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Showing posts with the label language and AI

Language After the Subject: From Plato to LLMs

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  Introduction Plato’s dialogues begin with suspicion. Poets, according to Socrates, speak not from knowledge but from divine frenzy. In Ion , he tells the rhapsode: “You are not speaking about Homer with knowledge… you are possessed.” And in the Republic , he warns that poets deal in shadows, imitations of imitations, and should be exiled from the ideal city. Only the philosopher, guided by reason, should govern speech and thought. Yet beneath this judgment lies a deeper anxiety: the instability of the speaking subject. Who truly speaks when one speaks? Is the voice of the philosopher grounded in reason, or is all language animated by forces beyond our grasp? This question reverberates through Western thought, from the Cartesian cogito to the unconscious of Freud, from Nietzsche’s genealogies to Lacan’s linguistic subject, and finally, into the uncanny speech of large language models. Across these thresholds, the sovereign speaker dissolves. Meaning becomes a game played beh...

The Post-Turing Test: AI, Creativity, and the End of the Cartesian Mind

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  Introduction For over seventy years, the Turing Test has served as a benchmark for assessing machine intelligence. In his 1950 paper, Alan Turing proposed that if a machine could conduct a conversation indistinguishable from that of a human interlocutor, it could be deemed intelligent. This test, focused on linguistic mimicry, implied a limited criterion: deception through dialogue. Yet recent developments in artificial intelligence have called this standard into question. Contemporary AI systems generate original poetry, compose music, and construct intricate arguments—achievements that far exceed mere imitation. These capacities compel a reassessment of what counts as intelligence and, more deeply, what we mean by mind. This article argues that AI’s evolving capacities not only outstrip Turing’s original test but also destabilize Cartesian assumptions about the mind as a seat of conscious, rational thought. By situating intelligent algorithms within the philosophical fram...

Signification Without Us: Rethinking Semiotics in the Age of AI

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Introduction: The End of Anthropocentric Meaning For centuries, semiotics has remained tethered to the human mind, assuming that meaning emerges solely through human interpretation. However, advances in artificial intelligence and critical theory demand a reevaluation of this assumption. The thought experiment of the falling tree challenges whether perception is necessary for sound, just as post-structuralist theory questions whether meaning requires a conscious subject. By examining Saussure’s linguistic theory, Barthes’ radical displacement of authorship, and Derrida’s concept of arche-writing, this article argues that the process of meaning-making is not bound to human cognition. Instead, meaning functions autonomously as a structural force , revealing the necessity of a Post-Human Semiotics . The Thought Experiment: Sound Without a Listener? The classic question— If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? —challenges the role of perce...