort of conclusion, we must return to philosophy—even if it is a politically incorrect, perhaps Western Socratic philosophy, daring to challenge its own established, modern “reality” and the abolition of the human subject—by the subject and its embodied magical discourses. To accept this challenge, we must expand the parameters of our discussions which so far have left us with a principle, pervading modern Western understanding: It tacitly assumes that we do not experience things or events directly: Our awareness is mediated by a specific mode of representation: mathematical and, by extension, technical. The latter allows for both, testing new projects, including hypotheses, and constructing or using available technical means to establish whatever we value as “the latest”. The mediation also extends to the claim by all theorists: We live in an environment of a linguistic tradition, which shapes our interpretation of all things; and linguistic structures are identical with a given life-world. The latter is identical to the magic of words. Despite their differences, the common claim is that all meaning and making sense, all understanding, inhere in language, even if one of them, mathematics, might be proclaimed as the universal language. After all, it appears on every food product, stating the numbers of calories, grams, ounces, and percentages of chemicals. The issue of awareness seems to be surpassed since there is no need for a subject who can claim to be a source of making sense of events. We find the sense of events in our modern historical tradition. This is to say, there is no longer any requirement for the last vestiges of modem metaphysics located within the sphere of what Kant, and later Husserl, called transcendental subjectivity. We have accepted a tradition where the mathematical mode of awareness, and its technically interpreted environment, constructs and “explains” all events, including ourselves—without residua, in such a way that, if there are some not yet accounted for problems, they will be resolved in the future. Of course, Socrates will raise a question as to whether such a promise is possible with a mathematical mode of awareness. Whether the claim that the subject is redundant by virtue of being defined by a specific tradition is a solution or a mere postponement and a relocating of the question of sense will be seen in the development of the problematic of theories and methods. Counter to the claims that all sense inheres in a tradition and its prevalent discourse as a mode of awareness, the transcendental argument purports to show that all awareness, even the modern positions, are premised on a final moment of reflection whose presence cannot be denied without the denying thesis becoming nonsensical. If this holds, then it could be said that any thesis, any position is, in the final analysis, transcendental. This appears in a tacit introduction of reflective awareness into every position, theory, or method. Such tacit introduction appears with a spontaneous activity of awareness called

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“attentional modification”. Without any question as to the “reality” status, any teacher, any scientist, can say “let us look at mathematics” as at any other subject matter; but one will also recognize that “looking at...” as intentionality does not look like the subject matter that is being intended—in this case, numbers. Yet, how easily the sense of “looking at…” or an “awareness of…” can be modified spontaneously in cases when anyone can say: “Let us look at things mathematically”. This suggests that mathematics becomes a mode of awareness which is very distinct from the things or subject matters that this mode intends. Other modes are just as available: We can look at things theoretically, practically, theologically, and aesthetically and realize that such modes are not at all “subjective” in the sense of mental or psychological states. In this way, we can also say, “Let us look at language”, whereby the awareness of language is not part of language, or we can say, “Let us look at the world linguistically” and hence make a transcendental claim that all awareness is linguistic. But the claim that all awareness is linguistic is not linguistic—it is an awareness accessible to anyone, anytime, and anywhere. Such awareness is not subjective in any psychological, mental, physiological senses, since all such subjective states can be objects of awareness, such that the latter does not possess any of those subjective features. After all, cultural scholars have no qualms in claiming that in their research, they are looking at different languages while comparing their structures, looking for common etymological compositions, without imposing their own current language as some sort of universal criterion. In fact, they include their own language as one among others for comparison. If this general awareness of “looking at languages” did not hold, then we would end up in an indefinite regress, constantly requiring one more language to interpret all others. A closer consideration of this issue might add to the understanding of the presence of the just-mentioned general or transcendental awareness. It was shown that there is no direct and demonstrable connection between theoretical thought and the domain of the life-world experience of things, cultural objects, and even language. The experienced phenomena are “external” to theories, and the conjunction between them has no necessity. The conjunction requires a conjoiner whose understanding must be broader than the theory and its selected perceptual domains. The conjoiner is a reflecting process that performs the task from a vantage point of interest, whether the latter is culturally prejudged, linguistically prescribed, or part of a historical tradition. In this sense, an application of a theory does not yield pure objective perceptual phenomena, but one that is interpreted by the theoretical requirements and, finally, by some contextual interest. The latter is usually understood in cultural, historical, or linguistic terms. Of course, the “interest” can be simple curiosity concerning the ways that a theory can be applied to a given domain in the world. Let us look closer at this practice.

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One position, discussed above, proposed that the “subject” is one component in a broader context of an interpretation of the world—such as modern. Assuming this position, it must be the case that the scientist, or the theorizing subject, as cultural and historical, is also a factor in the domain of investigation. The philosopher, if he/she is a part of his/her own history, cannot claim to obtain the given phenomena without changing them. The very theoretical explanation, which assumes a position toward the phenomena of its world, will transform the subject matter of, and by, such explanation. While researching a subject matter, the researcher’s explanations will also change such subject matter. In turn, if a theory is part of a culture and history and is shaped by them, then no theory is sufficiently broad to encompass even its own tradition, not to speak of others, and offer a universal interpretation. It is only one aspect of its tradition, a culture, or language. If positivism were to offer two contesting meta-languages, each claiming to account for all the usages of a given language, then the debate between them would involve a language that is broader than either meta-language. Indeed, this can also be said of any explanation which posits unsurpassable ground of all understanding of things; it too is a contingent position belonging to a specific tradition and hence cannot offer a universal claim, in our case, the use of one theoretical awareness—mathematics. The claim that such an awareness is universal, in contrast to other discursive modes of awareness, includes a comparative awareness which does not belong to either quantitative or qualitative modes—a flash of another mode. Perhaps the most pronounced way of this manner of theorizing, i.e., proposing a universal explanation which intends to overcome the problems of inherence in a linguistic culture, was offered by positivism and is still paraded by the mainstream analytic mode of theorizing. In the first case, there is an a priori position which posits a reality in itself, untainted by any tradition, and can be accessed by an appropriate mode of awareness, constituting a language, which composes both theory and method. But this means that all other modes of awareness in and of the world have to be discarded or reduced to the posited mono-logical discourse and homogeneous world. Yet, these positions do not escape the issue of the awareness of the world to the extent that the discourse of the method and theory does not in any way imply direct access to the posited reality. Such reality is always transformed in terms of modern methods and theory and thus becomes valuatively and technically mediated. The method must be applied from a valuative position which is pragmatic: What works for human benefit, at the price that humans must also be reduced to the same reality. In brief, such reality does not offer itself in its purity but in terms of what we can make of it, and thus transform it, through our methodological and technical intervention.

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All that we have attained so far is that a given theory or a selected method cannot be by itself the last moment of interpretation, since they are either one aspect of a given historical tradition, or they are interpreted by some valuative point of interest which might be seen as the last point of interpretation. Moreover, the very objectivity that is being sought is not attainable, since every effort to reach it leads to an understanding that it is compelled to change in accordance with the point of interest that may be laden with numerous interpretations or with the very process of the application of theory to the reality that is radically selective of what will count as objective among the various ontological options and thus posits an a priori decision as to what will be the data of its theory. This is to say, all other data will not be tolerated as objective and dismissed as theoretically redundant, perhaps subjective. But such a position will not include a justification for the principle of selectivity of the required ontology or its own position. If an explanation is universal, then it must be explained by the selected ontology and the prescriptive discourse. If not, then neither the theory nor a methodology, posing in their formal and quantitative language, can claim to be an allencompassing and final interpreter. From what has been said so far, it can be concluded in one regard that the subject, or the last interpreter, who constructs theories, correlates them to selected phenomena, and evaluates such correlation, cannot be, in principle, investigated by any of the empirical sciences. If this were the case, then the very subject of selectivity, correlation, and interpretation would be selected as an object of another subject of selectivity and interpretation, leading to an infinite regress. In brief, the last interpreter as the selecting and correlating awareness cannot be a subject matter of any specific objective science and theory, and resultantly, it is inaccessible to theories and methodologies of any philosophy or science. After all, if one looks at scientific language, one notes that its logic and structure are not derived from experienced phenomena. In brief, it is different from such phenomena; thus, when applied, it becomes an interpretation. Moreover, if one claims that a given language is distinct from the experienced phenomena, one must also admit that she has an awareness of things that are not bound by language; after all, the distinction between language and things could not be made. Let us consider the most prevalent modern claim that language is the allencompassing and inescapable understanding of the world and ourselves. If language is the medium in which all events, theories, and methods are understood, in which selectivity and designation of what is real, unreal, objective, and subjective appears, then language cannot be a subject matter of any philosophy or theory, since the latter would be one aspect within the vastness of a linguistic tradition. If a tradition and its horizons comprise the dimension in which we dwell, then such a tradition could not be grasped by any theory about a

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tradition, since such a theory, again would be a minor aspect of it. It could be said that even the very notion that everything is an interpretation, comprising horizons of past and future awareness, would be another partial interpretation which would converge into the horizons of this all-encompassing horizon, inaccessible to any interpretation—except for the constant appearance of awareness of the convergence of the horizons into horizons. All these claims, by virtue of their self-destruction, become necessarily contingent. And yet, left to their own devices, they seem to be the ultimate account. Indeed, it is ultimate because there is a transcendental subject, who is aware of the tradition, its horizons, and the way that understanding converges into such horizons. Such a subject is in the background of awareness of what AI can do, what technologies it can project, and what projected possibilities can be fulfilled with what speed, efficiency, and complexity. As was already noted, the transcendental subjectivity is not a subject in any psychological or mental—immanent—sense. It is a mode of awareness that anyone may assume anywhere and anytime without any metaphysical or ontological underpinnings. “Let us look at the world linguistically” or as present in a “context of a historical tradition”, or as “culturally constituted”, or “let us look at things mathematically”, “theologically”, or biblically through the “word of God”, fully understanding that such, and other such modes of awareness, are not “perspectives” toward the world, but the way the world as a whole appears. Given the variety of modes of awareness, it is possible to perform them in their own parameters, not as objects of analysis, but as “transcendental” invariants or “eidetic” generalities, prior to generalization. While we marvel at AI, discussing it as a result of algorithms, precise chips, materials, we already use it as a mode of awareness: It “looks at the world of things mathematically” and it does so with phenomenological method: It excludes all other modes of awareness—performs bracketing of every other mode and assumes an invariant, essential mode: quantification. Thus, it is indifferent to what it counts—votes, investments, productivity, artworks, social trends, surveys of religious beliefs—with total disregard as to whether its accumulated data has any claim to reality, existence, history—of course, it can deal with the latter if we provide it with texts from which it can count wars, calculate strategies, mentions of prayers by emperors for divine support. In all these cases, its mode of awareness “intends” the entire universe in terms of an eidetic generality. Obviously, such generality does not come from empirical generalization, but is prior to it and is assumed by anyone performing any generalization. “Let us look at the world mathematically” does not stem from counting apples, and then oranges, and angels or sheep, and then concluding that we can count everything. Learning how to count sheep is learning how to count stars, money, and economic “futures”. The transcendental subject is

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not abolished; rather, one of its modes of awareness is extended by AI as it also “intends” or “means” the world in such a mode within its eidetic limits. While our discussions should have suggested more discourses of our tradition, it is necessary to demonstrate various levels of concrete awareness which are accepted even by general concepts found in available discourses. First, let us check the mentioned thesis. More recently, the practical domain has been designated to function as communication, specifically emphasizing language and interpretation to be the basis of communicative understanding. In addition, some of the linguistically based theories appeal to scientific explanations of human interaction and thus use formal systems as the universal means of transmitting information and of explaining phenomena. Upon closer analysis, the explanations are completely abstract from daily discourse and experience. This is one of the unique claims of scientific thought: It purports to deal with the concrete, and yet it offers radically abstract and formalized systems. The answer, of course, is in the demonstration that such systems are applicable to concrete activities and practical purposes. This claim lends credence to the views that an understanding of situations and contexts is a socio-historically learned adaptation of rules, of interpretations of normative and theoretical structures, resulting in a conjunction of theory and concrete actions. Such claims are possible on two traditional assumptions: First, an application spells dualism between form and content, thought and reality, structure and manifestation; and second, the conjunction is possible in an instrumental sense, i.e., science is not a theoretical explanation, but an instrumental system for the mastery of nature in favor of human purposes. In both cases, the outcome of this conjunction is metaphysical virulence; i.e., metaphysics, as a normative construct, is used to change the world to fit the metaphysical constructs. In this sense, the abstract, formal systems, inaccessible to any perception, assume an inordinate preeminence against the concrete experience, since the formal systems become reality by being instrumental. As most serious researchers have seen, science no longer explains, but makes events happen. There is, in fact, a current tendency, resting, perhaps, on the modern conception of the instrumentality of science, toward a practical basis and explanation of human activities. Most diverse theories, from neo-Marxism through communicative competence, to postmodern conceptions of the production of truth, assure us that their theories are praxis-laden. These theories equally claim that human activities are imbedded in a human world with its historical horizons. One specific characteristic shared by such trends is the claim that their conceptions of praxis are based on concrete historical contexts, allowing for the interpretive discourse of scientific thinking and formal rules, and that such discourses offer a concrete domain that can avoid the pitfalls of some of the transcendental phenomenological trends. The latter is deemed to be idealistic and solipsistic. If communication is

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possible, then its basis stems from historical situations, particular forms of language, interpretation, and understanding. It is argued that phenomenology’s focus on the “objective” disconnects the given from its context and social and historical interpretations, and assumes that such a focus offers universally acceptable claims. Moreover, the presumption of objectivity leads to the view that the individual is in a position to observe the given without any relationship to others and without any introduction of interpretations by a historically acquired language. In communicative terms, the charge against phenomenology states that one cannot be a pure observer of the given without any admixtures of others and various intermediaries such as language. Only the historically and socially acquired common usages and practices allow for the understanding and communication of the given. The actions and practices of the individual are examples of the common practices, customs, and usages which are general and transgress the individual, i.e., he is a representative of something intersubjective and common. Despite the phenomenological arguments for the primacy of signification, of meaning as phenomena of experience, the attacks on phenomenology insist that meaning is linguistic, and the latter not only transcends the individual, but allows him to make sense of himself. Moreover, the phenomenologically conceived perceptual object, with its spatio-temporal horizons, is deemed an inadequate point of departure, requiring a historically effective consciousness, an objective spirit, encompassing institutions and individual activities. One is born into a communicative system. The individual lives and acts, thinks and feels in the sphere of commonality, of rules, plans, and customs, reaching into individual motivations. Thus, every plan, every explanation, is group-specific. This supposedly comprises a more encompassing and concrete domain. The individual activity is a situational application of the modes of prescribed activity. In essence, the sense interconnections of a tradition appear in a common praxis, constituting a form of life and a life-world, and precede the individual. It follows, then, that the genesis of awareness inheres in the common forms of historical life, institutions and traditions that have far surpassed the individual. In common terminology, without them, human activity would be blind, and with them, it is directed by an authority of a tradition. The intentional activities of the individual are situated signs or specifications and individuations of a historically and socially pregiven intersubjectivity and life-world. The latter are the subject, while the individual is their determinate object. We encounter, here, a peculiar circularity. The common meanings must be already in place and understood:

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1. if the individual is to make any sense of events, and 2. if the sense of practical activities is to be grasped. But this suggests that meaning can be derived only from the already pregiven common meanings. For phenomenology, the issue is with the “derived” and the “only”. If it is presumed that an activity is understandable because it is a logical derivation from pregiven meanings and socio-historically established rules, then one would have to account for various interpretations of the “same” meanings and rules. The variations would have to be attributed either to the incompetence of the individual, or to another level of language, i.e., the interpretive level, or to a silently experienced domain that makes sense of the meanings and rules simply by being their unacknowledged source. The latter would have to make sense on its own if it becomes an interpretant of the socio-historically-found common conceptions. The making of sense that can specify and concretize the conceptions apparently must be a process that is not blind, and that is in a position to “know” how to communicate with the world, and how to “apply” the socio-historically acquired common meanings, concepts, and rules. This circularity is also at the base of all AI constructs. We can take any technical construct and use it as means to open possibilities for projecting “novel” constructs and thus embodying the “previous” constructs as a discursive condition for the “novel” construct, such that the latter circles back to the discourse or discourses embodied in the technology which is deemed to be the “condition” for the projected possible technology. AI meets AI, mediated by the metaphysical subject with an AI vision which has constructed the “earlier” AI technology as a condition for the “future” AI. The individual, mediating subject is not a located representation of a broader “scientific” tradition; she views such a tradition in and with the same metaphysical constructs as the tradition “sees” her. She is as much an embodiment of AI as all the AIs she correlates. She is a repetition of the modern, metaphysical subject who views the world in terms of an artificial intelligence constructed by her and imposed on the environment as a discursive power. The issues are by now quite complex, and their resolution by those who argue against phenomenology takes recourse to a pedagogical thesis. This thesis purports to explain the conditions for the possibility of the individual’s awareness of proper, concrete activities. It is said that an activity makes sense, is meaningful and proper, because of the teaching of customs, concepts, orientations to the next generation. Granted. But pedagogy is what here becomes problematic, since it too must presume the priority of history that far surpasses the abilities of any pedagogical undertaking, and indeed the pedagogical practice would have to make sense only under the dictates of the historically transmitted meanings and rules. Hence, the very practice of pedagogy is one mode of individuating the common

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meanings, one variety of interpretation that cannot claim to be in a position of transmitting history per se. Moreover, even if we were to grant that the historical meanings, customs and institutions contain learned generalizations from individual cases, we would have a reversed problem: Now, we would have general rules or concepts and meanings of individual cases abstracted from their contexts. Yet, it is precisely the context-boundedness that is being advocated by the historical, anti-phenomenological thesis. The only way that such a thesis could escape this dilemma is by assuming the generality of contexts and thus by abolishing any claim to concreteness. This is to say, if one is compelled to generalize the contexts, then one is simply postponing the issue of concreteness and specification. It is precisely the efforts to avoid the transcendental, consisting of awareness accessible to anyone—even if never completely—that lead to such dilemmas. Yet, even if we assume that communication is possible on the basis of historically achieved intersubjectivity, with its mutual and universal understanding, we would not be closer to answering the question of such a universality in understanding. In what ways could history contain some type of commonality and universality when the proponents consistently claim that all abstract and universal conceptions must be derived from, and reinterpreted back in terms of the concrete historical contexts? This seems to be an admission that a historical process consists of contingent events, unless, of course, one has granted tacitly the transcendental generality of experience accessible to everyone, in the case of AI, a metaphysical mode of awareness. The sly move of the historical theses appears obvious: Assume the generality of the transcendental awareness, as depicted above at various levels, the primary of which became mathematics, reduce it to the property of a particular, factual being, and then argue that individuals cannot yield commonalities of meaning accessible to others without the props of historically effective consciousness. The dilemma of historically effective consciousness, with its claims of intersubjective access, is that it is particular, perhaps having no two situations alike, and thus it must import generalities from an experiential domain in order then to discover them in such a historical consciousness. If it is claimed that the historical subjects are contingent, and particular, then the question as to the possibility of comprehending the historically transmitted generalities cannot be answered. Neither such a factual subject, nor even an intersubjectivity of such subjects, could presume to grasp more than they are, unless, in fact, they are more, i.e., experiencing subjects that are related to, and engaged in, a transcendental generality prior to any factual singularity or generalized universality. No doubt, there is a historically transmitted knowledge and, as we noted above, a polycentric, corporeal subject, but the conditions of the possibility of awareness of this

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transmitted knowledge are not necessarily historical. Historical experience presumes the transcendental in order to make sense of its ability to locate and transmit the universal. Indeed, the very arguments for the priority of historical traditions and intersubjectivity are transcendental. Our arguments against the priority of intersubjectivity are not designed to reject it, but to show that the historical base for intersubjectivity leads to blind alleys. There appears to be a tacit assumption that the individual is contingent and totally incapacitated without the intersubjective, i.e., the individual is contingent, while the intersubjective is a necessary condition for the former. But the necessity of intersubjectivity, as something above the individual, implies that the former is not historical, but transcendental and thus requires transcendental subjectivity for its access. In turn, if intersubjectivity is seen as a historical accumulation and transmission of accumulated practical and epistemic views, then such a history could not offer any general conceptions under which the individual could be subsumed. Communication is an accepted occurrence; this implies that intersubjectivity cannot be an aggregate of either contingent, totally time-bound, factual individuals, with their specific psychosomatic functions. On this basis, intersubjectivity is precluded at the outset. Indeed, the contingency of history would be exposed to the same charge. Resultantly, the possibility of intersubjectivity can be maintained if it is taken at the outset to be transcendental, offering access to eidetic generality that subtends both the factual and the universalities and is accessible to any subjectivity. This conclusion is revealed even by those who argue against phenomenology. When one claims that all subjectivity is within the horizon of historical intersubjectivity, the claim has an eidetic generality as a basis for communicative understanding. This is to say; such claims are transcendental and thus accessible intersubjectively by all. There is still another dilemma for scientific communication. Assume that there are traditionally pregiven and learned rules of language, in our case mathematics, present in their intersubjective universality, and then applied interpretively to situations. The communicating individuals, using such language, do not somehow discard it and its rules, meanings, and concepts during application. Even if one had a dual language—and there is no indication of this being the case—one with traditionally acquired intersubjective rules, and one that is spoken situationally, the latter would turn out to be equally historical, traditional, with its general rules and usages, calling for specific interpretation during application. Hence, the issue of concrete, situational specification is not resolved but merely postponed. Any linguistic usage, its rules, prejudgments, takes for granted a general understanding of the meaning of situation, context, and concrete action in order to speak of concrete specification of communicative practice. But this implies that if the historical and intersubjectively understood language does not have within itself

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the requisite concreteness and specificity, then the latter is presupposed and must originate from another source. After all, the transmitted language can be specified concretely, not in any arbitrary way, but selectively. The selection presupposes that we already understand the concrete situation, the context wherein to order the specifications of a language properly. The proper ordering depends on the experience of concrete domains that are not simply cases of traditional categories and rules, but systems of factual experience founded on situated and significantly interconnected corporeal functions. We shall discuss the latter in the next section. Historical intersubjectivity is not something which imposes itself on an individual awareness but, as mentioned in the case of AI, a dialogical extension and variation of any awareness, comprising a transcendental, poly-logical field in depth. In principle, each text we read contains eidetic generalities which “mean” the things and events in a specific framework. We speak of numerous social structures, from monarchy through plutocracy to democracy, and regard them in the mode of awareness as “justice”. The latter is a general “eidetic” invariant which limits the investigation of all societies to this mode. And it invites anyone to look at any society in our own times with respect to justice and indeed, invites us to challenge this explication of such societies by introducing variants which might contest this mode of awareness. Our awareness of this “position”, our dialogue with this mode of awareness, is not an imposition on us of a historical intersubjectivity, but a mutual extension of awareness at the transcendental level. This mode signifies societies, means them in a specific way, inviting us to look at them in that way irrespective of the question of whether Plato was a Greek, just like it would be irrespective of whether Pythagoras was Greek as an explanation for the Pythagorean Theorem. AI extends our mode of looking at the world mathematically, and, as mentioned, more efficiently, faster, more precisely. This is not a “replacement” for our awareness, just as Plato’s awareness of justice was a replacement instead of a polycentric extension of our awareness. On the contrary, AI requires our transcendental awareness, since it cannot “mean” or “signify” the things it calculates—it gives us numbers, and numbers are not found anywhere and anytime; they do not have a signifying direction, such as “the message on the screen is from a friend in Tokyo”. It simply puts up a number of letters on the screen, just as it puts up a number of letters in the message. The AI does not say what those letters mean, speak about; they do not mean anything beyond themselves. When AI gives numbers of stocks, shares, quantities of production hours, even quantities of products, it does not know that such quantities mean anything beyond themselves. When an astronomer gets numbers of light years from Andromeda, numbers of seconds “after” the Big Bang, those numbers, by themselves, are numbers on the screen, calculated with dramatic efficiency and

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speed, but without understanding their meaning “after”. The numbers have no temporal direction. It is the transcendental awareness that reads those numbers as signifying “past” and “future” signifying directions such as an “expansion” of the galaxies from “then until now” and from “there to here”. The AI will print the letters by the numbers, but numbers do not signify positions and directions; they are spaceless and timeless, and it takes “time-space” awareness to allow the numbers to “mean” or signify something. And such signifying leads to the lived world. Meaning is “directional”—where something points to something else. Like language points to things, mathematics points to quantified objects, religious texts point to the world of images, and all comprise a world of “meaning interconnections” which we shall call signitive. The signitive logic that pervades the life-world, with the latter’s valuative selectivities, is also in the background of the cybernetic revolution. This is to say, while the cybernetic revolution brought in computer science, it has at the same time included as a background the self-generating process of formal systems that are translated and reified into the technical environment. The computerized logic as formal has no regard to anything that is environmentally, qualitatively differentiated. Its own logic does not need to respect the so-called “naturalqualitative” differentiations. Any living, working, suffering being in this logic of indifference that transcends such a being can regard all events in terms of mutually replaceable variants. Social, economic, pedagogical, cultic, and cultural givens are, in this logic, equivalences in normative exchanges. Whether something is labor power, artwork, or mysticism, it must subject itself to the requirements of the formal rules of quantification. The latter, the quantification, must become the information to be transmitted globally. While previously, televisual globalization was available, and this globalization depended on valuative selectivity of large media organizations, computerized globalization offers arbitrary access to any selectivity. This means that rhetorical propositions, as translatable into practices, will be equivalent to other propositions. No external judgment is possible apart from an appeal to other computerized information, whose credibility is simply the appearance in the global network. Computerization opens up a domain of any space and any time accessed without history, without places, and without times. It is a synchronic instrument premised on signification that is everywhere and yet not localizable. The age of the computer is a world of signification where there is no place and time and, conversely, where all places and all times are equivalently accessible. Our task is to explore the domain of all places and times.

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SIGNITIVE SPACE-TIME Any scientist, for example, an astronomer, gets images from the Hubble telescope which “tell” the scientist that the visible galaxies, in a specific “region of the sky”, are six billion light years “from here to there” signifying how they looked “in the past”. In addition, the scientist will announce that “this cluster” (recall a “group” as a mode of awareness) is “closer” than the “cluster to the right”. Let us call it the Hubble telescope AI. What it gives the scientist are numbers and empirical images, which the AI can count and deploy on the screen, but the space-time, and distance in-depth, require transcendental awareness, which makes sense of the “data” supplied by the AI in numbers and images. Obviously, the Hubble telescope as AI is a complex thing, as are our retinas, and “extends our vision”, becoming a “dialogical partner” yet the signitive deployment of its vision consists of our intersubjective transcendental awareness. Why intersubjective? Because the scientist is aware of the awareness of Newton, extended by Einstein, Hubble, and various astronomers, and all of them are accessible to anyone at the transcendental level. One need not know Newton’s personal life to acquire an awareness of the mathematics of gravity. The same goes for Einstein and others. When someone reads the computer messages, that someone does not question the presence of such messages, despite the empirical fact that those messages originated ten thousand miles away, and that all we have empirically are marks on the screen. The empirical components become transparent and assume a meaning which signifies, “intends” something, and it does so with the transcendental awareness of space-time directions. This must be emphasized: One gets a message with a date and time and distance of origin. All one has are numbers, but the numbers for the receiver turn to signifiers for an awareness which reads them as a message from “then and there”—as a specific signitive space-time awareness. This should be made clear: The space-time-movement mode of awareness is the way that things, events, and even our own place are deployed. We could say that such awareness is “cosmic” to the extent to which we speak of the “Big Bang”, which happened some 13 billion years ago, and we expect in the next ten years to gather data closest to the time of the Big Bang. We are not empirically present to this Bang, but we are already in the signitive space-time-movement awareness necessary for the location of events, emergent matter, forming galaxies, and stars with proto-planets. The reading of the AI message is prior to and pervades the empirical means that transmit the message. Any AI, from computer to robotics to space telescope such as the Hubble, as technological means, is overlooked in favor of what it says about something, “intending” something, what mode of awareness it incorporates, and what transcendental space-time-movement awareness deploys what the

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message states. This would be analogous to the construction of non-Euclidean space. The latter has no empirically given intuitive component. It is a pure system of formal constructs that do not point to any material, mental, or other “realistic factors”. Given the non-positional mode of awareness incorporated in any “smart technology” including AI, then, in principle, it is possible to select and transmit the sense of any event as if it were immediately present to anyone. What is at issue is the process of selectivity that is not implied by the mode of awareness and by the empirical events such awareness “intends”. Here we encounter the question of selectivity as valuation. Among numerous events signified in a life-world, some are regarded as important and valuable. At this level, valuation does not have any rules which could be derived from either domain, the formal and quantitative, or the technically constructed events of the life-world. The point we have reached is the previously mentioned requirement of connecting logic with fact, mathematics with data, and sense-making with events. Since the systems of signification are constituted at will, they themselves do not imply which of them are relevant to the social, economic, pedagogical, and cultural aspects of a lifeworld. Resultantly, the very constitution of signitive systems requires a valuative criterion which would say: 1. What formal-mathematical systems among all possibilities should be applied to what aspects and events; and, 2. The criteria for the constitution of specific formal-mathematical systems must be part of a society, a political society, political economy, or political economical ideology, which would provide a clue concerning what is relevant among possible systems. In fact, the very construction of AI technology based on mathematical awareness, is a technology that embodies valuation. This is to say, we elect to build this instead of another technology. This is simply to remind us that technology embodies valuative conditions, and therefore it cannot be regarded as a mere neutral empirical implement. CONCLUSION What is appropriate to the theme of the technical means which embody the mathematical mode of awareness and its valuative subtext is that it can be produced and set up anywhere and anytime around the world. This globalizing transference of technology brings with it non-positional access to global events as

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if they were present. This can be noted in the change of language from “representation” to “presence”. A normal daily discussion seems obvious: “Have you seen the hurricane in Bermuda?” As if the medium—television—and its images have vanished, and the “thing in itself” has become present. From this, we can only suggest how mass media obtains a rhetorical power; every image is “the thing” and carries the presence of “the ways things are”. We have the origin for “Media is the message” invented by a modern, metaphysical subject—an AI. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Mickunas, A. (2014). Modern West: Two life worlds. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2015). The Project Europe. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2016). Lithuania and globalization. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. REFERENCES Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. New York: Pantheon Books. Pico della Mirandola, G. (1956). Oration on the dignity of man. (R. Caponigri, Trans.). Chicago: Gateway Editions.

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CHAPTER 10

The Limits of Artificial Intelligence and the Public Abstract: Contrasting the phenomenological perspective with that presented by Enlightenment thinking and its particular valuative structure, Chapter 10 delineates some of the often-overlooked, negative effects of artificial intelligence on the general populace. We review a variety of philosophical perspectives that treat the underpinnings of Enlightenment thinking, leading to a discussion of the legitimation crisis and its negative effects on democracy. The discussion then turns to a detailed discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of apprehending time from a phenomenological perspective as related to artificial intelligence. The final section of the chapter is devoted to a critique of artificial intelligence, highlighting the significance of instrumental reason and the notion of “progress”, and focusing on the discursive power inherent in inventions that leverage AI.

Keywords: Contingency, Enlightenment, Horizon, Instrumentality, Logic, Legitimation Crisis, Public, Things, Understanding. INTRODUCTION In previous chapters, we have disclosed the multiple features of the modern Western world: ontology—the fundamental nature of all things; metaphysics, the principal mode of explaining the world; the appearance of the modern subject; the technological—instrumental essence of progress; and the oriented world of praxis based on bodily activities. We also touched upon the modern conception of a temporal horizon of possibilities and their complex relationships. We can even point out that modern time, at the basic level, is an attempt to solve the question of transcendence of the traditional “now point” as a constant presence of the universe, such that the past is no longer, and the future is not yet. With the notion of “projection” of possibilities, we have a future horizon from which we can select a variety of “possible futures”. Such projections are regarded as the basic mode of awareness which allows many twentieth-century thinkers, such as Sartre, to speak of absolute freedom. We are always transcending the present toward the possibilities in terms of which we judge the present state of affairs: economic, psychological, and social. Future as “not yet” has no reality and thus is nothing, although it is this nothing that judges what is missing at present. What we know of the universe is the way humans, as the place between things and the possibility Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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of their temporal horizon, select and interpret what such things can be. Of course, such awareness is premised on the modern dualism of subject and object; the former is mind, and the latter is matter. First, the subject is the unconditional source of all theories and values, while the material world is an irrational and valueless sum of homogeneous matter to be constructed in terms of the subject’s theories, methods, and values. Second, the subject is the unconditionally autonomous source of all laws in both the social and material realms. Since there is no other criterion concerning the material and social worlds, then all subjects are equal concerning the way that the material and social worlds are to be constructed. Third, construction is unconditional to the extent that no causes can be assigned to the structures and procedures by which the subject interprets and shapes itself, social relationships, and the material environment. In the language of Enlightenment, all are projections of human autonomy. Various terms have been used for projection: objectification, alienation, humanization, and even selfrealization. It is important to note that the term “projection” is basic to political and scientific enlightenments. ENLIGHTENMENTS Political and scientific enlightenments posit the subject as an autonomous center of the public domain and all public rules and appointments of governing entities. The public domain of autonomous subjects is strictly distinguished from the private-social domain of needs, wants, desires, and their fulfillment. If the latter entered the public domain, it would abolish autonomy and equality. Scientific Enlightenment posits the subject as a rational bearer of theoretical and methodological constructs by which to manage the material environment in terms of projected human “needs”. The latter is to be understood either biologically or psychologically and thus can be satisfied by the scientific invention of “techniques” of fulfillment leading to what is known as the reduction of scientific reason to instrumentality. Next is the invention of history and its progress toward a utopian society; the latter assumed various interpretations, yet common to all is the notion that humans can construct material and psychological settings wherein all previous ills would be abolished. It is obvious that this utopian notion, as “the aim and end of history”, is a mixture of political and scientific enlightenments. In addition, the reason that this mixture had to be posited as a future aim is that political and scientific enlightenments became incompatible; the scientific Enlightenment, and its promise to fulfill material and psychological wants, had to abolish the interpretation of human life as autonomous, unconditional, and selfcreative. At this juncture, the significance of AI becomes obvious: While it subjects humans to function more technically and narrowly, it also “liberates” humanity from many burdens, such as manual assembly labor or the slow calculations at numerous enterprises—cash registers for one. In turn, humans, at

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these levels, need not be educated since all they need to know are the simple functions—which icon to press—and the rest of the “intelligence” is performed by AI. Meanwhile, the first requirement and interpretation of human life became the material and psychological sum of wants and their immediate gratification. As we know, the current reading of life and experience is regarded as a multiplicity of intensive pleasure nodes, each clamoring to be tickled, and gratified, in order that new pleasure nodes could pop up for more gratification. Utilitarianism is the general ethical position wherein all things and humans have value to the extent that they produce pleasure. The second requirement is the massive technology and its progress, designed for the constant fulfillment and constant invention of needs. The conjunction of these factors results in the abolition of a historical aim and its replacement by progress for the sake of progress. This is obvious from the essence of instrumental rationality. Third, the notion of autonomy, the view of the subject as self-creative, had to be postponed and forever deferred, and also regarded as scientifically irrelevant and contradictory. It is impossible to claim that, once the material and psychological conditions are fully established, they will cause the human subject to be autonomous. As we know at the outset, autonomy cannot be caused. As just noted, this is equally problematic due to progress that can never reach any end and hence establish all the necessary conditions for the emergence of autonomy. Every new condition, as a result of instrumental reason, becomes a means for new conditions and new needs, and the latter split up into more novel needs. In this sense, it is impossible to fulfill all human needs and then establish autonomy. Fourth, we are left with a democracy whose principle of human autonomy and the public domain, wherein such autonomy is maintained and exercised, is no longer available. It has been completely pervaded by instrumental rationality and the proliferation of needs and their fulfillment. Hence, the members of a political and democratic community are reduced to material life, psychological titillations, and the chemical prolongation of boredom. Most likely, we are in ancient Rome, where the public will worship any emperor who provides bread and circuses. It is now possible to turn to the essence of the life-world of Enlightenment: It is a process of valuation. Everything in the universe assumes a value to the extent that it serves our interests, i.e., fulfills our needs and, in the fulfillment, creates new needs, requiring the selection of material events which become valuable for the fulfillment of such needs. Contrary to claims that the world has no value, the world constructed by Enlightenment is full of values: the labor theory of value (accepted and expounded by capitalists and communists), values for sale, values produced and to be produced, values of stocks and bonds, values of education, family values, religious values, ideologically constructed values, the changing and

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the new values, the value of life and even calculated death, social values, and persons are judged as to their value in all of these settings. Indeed, the basic mode of awareness is valuative selectivity. It should be clear also that awareness and perception are no longer given in some innocent, pure empirical sense, but are selected on the grounds of valuation. What is given as a plethora of empirical environments is, for the most part, ignored. What is perceived depends on its specific value. Indeed, there are social mechanisms that not only consist of values, but also the evaluation of values that select specific ones deemed relevant in terms of future value projects. It has been argued that all these values are human, and hence the primacy is placed on the modern subject as the source of values. This claim would hold if human were a distinct and decisive category, wherein all other categories and processes were subservient to humans. But this is no longer the case since other values, such as technologies of various sorts, from electronic media to genetic biochemistry, compel the understanding of the human to be equivalent to the rest of the values. This means that genetic biochemistry will not treat human as a special category, but it will have to reduce all human functions to biochemistry. Thus, the environment, which is constructed on the basis of the process of technical valuation and is deemed to be objective, requires that the human be treated equally objectively in terms of what such an environment demands, i.e., an interpretation of the human as material, chemical, biological, physical entity in order that such constructed technical values could be applied and thus be useful and valuable. The recent theologian, Emmanuel Levinas (1991), is a fine example of this modern trend, lending values an ontological priority over being-reality. We are now in a position to extricate the fundamental intentionality that constitutes this life-world. To have some sense of this intentionality, it is necessary to explicate the directly lived awareness that could not be posited as an object by the thinkers of Enlightenment. It ought to be understood that such a lived awareness is transcendental and hence accessible only reflectively from the meant objects that such a lived awareness intends. What, then, are these objects? While the process of valuation of events in favor of human “needs” was briefly indicated, i.e., various reductionisms of the human to biochemistry, genetics, and mechanics, the lived awareness subtending this process intends an objectivity which is unique to Enlightenment. One level of this objectivity is designed to be accessible to quantification, and hence it has to be measurable homogeneous matter. This design, of course, is meant by a specific exclusion of the entire perceived world and hence in no wise accessible to experience. Yet covered by this homogeneous materiality as an intentional object is another intended objectivity: temporal possibility.

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The lived awareness that intends such an objectivity is an empty will, prior to the question of its being free or determined. Phenomenologically speaking, there can be eternal possibilities, but such possibilities have already been enacted theologically and in part metaphysically. Enlightenment rejects eternal possibilities and is left with temporal, although being projected, they are empty temporal possibilities. It is to be noted that the term “temporal” does not suggest “being in time”, but an open horizon without any specific ontological locus. Hence, any temporal location would have to be established within such a horizon. If we attend to the language of Enlightenment up to date, we shall note that, subtending the question of “reality”, there is a prior discourse concerning the “conditions for the possibility of reality”. Such discourses are premised on the first lived intentionality of empty temporal possibility. It opens a horizon of possible intentions and their fulfillment, requiring a second constitution of objectivities: possible valuations of what the will intends as valuable for us, but recalling that at this level, all value possibilities are open as temporal. In principle, it is possible for us to be all that we will as valuable in time. This is Enlightenment’s alpha and omega: empty temporal possibility and its temporal fulfillment by all that we value as our mode of final being. Both Marxism and capitalism offer the same intentionality. The intentionality of the fulfillment of possible valuations as temporal does not lead to perceptual awareness, since the latter, in its immediate mode, is quite limited and merely qualitative. Hence, fulfillment requires constructive intentionality that can establish possible conditions for possible reality. One minor aspect for this establishment is the shift of reason to instrumental rationality whose task is to calculate what reality is valuable for us and then calculate the conditions how such reality shall be achieved. Values, in this sense, are calculations of possible results realized solely as material. To achieve any value, the human has to be reduced to a system of interests, needs, desires, power, and all must act aggressively against others to fulfill such wants. Indeed, language itself is split into numerous technical discourses. The issue of temporal value possibilities is the driving force of Enlightenment at this level. A transcendent or eternal possibility is abolished; hence, temporality is the pressure that demands a prolongation of our temporal existence. There is no other option; being temporal, we want to live as long as possible and hence the frantic rush for the latest technologies that promise to protract our lives. Such technologies have become equivalent to the value of life and death. The public domain is an arena for the struggle for life itself, and any means can be used, whether lying, killing, or wars; all will do as well, as long as they promise to keep us safe, and ensure our continuity at any price. All the changing technical inventions promote other inventions as values of life: We want to go on. The transcendental rule of Enlightenment at this level is changed as permanence

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enhancement. Thus, the political shift to dramatic conservativism. The latter is a promise, by whatever means, to guarantee our security, safety, protection and continuity, as long as we surrender our freedoms to participate in the public domain and to engage in public dialogue. In other words, the public domain, as the condition for other democratic institutions, is no longer maintained, despite all the rhetoric about democracy and its “values”. The intentionality of Enlightenment has worked itself out to reveal its truth two centuries later. Indeed, we are living this intentionality as an awareness of our life-world in such a way that, while speaking of democracy, rights, equality and freedoms, we intend such a world as a struggle for temporal and technical continuity. Thus, all is valuable that enhances this continuity—and purely materially. What subtends this model is a radical transformation of time awareness: field-horizon. The various major critiques of Enlightenment, from Adorno through Heidegger, Habermas, Derrida, and Levinas, to Deleuze and Guattari, fall within the parameters of some variant of Enlightenment, whether it is rationalism, psychologism, sociologism, economism, or even biologism, and above all, plain pragmatism. It is no accident that such notables as Heidegger (1962) and Sartre (1956) have a pervasive notion of humans as always being ahead of themselves. In the just-mentioned work, Heidegger claims that we are a projection of future possibilities as a horizon where Being itself is disclosed in its temporality. All the mystifications and obfuscations by Heideggerians skip over the modern ground of his quest for Being: The very world we live in is interpreted technically. The environment for Heidegger is a priori a value function, expressed in his concept of “in order to”. Priority is given to things which are “in hand” such that a hammer is not a thing but an extension of our activity in order to pound a nail into a board, and the latter is a board for a wall, a wall is for a house …. and the entire region opens up. In the world of “circumspection”, everything is a value as a function “in order to…”. If we listen to Sartre, we get the same story: awareness always transcends the present, and by the time I tell someone who I am, I am no longer who I am; I have transcended the present moment. This constant transcendence toward the future possibilities is also a feature of selectivity of the past as to its relevance for the future. Thus, any critique of a social system concerning its inadequacies, includes the possibilities of what the society lacks. The possibility is not yet real, and the lack it reveals is also not real, i.e., precisely because something is missing. This is precisely one main aspect of Western modernity—past is gone, and we constantly “will” new projects as our future to be fulfilled with technically produced commodities or new technologies. The very shape of ceaseless progress is premised on the will projecting what we want, and then establishing the conditions to achieve what we want—a lack, and once the want is achieved, it becomes the means or conditions to fulfill more projected wants. While Heidegger was shouting against technology, his romance with Being

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survives in the modern technological time and the modern metaphysics of the will. But what does such metaphysics have to do with AI? The very short answer: It involves what is known as “modal” logic, which is a formal attempt to account for “possibilities”. Progress is a given, and even instrumental reason is constantly improving, but with the preeminence in all areas of AI, progress and its upwardinclined time arrow is much too crude a metaphor. After all, various AI technologies calculate not only the future, but possibilities in possibilities, which in their mathematical forms are not images or signs of temporal directions, even if scientists invoke time and even space, such as “from here to there”, and “from there to there”, and, of course, from “now until then” and from “then until then”. Any quantifiable measure could fit within these dimensions of awareness, no matter how fragmented or extended. The modal logic involves not only technical valuations, but the public arena which, by now, is not interested in such questions as human rights, autonomy, and activities of public officials, but what such officials promise to deliver in the sphere of material values. This context results in the question of “legitimation”. The point is that the organizational principle of socio-political life has been drastically altered. The distinction between the private and the public has been obliterated. The non-political relationships, in the economic sphere, for example, have become political, where private economic achievements are distributed socially vis-à-vis the political or public functions. This is the reason, or at least one of the reasons, for the confidence crisis. The population no longer votes for a public platform, but for a private platform that promises to fulfill private needs by way of distributing privately acquired social wealth and benefits. If the platform tends to favor one private segment over the other, then the vote is split along the lines of who falls within the favored and who falls outside the favored private interests. The crisis reaches a culminating point when the political functionaries cannot carry out the promises to fulfill the private demands of a particular group. There are created expectations in this fulfillment by the public, and when the fulfillment cannot be attained, the public sees that its vote is “irrelevant”, and that its participation in the public affairs “makes no difference”. This is indeed ironic, because the public has accepted the notion that the public sphere must somehow participate in the private sphere. The main demand and the promise by yet-to-be or already-elected officials is “jobs”. “Vote for me, and I will bring jobs”. By requesting the fulfillment of private welfare, the public invites the political domain to intervene in the private domain and thus obliterates the differentiation between the public and the private spheres. This is laden with the questions of legitimation and its crises. This is obvious when governmental planning cannot steer the private segment to fulfill all private interests and accommodate all the conflicting private demands. In this case, some

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segments of population will be opposed to the governmental functions and will see them as illegitimate. What is suggested here is that the governmental intrusion into the private domain and the obliteration of the distinction between the private and the public leads to the legitimation crisis. In turn, the public’s demand for governmental solutions to private problems leads to the same crisis of the privatization of the public sphere and hence to dissatisfaction when the public sphere cannot solve all private problems. Another factor in the legitimation crisis, as would be perceived by the population, is the loss of confidence in the conception of fair exchange. There is an awareness that the distribution of wealth and welfare depends on governmental policies and the political negotiations which mediate among various private interest groups. It is known that in the private sphere, the basic motive is profit and hence setting goals in terms of maximizing profit. Since governmental interference distributes public wealth and welfare in accordance with interest groups, the productive interests, such as corporations, while receiving public funds, are perceived as receiving an illegitimate dole for maximizing private profit from the public funds. Hence, they maximize profit not only on the basis of market, but also on the basis of governmental favors. Since the public perceives these favors as stemming from the public domain, it views the governmental action as illegitimate; after all, such an action “makes the rich richer”. Since the public does not wish to legitimate the private appropriation of the public’s wealth, and since the political party is nonetheless involved in the distribution of the public’s wealth to private interest groups, then the population concludes that its input in public affairs is meaningless, powerless, and ultimately irrelevant. After all, formal democracy is designed to ensure the independence of the public sphere from private interests, and yet the governmental functions, by politicizing private interests, changing the substance of formal democracies. In turn, as paradoxical as this may seem, the formal democracy is depoliticized, insofar as the voter is concerned. The elected functionaries in the public sphere use their political functions to favor and sanction private economic processes and either the accumulation of profits by one group or the use of public funds for the undeserved welfare of another group. And in turn, paradoxically, while the public demands of the officials that they engage only in the public-political sphere, it depoliticizes the public sphere by demanding that it fulfill the needs of private welfare. In both cases, the public sphere is obliterated, and the meetings dealing with public affairs are attended only by those whose immediate private interests are affected. The public’s participation in the public’s affairs is no longer public. The result is political “privatism”.

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The increased activity of the state produces an expanded need for legitimation, for justification of governmental intrusion in the private sphere. At the same time, the process of administrative planning produces the unintended effect of undermining the traditional procedures of legitimation. What this means is that, by planning “public programs” such as family and health, the government publicizes the private domain by offering technological solutions to questions that were once settled by traditional ethics and norms functioning in the private sphere. Thus, the state tends to politicize domains that were once private and depended on private norms. Yet, this politicization is merely an appearance. The public, having been offered the “programs” for health, housing, family planning, technical training, and above all, jobs, depoliticizes the public sphere and makes it into “private” rights to have “public” health, housing, education, jobs, security, and so on. The end effect is the disruption of private norms of social action and their replacement by bureaucratic procedures which depend on political parties and their ideologies. The only demands that the public tends to place on governmental officials is the fulfillment of private or even personal demands. This is where we meet the power of AI. It can be used to calculate the possibilities for value selectivity, equivalent to which values can or must be fulfilled. It is obvious that, with the distinction between private and public abolished, the value selectivity will be in favor of the material interests of those who can afford to have their interests prevail. Given the absorption of the public-political domain into the private-social, there is a constant struggle among groups whose interests take priority. Here, the AI becomes a “judge” since it can and does monitor people’s “wants” or “views” and their statistical distribution, telling the ruling members of any society how to “please” its members. Remember, the modern ethics of pleasure rules the day, and if a majority is pleased, then the ruling members are applauded and cheered. Most Chinese people are very happy and proud of the success of their leaders in providing jobs and the psychological euphoria of the greatness of China, and they are in no wise concerned with the mass mistreatment of minorities. Meanwhile, AI has become an instrument to enter and read every citizen’s AI systems, from computers to smartphones, and thus monitor for unacceptable views. Such monitoring blocks any critical voices and free speech—not only blocks, but also cancels programs from “decadent” media from abroad “for the maintenance of public order”. While China is preeminent as the “model society”, others are not far behind. Iran has imported China’s “great firewall” to monitor its citizens and block foreign systems. But even the “free enterprise societies” have abandoned the public domain and are pervaded by AI systems which “see” what people watch, buy, use, and where they travel, thus providing information for those in charge of such systems so as to provide “bread and circuses” to please the masses. In fact, the gathering of information is also a big business; the information is a commodity to be sold and thus proliferated and enhanced exponentially. Of

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course, such information is also available for the private rulers of societies—the autocrats or theocrats, whose management of all social affairs has nothing to do with “political societies”. As mentioned, the latter is abandoned for the sake of the pleasure-creating values of the majority. It is advisable to check the modal logic of how such value selectivity functions. As noted, modern Western thought is more concerned with the conditions for the possibility of... than with the immediate world of awareness or the facts within it. The latter is already established or technically realized, embodied and materialized possibilities, and even calculated conditions for the achievement of other possibilities. Such conditions for the possibility have abolished any semblance of one future aim—the utopian society, since there are as many futures as the field horizon can bear—indeed, there are futures in futures, overlapping with other futures, leading to a process of temporal reflexivity, where any possibility can be regarded as a positive presence. Everything must be understood temporally as a process of socio-historical variations and even radical breaks. As will be seen subsequently, such a temporalization of all social factors toward history introduces a concept of theory, which is no longer merely explanatory but, above all, critical. Any reflexivity presupposes as its condition the distinction between the real and the temporally possible, with the full awareness that the real is also produced and contains vectors to become various means for constructing various futures. Thus, a particular social history does not vary only in terms of the presently given and selected facts, but also in terms of the constitutive conditions of selectivity based on possibilities, which are temporal. The insight into the selectivity of facts in any social process is a key to the constitution of the relationship between social facts, their vectorial structures, and the temporal horizons or possibilities. The fundamental condition for possibility and the selectivity of facts within a social process is temporality. This means that the condition for the possibility of modern social system as a process is a modal generalization constituting the temporal horizons—in both temporal directions. Given the brief discussion of legitimation, we shall no longer speak of political society, since the latter has become a society with clashing interests whose adjudication is premised on power. We are in the age of autocracies and group antagonisms. Such antagonisms can be in a constant clash, each group conniving for a more favorable future and thus constructing or acquiring AI with a greater vectorial range of value selectivity in the field-horizon of possibilities. Thus, at the outset, it must be obvious that it is too simplistic to assume a one-dimensional, linear advancement of relationships between the complex interests of a social system and its temporal horizons. The growth of more complex social systems does not have a more complex history; rather on the basis of the complexity, they

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neutralize history, illuminate it by differentiated selectivity and in many cases, reject its lessons. When history becomes relevant in more complex societies, it becomes at the same time more contingent; it becomes memory and forgetfulness, detailed interest and indifferent neglect of a conquered past; all these coexisting vectorial facts suggest future possibilities, and the latter, offering more diverse selection among the facts, is the situation which leads to the complexity of contemporary society. The temporal conditions for factual vectors to open possibilities and the way the latter can transform the transformation of such facts, are quite complex, although they can be managed by higher levels and broader rules which can encompass various temporal levels. Modalized aspects can be again modalized under more inclusive possibilities and wider horizons. One can discuss the possibilities of reality and the reality of possibilities or even the possibility of possibilities, necessities, contingencies, and so on. The complexity of the temporal condition of factual vectors and horizons of possibilities can be characterized in the following way. There can be a present future which must be distinguished from the future present, even if only on the grounds that the present future contains more possibilities than is possible for future presents to become a reality. Such interplay of temporal complexities, specifically when different disciplines and their horizons of possibilities are also part of the complexities, cannot be managed by the clumsy and slow functioning “carbon-based units” AI fills the gap. The banking and investment domain requires decisions to be made at fractions of a second—otherwise, vast fortunes may be lost. One must also distinguish between future presents, present presents, and past presents, between the present of the past as history and the past present. If one begins with the two temporal horizons of the present, namely past and future which in each point can be seen as presents with their own pasts and futures with further possibilities of reiteration, then one begins to constitute the conditions for the possibility of all possible processes of temporal inclusion. This suggests that the indefinite modalization of time horizons can be seen as temporal possibilities of possibilities at indefinite times. The immediate future can be reflected by a more remote future and both, in turn, by a still more remote and perhaps encompassing future, yielding the structure for the reflexivity of possibilities in possibilities. This process is the condition for any distancing from the present facts and their vectors and environment. It allows the disclosure of the total environment, be the environment “material”, “ideological”, “juridical” or even “ethical”. The judgment of current events, environment, or facts is a judgment from a horizon of time and its possibilities requiring no hierarchal arrayment either of values or of norms. This free-ranging reflection of the time-in-time and possibilities-in-possibilities is the condition upon which all AI processes are

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coded. For our purposes, it is not necessary to deal with further complexities of time reflexivity as a condition for social reflexivity, which is institutionalized to allow the complexity and management of an indefinite multiplicity of social events and factual factors. Suffice it to say that such reflexivity opens the possibility for decision-making without being one of the interest-laden social factors, ideologies, or juridical norms. In a unique sense, such norms disclose the question of “overlapping time”. The norms, such as constitutional, are designed in the past, but also belong in the future horizon as relevant to what other future norms can or cannot be established and thus can reflect across other future possibilities. For example, we can perform biological and chemical experiments on humans only within designated limits. This also reflects on biological and chemical investments in pharmaceutical research, production, and advertisement. This might also reflect on the possibility of political and public debates concerning the changing of rules. Resultantly, all AI programs will require human input concerning value selectivities and their place in a temporal horizon of what and for whom something is possible and what is not. Our most limited discussion of the conditions of field horizon empowers us to consider further the shift of the concept of theory to a concept of critical theory. First of all, it must be noted that theory no longer has a privileged status to be an extra-social, extra-historical, or extra-temporal process, surveying events indifferently from a non-participating observer’s stance. Theory, too, functions in society and history and thus changes the very “objects” of its explanation. This is more so the case when every theory is constructed technically, and thus, its only acceptance is “what we can make of it”. Hence, a critical theory must: 1. Show how its very explanations of events will influence such events, since such an explanation can be subsumed under one possible process and its predictions either enhanced or thwarted; and 2. Evaluate social events from a temporal horizon of possibilities showing what is possible and what is impossible within a given set of facts, norms, and their vectors and their possible futures and relationships. This means that a critical theory must correlate all factors and show how, in this correlation, some possibilities are realizable, others are probable, and still others are made impossible. For example, it must show how an economic capacity may be thwarted by a political incapacity, a moral stance or an economic misapplication, or how an economic capacity, yielding certain options, may become impossible due to a technological incapacity. At the same time, the critical theory must show the limits of the possibilities of a social system and delimit what changes must be instituted within certain social facts—technologies

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and rules to surpass the limitations. The critical theory thus constitutes the most encompassing process of social field horizon in history and ultimately in the complexity of world time. As with any invention, AI has become a public issue concerning its impact, influences, and effects on various areas of society. It must be understood at the outset that inventions do not have a linear effect; rather, they spread vectorially and through diverse levels of social life, including economy, education, employment, health, safety, public norms, crime, family composition, international relations, and global ecology. Current writers call this impact “exponential” since every step in chip enhancement is doubled—such that in traveling 25 linear meters exponentially, one would almost cover the circumference of the Earth. This metaphor is to be supplemented by vectorial logic insofar as the growth of AI spreads in all directions and across diverse fields. Simple images of a group of young people sitting together are quite revealing. Each has an iPhone used to “text their friends”, including those sitting at the same table. The vectors merge into a field-horizon of possibilities such that any judgment of the need and utility of any AI must include a variety of “futures”, a conjunction of values and their evaluation, and thus political questions, to be adjudicated locally and globally. The vectorial logic of AI is constitutive of a spread of space-time possibilities and their shifting relationships. Every vector “touches” different space-time “locations” and creates field-locations which also radiate vectors, reaching and transforming the “initial” field. The task is to discuss the way AI functions in various fields, such as finance, driverless cars, industrial production, all kinds of “services” such as waiters, home appliances, attendants, teachers, medical “workers” in precision surgery, and even scientific researchers. Second, the admitted limits and constant, technical issues admitted by researchers in the fields of AI, and the constant role required of fallible humans who correct and are corrected by AI. Third, the constantly shifting field-horizon logic, both encompassing the AI and being rearticulated by its vectorial presence. This shifting logic requires the reevaluation of the functioning of “time-space” insofar as the question of what is present, future, and past, near and far, becomes radically rearticulated: Various possibilities to be realized will be regarded as a feature of the judgments regarding what to do first, where it is to be done, and what resources are available— such as lithium, and what places must be built to store global information, called “clouds”, which are not in the sky but which occupy vast areas, such as the one in Langfang, China, which covers an area equivalent to 110 football fields. Meanwhile, various calculations of selected social possible impact areas will, reflectively, form an evaluation of the features to be built into an AI; various selected production of AI will select past records of persons who can accomplish future tasks in such a production, and such a selection will offer a technical education for future employment. This means the following: The

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algorithms forming a specific set of AI functions are mathematical. The latter has neither time nor temporal continuity, neither present, past, nor future—mathematics is “Platonic” or timeless, and it does not have a location in space—neither here nor there. Thus, human time awareness will have to come into play to make judgments “when” and from “when to when”, and from where to where; the horizon possibilities will come into play. The play and inter-play within the field-horizon of possibilities may be calculated mathematically, but such calculations, as numbers by themselves, have no today or tomorrow, and above all, no “memory of the past”: Enter the fallible humans. The fallibility is based on the inevitable fact that any AI, calculating the field horizon of any produced fact with its vectors, has no sense of time, such as future, now, or past. AI sees things mathematically and hence atemporally. While it can offer all sorts of complex possibilities, the final decision of when to implement the future depends on fallible humans whose horizon is less sophisticated than the complex numbers posted on the AI screen. The entrance of this modern man is unique: While being fallible, he decided to look at the world only mathematically and regarded such a vision to be precise and infallible. The result is a scientific methodology and theoretical construct, leading to the production of modern technical reality. Being material, the latter is “contingent”, and thus, when managed and constructed by fallible humans, is never perfect. While using mathematical techniques for its construction, the best that one can hope for is “statistical” distribution of probabilities. In this sense, any AI, as a technical invention, cannot function with mathematical precision, since what mathematics, in its technical precision, can produce is statistically contingent. Even if we allow that statistics, as mathematical, is infallible, what it calculates is always exposed to the possibilities of “unpredictable”, contingent facts. Of course, as every scientist will proclaim, “numbers do not lie”, but the problem is that facts can be different. It is like pharmaceutical advertisements: “This drug is the best for your heart—60% satisfaction. But check with your doctor if you have the following conditions…. In case of loss of consciousness, call your doctor, or 911, or go to the emergency room”. In brief, chances are, and the numbers of the chances are statistically precise, but every case is “chancy”. As noted above, the increasing complexity of the field horizon of any AI fact opens an increasing horizon of possibilities and combinations of diverse fields of research, production, and invention, increasing the contingency of results. In brief, such incrementation outruns every judicial, public, and normative institution to decide the value selectivity of numerous futures and the intersections of their temporal possibilities. The latter, as we shall see shortly, is also based on technical time and space calculus with its precise imprecisions in the context of the world as field-horizon as an open and undetermined, although determinable by value selectivity as the modern mode of perception. Such perception is

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modal—the temporal logic of possibility, accessible only to transcendental awareness which, as we saw earlier, is basically time awareness and, with its vectorial logic, also space awareness. CONTINGENCY While seeing things mathematically is absolute, its instrumental realization is contingent. Every novel invention will be an advancement but will also create a greater variety of technical “facts”, each belonging to a field-horizon and possessing vectors of value selectivity that fragment and recombine the environment into new forms; the latter has an impact in numerous areas, from medicine to production, employment, training, and even family relationships. After all, AI technologies are transportable, and employees take their work home or, by now, simply work from home. The contingency is obvious in pharmaceutical advertisements of health products. Every product is introduced to treat some specific area—atomistically—and then come the warnings concerning “side effects”, which immediately reveal that a specific ailment cannot be located and thus, the product will spread negative effects on the rest of the organism. To obfuscate this contingency, scientific research is presented in statisticalmathematical form, which guarantees that the product is effective in 73.7% cases. Such cases have 48.2% fewer negative side effects. One can just imagine how great it is to take a product for “improved” sleep. Research has shown that, by taking this product, your restfulness, morning satisfaction, and relaxation will improve by at least 72.64%. While facts are contingent, the numbers do not lie. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: CRITIQUE The world of AI is an invention of previously discussed modern Western atomistic ontology and mathematical metaphysics. These two features are embodied in all AI systems, from initial calculators, to computers, to the digitalization of all sciences—including the so-called “humanities” and industrial robotics—soon to enter all homes as cleaners and servants. What is usually missed is the discursive power of all AI “products”. They are languages, and to read the “instructions” on how to operate them, one learns the language that a specific AI speaks. The technical systems we invent are not mere technologies for our use; they are languages and indeed, each computer, each phone, is an intersection of various discourses, run by diverse algorithms. The disciplines, being basically technical, have become a “material-language” capable of direct inscription in concrete activities. Since technologies function under the law of power, i.e., increasing growth whose only aim is self-proliferation, and since their continuous refinement calls for greater efficiency on the human side, then the human must be increasingly subjected to a system of controls appropriate for a

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technical set of operations. A person must learn the increasingly complex languages of the contemporary environment in order to communicate with it and adapt himself to the commands of its discourses. Moreover, the growing articulation of technological processes—correlative to the articulation of formal languages—leads to a horizontal division of functions, capable of greater controls and, at the same time, of increasing arbitrariness. By now, there is no longer any debate concerning the metaphysical status of formal-mathematical systems: They are constructs “at will” and their technical use can change the “material production” of new implements which embody the constructed languages, becoming new disciplines. At this level, we discover once again the growing contingency of the environment, including human actions as part of the environment, and the enhancement of the power of technical arbitrariness. In this sense, the public fabric, as the arena of human daily activities, is shifted toward the management of the “scientific” discourses embodied in every feature of the environment. One cannot buy a box of cereal without having to read a list of scientific data: 120 calories per cup, 11% sugar, 17% fat, and so on. Our modern vision—“Let us look at things mathematically”—has invented our environment with vast power of instruments, which see us and demand that we become their images, and follow their “intentions”, which see us faster and more efficiently than we see them or ourselves. Thus, AI tells us how to build cars, invest our finances, train for jobs, see the universe, and calculate our future. This vision of seeing us as a sum of quantifiable and interchangeable functions is extended to discard everything personal. One is simply an ego in a specific spacetime location and can become another ego by learning a different discourse and assuming a different function in another location. One becomes dispersed in time and space, attached to fleeting phenomena for momentary happiness. In modern terms, this is the utilitarian, pleasure “ethics”. The price for such ethics is being watched at all times and in all places, whether it is on one’s telephone, computer, cruise vacation, or by public cameras. The advertisers, the autocratic governments, the statisticians—and all equally watched by the vast technologies—spies spying on spies—are recorded. All social members are available on the bases of assessments, records, rumors, and intersecting hierarchies of power centers that mutually share informational records: Police records go to banks, bank records go to workplaces, workplace records couple with family records, confirming or contradicting police records, vacation, education, travel, medical records, crisscrossing from one disciplinary center to another, as centers of competing powers exert greater control over the person. One does not meet a person first in order to ascertain who she is; the records, present on the most varied programs “see” and evaluate the person by reducing one to a positional, ego function. This is to say, it is not the eyes that watch the human as if he were a natural being; it is the records, the technologies, the reports, the

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filled-out papers, and the rhetoric of the enveloping “invisible vision”. Person is irrelevant since, by now, there are no persons but sums of functions obedient to numerous discourses and rules of technical systems. The broader self, the more disclosed by classical education, is abolished. Everywhere, such “Western education” is discarded as disruptive; persons with such education might ask uncomfortable questions, might challenge authorities and even demand respect. Such features of persons are a hindrance to “progress”. We have arrived at what de Cervantes (1957) called the “iron age”. Expert discourses of every discipline communicate with other discourses, contesting, and extending the fragmentation of disciplines which fragment the human into a more “visible” sum of discursive functions. It would seem that the AI has far surpassed its creator—on the verge of making him obsolete. If not obsolete, then at best equivalent in discursive talents as those embedded in AI as another competitor in the social-economic field of tasks. But this competitor is anonymous and does not “think” of social responsibility or accountability to anyone. It treats its “competitors” as another set of discourses, imbued with different algorithms. When a person accepts a position in an organization, she must accept anonymous instructions from her AI partner and, if she fails to communicate, the partner disqualifies her—nothing personal. The AI seems to be victorious, although it does not know what victory or defeat is. The victory might be premature and the race not yet over. There are expert voices that are raising questions concerning the limits of AI, regardless of how far its “intelligence” and abilities are stretched. The AI is called upon to perform “infinite tasks” of increasing complexity. One such well-discussed task is the management of vast commodity outlets, such as Amazon or Walmart, and others. While not completely implemented, some outlets, such as Amazon, are run by AI; customers with proper cards can pick items from shelves and the price is recorded; the customer can walk out the door without the lines at cash registers. The trouble comes with the “unruly” customers; they pick items, get recorded, but then decide to put the item back, their children might drop things in the cart, leading to the issue of recognition of who belongs to one family or another. It will not do to add one more algorithm to manage all the others since its organizing power in no wise can eliminate the accidental or even deliberate actions which would confuse the AI system(s). This is a minor issue in comparison to the requirements of the global distribution of floods of commodities. But of course, there is progress and someday, we shall be able to invent a divine AI which will see everything in detail and track everything from moment to moment—a total digital world, reached only at infinity. After all, such an AI interconnects everything, and thus, one fault is equivalent to a cascade across this AI universe.

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A more fundamental issue is social-political; the ideologues of AI will contend that if mistakes occur, they are due to “human error”—after all “numbers do not lie”. Indeed, but people will go around numbers without lying to maintain their various interests. The idea of scientific management originates with Galileo (1974). Here, the state had to be drawn in as a wise manager of all social affairs, so well-promoted by Thatcherism in conjunction with AI—a conservative dream. Following this dream, Britain is a good example of its “outcomes”. Setting targets leads to perverse results. The hospitals were required to give time measures as to how long it took patients to be treated when they were dropped off by ambulances. Statistical figures “decided” that the waiting time was too long. Hospitals solved the “problem”: instead of depositing patients in emergency rooms, they were kept in the ambulances. Getting the right “outcomes” leads managers to “achieve” the required results. For example, policemen will receive raises and promotions if they achieve measurable crime reduction goals. The real result: reporting less crime by the police. A similar “outcome” appears in academia. Tenure and promotion are awarded on the production of articles rather than teaching—at the expense of students. The experiment in the United States, to reward teachers for outcomes—measured by exam scores—is another example: Teachers began to teach for exams and not the subject matter. It is a context where a teacher will be tempted to discover what the exam questions are and then provide the answers. Science is flawless—too bad that the infestation by the conniving, fallible, and contingent carbon-based units keep interfering. The ideologues of instrumental reason must constantly appeal to the modern temporal horizon of possibilities as the calculus by which contemporary problems will be solved: We have progress, and the latter is the flux maintaining its own permanence. And it is humans who decide and must maintain progress by the inevitable requirement to keep progressing: the newest, latest IT software, the fastest machines (after all, time is money), and the latest and most qualified programmers. All these features matter because, in terms of software companies, “software is eating the world”, i.e., most firms are, to a great degree, software companies. So, what is at issue? Computer code: Programmers are required to make progress—to be literate and creative. According to their own statistical rules, programmers make up to 50 errors in every 1000 lines of code they write (e.g., a misplaced punctuation mark); since cars and airplanes contain tens of millions of lines, the chance of an error-free system is zero. Thus, an average developer spends approximately 20 hours per week fixing old or bad code. This is compounded by “the transcendental rule of progress: flux enhancing flux”. Every new program must be faster and more encompassing than the ones available at present, and the new one will be a faster condition for the next one, which will be still faster. Critical features show up. From “field linguistics”, we know that a change of one term in a system of language will change the rest of terms, and

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even terms in the associated fields. A dramatic example is available in the simple pronouncement in various literatures, whether it is Nietzsche, Kafka, or Dostoyevsky, that “god is dead”. This means that if the word “god” no longer appears in a linguistic field, all other terms associated with it will change: morality, the essence of nature, expectations, the “eternal soul”, the meaning of existence, and so on. The human expression concerning this “death” was, “If god is dead, everything is permitted”. The impact of the deletion of one term vibrated (and still does) in the academic world and in the economy. Countless texts, dissertations, theological gatherings, shouts of “nihilism” proliferated across the West and beyond, enriching publishing houses and rattling the sanctity of life itself—in many debates, it is seen as the cause of two world wars. The field understanding is completely correlated to the presence and development of the software which is running the AI world. The flux in programming means that, even if a system works, it is already on the brink of becoming obsolete. The departing systems, with not-yet resolved “bugs” are in part incorporated in the new system, where the new terms and algorithms will change the function of the old language, including the errors which will reappear as incomprehensible in the new language. The great new systems rapidly devolve into half-understood mixtures of terms; thus, the solution must come from a new system—and this is also an incrementation of danger. The newest system must do everything that the half-understood old one does and more—of course with guaranteed chances of its own mistakes. There are bugs in one field which must incorporate bugs from another field, each changing itself and the others—calling for a creation of one more program-field, compounding the reshuffling of the function of terms across the old and the latest—bugs bugging bugs. The issues can be extended to include “methodical hermeneutics” or interpretation. It has been said that hermeneutical thinking, in general, constitutes a circle. Each text in a context implies the context, and the latter implies the text. Regardless of how far we stretch the hermeneutical understanding, we shall have to admit this rule. Parts imply the whole, and the whole is given through the parts. If a text is inserted into a different hermeneutical circle—a different context—then its terms will be drastically changed or even meaningless. The novel text, or set of texts, will suppress a previous text, a culture, or even a tradition. Speaking more concretely, some of the traditional texts tend to fade out, and cease to function as “significant” in a given context, and thus the only preservation that is accorded to them is done by the philological method. The latter can be a catalyst for various renaissances of texts—a sort of archaization movement—that proclaims the genuine truths that have been forgotten and neglected. Searches for “ancient wisdom” have this tendency, yet such tendencies are always destructive to the extent that the “dead languages”, although preserved

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by philological method in archival depositories, are framed in the current living languages, and hence are taken out of their own contexts. They are a species that have vanished, reappearing only in a dramatically reconstructed genetic pool. For example, after the Renaissance, the Scientific and Political Enlightenments, and the Reformation, medieval literature virtually vanished. What sealed its fate in the past, and the libraries of the monasteries, was that the art of printing became the means of communication. The literature of the Renaissance was correlated to and had direct access to this new technology. The rest were consigned to manuscripts which, apart from being written in peculiar Latin, also contained numerous abbreviations and other peculiarities, and it was nigh impossible to decipher. What we have as “Neo-scholastic” is a concoction of parts into a whole that belongs to our reading. Thus, in the case of all Middle Eastern personality cults, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there are efforts to insert their texts into modern Western tradition and indeed create organizations such as the Christian Democrats, whose meaning is that of the Enlightenment and not of the original context. Such organizations are parts of a drastically different circle and their reading of the texts of the “ancient wisdom” of prophets, and they do not refer to their own whole, but to a whole which interprets such wisdom in modern terms as historical literatures, equivalent to other such literatures. Indeed, such wisdom texts, interpreted in their own “original context” lead their readers to reject modern political and scientific enlightenment as the true enemy to be destroyed by any means—thus holy wars, terrorism and “conversion”. And then comes the battle for data—who owns, who manipulates, what is private, what can be advertised, what are the targeted audiences, what data must be forbidden, by what social system, and who can decide what is allowed and what is forbidden? Yet, as the saying goes, data are the lifeblood of AI. The mere amount of data is staggering. For example, “data” available for 2018 generated 33 zettabytes of data—enough to fill seven trillion DVDs. Despite this grand amount, data issues are the most contested in any AI project. Different organizations do their best to “lock up” data to prevent competitors from accessing it. Data controversies take up to 80% of the time in any AI project, and training a machine to “recognize” a great variety of features is a task performed by an army of humans who must label a particular feature, whether it is a street scene or a human face, or a fractured bone, or even a tumor. While collecting and labeling such data might shift to trained AI, the use of such data has to contend with social and political rules—privacy, ownership—leading to international tensions over “stealing” both the AI and the data.

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CONCLUSION In conclusion, the big issue is this: Once something is posted on the global network, it is up for grabs by anyone. A miniature example is that of a girl who posts her “compromising image” on the internet “only” for her boyfriend, only to discover that “others” have accessed the image and are selling it. If she takes the seller to court, the common judgment is: Once you posted the image, you made it available to anyone. Add to this the issue of hackers who can crack codes and access data which they might sell to the highest bidder, leading to a proliferation of programs to hack the hackers and hiring hackers to devise programs to protect against other hackers. In brief, thieves steal from thieves, each accusing the others of thievery. Again, we encounter the same transcendental rule: flux, both enhancing and maintaining flux—a variant of modern instrumental reason and progress. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Mickunas, A. (2014). Modern West: Two life worlds. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2015). The Project Europe. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2016). Lithuania and globalization. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. REFERENCES de Cervantes Saavedra, M. (1957). The Adventures of Don Quixote. (D. Daly, Trans.). New York: Macmillan. Galileo, G. (1974). Two new sciences: Including Centers of Gravity and Force of Percussion. (S. Drake, Trans.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). New York: Harper. Levinas, E. (1991). Otherwise than being. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7906-3] Sartre, J-P. (1956). Being and nothingness. (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). New York: Philosophical Library.

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CHAPTER 11

Conditions For Public Decisions Abstract: Chapter 11 entertains the tensions between the development of future artificial intelligence structures and the priorities of universal human rights, which necessitate the founding of a public domain. We return to our discussion of the effects of Enlightenment theorizing on the current situation, contrasting that with the possibilities afforded by taking a phenomenological approach to the concept of human rights. The limits of personal autonomy are discussed, and phenomenological concepts that were explicated earlier in work are applied to this question of human rights, which are discussed in conjunction with, as well as in opposition to, the effects of the globalizing logic that advocates for the unfettered application of computer logic to all aspects of life.

Keywords: Autonomous Freedom, Causality, Human Rights, Image, Intersignification, Logic, Meaning, Perception, Reflexivity, Subject, Understanding. INTRODUCTION The proclamation of Universal Human Rights, and the numerous celebrations, organizations, and debates promoting and defending such rights can only be plausible if the conditions for the possibility of such rights are articulated. The latter task requires an understanding that disregards many theoretical and explanatory accounts for the appearance of such rights and their ontological, and even metaphysical, grounds. What shall be argued in this chapter is the notion that Human Rights are not a fact, derivable from all sorts of social, psychological, naturalistic, theological and even current genetic claims that “humanity is 98% homogeneous”. The fact is that, despite this homogeneity, the varieties of cultural practices, social systems, and even mutual antagonisms point to another set of requirements to discuss human rights. Moreover, it will be argued that the obtainment of rights is inseparable from responsibilities and duties. In the process of explicating the conditions for the possibility of rights and responsibilities, it will be noted that even the common understanding of freedom of choice will have to be discarded as inadequate—specifically with respect to the question of responsibility. While socio-historical views might offer analyses of various social, economic, and historical events that “caused” democratic movements, the philosoAlgis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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phical task is to show the fundamental presuppositions that sustain a democratic polity and human rights. The argument has been made that naturally and empirically speaking, humans are radically unequal in talents, dispositions, and aims. Such a view precludes an understanding of freedom and equality, and could easily lead, if not to an aristocracy of the best at least to a meritocracy of the most talented, or a theocracy who would make public policy for the good of the remainder of the population without any input from such a population. This was the case in the Soviet system, wherein an enlightened party and its technocrats could claim that widespread participation in making policy is unnecessary since the common weal can best be served, not by ignorant masses, but by enlightened elites armed with the knowledge of history, society, and what is, in the final analysis, ultimately good. No progress could be achieved if decisions were left to the multitude of individual whims. Individual freedoms cannot exist until the elites and technocrats have established the appropriate economic and social conditions. This is to say, social rules must be derived from interests and causes and not from rational considerations. Thus, there cannot be a public domain for the populations and freedom has to be reserved for the elites, while postponed until remote and future material-technical conditions are erected for the rest of the population. In effect, and in a contradictory fashion, freedom, as one of the grounds for universal human rights, is deemed to be a result of all sorts of conditions. UNIVERSAL CONDITIONS The principles of human rights, wherein free and equal persons are involved in the final arbitration, rest on different conditions. Thus, a question arises concerning the difference between the relationships that comprise a political community and other types of relationships. The answer demands careful scrutiny of the founding of a political community wherein human rights are located. What should be emphasized is that the term “founding” does not necessarily imply some historical set of conditions or some specific interests. Rather, this idea refers to a necessary institution on which other political institutions can be built. Thus, this is a grounding and not a historical relationship. Most human relationships rest on a variety of similar and conflicting interests, whose resolution too often depends on power. Although such interests may become a part of such an institution, there is a difference between interests and the creation of an institution that we shall call the public domain. This is to say, the founding and the existence of such a domain are tied inextricably together. While diverse purposes depend on interests and require appropriate means, the public domain is its own means, purpose, and requires each citizen for its maintenance. The rationale for human relationships in the public domain is this very relationship, which is identical to its own purpose.

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The activity of founding a public domain as its own purpose, is not an activity of the past, done once and for all by the so-called “founders”, but must be responsibly and constantly maintained by every citizen. One cannot speak of the public domain as if it were some system that perpetuates itself without individual participation and support or merely with the periodic participation of voters. The public domain, as the first institution of a democratic community, is a perpetual process of self-founding, not a structure imposed on a community or derived from some abstract needs and interests. In the public domain, the equality and autonomy of humans are maintained for their own sake. This means that the source of human equality and autonomy is co-extensive with and sustained only in the public domain. In principle, any other form of the community may be based on heterogeneous interests and purposes, resulting in the domination of one social group by another, but such a situation would disallow the equality and autonomy of every individual. The notion that humans act socially on the basis of their own interests leads to a structure of society whereby individual or group interests are pitted against the interests of others, thus leading to the exercise of power, inequality, and the abolition of autonomy. Yet, what is meant by autonomy and equality needs to be delimited. Critical scholarship has shown that the basic principles of modern Enlightenment, explicated by Pico through Kant (Mickunas, 2012), have rejected the Naturalistic and Essentialist views of the human person. Such principles also imply the absence of causes in human affairs. But what does this mean with respect to equality and autonomy? First, as already mentioned, for modern philosophical Western thinking, there is no specific human nature to serve as a source of human equality. Second, equality results from a specific concept of freedom, such as autonomy. The freedom of autonomy is analogous to logic, wherein the rules that are established logically and rationally do not result from imperatives, but from respect for rational and free debate. Accordingly, the equality of all persons stems from autonomy. If rules, logics, and rational discourses are not derivable from natural states of affairs, then there are no inherent criteria for elevating one possible proposal for rules over another. In this sense, all proposals are equal. Autonomous freedom, as rational in the above sense, leads to the equality of persons who are in a position to posit rules by which they will govern their lives and deal with the environment. Each individual is an equal “lawgiver”. If there are to be common rules, they will not be discovered but posited and decided on in public, i.e., in political debate. Third, the establishment of rules based on autonomy also means that such rules are free, and individuals are duty-bound and responsible for living under such rules. Only autonomously established rules demand a person to be responsible for his adherence to them. If rules were derived from any other source, such as the nature of whatever description, then one would

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be compelled by natural forces and could not be held responsible. This is counter to a traditional conception of freedom: not the freedom of autonomy, but a freedom of choice. While at one level, this freedom presupposes autonomy as a foundation for constituting rules, at another level, the choice of rules is determined by interests and power. This means that one may have a choice to steal money or food in the face of hunger, but one’s choice is subtended by a natural compulsion, and in this sense, such a person could not be held responsible. The latter requires an autonomous freedom wherein the very rules, stemming from such autonomy, are our duty to maintain. But it is to be emphasized that such autonomy and its resultant equality of persons is founded by, and is coextensive with, the public domain, where everyone is equal and free to establish rules of common action. One misunderstanding must be avoided: The autonomy and equality of each individual, as the unconditional source of law, does not imply unrestricted activities. This means the freely posited rules are not causes that restrict human life but are rationally analyzable structures that can be modified and even rejected. Autonomous freedom implies a life under freely posited, debated, and rationally examined rules. This achievement is a matter of public debate and consensus. This is another way of saying that the political is identical to the continuous activity of maintaining or founding; the public domain as its own purpose is equally the maintaining and founding of autonomy, responsibility, and equality of persons. This domain is the basic public institution on which all other political institutions—including specific constitutions and human rights—rest. Unless each member of society is able to enter the public domain as an autonomous, equal, and hence responsible source of rules, the meaning of political disappears. No doubt, one could contend that by living with others, the autonomous individual is limited, specifically where one group’s interests are given primacy over another’s. This is a thesis advocated by both capitalists and communists. Nonetheless, this arrangement may split society into classes, thus resulting in class conflicts. In this case, the public, autonomy, responsibility, and equality framed as political society vanish and the public domain is reduced to a clash of irrational motives and causes, while publicly appointed servants operate on the basis of their own interests and support those who can best satisfy these interests. Here, autonomous freedom as a source of public rules also disappears. How can this abolition of the political and the public be avoided? In the face of numerous relationships, the autonomy of every member of society must be structured by the following conditions. First, everyone is an autonomous source of law; second, all laws are proposed and discussed by citizens in order to reach a reasonable consensus; third, all laws must be applied equally to everyone, i.e.,

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they must be designated as universal; four, as autonomous and equal, all members in the public domain have universal rights and duties to be the sources and the subjects of laws. These conditions outline the rights of every member of the public, and thus rights are secured by mutually obtained laws. The latter regulates the freedom of everyone in relation to others. One of the most important assertions is the universality of every law. Along with the absence of contradictions in a given law, universality is a guarantee of rationality and equality. This is to say, every proposed and publicly approved law must be accepted by all, including the instigator of the law. If one proposes a law against stealing, then she, too, must be subjected to the law. If any exceptions are made, then the law ceases to be universal. But any public claim to the universality of law excludes such contradictions. Therefore, the freedom and equality of persons are assumed to be the grounds of law. The universality of laws implies another basic principle: The claim that one is an autonomous source of laws must include all members of a political community. That is, everyone is an equal source of law. Without this procedure, one would face a reverse contradiction: No one is the source of laws, but I am a source of this rule. It is important to note that such a ground has very little in common with any kind of naturalistic ontology or metaphysical and moral explanation for a political community. Clearly, there is a wide variety of individuals. Persons differ with respect to interests, abilities, and aims, and left to function in such a context, society would be a sum of confrontations and antagonisms that produce inequalities. Given such a situation, laws would depend on the power of interest groups. In this sense, not all societies are political, despite the actions of persons such as Hitler, Stalin, Reagan, Mao Dze Dong, and Trump, who claim to be engaged in political affairs. If such persons were engaged in the support, protection, or enhancement of specific interests, or if they abolished the public domain and universal participation in the formation of laws, then one should speak of power confrontations and not politics. Strictly speaking, politics has one major aim: an open public domain in which every member of the community is involved in raising and resolving issues. Of course, implied in this is that political community members are equally duty-bound to participate in all public affairs, even at the expense of their private or social agendas. The latter does not require a continuous founding, while the public affairs that comprise the domain where autonomy is maintained must be constantly affirmed. The term “duty” should not be read morally. The concern at this juncture is with an ethos—a way of being political by a participation in the public arena when public interests are at issue—and thus with maintaining one’s own autonomy. Indeed, the Athenians of ancient Greece regarded those who failed to take part in public affairs not as “non-political”, but as “incapable of being”. If freedom and equality are features

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of human life, then any introduction of causal explanations or justifications denies what makes us human. The distinction between the political and the social-private shows that human autonomy requires a political community, where the individual’s autonomy and humanity can be guaranteed by the free establishment of, and responsible adherence to, laws. Conversely, public and free enactment of laws is, equally, essential to a political community. This framework allows the discussion of all purposes. Depending on temporary requirements, one may establish other institutions, such as legislative, administrative, and judicial, yet they, too, have the clear task of assuring that, in the final analysis, the autonomous being remains the undisputed arbiter of all rules. There is a hidden condition of this guarantee: In the public arena, all social and economic differences are disregarded, as everyone enters the public domain with equal rights and duties. Universalism ranges through various layers of awareness without any having supremacy. Let us begin with care since hasty pronouncements might lead to confusion. In accordance with Classical Western thinking, universality is premised on open public domain, requiring every citizen to participate in public affairs without introducing private wants, desires, and prejudices—since only such participation guarantees a free discussion, not determined by causes. In this sense, public decisions are autonomous, and autonomy means that every citizen is equal, regardless of social position: Equality results from autonomy. All rules are derived from rational dialogue among autonomous, responsible, and equal persons. It is also important to note that such rules might be partially mistaken, and hence it is the duty of responsible citizens to correct them—equally through public dialogue. This state of affairs can be stated as an unconditional human responsibility for decisions, their enactment, and a duty to correct mistakes. SUBJECTED SUBJECT Without going into the protracted repetition concerning the very nature of the world, the modern West accepted the view that nature is composed of physical particles, called atoms, known as the “building blocks” of the universe. Meanwhile, all the awareness which we usually call qualitative and valuative was assigned to the subject. Hence, even such factors as autonomy and equality belong to subjective awareness, while the world of particles is the objective reality. The latter is not accessible to qualitative perception. It was obvious that the way to treat the objective world was to look at it mathematically. The question that has to be answered has to do with the access to the “imperceptible” reality of the atomic parts. As mentioned above, there is no other avenue except through the subject, who has to posit a method, and to do so self-consciously and critically. Descartes

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(1983), in his ultimate doubt, expresses this search for a method which is not derivable from the vagaries of perception, but must be certified by a mind reflecting upon itself. Since phenomena, judged on the basis of perceptual awareness, offer no objective certitude, objectivity must be guaranteed by the mind in terms of clear and distinct ideas, a methodology which, in its ideal structure, excludes perceptual-qualitative awareness. These ideas and this methodology are quantitative, i.e., metaphysical in the form of mathematics and, in accordance with modern ontology, must be mental and inevitably subjective. The result is obvious: Objectivity is relative to the powers of the subject; the world must be interpreted as accessible to the methods which are guaranteed by reflective thought and human controls. Too many texts have overlooked a background move or intention that had to play a decisive role in resolving an issue arising within the confines of the new subject. The latter has two modes of subjective awareness: the perceptual—qualitative, and the thinkable—quantitative. Both are given equally to the reflecting subject, and neither has any inherent criterion to indicate which is more appropriate to disclose reality. It is obvious that the qualitative awareness is more direct and objective, more accessible to everyone than the quantitative-mathematical. For most persons, the latter has to be learned through great effort and torture, while the former is present without any doubt. In brief, the choice of one over the other has to be decided on other grounds, has to have another intention in its background. The latter suggests that the selection of a quantitative-mathematical metaphysics as a method is done on the basis of valuation: We want to control and master the environment. After all, it is quite clear that, if we know how to define something mathematically, we also know how to make it. In principle, this method is technical. It contains rules of construction and resultantly, such rules can be applied to anything in a way that the very application will regard anything mathematically. But this metaphysical method, and this ontological base, take for granted that there are no essential distinctions, no qualitative differentiations among the objects composed of the “atomic” parts. The difference among composed objects is one of quantity. The quantitative, a priori calculations of the material aggregates require that such aggregates be arranged in a causal sequence through physical activity, such that the calculated arrangement can yield predictable results. This process regards only the “underlying”, reified aggregates, which are arranged, and experimented with in accordance with the reflectively instituted calculations. The quantified arrangements of “matter” allow, correlatively, the quantitative calculation of possible “material” results. We should be reminded of the fact that by the eighteenth century, reality was no longer defined in terms of its being, but in accordance with “the conditions for the possibility of being”.

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Given that the modern conception of the environment is regarded to be the sum of material parts that are qualitatively and essentially indifferent, then such materiality can be used as a condition for any possible reconstruction on the grounds of formal systems. In principle, the formal systems are also technologies for reconstructing the material environment. This logic of “self-generating” formal systems that get directly translated into material implements implies that even the material facts are co-extensive with the signitive domain of formal constructions. The term “signitive” designates a system(s) of interconnected meanings, pervading the empirical domain. Thus, a flashing blue-red light means a police car, signaling for a driver to stop, means speed limits, means fines, courts, laws: means social values. Thus, the simple empirical “blue-red” in the human world, is co-extensive with a system(s) of meanings. The transformation of materiality into signitive conditions implies that the social environment is a lifeworld structure, consisting of a system of multiple implications. To speak in a limited traditional sense, all social factual phenomena are not merely factual, but already signitive. In this sense, the world we live is an interconnection of social, historical, scientific, valuative, and technical vectors. Signification as meaning and/or sense-making is already available at the formal level that is understood by anyone in applying calculations to environmental material conditions. Once those conditions are “realized” and, therefore, science is “embodied” we acquire a technical environment that is produced in terms of valuation, which is in a background that grants certain formal systems practical value to transform the environment in favor of the so-called “human needs”. This means that the criterion will be some valuative principle that will facilitate the decision as to which formal system will be adequate to apply for the fulfillment of which needs. Yet, the process is still more complex: The needs themselves are also selected in terms of their significance in a given life-world, and hence are not a mere observation and generalization of empirical phenomena. In principle, formal systems as signitive are valuative to the extent that they can fulfill the equally articulated desires in terms of socially, psychologically, and economically signified needs, mediated by technology as a constant, self-proliferating need. In other words, the very needs are significant by social and not by empirical definition. Not every psychological wish, or biological drive will be regarded as socially significant. In this sense, only the significant needs will be granted value. What emerges here is a question of multiple valuations. The kind of valuations there are—and the kind of formal systems—must be constituted to translate the material environment to fulfill the valuation of needs, depending on the complex intersignification of a given life-world. Technology, at this level, can be primitive, ranging from implements through heavy-duty mechanical means, all the way to industrial mass production.

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Transferring such technology to various regions around the globe might, at first, be regarded as “neutral”: road-building, architecture, hospitals, and schools, including technical training. But it is significant that the very introduction of technologies does not leave a place and a society the same. The structure of space and time gets transformed, tasks get reassigned, family life is changed—the introduction of technology is equivalent to an introduction of a very different lifeworld. It is also the case that the current life-world of the West is interlaced by multiple scientific and technical discourses and practices. One cannot buy a cereal box without being exposed to multiple languages and quantities of bio-chemical, nutritional, caloric, and such codes. All this also implicates productive, normative, and even legalistic interconnections as aspects of a life-world. This is to say, the scientific and technical discourses and practices do not overlay some primordial life-world, but rather comprise our understanding of the way our world and we are, live, and relate. Our mass media are equally replete with reports of scientific “studies” and reports of inventions and progress, and even of protests against some scientific inventions and technical innovations—all being understood as aspects of our life-world. In this sense, technology embodies the entire life-world of the West, with its values, ontology, metaphysics, education, production, research, political laws, and even theological controversies. And in the same sense, any transfer of technology to various regions means an introduction of a different life-world. The signitive logics that pervade the life-world, with the latter’s valuative selectivities, are also at the background of the cybernetic revolution. While the cybernetic revolution brought in computer science, it has included as a background the self-generating process of formal systems that are translated and reified into the technical environment. The computerized logic as formal has no regard for anything that is environmentally, qualitatively differentiated. Its own logic does not need to respect the so-called “natural-qualitative” differentiations. Any living, working, or suffering being in this logic of indifference can regard all events in terms of mutually replaceable variants. Social, economic, pedagogical, cultic, and cultural givens are, in this logic, equivalences in normative exchanges. Whether something is labor power, artwork, or mysticism, it must subject itself to the requirements of formal rules of quantification. The latter must become the information to be transmitted globally. While previously, televisual globalization was available, and this globalization depended on the valuative selectivity of large media organizations, the computerized globalization offers any arbitrary access to any selectivity. This means that rhetorical pronouncements as translatable into practices will be equivalent to other propositions. No external judgment is possible apart from an appeal to other computerized information whose credibility

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is simply its appearance in the global network. Computerization opens up a domain of any space and any time accessed without history, without places and without times. It is a synchronic instrument premised on signification that is everywhere and yet localizable on any computer, smartphone, or in large areas—such as a cloud—comprising systems of vectorial space and time sites, equally vectorial with possibilities of such space-time sites. The age of the computer is a world of signification where there is no place and time and, conversely, where all places and all times are equivalently possible and accessible. Our task is, therefore, to explore the domain of all places and at all times. While it is possible to contend that sciences are value-free, it is not possible to claim that formal systems, applied to transform the environment, are value-free. The required connection between logic and fact introduces the third component at base: valuative. This is to say that the very understanding of the application of logically framed theories or hypotheses introduces selectivity among various logics and selectivity as to what domains in the environment are relevant for application and hence techno-logical reconstruction. The reconstruction is an activity premised on human purposes and resultantly on various levels of valuation interpreted in various ways, such as sociological, psychological, economic, ideological, and even mythological. Whether biotechnology or computer rationality, each is value-laden, and, therefore, premised on individual or social purposes. For example, computer rationality consists of layers of value systems. In the final analysis, valuations promote autonomous selectivity and invention, and in turn, place demands on individuals and groups. Engaging in the continuous proliferation of increasing efficiency and creativity requires that any logic translated into material implements becomes, in turn, the means to create more novel, encompassing, and efficient computer and other technical logic. In this process, one is compelled to constantly engage in research that is designed not only to discover new facts, but to invent new ways to establish logics that would become factually efficient. This is a magic circle. The more we constitute new logics translated into material implements, such as computers, smart phones, or digitalized systems, the more we can use the same computers to open up new logics for their own material implementation. But the point of this magic circle is an increase in possibilities of valuative selectivity. The latest computer machines can perform calculations that previous logics were incapable of performing. In this sense, the very latest machines can instruct us about the possibilities of new logics. This means that the computer systems are themselves information, and indeed selected information. First, the imbedded information is a particular logic of the

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computer (the software); second, its specific material design (the hardware); third, its economic system of values and the modes of production; and finally, the options that it suggests. In this sense, the objectivity of the computer embodies various levels of valuation. Those who acquire the latest machinery do not acquire neutral means of processing and transmitting messages but also the messages of computer logic, embodiment, economy, and basically an entire life-world and its social systems. Moreover, the logic of the programs is designed to process information in specific ways. While the user is told that he or she is free to access information, the information is mediated by the logic of the program, the economy of affordability by a specific group, in a specific part of the world, and its purposive rationality that would dictate the programs and the messages that the given population will access. In brief, the objective claim that computer rationality is merely a means for anyone dealing with messages is inadequate to what computer logic is all about. The logic of the latest software demands the reproduction of hardware, leading to a constant rush for the latest technology. The implication is obvious: Vast populations of the world would be called upon equally to engage in valuation. Do we want the latest hardware to match the latest software? Or, do we want to protect the environment, to educate next generations, to afford decent housing or medical care? It is the case that all things cannot be accomplished at once, and to buy the latest hardware may have to be postponed in favor of other human purposes and, therefore, to forego the receiving of messages that are deemed to be objectively accessible for everyone. The introduction of the computerized systems around the globe is not an innocent presence of a means to acquire information, but valuational requirements of people and their governments to deal with what is of greater value in a given society. In short, there is nothing wrong with the logic of technologies of all kinds, with their objectivity; yet, we must also recognize that they are value-siginitve systems whose transference to other parts of the world assume different value contexts. It must be noted that the conditions for the possibility of globalization are not only economic, psychological, and even ideological, but signitive. The reason for this claim is that, before a particular people in a global economy will acquire the economic conditions to better their lives, they have already been informed signitively of what a better life means. And the better life is the possession of modern technology, specifically information technology, such as computers and their logic, and above all, the value preferences imbedded in this logic. This logic, in turn, is the end of temporality, the end of history; it is an all-encompassing logic that can transmit its values to any village with promises of the production of anything that the logic signifies in a global economy. Of course, the villages would be able to access the information once various technologies become available. The images open a life-world that is achievable through participation in the global economy, socialization, forming relationships, and building

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education—in short, accepting the West. Computerized technology is the metaphysical logic that has the power to accomplish this task. Of course, we shall not make a judgment as to whether this accomplishment destroys or saves the multiple ways people have lived or want to continue to live. This is to say, will they be absorbed into the metaphysics of transformation of their environments in order to join the global nexus, or will they be able to use the technical mass means to maintain and defend their own cultural difference? This subtends the entire discussion of multiculturism, environmental protection, and even the rights of people to self-determination. This means that the globalizing logic, with its technical efficiency and promises of a better life, has become an aspect of the life-worlds of other civilizations. They see themselves in relationship to this efficiency and liberation from want, poverty, ignorance, and oppression, and reflectively as culturally different from this globalizing logic. This creates an internal tension within various cultures that constitutes dual self-recognition. One still maintains his own cultural discourses yet also judges those discourses in light of global images. This is the source of alienation and the destruction of cultural self-identity. We still want to maintain cultural identity, but we also like to be like the other, to judge ourselves from the vantage point of the other, the West. This is an invention of a dual consciousness that frames the power struggles within various cultures. The modernizers, who at the same time claim to be part of their own culture, want to transform that culture to be Westernized, practically efficient, objective, and beneficial to individuals, liberating the individuals from their own ignorance, and yet against the globalizing process, wanting to cling to the uniqueness of their own culture. In one sense, there is a demand to use the environment purely as material for the purpose of the benefit of social members, whether the benefit is health, employment, education, or increased wages as signs of the good life. In another sense, there is a wish to claim that we in our culture have spiritual values that do not allow us to reduce the environment, including the human, to mere resources. Above, we saw two major compositions of incompatible civilizations; now, such compositions form a context for the global tension between those who wish to maintain their tradition—indeed, wish to reclaim some remote past—and those who wish to look toward an open future and its possibilities. This tension is well exhibited in the images of the Arab Spring, where huge crowds, forming a socalled “streetocracy”, demonstrate for one or another civilization, for one or another set of laws and constitutions—the secular or the autocratic. Europe is equally ambiguous—and rightly so—concerning the need to support freely elected governments in the Middle East. After all, some are purely autocratic (theocracies) and will not allow any introduction of Western aid, whether health clinics, education or professional infidels. How does one abolish poverty—which

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stands at 40% of the population—in Iran when autocracy will do anything to spend national wealth to acquire “the sword of Allah” to defeat the infidels and hardly care for the impoverished? How does one deal with Turkey, where the elected government wavers between autocracy and democracy, and provokes mass demonstrations against efforts to establish autocracy by the very government which was elected by those who are now demonstrating—as is the case in Egypt? How does one address the issue of poverty in Myanmar, where “fundamentalist” Buddhists are killing Muslims and pushing them into camps, thus creating new regions of poverty? But the same principle applies in all variants: Emerging autocracies (even under the guise of fundamentalisms, ethnic or sectarian movements, or nationalist frenzy) tend to dismiss poverty in favor of their more significant aims. Within this tension, the adjudication cannot be had on the basis of some criteria that would be able to decide which is more true. The only solution to this tension is power. Hence, we witness the many confrontations between groups within specific civilizations that promote Western modernizations and at the same time fundamentalists that resist modernizations. This means that a specific civilization is split into those who propagate the need to become globalized and modern and, at the same time, those who, while recognizing the necessity of this modernization, wage a battle against it as an imposition of alien, modern Western civilization. In principle, they claim that we may use the efficiency of modern technology to resist the very logic that this technology imposes on us. In this sense, the very globalizing logic constitutes a power confrontation, all the way from holy wars to so-called passive resistances. What we have is a temporal horizon of possibilities in such a way that one possibility is regarded to be a recuperation of the past, while the other is offered as the future. Politically speaking, the rhetoric states that the one from the past is conservative and traditional, while the other is liberal, individualistic, open, and even humanistic. In many cases, a partial division is between generations; the younger generations opt for the open future, while the older want to hold onto the firmness of the past. Perhaps the most pronounced tension showed up with the appearance of the global pandemic. On the one side is a science with its chemical inventions of vaccines and preventions or cures, and on the other side are the believers who look toward some ancient text with magic words, which, when spoken, will prevent the virus from being a danger. Any scientific cure is “the mark of the Beast” or an invention to control humanity by the elite, and such. All one needs are prayers to deflect the inventions of the secular devils, all the while using AI to transmit their messages to the faithful. Of course, they also use the Enlightenment’s language of “freedom”, despite being humble slaves of the Lord. In brief, there is a use of futuristic AI media to reclaim the “truths” of the past.

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Whether the views of the believers are true or false is not our concern. Yet, it is generally claimed that those, in their dual consciousness, will play out their roles as both maintaining their tradition and, at the same time proposing future transformations. At this point, a specific conception of the world is divided into a closed past and an open future. It is important to note that this conception subtends or underlies Western modern globalization. Anything in the past can no longer be changed, and therefore, to return to it would mean to return to something changeless and thus conservative, while the escape from it would require an open and undetermined future. This is the confrontation between any given tradition as a determined history and its rejection in favor of a constructed and undetermined future. It is of note that modern Western globalization is characterized by the shift of temporal awareness from the rejection of the “irrelevant” past to possibilizing future. SIGNITIVE SPACE AND TIME Time and space, wherein we locate empirical events, is accessible only as a signitive framework of sense-making to which everyone has access. Given that we have no time machines to go from now into the future or the past, the only access we have to both of those temporal components is the immediacy of meaning and sense-making awareness. In this sense, the globalizing process of the cybernetic revolution is based on our ability to communicate irrespective of place and time on the globe because we know or understand what others mean. This suggests that, dealing with computer technology, we are presented with immediate access to the entire world, not because of our capacity to be empirically everywhere, but because of the technical capacity to make present the meaning of events no matter how far or near. Let us note that the reading of a message is prior to and pervades the empirical means that transmit the message. Computer, as technological means, is an entity in space and time, but it is designed to carry the presence of significations that have no specific space-time positions. This would be analogous to the construction of non-Euclidean space. The latter has no empirically given intuitive component. It is a pure system of formal constructs that do not point to any material, mental, or other “realistic factors”. What is appropriate to the theme of space and time is that the technical means that embody the formal logic and its valuative subtext can be produced and set up anywhere and anytime around the world. Yet, it is to be noted that such a setup carries with it the social-cultural, economic, and technical life-world. Thus, the First World imports and transfers the latest technologies to the developing world in order to help “develop” the local populations, to make them aware of the rest of

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the world, in brief, in order for them to be signitively accessible and access events, no matter where and when. This globalizing transference of technology brings with it non-positional space-time to all who can afford the technological means. We must remind ourselves that those very global means are not mere empirical data or facts, but rather, they carry with them valuative conditions. For modern Western understanding, values are deemed to be subjective, in contrast to the objectivity of the empirical, and, as we have argued, to the logical-signitive domain. Yet, the very selectivity of certain logics over others and their connection to the events is valuative. Exporting computer (and other) technologies also includes the export of values imbedded in technologies. METHOD Having gone through modern Western civilization and the issues that will have an impact on European engagement with other civilizations, it is important to start “winding down” to a more concrete level and explicate a method that is equally European but also with a universal appeal. It is well known, that for Europe, since the eighteenth century, reality was no longer something present but the “conditions for the possibility of being”. This is precisely what is needed methodologically to assist others in establishing conditions for their being—and not necessarily only economic. As is well known, some are economically self-sufficient, and yet they have vast numbers of their population at the level of poverty. This means that other kinds of “conditions” must be addressed—including the structure of closed civilizations and the levels at which dialogue is possible. To decipher such possibilities requires a common methodology which would also access common awareness. It is best to begin with the latter as an inevitable ground of diverse human actions irrespective of civilizational interpretations. There is a given in all civilizations that life—and in most cases—all events are temporal, including the notion of permanent eternity wherein there is a promise of all sorts of activities in “an eternal place”. It is noticeable that the “eternal place” is present to awareness in the mode of “expectation”, and thus as one aspect of numerous other expectations. Expectations of what is possible are an open temporal horizon that can be narrowed to what is relevant and what is at present irrelevant. In turn, awareness is extended as a “past horizon” which is equally relevant since, in some civilizations, the past horizon might be restricted to specific stories or eminent texts that become equally relevant as to what shall be selected as significant from the future horizon. Indeed, various tribal (African) peoples are fearful of modernizations because younger generations are leaving for better living standards and thus leave gaps, and disconnections, in family

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continuity; in this setting, the older members will cease to have a place and thus will vanish. Their continuous existence is their being co-present in all events as members of complex, family-tribal relationships. Here, is a clear example of the way temporal awareness overlaps, i.e., a past system of relationships is also a determination of future relationships, and the latter depends on past relationships. In this sense, it could be said that past-present-future comprise a field phenomenon of human active orientations. This is a way of saying that there is a selectivity of activities that are deemed to be proper and exclusion of those that are forbidden or irrelevant. As we shall see shortly, this kind of time does not mean that humans make history—they are their history directly manifest in what they do and build. The field of active time is not connected causally, but “meaningfully”, such that present events point to past and future events, i.e., they “signify” them, forming what most European thinkers call a “life-world”. This suggests that to understand a people, one must understand their life-world. Even in the most beautiful and uncluttered life, events and people interconnect through meaning: This plant is medicine, and that animal is domestic, while the one growling at a distance is wild. One event signifies an entire field of other events, equally with overlapping temporal awareness. The horizon of memory does not reveal an entire past but makes leaps, connecting only the events, personalities, and mythical figures as they are required in the temporal field. Meaningful connections of events, coupled with the difference between theoretical and field—vectorial—time, account for the fact that there is no one-toone correlation between the changes in the natural environment and its evaluation in field time. Indeed, while natural events may change, their entering a life-world as meaningful interconnections may remain the same, and conversely. This is one part of the methodology being unfolded here—a variation of natural and meaningful aspects. Thus, the so-called material conditions may be similar, yet the temporal field of a life-world might signify such conditions very differently from life-world to life-world within their horizons of possibilities. Such a horizon is also open selectively where significant possibilities are selected and form a context for the interpretation of events across future, present, and past, forming a historical continuity that skips over the theoretical time of causal succession. Even if events are past and causally no longer efficient, their significance is present, not only as past but also as a factor in the horizon of what is possible. Our brief delimitation of temporal—by now, vectorial—field awareness, pervading a given life-world, also disclosed the presence of civilizations as traditions, that while devised in the past, are equally dominant in regulating the future horizon and what is possible in it. It is the next task to articulate the field time of action with its open horizons in terms of civilizational compositions and the ways they may limit such horizons—what was already selected and what can

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be selectable. It is equally important that the field time of action retains open horizons and options that a given civilization has not considered, even if it were not against its requirements. Moreover, an open horizon must remain even if what is selected from it as possible comprises its limits; the comprehension of the latter is premised on the presence of the horizon, and all that is possible but, for a given tradition, it is impossible. Contemporary (and of course, many other) clashes and revolutions are premised on the tensions of what there is as a life-world of a given tradition, and what there is not—the open possibilities of a horizon that one tradition has closed. One can think of the “Arab Spring” that is still “springing” and shifting the selectivities of what is possible—both showing the limits of what has been a tradition and its horizons and what limitations are no longer acceptable. One can also think of current autocracies in China, Russia, and the Middle East, where the presence of AI possibilities in technologies are extolled, but they are used for the total monitoring of the behavior of entire populations, and even for restricting economic activities. It ought to be obvious that within a context of a civilization and its traditional lifeworld, not all possibilities are equally significant—some are more remote than others, and some are not even available. In turn, it is the case that some possibilities in a given life-world are not realizable, even if possible. The relationships between socially possible and impossible are quite complex. What may be possible politically may be remotely possible or even impossible economically, and what is possible economically might not be possible technically, morally, ontologically, or mythologically. This means that some options might be excluded for the time being and “sink” into the horizon of the past, and yet they might be reinstated as a future possibility given its shift in significance or the changes in moral values or economic distributions. Such changes require an introduction of awareness as “time reflex”. As noted above, the limits of what a civilization, or in some of its remote corners a tribe or society, can project, appear in terms of what is possible as reflected from what is impossible. But the latter is what reveals options for a civilization from another civilization, leading either to transformation or to a clash of civilizations. It is the case that in contemporary global interaction, such time reflexivity is unavoidable, despite the claims of positivistic sociologists that analyses of facts do not indicate any transformations. Indeed, such sociology, without addition of the notion of the life-world and its horizontal composition, cannot disclose anything as a daily awareness, and the way it plays a role in constituting demands for change, demands for “return” to some eminent text and its prescribed narrowing of the horizons and indeed precluding a dialogue. During one session at

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the UNESCO conference in Vilnius (2001), a question of tolerance was raised; there were Muslim scholars from Egypt and Iran, and they stated that, as long as the West tolerates homosexuality, no dialogue will be possible between Islam and the West. Within their horizon of what is possible, homosexuality is not possible, and thus any question of its tolerance is to be rejected and, with it, a civilization that allows this possibility to be part of its life-world. It is now possible to sketch briefly the way time reflex is a primary method in understanding various research ventures and what the researcher can offer as an aid without too much disturbance of others’ life-worlds. First, the dialogue concerning the options and possibilities of a given life-world is in flux, and the changing, expanding, or narrowing of temporal horizons also shifts the selectivity and significance of events. This means, second, that the temporal horizon of the future is a way to locate what is more significant from the past and how such significance can be modified in terms of the needs that must be fulfilled. Third, the past, as a tradition of a life-world with its own future horizon, may be opened in terms of current events and yield new possibilities for the past—such as the rereading of some eminent texts or making some previously insignificant sections of such texts become significant, or even in case of a group that depends on family or tribal stories. The latter may be enlisted as a way to interpret the novel possibilities and thus become part of the fabric of the future. Hence, while moving toward the future, research also establishes an orientation and selectivity of pastpresent-future events. Fourth, the time reflex accounts for the distinction and relationship between the presence of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future. Each present is available with its temporal horizons, which intersect and are continuous with those of other presents. This accounts for historical presents as overlapping temporal fields that continue a specific tradition of selectivities of the possible, the transformative, and how the latter comprises a confrontation, intersection, and mutual transformation with other traditions. Any reflexivity presupposes as its condition the distinction between what is currently real and the temporally possible, the modalized. Thus, a particular social history does not vary only in terms of the presently given and selected facts, but also in constitutive conditions of selectivity based on temporal possibilities. The insight into the selectivity of facts in any social process is a key to the constitution of the relationship between social facts, their structures and the temporal horizons or possibilities. Our most limited discussion of the conditions of reflexivity has opened the possibility to consider further the shift of the concept of theory to a concept of critical theory. The latter must:

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1. Show how its very explanations of events will influence such events, since such an explanation can be subsumed under reflexive process and its predictions either enhanced or thwarted; and 2. Evaluate social events from a temporal horizon of possibilities showing what is possible and what is impossible within a given social system and its sub-systems. This means that a critical theory must correlate all factors and show how, in this correlation, some possibilities are realizable, others probable, and still others made impossible. For example, it must show how an economic capacity may be thwarted by a political incapacity, a moral stance or an economic misapplication; or how an economic capacity, yielding certain options, may become impossible due to a technological incapacity. At the same time, the critical theory must show the limits of the possibilities of a social system and delimit what changes must be instituted within certain social sub-systems to surpass the limitations. Thus, the critical theory constitutes the most encompassing process of social reflexivity in history and, ultimately, in the complexity of world time. The methodological outline as time reflexivity can now be regarded in relationship to any specific life-world and the way an intervention by another civilization—the Western—can become relevant and beneficial. In too many cases, efforts to assist in the transformation or partial reconstruction of a given life-world were “external” to such a life-world. Armed with all the good intentions, with “advanced” knowledge of the latest instruments and expertise, we tend to “build” for the indigenous population what it needs, and even if what it needs might well be external to that life-world. They need a school, we shall build one for them; they need a clinic, we shall establish one for them—most laudable actions. But we cannot forget the basic principle discussed above: peoples in their life-worlds are not external to them, and their very being is the reflexive time in which field they understand themselves, the field in which they are co-extensive with all that they do. What does that mean? It means that to build something, we cannot build it for them, but we must do it with them—from the ground up, with their full involvement, participation, and full cognizance of what the things we bring will mean in their world. Without their participation in building their world and temporal horizons, the “development” will be an introduction to another life-world. We may offer access to the internet, open all sorts of commodities that they can see but not reach, and yet inspire expectations that show the radical discrepancy between what they are and have and what they will not be able to have for the foreseeable future. The disappointment is a sign that we have offered expectations and yet cannot offer

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their immediate gratification—thus we failed. In turn, going back to what this population has and has been doing becomes equally dissatisfying. Given these concerns, the needs of a given people in a given life-world must be assessed in the following ways. Cultural context, including stories, myths, past and future, their values and expectations, their education, skills, and local hierarchy, are the framework for what the population can accomplish if some aid is introduced and at what level such aid is most significant—for the time being. This is where time reflexivity begins to appear: If, for example, a new health clinic is to be established within a certain period—one year, then what sort of education must some members of the society achieve within that span of time to be able to manage and staff the clinic? If a school is to be established, can the economic level maintain both the clinic and the school? Hence, there is a question of value and which value is temporally most feasible and which must be postponed, reflecting from the future possibility of economic improvement and/or expected aid. The latter can be involved from a broader horizon, such as a regional government, as a reflexive agent, analyzing the options of present and future investments and thus selecting which is of greater significance: schools or local clinics. Yet, two things must be maintained: First, the local community must be involved in making decisions and in building, since both activities comprise a local democratic practice and direct education of what the members of the community can do, such that their very doing is part of their own historical continuity and responsibility. While this might seem simple, yet as a process of decision-making and building also constitutes a ground of selectivity as to who can do specific tasks, whose voice emerges as relevant and significant, and who can speak to the foreign providers and advisors, and even to the regional officials. This is “praxis” democracy. It is important to point out that all the grand efforts to export democracy were and continue to be failures. Democracy is established through concrete participation in building a history within a life-world that opens horizons, unfolds possibilities, some of which might remain unfulfilled for the time being but will be available with changing variables. CONCLUSION In all cases, education should take precedence since it is the site where horizons open, where an understanding of complex issues get disclosed, where broader intersubjectivity is constituted, and where an awareness of limits becomes available. Education is, in principle, dialogical, and given the contemporary means, intercultural. The latter is, by all accounts, a most significant way of building participatory, global democracy. What must be carefully avoided is narrow, technical instruction that creates “experts” who can function in any modern life-world. Their skills are homogenized and thus global. This means that

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apart from technical sophistication, two aspects have to play a significant role: integrating the new skills into the local life-world, its culture and values, and opening the culture to intercultural dialogue. If technical education provides the ability to advance economic well-being, cultural education is a way of eliminating prejudices, oppression, and violence. Moreover, technical skills alone tend to create a segment of a population that becomes “nomadic” and even self-serving. It is a constant reminder that, while technical education advances the possibilities of well-being for those with globally needed skills, such abilities also lead to an increasing gap between the well-off and the rest of the population. This means that a broad and integral education, both cultural and intercultural, is a direction that might prevent the so-called “brain drain” from emerging economies and societies. We are certain that the European agencies, engaged in the field work of foreign aid and education, can find a way of preventing such a drain. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Mickunas, A. (2014). Modern West: Two life worlds. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2015). The Project Europe. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. Mickunas, A. (2016). Lithuania and globalization. Vilnius: Mykolas Romeris University Press. REFERENCES Descartes, R. (1983). Principles of Philosophy. (R. V. Miller & R. P. Miller, Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Mickunas, A. (2012). The divine complex and free thinking. New York: Hampton Press.

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Radical Embodied Truths for Artificial Intelligence Abstract: Embodiment distinguishes between two bodies, which are the body regarded as a physiological entity, and the phenomenal body, which is not just somebody, some particular physiological entity, but my or your body as it is experienced. It is understood as a phenomenal body. Nobody is an entity. Typically, one experiences one’s body and potential capacity for doing this and that. Moreover, the sense that I have my own body capacities is expressed in bodily confidence. It does not depend on understanding the physiological process involved in performing the action in question. The distinction between the objective and the phenomenal body is central to understanding the logical treatment of embodiment. Embodiment is not a concept that pertains to the body grasped as a physiological entity, but rather it pertains to the phenomenal body in the role played in oriented experience. Fundamental to embodiment is space/time/motion and its manifestation of circularity of AI research/AI researched.

Keywords: Revolution, Truth, Signification, Thing, Lived Communication, Embodiment, Marxism, Abstract, Experience.

Body,

INTRODUCTION The notion of embodiment or “bodied minds” is meant to replace the ordinary notion of mind and body, both as derivatives and abstractions. The lived body relates to the space it lives in. It is already incorporated into the world, understood as the horizon, presupposing a form of understanding, and the body is of the world in which it carries out its operation, and operant intentionality is established with the world. That is, the corporal subject is inserted into a world that provokes certain questions or problems that must be resolved. Therefore, one can speak of motivation as part of the world—although not of necessity because the response is not mechanical or determined between the movement of the body and the world. No form of representation is established, but rather the body adapts to/adopts the invitation of that world. The environment calls forth a specific body style, so the body works with the environment, and included in it is the posture that the body adopts in a situation.

Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

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TRUTHS Truth 1 The social order is comprised of social acts which have fields of implication which extend a-temporally beyond the location occupied by any individual. Individual acts then become relative to each other—in their own movement. Every social act, therefore, outlines its own inherent limits. No social act can go unmediated. This idea of integration is formed through a fundamental negativity of mediated social relations. Every human act dimensionalizes itself through a time-space movement. Therefore, every human act is related to an entire field or network of human actions. The range of human acts dimensionalizes itself. Each act is relative to the other, yet it is also correlative to a universal. Each act may be relative to something, which is absolute. Each absolute is such because of its correlation to the relative. Therefore, every act is relative to its time and space. It is also integrative at the level of the difference between the relative acts. All social acts have a temporal character, yet all are integrated at the a-temporal level. The integration is accomplished at the level of verticality. The notion of temporal social acts extending beyond themselves and integrated at the level of atemporality is based on the following ontological principles, which have been derived from the concept of the sensuous universal: 1. The enduring inherence of a thing manifests itself temporally from different perspectives. 2. The “more”, or the potentiality of a thing, is required for the explanation of new qualities and non-reductionism. 3. The thing, by manifesting itself from a particular perspective, implies its context and its specific qualities. These principles have led us to a general conclusion regarding the nature of social order. Truth 2 Each unified thing, displaying itself from a perspective, implies totality. Things display from a particular perspective and correlatively evoke the perspectival manifestations of other things as parts of their context. If every perspective implies a whole, ordered through the inherent unity of the things, then every human activity as ekstatic correlates to the world of things. The social order based on the sensuous universal is inseparable from its human existence (ekstasis). Soc-

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ial order does not exist other than in the historical totality of human products, which reveal retroactively and pro-actively the character of the human (society). Truth 3 The mode of overcoming a purely transitory human history is the organization of knowledge. It is a historical enabling and a historical structure in excess of the evolution of historical sensorial humans. The historical enabling is equivalent to the I-can structure, which draws past things into the “living now” (present) and surpasses the momentary. The past enters into the “living now” and constitutes the present in a self-formative human nature. Historical epochs are not merely empty discards in which human life has evaporated just because humans have reached a “higher” plateau of development. The forms of development are incorporated into the present through sensuous praxis—the creative universal activity of humanity. The process of incorporation is an aspect of the apprehension of the past as it is manifested in the future. It is also a limitation or critique. The past is intensified in the “living now”, which is a form of sublation in dialectical thought. The social order is shaped in terms of objectivity and subjectivity, sensory relations, reification, and the ability of humans to “view” the world in its different modes. Interestingly enough, within the Marxian legacy, the law of flux underwrites the entire enterprise; yet, Marx’s work—as well as that of Hegel and Heraclitus—continues to live in the concrete moments of the “living now” in the form of permanence. Truth 4 History as a human production is an enduring totalization, in which human activity incorporates, brings to life, and integrates the past in a social order which is not only the production of the “new” but also a reproduction of the old. Therefore, totalization is an intensified retention, a process of production and reproduction—a renewal. The process of totalization is at all times a prerequisite and a historical production; it is a differentiated and universalized capacity of human perception. Therefore, history is not embodied in one common set of phenomena itself, but additionally, it is thought to be reflected in the relationship that is implied to exist between that set and another. Truth 5 The sensuous universal is the ground of all social life which is humanity itself. The apprehension of a human by a human is a grasp of oneself invariantly through one’s historicality. In short, the human can grasp himself/herself concretely and sensuously and universally. The radical human is the apprehension of the complementarity of historicality and universality—which is tantamount to the

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reflexive ground of the social order. In terms of our thesis, we are fleshing out the sensuous character of sensitivity—which is a continuation of the Marxian project through the argumentation and description of the sensuous universal as the locus where an “overlapping” or “folding over” of the human upon oneself occurs. The sensitivity and the sensibility of “the human for oneself” is a locus where all typification and movement of things can be grasped because the human contains all that the visible and tangible are capable of—which is precisely that: being visible and tangible. The sensuous-human is a field where the sensible radiates and dimensionalizes itself. Truth 6 Radical sensibility has implications for social communication theory. The specific character of any communication theory is that it must analyze and describe the social relations of which it is itself a part. At the same time, it must be involved in and aim at changing those very conditions. To make this claim, a view of history is presupposed: history is a history of human practice and human limits. By being a history of human practice, we avoid the trap of becoming a theory of vacuous pragmatics. At the same time, such a view of history makes a specification of history and a concrete insertion into it. All theory becomes a part of history, and it is able to decipher ideologies, theories, and critiques, learning from other ongoing forms of human action and their ensuing limits. Corporeal materiality is a process of continual transformation through self-critique, and learning from human practice is part and parcel of theory. This continual transformation is necessary in order to come to grips with social-political situations which do change as the result of theory as well as any other social intervention. If the theory is historical, then it must transform itself in terms of the situation that it is attempting to change. Yet, for theorists and the communication enterprise to identify itself through its historical changes and to learn from its own practices, it must liberate itself from the immediacy of its own historical insertion. If this is not possible, then communication cannot engage in self-critique and thus judge its own limits. Truth 7 Theory is always a theory of human practice. Theory must surrender to and place in relief the lived situation—as opposed to simply being contemplative. Theory which effaces itself in favor of its content is essential to a critical orientation and its institutionalization. The motivation for the institutionalization of critique is that, within our human life, over-quantification has served to suppress the qualitative aspects in our lived world, which is correlative to the suppression of the historical-temporal dimension. (This notion is a shared point of agreement between phenomenology and Marx). The quantitative approach is a formalism

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that cannot encompass the whole, but which is one-sided rationalism at best. Given that human social life does not live strictly by “numbers” but by socioeconomic, familial, aesthetic, ethical, and evaluative orientations, the rationalism of quantification cannot encompass these relationships and therefore must be separated from the sphere of human concerns. The correction of this problem is the reinstitution of teleology. Truth 8 Reason without direction is abstract, and it lacks the telos of humanity, which is guided by the unlimited development of the senses—or the achievement of the sensuous universal. The aim of the achievement of the sensuous universal—or the change toward a “new” humanity—is not possible without a reason for social change. Therefore, theoretical universality is a critical universal praxis. The theoretical attitude is unified with praxis in concrete ways. When we ask a question regarding the sense of social events or powers in society which affect our lives, the question aims at a significance that extricates us from our total immersion in everyday life. The reflection upon the question, “What’s happening in my life?” is theoretical. The search for significance aims at the transcendental level, which is required for every critique within history. Critique is a questioning and a self-interrogation of the state of affairs—a search for the sense of the situation. Critique requires a transcendental aim. Habermas’ Knowledge and human interests (1971) was an attempt to abandon the transcendental significance due to its quasi-static nature. But a problem arises regarding the historical dimension of praxis and the unification of theory with praxis. The unification of theory and praxis is a form of universality which is neither a metaphysical naturalism nor a logistic-theoretical formalism, but rather a universality which is a transition from the theoretical to the practical, thus comprising a synthesis. In this sense, theory can be of service and significance to the lived world—the sensuous world in which we live. Truth 9 Theory is a critical evaluation of the human practice concerned with the truth of the situation in which we discover ourselves. Theory is directly related to the changing of the human toward a new humanity, which is the transformation of human practice in terms of the “new” humanity. In terms of our thesis, the very possibility of theory requires this universality. The transcendental is always something that has been or remains to be accomplished. What is accomplished as a social reality is always reflected by the implications of the future (the not-yet). Thus, mediation occurs outside of a real relationship. If this were not the case, theoretical thought would not be possible since all theoretical relationships would

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be immersed in the environment and would never gain the required distance (verticality) necessary to articulate the social situation and make sense of it. Truth 10 Every orientation is a temporal one. This means that socially or intersubjectively, the experienced field, which we assume from a particular point of view, is polycentric; others participate in structuring my field, as I do in theirs. The polycentric field is temporally oriented. The sense of experience in its encounters with things of the world is temporal. Through social institutions, sensibilities are extended; hence, we borrow experience from others—our predecessors, and our experience will extend into the future to be incorporated by others into their fields of polycentricity. From the beginning of our lives, we are placed into a world, and that world is one that bears concrete historical praxis. We are born into a world of chairs, cradles, houses, hammers, and language, all of which are taken up into the historical process. Our contemporaries and those of previous times appear in the form of the hammers which they made, in the cost of the tools, and so forth. Before we have any questions concerning the abstract meaning of history, we are in a field of historical entities and styles of comportment. Institutions, too, are human products and hence change mutually with the human experience within the lived world. We are stressing that the sensuous-praxis, which is embodied in the world of implements, is “materialistic” but in a materialism of praxis, and in these relations lies the source of theoretical thought. It is at the level of social relationships that the task or aim is established—to open the horizons of transformations for change—within and based on the implications of the relationships of the lived world. Truth 11 The other points out new perspectives on the world of things and correlatively exposes new possibilities in us. We can say that there have been persons whom it has been beneficial to know. In other words, they have revealed themselves to us, and correlatively they have opened new fields of sensibility for us. The world has been enriched through a new perspective. Intersubjectivity has its value in the mutual contribution to the discovery of the world of things through our various activities. Our activity is directed by symbolized sensibilities, yet we express an original or “creative” relationship to things by following the lines of implication, which point to new perspectives and our self-understanding. In our view, the sensuous universal is an evaluative criterion for social progress.

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Truth 12 Social progress cannot be arbitrary but rather is dependent on the implications of the world of things. The embodiment of a symbolized sensibility contains more than the intention of the subject or a group of subjects because it is an objective perspective on things. Sense implies more than the particular intention of the subject because it does not depend upon the subject’s projection. The subject correlates him/herself to it and expresses it through activity. Only if the symbolized sensibilities are stored perceptual sensibilities of things with their own implications can social productions direct the subject to future development. Based on intersubjective foundations, the subjects in each society create their world and determine the kind of reality each social order has. But there is no criterion provided between advanced or culturally richer times and culturally inferior times. Hence, each social order and its age are equally absolute. This is not a satisfactory perspective. History has shown that social orders differ. How is this possible for us—embedded in a particular culture—to understand other cultures? In terms of our discussion of the consciousness of perceptual sense, limited perspective and totality, we can present a criterion for the advancement, differentiation, and development of societies. Every society, by developing certain perspectives of the world of things, is open to the implications of future development, or the more. In our view, the same world of things can be expressed in many ways, dependent upon an adopted perspective. This allows us to understand different societies from the perspectives of the subjects of other social orders. We can enter their perspective and interpret ourselves in terms of it. We have determined that the possibility of our understanding of other societies indicates something common between them: the commonness in the world of things, with its different perspectives and characteristics. A methodological problem that phenomenological social science must face is this: If one theorizes that the subject is a product of his/her society, then the theory one holds about societies cannot be generalized as applicable to all societies. If, as we claim, societies depend on the perspectives of the world of things in terms of which the subjects within a given society interpret themselves, then it is evident that subjects from one society are capable of understanding those of other societies. The possibility of viewing the world of things from that other perspective opens our own horizons and presents new possibilities for self-understanding. Hence, a multitude of societies—or realities, or “world views"—does not deny the necessity of ontological things. In short, based on the sensuous universal thesis, multiple worldviews or multiple realities are nevertheless views of the same

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world. Based on this criterion of one-world, we can indicate that the changes in humanity throughout history have depended upon the different relationships that humans have had toward the world of things which, correlatively, reveal different human possibilities. Truth 13 Social research requires a criterion to determine whether certain research is adequate, if the model is partial in its selectivity of phenomena, and if the aim of the research will have any value for understanding social action. The criterion must include assumptions about the norms, the sense of social action, and what is to be realized by such social action. This means that a methodologist must reflect on his/her model to check its presuppositions. For example, a social scientist may base his/her model on the economic activities of social members. This researcher may evaluate the sense and aims of a family, but only in economic terms. Yet, a family—which has socially required rules of behavior, views, and a sense of its activity—defines itself in terms of cohesion. This means that the researcher must value that particular sense of family and not truncate the familial interpretation. In other words, the sensuous universal demands that self-expression is valid and that it reveals different possibilities. Indeed, we are products of our socio-cultural milieu, but we are not merely products. Since we have stored socio-cultural sensibilities which have implications, we can follow them and gain a greater knowledge of the world of things. Furthermore, being in primordial contact with the world, we can reveal new perspectives and allow the vectors of implication to direct our social actions toward new horizons. Our thesis of the sensuous universal indicates that, although we do not have a total knowledge, we can increase our knowledge of humans while engaged in the process of opening their capacities—widening their relationship to the perspectives of the world of things. The opening of new perspectives gives rise to new sensibilities in terms of which those persons can then act and express themselves. Truth 14 There is an inherent problem that confronts any theory that posits “the human” as a totally historical being, determined by his/her time and culture. The problem is that, if a human is historically determined, then the theory which claims to be a product of a given culture is applicable only to that culture. But the problem goes much deeper. In our discussion of the sensuous universal, we have proposed that, in order to know a perspective, we need to transcend it. To know a given society

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or culture, we must transcend the society or culture. In order for us to grasp the subject as a historical being, we must be capable of transcending this position. To make the claim that we are “historical beings”, we need a non-historical view of a subject—who possesses all the possibilities revealed in history and who implies other possibilities to be realized in the future in terms of humanity’s future relationship to the differing perspectives of the world of things. Different historical periods are expressions of the different possibilities of what a human being is from a particular perspective. To grasp the distinct periods of human history, we must, at the same time, understand the nature of humanity expressing itself throughout history. Truth 15 (a) Theory based on the argument that every part is connected to the whole is interested in establishing the conditions for the possibility of something. In this sense, theory in terms of the sensuous universal is not “explanatory” but rather expository of the necessary requirements without which something could not be. Thus, theory ranges beyond what is commonly understood to be in the present. Rather, “theory as expository” can investigate “the conditions for the possibility of theories themselves”. These conditions are not empirical/factual but structural. For instance, while one may know all the empirical facts about Karl Marx, these facts will yield neither Marxism nor the structural conditions for Marx’s theory of species-being. Truth 15 (b) Theory, once it has been located in history and has achieved an awareness of its own history, loses the privileged status as extra-social or extra-historical, which surveys events indifferently. Rather, theory functions in society as history and changes its very “objects” of explanation. This means that, if we can assume that events influence history, then social science as an event influences history, thereby admitting that all theoretical determinations participate in the influence of its objects of investigation. Hence, the sensuous universal posits society as a whole of which it is one part; in turn, they reciprocally imply each other. Thus, the sensuous universal demands that theory has a critical or evaluative component. Therefore, theories based on the sensuous universal must adhere to Truth 16 (a and b). Truth 16 (a) The theory must show how its very explanations of events will influence those events. This can be done because an explanation can be subsumed under the reflexive process, and its prediction can be enhanced or truncated.

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Truth 16 (b) The theory must also evaluate social events from a horizon of possibilities showing what is possible and what is impossible within a given social situation. This means that social theory must correlate social factors and show how, in these correlations, some possibilities are enhanced, truncated, and others emerge. These possibilities are determined by the sensuous universal paradigm of the limited and the more. For example, theory can show how economic capacity may be curtailed by political incapacity, a moral stance, or even the misapplication of economic theory. In addition, theory based on the sensuous universal is critical; it must show the limits of the possibilities of a social situation and delimit the changes that must be instituted within particular situations in order to surpass those limitations. Therefore, social theory (and all social scientific theory) based on the sensuous universal encompasses the social-historical process. This encompassing process is more than the social-historical inasmuch as it is of the social-historical and yet aware of its own specificity. This awareness is a transcendental condition that allows us to reflect upon a concrete situation and correlate it to diverse factors. Truth 17 The theory of the sensuous universal can be understood as a phenomenology of materiality—not in a merely physical sense, but in the sense of praxis, which deals with work, implements, humanly established directions, and ethical relationships, e.g., helping someone to move from one’s home or walking a child across the street. For example, as a materialism of praxis, what is written on government banners becomes irrelevant. Rather, we must look at the concretesensual relationship and institutions in which we live. The sensuous-relationships are sources of theoretical and categorical distinctions. The concrete task of sensuous universal theory opens the limits for the transformation and expansion of sensuous-relationships as they are determined in the lived world. The evaluative character of theory is foreign to traditional social theory, as is the methodological posture of positing society as a sensuous universal. The methodological posture of positing society as universal and theory as sensitivity reveals an inner dialectical or dialogical structure in the methodology. This methodological posture is based on corporeal intentionality which demands that a sociological principle be founded. The principle is that social research must be capable of being used by its “subjects” for their own self-understanding. This principle assumes that the “objects” of social research are co-subjects who are of interest. The co-subjects are not merely of interest as entities, where behavior is to be observed and explained, but they are of interest as partners in communication

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with each other and with the researchers. Therefore, communication research’s objects are co-subjects who must incorporate their objects and their concerns into the communication community. A social theory based on the (dialogical) principle cannot help but evaluate the aims of human action. Truth 18 Human speech has a socio-historical embodied sense that all speaking is trying to communicate about something. We must eschew the psychological notion of language, which claims that “what can be meant can also be said”. This contains the notion, borrowed from ordinary language philosophy, that speaking is also “a making”. This means that language presupposes an ideal meaning to be expressed, and as soon as we devise the appropriate terms, there can be a full articulation and “doing” of the world. This notion of language is non-historical and presupposes a world which is pre-given and things that are reified. We are not contesting that we need meaning, that we need speech acts, and that our speaking influences our doing. However, notions regarding idealized speaking, the pre-givenness of meaning, and the pre-givenness of a fixed world lead one to the “class” characteristics of language. For example, in interviewing an ethnic population, such as African Americans, or workers, an interviewee’s inability to use “the appropriate language” is not a distortion of the social world, nor does it mean that the individual is incompetent. Rather, it means that the person’s speech is bound to his/her corporeal situation in which he/she is expressing the qualitative sense of that world. The very language employed effaces itself, revealing and expressing the world to which that person belongs. A theoretical implication of the sensuous universal is that one’s language is not merely a speech act; it also depends upon the class into which one has been born and upon the way that social class has produced language through historical experience. Various speech acts are implied or required by the language which one finds as a part of one’s concrete relationships. The development and understanding of class, ethnic, and other relationships in an intersubjective world must rest on their corporeal relations to the world of things. Truth 19 Any critique of social relationships or the language employed must be based on the speaker’s specific linguistic modes—which is precisely what is meant by “the corporeal situation”—and any ideality must be established in terms of the lived context. It is impossible to translate a linguistic term into “the” meaning. It is possible only to translate it into another concrete situation within the historical and institutionalized language. As communication theorists, when we understand another in terms of a class or a social role, we are dissecting the social field and

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affirming a series of social traits, roles, or classes. These make up a social field of synchrony in which a sensibility spreads. The experience of an individual of a particular class is not strictly the experience of this particular individual alone; the sensuous vectors implicate all other possible individuals who operate in a certain way. In addition, the experience of individuals of a class is only possible within the field of other possible social classes through which a particular social class is put into relief. At the same time, this social class has a depth, which implicates a horizon belonging to the total sensibility of ourselves and our species: emotional people, warm or cold, stingy or greedy, dull or brilliant, and so on. The segregation of a particular social role or class universalizes itself, thus inviting the operation of all sensibilities and the spread toward generality, which is accessible by anyone, anytime, anywhere. At the transcendental level, categories are accessible as sensuous and spread through a field of free association. Methodologically, we must be mindful of the sensuous generality of the individual. Truth 20 The social person may be distinguished from the individual person, who is composed of individual acts, aims, and directions. The individual founds his/her social behavior in an activity of a “higher” order. This social personality may be characterized in various ways. One’s personality is founded on a higher order than that of the individual because one’s personality is not limited to one’s own activities, but also contains the historically sensuous-incorporation of activities provided by others. When two individuals communicate, they mediate each other’s views and experiences and together comprise a basis for communication to an indefinite number of individuals. The social personality is of a concrete, “higher order” because it incorporates not just the activity of an individual, but also the activities of various individuals whereby the interrelationship of the activities constitute something “more” than the sense of individual acts; they influence and change one another. In the process of corporeal interaction, the individual persons in their relationship influence and change one another, which in turn yields a more encompassing awareness that belongs to both—or even to more—individuals. The relationship between the individual and the social (or higher-order individual) can be depicted through an analogy with musical notes and melody. Without musical notes (individual sounds), there is no melody. The sounds are the foundation of melody; but, in forming the melody, the sounds create a higher order which is not identical to the sum of sounds. This is not to imply that the

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sounds lose their individuality. The contribution of each sound is recognizable, yet their internal communication, which forms a melody, also creates an order which can be perpetuated even if the individual notes are changed. Analogously, this constitutes continuity of the social order, yet in such a way that the individual and his/her contributions are always presupposed. Truth 21 The social-communal comprises the phenomenological category of “we”, which consists of the accumulated sensual relationships and mutual influences of activities sedimented through history where the very names of the actors have been forgotten. Yet, the bearers of the names are the founders of the social dimension; in turn, their contemporaries are also founders—and at the same time carriers—of that dimension. Here, the function of a carrier is not a mere transmission of a tradition; rather, it adds an experiential perspective or a shift of meaning to the whole fabric of society. The experiential aspect allows us to move beyond the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, in that experientially, while “being in society”, we are also capable of “facing society”. While being influenced by society, we in turn influence society as well. We not only accept and follow what is socially common; we also question and interrogate the “communal spirit”, accepting it or rejecting it. There is an interaction not only among individuals which form the foundations for society, but there is also one between the individual and society. The solution to the problem of social order is also offered on another level. While being engaged in the world as individuals, aware of our individuality and its various attitudes, habits, and conceptions about the world, we simultaneously confront the world which is “humanized”. Every institution, every implement, street sign, utterance, and book has a presence pervaded by human experience which, while not our own, is still accessible to us. As we have already shown, experience is universal. The constitution of society and the accessibility of any experience to everyone comprise the foundation of the human communication of sensibility, and the communication of sensibility enhances the development of the individual as a social (sensuous universal) being. Truth 22 The ontological thing is a necessary prerequisite for the explanation of the coherence of cooperative experience, which is fundamental to species-being. The thing can be grasped from an unlimited number of perspectives. Hence, the subject can act in terms of a perspective which correlates to the affective qualities of things. The subject relates to things as a total being.

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The total subject is a conscious being who has an indefinite set of capacities which manifest the subject from a particular perspective. While manifesting the subject, the capacities are correlates of the perspective of things and thus present the different characteristics of things to the conscious subjects. Thus, the total subject is a process of: 1. The manifestation of the subject in and through his/her actualized capacities which are expressions of the subject; and 2. The actualization of the subject’s capacities, which correlate to the particular perspective of things, expressing the things to the subject. The process of the subject’s self-manifestation in and through an increasing number of capacities “totalizes” the subject’s self-expression of things to the subject. Totality is a process toward the maximum self-expression of the subject in terms of the maximum expression of the world of things to the subject. The subject, acting in terms of a thing from a particular perspective, expresses oneself as a whole in a limited manner. The idea of totality is not merely a direction for cognition. It is inherent in subjective activity, which is a mediation between the conscious subject and the things with their total implications. It drives human action from its limited character, as perspectival and partial self-expression, to the more. These more (or indeterminate) possibilities loom, so to speak, on every horizon of the subject’s life and indicate one’s present limits while continuously implying other possibilities. Truth 23 The subject is a synthesis of one’s particular character, humanity, and one’s total possibility of what one can be. It is the telos of the individual and cannot be reduced to anything else. The particular perspective that the individual assumes toward oneself is the presence of the subject to this humanity. Human activity is a particular self-interpretation in terms of the world of things, which is a perspective of the total possibility of one’s humanity. Human action renews itself and is driven forward by an indeterminate quest for totality. It is a striving for totality which is a process of the continuous expression of the subject’s capacities in terms of the world of things and, correlatively, an expression of the world of things to the subject. If the sensuous level of society is co-extensive with the world of things, and social order is developed through the communication of sensibility, then the individual is developed as a sensuous universal being.

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Truth 24 We have claimed that the thing manifests itself in and through its perspectives. Perspectives are the temporal manifestations of the unified thing. The thing becomes in and through its perspectives. The thing is a synthetic unity which is in the process of self-manifestation in correlation to its context. The present perspectives of the unified thing stand in a horizon of consequences. The sensible is not one perspectival meaning of the thing, but also the implications to the past, the future, and to the thing’s context. In short, we have a field of sensible perspectives or expressions of the thing which are implied in the present perspective. These are not formal implications, but content implications. The principle of relevance indicates the relevance of the context in which things exist. Whatever action we may attribute to the thing through its perspective, we cannot conceive of it outside its context. From this viewpoint, we observe a horizon-like fusion between the thing and the action which the thing undergoes from other things. We can say that the thing undergoes actions and transmits them. For things, the distinction from every other thing is never perfectly realized. They possess a relative unity and independence. The thing supports itself on the multitude of things surrounding it. The individual thing is a relative subsistence. The thing exists within a context, and the implication of its context is identical to the relevance of the context for the thing’s existence. It must be clear that not everything within the context is relevant to the thing. Relevance indicates what is needed for the thing’s continuation in existence. For example, equality is symbolic “of the need for more” of something in the situation. Truth 25 Relevance in phenomenology is relevance for the subject. From the social phenomenological viewpoint, relevance denotes a relationship in which the concrete objects are relevant to the subject’s plans and designs (Schutz, 19621966). A particular thing is relevant not to other things within a context, but to the subject and his/her projects. Such a view is not acceptable. If relevance were not basically a contextual relationship among things, then it would be impossible to determine how things could be integrated into a system of relevance for the subject. We must remember that on the basis of the sensuous universal, sense inheres in things. The principle of relevance can be explicated further through meaning. It must not be assumed that the context makes the thing ultimately meaningful as though the thing were a conjunction point of a system of sensible relations. As we recall, the

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thing as a whole is a synthetic unity, and the qualities express the sense of the thing in a particular way or from a particular perspective. This particular perspective is expressive of the thing and is grasped by perceptual activity as “perceptual sense”. It is the unity of the thing which gives unity and synthesis to its manifested perspectives and correlatively gives unity and synthesis to the perceptual meanings. The context actualizes the thing’s specific sense from a perspective through which the relevance of the context is indicated. It can be said that the specification of the sense of the thing, within its context, depends upon the perspective of the thing which is revealed by the context. This means that the complete knowledge of the unified thing requires the knowledge of the manifestation of the sense of the thing in differentiated and relevant contexts. Although the particular manifestations of the thing within a context do not totally determine what the thing is, they present a perspective of the thing correlative to the particular context. For example, a building is not seen only as a building, but also as a courthouse, implying a total context which is relevant to it: it relates itself to trials, police enforcement, judges, lawyers, and such. The relevant context is thus correlated to the particular perspectives of the thing. The manifestations of the thing, within a particular context, yield a perspective of the thing. Truth 26 By employing the sensuous universal’s principle of relevance, we determine that each thing in context implies its context, and things of the context imply their own context; therefore, there is a continuity toward totality, which means that sensibility is self-referencing. Things imply their relevant context and other things, which in turn imply their contexts. The continuous implication of things and their contexts means that a particular thing implies a totality, and correlatively a thing leads the subject in his/her cognition toward the cognition of the totality implied by the thing and its context. Hence, relevance is not merely a centripetal movement but a centrifugal one as well. Only by adding the centrifugal aspect are we able to understand Schutz’s notion of the pursuit of happiness as a relationship to a social world of things and not merely as a relative definition. Rather, all relative definitions are relative to something which is not relative. In turn, the notions of equality and inequality are symbolic of something which unifies the relative definitions. Equality is relative to a situation which, in experience, is an absolute or unequivocal experience. Therefore, the experience of equality is symbolically relevant to the things of situational concern and their sensible implications (which are universal).

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Truth 27 Tying the transcendental to the mundane is necessary for any critical theory or critical evaluation. The priority of the transcendental is the first priority of methodological critique. Without the transcendental, critical theory is impossible; the natural attitude could not be revealed; method could not be evaluated; no progress could be made, nor could the sensuous be transmitted. We must not fall into the trap of a form of reflection which neglects the transcendental. The concept of reflection that is often used by cultural studies overlooks the fact that the “inner turn” of intentionality cannot elevate the co-given reflecting process to a thematic object at the time of reflection. This “turning back” occurs effectively in language as it is spoken. One cannot step behind it; at best one can incorporate it. The sensuous as a mediation on the world does not have a natural necessity in itself. It remains contingent and constitutes a tradition which is not ruled by any laws of being. The sensuous universal demands transcendental truths according to which it can describe, analyze, and compare empirical investigation. By means of this procedure, we are able to see that the concrete life-world is all. Its relative structure has a general structure. The general structure or transcendental structure is that to which everything that exists relatively is bound yet is not relative. We can attend to it with sufficient care, and it is equally accessible to all. The sensuous universal is that which is formal and general, and which remains invariant in the lived world throughout all alterations of the relative. The sensuous universal is the invariant form of all world-lives and worldviews and reveals the essence of all communication theory and all social science—the comparative. The sensuous universal is the condition which allows the exchange of information between specialists and the lay public, European cultures and American cultures. In other words, there is a common structure between them. In every particular world in which one plays a role, one has the world as the horizon of totality which encompasses all particular horizons which are determined by specific interests. In relation to this unity, everyone has his/her own world. On the other hand, what allows comparison is specifically the fact that everyone who has a world is limited. Limits are a transcendental condition for people having different cultures, and they are the condition for different cultures to have something in common. The invariant in all conceivable worlds must be present as something which is shared before all differences of particular worlds. This invariant must be that which is the beginning of all communication. This invariant structure is the transcendental structure of the sensuous-bodily-movement, the sensuous universal. The comparative transition rests upon this structure. Any life-

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world is in itself a sensuous universal, inasmuch as a life-world is a way of saying that one has the world and the possibility of all comparative worlds. To the extent that social science does not thematize the most general conditions for their activity, they are immersed in the “natural attitude”. The sensuous universal invites comparisons and is the condition for social science to be comparative. The sensuous universal is the fundamental principle for all truths or “new truths”. Truth 28 Praxis is the embodiment of self-consciousness and affirms a science of experience. A science based on concrete praxis or experience is a corporeal science. A corporeal science exhibits the virtues of articulating experience (immediacy) and pure movement—human motility, shaping nature in accordance with human requirements. Marx (1967) supplies us with a paradigm for the realization of the sensuous universal through the dialectical relationship of concrete universal and particular-abstract. Concrete and abstract are relational in the manner of wholeness (totality) and partiality. The fully-developed is concrete, and something that is partially developed is abstract. The dialectical relationship of abstract-concrete is a paradigm of universal sensibility. Hence, the task of a corporeal science is to assume the ideal of the universally concrete. This means that science, or philosophy in Marx’s sense, would become experience-based—or world-based—requiring sensuous-bodily motility. This project is exactly what Merleau-Ponty had in mind, as evidenced in his works, especially The visible and the invisible (1968). The epistemological foundation employed by Merleau-Ponty is corporeal intentionality. Fundamental to the project is the articulation of the concrete experience of things. Conscious activity is explicable in terms of things and their relationship to the body-subject. The conscious subject manifests himself/herself in terms of the world of things. There is a correlation between the thing and its perspectives and the activity of the body-subject. The conscious body-subject, while grasping the thing as a whole, expresses the thing only from a limited perspective. The thing and the bodysubject are both expressed in a limited manner. The importance of understanding limitedness in a corporeal way is that humans are capable of transcending the limits and opening up more perspectives. Hence, while looking at a thing from one side, sensing it through perspective, the other sides are “sensed” by the sensible things surrounding the particular thing of my concern. I sense the thing “globally” by virtue of the sensibility embodied in the sensed things. Perspectival sensibility is chiasmed with the perspectival sensibility of everything. A thing manifesting from a particular perspective implies totality. This sensibility universalizes itself:

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1. The experience of a sensed thing is not an experience of mere particularity, but it implicates all possible things of the same order. This is a corporeal or sensible style of operating. 2. The experience of a particular is only possible within a field of implication. The particular implicates the universal field. At the same time, the universal field has a “depth”, which implicates a horizon belonging to the total sensibility of ourselves and our species. A sensibility invites tactile and psychological sensibilities, thereby indicating total corporeality. Truth 29 Thus, sensibilities communicate with each other and provide limitations toward generality and a depth (or fundamental negativity) which further invites exploration by anyone, anytime, anywhere. The movement of sensibility to its generality is the condition for the possibility of the species and of all social life. The sensual universal is transcendental. It is transcendental because it is the condition for the possibility of experience accessible to all, anytime, anywhere. The transcendental is a species condition. In its movement toward generalization, it presumes that any experience (color, emotion, history) assumes the transcendental, therefore demanding a transcendental theory of communication which is grounded in the concrete experience of corporeality. CONCLUSION What is decisive is not the body itself but its relationship. The body possesses limbs and organs, but nothing is subjective. Subjectivity requires a relationship to an ego that is distinguished from its lived body even by a non-reflective consciousness. That this relationship of the body essentially signifies subjectivity means only that the ego grasps itself as an ego of a lived body. It is not that it is a lived body as such, but that it is a lived body of an ego, of a self, that makes it capable of distinguishing what is one’s own from what is alien (in an ordinary sense). The sense of the relationship “in me” and “outside of me” is based on the rationality of a lived body to an ego. In this sense, they belong to me; they are “my own”. The correlation is “what is alien to ego is alien to me”. Things and their relationships do not belong to me; in this sense, even alien persons are not subjective. The manipulation of an apparatus suggests a state of affairs where significance can be understood only after the investigation of geometry (the so-called application of lived space). The expressive world dissipates in the space of action. The expressive characteristics vanish into those required for utility. They lose

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their effectiveness and communicative physiognomy, and they reveal their suitability or resistance in view of a goal. A thing of intuition means a complete thing in the totality of real qualitative fullness, as well as all of its sensibilities which are perceivable, inclusive of what is perceived and what is grasped, along with the grounds of the conception of the thing as an identity, in the flux of perceptual change. Each sensory intuition contains categorical moments—straightforward presence “in person” and “in the flesh”. The order of things among themselves is not a pure relation of position, not a mere constellation, but a situation—an ordering of them which is relative to the here and now of a corporeal subject who apprehends what is sensually intuited. Each relationship in an order obtains its meaning from associative relationships. It is not a factual order but a place of accomplishments of the subject at present—in the here and now. The lived body means a corporeity, like me, and thus is a center of its space of intuition, which is distinct from mine, and which is insurmountably closed to me in my own here (and now). The lived body is the foundation of having possessions. The certitude of the lived body, mediated by its feeling, is a typical certitude “from within”. But this is no “outside” of the “inside”. The boundary between inner and outer runs visibly at the surface of the lived body. Yet, this expression is senseless—a functional unity cannot possess a surface. The lived body, in its strictly phenomenal sense, is on the near side of all separation, physical and psychic. That there is a distinction is founded on corporeity itself, the constituted separation through touch. In touch, there occurs the original communication of the corporeal subject and a world outside. The essence of corporeity is nothing less than a system of functions, not merely a physical body. One must be cognizant of the presupposition of the general sign of life as self-movement. Functionalities are generalities, which lay the foundation for the comprehension of the meaning of a situation—intersubjectivity and individuality as inseparable correlates. The functional body is a “passive domain” and is different from the physiological body. The difference is: 1. The priority of the function of practical experience; and 2. The possibility of understanding the physiological rests on the change derived from practical experience.

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Without the practical domain—constituted by the acquisition of abilities within the parameters of the functional body—the historically transmitted understanding would be un-situated, two-dimensional—in short, bodiless. The practicalfunctional comprises the domain of the practognostic. Part of this chapter has been previously published in the following: Pilotta, J. J., & McCaughan, J. A. (2012). The Sensuous difference: From Marx to this and more. New York: Hampton Press. REFERENCES Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests. Beacon Press. Marx, K. (1967). The writings of the young Marx on philosophy and society. (L. D. Easton & K. H. Guddat, Eds. & Trans.). Garden City: Anchor Books. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Schutz, A. Collected papers (Vol. 1-3). (M. A. Natanson, Ed.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence, 2023, 248-251

68%-(&7,1'(; Abstract Abstraction Algorithm Analogy Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Autopoiesis Awareness

Being

Causal Causality Cause Cognition Communication

Communication, Affective

Communicative Competence Common Sense Computer

Concrete

Contingency Crisis Crisis, Legitimation

2, 7, 8, 89, 126, 132, 146, 147, 151, 157, 160, 175, 178, 208, 231, 232, 244 149, 227 i, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 17, 18, 22, 23, 71, 87, 90, 92, 169, 174, 198, 199, 201, 203 7, 8, 108, 146, 153, 154, 238 i, ii, 1, 3-8, 9-11, 17-20, 22, 23, 27, 32, 34, 35, 55, 58, 60, 68, 69, 70, 71, 90, 92, 144, 146-149, 159, 161, 163, 165-167, 168, 169, 174, 175, 177, 178, 180-184, 185-187, 191-204, 206, 218, 219, 222, 227 1, 11-18, 144 22, 34, 39, 47, 55, 56, 58-64, 66-69, 70-72, 77, 80-83, 88, 102, 104, 122, 123, 131, 137, 146-152, 155, 157-163, 165, 167-178, 180-183, 185, 186, 188-192, 194, 198, 199, 211, 212, 219-221, 225, 235, 236, 238 14, 40, 43, 45-47, 49, 51, 55, 56-59, 63, 67, 71, 72-75, 77-82, 87, 88, 98, 99, 101, 112, 118, 122, 127, 129, 131, 132, 136, 140, 157, 178, 181, 188, 189-191, 200, 210-212, 214, 218, 220, 224, 230, 234-236, 239, 240, 243 6, 9, 13, 26, 36, 83, 100, 104, 167, 212, 221 6, 7, 9, 43, 55, 58, 80, 206 7, 25, 26, 37, 43, 60, 99, 163, 186, 187, 203, 207-209, 211 14, 16, 119, 120, 152, 240, 242 11, 17, 20, 22, 38-40, 45-50, 52, 53, 60-62, 94, 103, 110-115, 126, 127, 143, 148, 157, 159, 160, 165, 175, 176, 178, 179, 204, 227, 230, 236-240, 243, 245, 246 16, 118, 239 35, 37, 39, 42, 51, 53, 147, 175 1, 3, 7-9, 16 2, 4, 6, 10, 11, 22, 30, 33, 71, 87, 88, 94, 95, 97, 98, 101-103, 106-109, 113, 115, 166, 181, 182, 193, 199, 200, 202, 206, 214217, 219, 220 12, 15, 16, 35, 83, 104, 113, 119, 126, 127, 130, 131, 146-151, 154-160, 162, 175-180, 199, 220, 225, 229-232, 236-238, 241, 243-245 26, 73, 85, 91, 96, 151, 179, 185, 198, 199, 200 185, 191, 192 185, 191-194

Algis Mickunas & Joseph Pilotta All rights reserved-© 2023 Bentham Science Publishers

Subject Index

Critical Diacritical Dialogue Discourse

Ethics Embodiment Empiricism Enlightenment Experience

Field

Field, Linguistic Freedom Freedom, Autonomous Generative Genesis Globalization Hermeneutics Horizon

Human Rights Identity Image Inference Information Institution Instrumentality Intentionality Internet of Things (IoT) Intersignification Kinesthesia

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249

8, 18, 35, 65, 133, 155, 193, 194, 196, 197, 202, 208, 211, 212, 223, 224, 230, 231, 235, 236, 243, 244 29-31 19, 114, 151,180, 190, 211, 220, 222, 223, 226 4, 19, 35, 36-38, 58, 63, 64, 68, 72, 79-82, 88, 92, 95, 96, 103, 146-148, 151, 155, 157, 161, 165-170, 172, 173, 175, 177, 189, 199-201, 208, 214, 217 3, 4, 19, 20, 193, 200 16, 22, 30, 46, 58, 68, 70, 80, 90, 108, 117, 146, 169, 177, 216, 227, 233, 244 22 2, 75, 76, 185-190, 204, 206, 208 1, 8, 15, 20, 23, 31, 35, 36, 40, 42, 43, 45, 48, 49, 60, 64-67, 81, 83, 97, 103, 104, 110, 114, 118, 121, 122, 124-126, 131, 132, 138, 147, 153, 157, 165, 170, 171, 175, 176, 178-180, 187, 188, 227, 232, 237, 238, 239, 242, 244-246 15, 25, 29, 31, 32, 44, 46, 49, 50, 55, 58-68, 69, 83, 105, 119, 121-126, 135-139, 141, 142, 143, 147, 151-155, 157-163, 190, 194, 196-199, 201, 221-226, 228, 230, 232, 237, 238, 241, 245 22, 29, 32, 41, 202, 203 ii, 37, 73, 74, 76, 77, 185, 206-211, 218, 219 14, 16, 58, 74, 77, 100, 107, 114, 167, 169, 186, 187, 206, 208211, 215 2, 36, 38 35, 36, 52, 148, 176 70, 101, 115, 143, 161, 165, 166, 168, 169, 181, 214, 216, 219 35, 36, 39, 42, 47, 51-53, 92, 203 29, 37, 51, 64, 77, 88-90, 92, 103, 118, 119, 121-126, 132, 135, 136, 138-143, 147, 148, 150, 157, 158, 163, 169, 173-176, 179, 185, 186, 189, 190, 194-200, 202, 218, 220, 226, 227, 232, 233, 234, 236, 238, 240, 241, 243, 245 167, 191, 206, 207, 209 2, 3, 12, 14, 24, 29, 50, 56, 59, 60, 64-66, 70, 77-80, 82, 84, 94, 121, 127, 141, 151, 152, 161, 165-167, 217, 246 4, 10, 24, 29, 41, 63, 70, 78, 79, 81, 110, 112, 113, 115, 143, 156, 168, 181, 182, 184, 191, 197, 200, 205, 206, 216, 217 8, 9, 98 5, 8, 10, 14, 17, 19, 20, 36, 37, 71, 94, 95, 101, 102, 108-115, 143, 178, 181, 193, 194, 197, 200, 214-216, 243 ii, 3, 4, 17, 18, 36, 51, 90, 130-132, 137, 148, 161, 176, 178, 190, 196, 198, 207, 209, 211, 230-232, 236, 239 19, 55, 57, 70, 80, 92, 147, 150, 175, 185, 187, 189, 191, 199, 202, 205 14, 40, 55, 60-62, 85, 88, 103, 127, 143, 167, 171, 188-190, 227, 236, 243, 244 17, 117, 121, 144 101, 206, 213 24, 137, 138, 146, 149, 150, 152-155, 159, 161-163

250

A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence

Learning Life-world

Lived Body Logic

Logic, Machine Magic Marxism Mathematization Meaning

Metaphysics

Network Perception Phenomenology

Philosophy Possibility

Public Reason Reflexivity Re-presentation Revolution Schema Selectivity Significance Skepsis

Mickunas and Pilotta

4, 6-9, 11, 22, 92, 94, 97, 122-126, 146, 176, 177, 200, 230 i, 20, 36-38, 56, 94, 95, 96, 100-101, 103, 106, 108, 117, 122126, 148-150, 161, 162, 168-171, 176, 181, 183, 187, 188, 190, 213, 214, 216, 217, 219, 221-226, 243, 244 15, 227, 245, 246 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 22, 23-25, 28, 30, 33, 35, 38-41, 43-48, 50, 53, 67, 70, 71, 80, 90, 94, 95, 96-103, 106-109, 112, 113, 115, 146, 151, 153, 160, 161, 165-167, 172, 173, 177, 180-183, 185, 191, 194, 197-199, 206, 208, 213-219 94 ii, 1, 2, 19, 70-72, 78-81, 92, 107, 108, 142, 166, 170, 215, 218 76, 77, 147, 175, 189, 227, 235 70, 83, 84, 105, 165 1, 5, 8, 9, 14, 15, 20, 22, 23, 28-34, 35, 37-44, 47-50, 52, 53, 62, 78, 80, 95, 98, 100, 102, 110, 114, 119-121, 123-126, 130, 131, 148-150, 156, 160, 165, 167, 170, 176-179, 181, 182, 192, 203, 204, 206, 209, 213, 219, 221, 232, 237, 239, 241, 242, 246 23, 33, 55, 56-58, 61, 67, 68, 70-73, 76, 80-84, 86-88, 90-92, 94, 98, 100, 103, 114, 115, 147, 150, 151, 161, 163, 165-168, 170, 174, 175, 177, 178, 184, 185, 189, 191, 199, 200, 206, 210, 212, 214, 217, 231 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10-12, 14, 94, 102, 109-112, 114, 121, 143, 144, 181, 205, 215, 228 8, 9, 14, 23, 42, 67, 72, 82, 84, 94, 103-105, 117, 131, 135-138, 140, 146, 153, 156, 165, 175, 188, 198, 199, 206, 211, 212, 229 i, 1, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18-20, 22-25, 27-31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 43, 47, 48-50, 58, 59, 65, 67, 94, 118, 119, 120, 131, 135-138, 142, 146, 148, 150, 155, 157, 160, 163, 174, 175-179, 185, 189, 206, 230, 231, 233, 236, 239, 241 22, 25, 27, 39, 49, 77, 128, 170, 173, 237, 244 15, 19, 33, 36, 38, 45-50, 55, 65-67, 70-71, 77, 84-90, 92, 94, 105-108, 115, 117-119, 121-127, 132, 134, 142-144, 149, 150, 157-159, 169, 174, 177-179, 183, 185, 188-191, 193-199, 202, 206, 212, 215-218, 220-226, 231-236, 240, 244, 245, 246 5, 6, 7, 22, 49, 78, 88, 124, 185-187, 189, 194, 197, 198, 200, 206, 211, 243 2, 55, 56, 57, 70, 74, 80, 91, 92, 185, 187, 189, 191, 202, 205, 231 35, 51, 53, 89, 90, 117, 153, 158, 194-196, 206, 222-225 117, 135, 136 ii, 17, 74, 79, 83, 101, 102, 104, 150, 181, 214, 219, 222, 227 19, 20, 47, 149 18, 88, 89, 95, 101, 106-109, 117, 122-125, 173, 181, 183, 188, 190, 193, 196, 198, 199, 214, 215, 220, 223, 225, 234 36, 39-41, 46, 50-52, 95, 101, 113, 114, 117, 122-124, 130, 131, 138, 146, 155, 185, 186, 213, 221-223, 225, 231, 245 83, 104

Subject Index

Socio-temporal Space

Space-time Subject

Synchrony Thing

Time

Time Reflex Transcendental

Transformation

Truth Understanding

Universal

Universal, Sensuous World

A Critical Understanding of Artificial Intelligence

251

6, 117, 124 2, 5, 11, 12, 16, 27, 33, 37, 55, 56, 57, 77, 94, 102, 103, 106, 110-115, 121, 128, 133-135, 139, 143, 146, 148, 149, 150, 152, 155, 156, 158-163, 181, 182, 183, 191, 197-200, 214, 215, 219, 220, 227, 228, 245, 246 2, 56, 57, 103, 106, 134, 146, 148, 150, 152, 156, 161-163, 182, 183, 197, 215, 219, 220 14, 33, 36, 38-40, 45, 58, 60, 61, 63, 69, 72-76, 80-82, 84, 85, 91, 92, 98, 101, 104, 105, 114, 117-120, 131, 133, 135, 141, 146, 148, 149, 161, 163, 165-178, 181, 183, 184, 185-188, 202, 206, 211, 212, 214, 227, 233, 235, 239-242, 244, 246 35, 39-41, 89, 102, 181, 215, 238 22, 24, 25, 29, 43, 44, 55-57, 61, 63, 68, 70, 72, 78, 80, 81, 86, 88, 118-200, 127-130, 132, 133, 136, 138, 139, 141, 150, 160, 182, 184, 190, 227, 228, 239-242, 244-246 2, 6, 9, 10, 19, 25, 26, 28, 34, 36, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 50, 52, 55, 56-60, 63-65, 67-69, 71, 77, 89-91, 94, 101-103, 106, 110-115, 117, 121-129, 131-144, 146-148, 150, 152-163, 168, 179, 181, 182, 183, 185, 189-191, 193, 195-204, 214-225, 227, 228, 230, 234, 235, 238, 239, 243, 245 117, 124-126, 222, 223 15, 19, 34, 35, 39, 42, 43, 47-53, 58, 60, 62, 68, 136, 142, 146148, 151, 155, 162, 165, 169, 170, 171, 174, 175, 178-182, 188, 189, 190, 199, 202, 205, 231, 236, 238, 243, 245 2, 12, 16, 40, 64, 71, 73, 74, 95, 98, 100, 103, 110, 111, 115, 117, 122, 124, 125, 190, 195, 213, 217, 219, 222-224, 230, 232, 236 45, 50, 75, 82, 87, 91, 96, 98, 112, 123, 147, 175, 190, 227-247 ii, 1, 7-9, 12, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 33, 34, 35-38, 41, 42, 44, 47-51, 55-57, 60, 62, 63, 65, 70, 72, 73, 77, 81, 82-84, 87, 91, 94, 96, 97, 105, 107, 109, 118, 122, 124, 127, 131, 136, 139, 144, 146, 148, 151, 153, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 170-176, 178, 179, 181, 185, 188, 203, 206, 207, 214, 220, 223, 225, 227, 232-234, 236, 237, 244, 246, 247 6, 26, 34, 36, 61, 62, 83, 97, 104, 105, 112, 118, 120, 127,131, 146, 147, 149, 155, 156, 166, 167, 169, 173, 175, 178, 179, 206, 207, 210, 220 118, 120, 228-237, 239, 240, 241, 243-244 ii, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14-16, 20, 22, 25, 28, 32, 33, 36-38, 40, 41, 45, 56-61, 63, 64, 66, 70, 71-89, 92, 94-110, 113, 115, 117119, 122-138, 140-143, 146-152, 154-163, 165-177, 180-184, 185, 186, 188, 190, 194, 197, 198, 199, 201-204, 211-226, 227246