An encounter with Jan M. Broekman, "Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversation" (Springer Nature, 2023): Part 7 -- Chapter 6 ("The Non-Naïve-Natural")

 

 To my great delight, I was asked to review Jan Broekman's brilliant new work, Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversation (Springer Nature, 2023). The work is published as Volume 8 of the Series Law and Visual Jurisprudence, for which I serve as an Advisory Editor.

Knowledge in Change approaches ancient and perplexing issues of the organization of human collectives  within a rationalized understanding of the world in which these collectives function (exteriorization) and the investigation of the human individual as disaggregated components of that world of human social relations (internalization). These are usually articulated  by knowledge guardians as issues of phenomenology (a philosophy of experience; meaning through lived experience),

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epistemology (theories of knowledge; the rationalization of reality) and intersubjectivity (shared perceptions of reality; the experience of knowledge as social relations, the rationalization of human interaction at every level of complexity). All of these currents and problems presume the humanity as the only or the central subject of interest. 

But the book does much more than that. It provides a basis for re-thinking the fundamentals of the way in which one understands the interface between humanity and its increasingly autonomous technology, and between the idea of humanity as innate in itself against the reality that the human may now be more intensely manifested in its interfacing with increasingly self-generative machine intelligence and the hardware within which it resides. The consequences for everything from philosophy to a philosophy of knowledge, to core insights for the organization of social relations within a world that is now populated by carbon and silicon based intelligence may be quite profound.  Human social collectives already fear and desire this new world--the engagement with artificial intelligence and its consequences is but a tip of that iceberg.  While humanity started this century secure in its conceit that it was the center of all things, by century's end a very different form of intersubjectivity may well be the basis of the ruling ideology for humanity within its natural and machine orders.

It is with that in mind that in this and several posts that follow I will review Knowledge in Change. This Part 7 examines Chapter 6 of the book, entitled "The Non-Naïve-Natural" and my own engagement with it.  

Broekman here moves from the interludes of Chapter 5 to one of its principal implications for the digital--the challenge of the natural-artificial divide. That divide is not merely a binary but an ideological position--that one--the analog, human, deductive, etc.--serves as both baseline and organizing rationality for consciousness and epistemology.  The other is consequential--artificial, unconscious and dependent. The interrogation of that ideological position is a first step toward the realization of plural subjectivity--of the consciousness and then sentience of artificial intelligence. To that end, it is necessary first to consider the notion of the natural, the digital, and the self. Those concepts, re-imagined, then can be used to reconsider the notion of Sprachgestalten “configurations” as a prelude to an initial consideration of the critical concept of conversion and its relation to cognition in the digital. The ultimate challenge of the digital--to move away from a presumption that everything must be translated into and be understood as a function of the analog!

 

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Additional posts will consider each of the other nine chapters that make up this work. Links to the discussion of the book:

Part 1: Preface

Part 2: Chapter 1 (Minds, Moons and Cognition)

Part 3: Chapter 2 (Fluidity and Flow)

Part 4: Chapter 3 (Post-Dialectics)

Part 5: Chapter 4  (Flow and Firstness)

Part 6: Chapter 5 (Interludes: Changing Worlds Changing Words) 

Part 7: Chapter 6  ("The Non-Naïve-Natural")

Part 8: Chapter 7 ( "Plurality and the Natural")

Part 9: Chapter 8 ("Rearguards of Subjectivity)"

Part 10: Chapter 9 ("Conversions Convert Us All")

Part 11: An Epilogue (Chapter 9.5 ("Climate and Change")

Full discussion draft available for download SSRN here.

8. Chapter 6 (The Non-Naïve-Natural)

 

Broekman returns here to the challenge of encasing philosophical inquiry within the language lifeworld of the dialectic, and its consequences for breaking through a philosophy of the analog and of stop-time freeze framing of the human condition into the digital.  To that end, he starts by putting up against each other the concept of the “natural” (Broekman, supra, pp. 93-95); the “digital” (ibid., pp. 95-99); and the “self” (ibid., pp. 99-105). These are then connected in Sprachgestalten “configurations” (ibid., pp. 105-109). All are prelude to “conversion” (ibid., 109-115).

 

Broekman starts by reminding us that the term natural, as an anchoring concept of cognition, has been changed as to meaning and psychological relevance (ibid., 94). That transformation has a cause (the explosion of the digital onto the scene of cognition) and an effect, “whether what is at home  in natural languages will also find a place (or will be replaced) in digital forms of expressivity” (ibid.). Unstated, but also critical, is whether the natural in natural language might serve, itself, as a bridging element between the subjectivities of the physical and the digital worlds. This is made necessary as fixed identities and ego-positions that could be delineated and referenced in social relations  (Broekman’s “social patterns,” ibid., p. 93) have become detached and digital. By that  is meant that the basis of knowledge itself is no longer anchored in the analog physical and observable world but itself ac quired a sensibility of “practical prescripts” (ibid,)  grounded in “floating data  linked to special electronic activities” (ibid.). The consequence for Broekman suggest emancipating forces of the human mind made possible by these new forms of inter-activity.  It also suggests, the emancipation of the virtual mind as an autonomous ego-position—related, to be sure, to its creators--but distinct either as to trajectories of knowledge (the simulation and model) or as to the generation of ego position and thus sentience in the response to stimulation (generative AI).

 

It might be useful here as well to detach the digital  from its natural food source.  That is to say that while the references to electronic are meant to suggest difference, they ought not to be understood as the central characteristic of the digital.  Electronic is to the digital, perhaps for the moment (but only for the moment) as chlorophyl is to plant life.  That is to be distinguished from the relationship between hemoglobin and animal life.  It has potent impact, to be sure in the sense of the structures necessarily built on those foundations, but they are not the thing itself. “So, it is important and not simple to understand the term ’natural’ as a new expression for the ‘evidence’ modern patterns of thought represent today in the combination of analog, digital, AI and Quantum patterning.” (Ibid, p. 94). That, in turn, requires the recognition that for studying cognition in this new space of plural identity, a differentiation of natural and non-natural is necessary.  Perhaps better put—a sensitivity to the differences between the natural in the analog and the natural in the digital—and the natural in the spaces that separate and attach them—is now necessary.

 

To develop these insights, Broekman, quite rightly, draws on Husserl (Edmund Husserl, First Philosophy: Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920-1925) (Sebastian Luft and Thane M. Naberhaus (trans); Dordrecht; Springer Nature , 2019 (1925)). Especially useful the ego positions of  the non-naïve natural,  and its second and third positionings in the phenomenological and the transcendental. From this he draws six ordering points (Broekman, supra, pp. 94-95). First, that it is necessary to distinguish—to separate, to draw lines, to acknowledge spaced between—natural and nob-natural positions. That points not only to the basic dialectical orientation of the analog  but also to the binary language of the digital.  Second, a further distinction must be made between a naïve and a non-naïve natural position. Third, this distinction carries over to the gap or spaces between analog and digital expressivity. Fourth, linguistic research requires focus on the non-naïve-natural and its analog borderlands. Fifth, the borderlands themselves remain fluid—and that fluidity brings back concepts of the flow (and a reminder that in the new ordering of plural subjectivity it is the flow rather than the fixity within flow that constitutes the basis of cognition. “In other words: to achieve meaning, one needs attitude, i.e., ego positioning” (ibid., p. 95). Last, the non-naïve natural position is the basis for situating analog and digital expressivity in ordinary life.

 

With this basis in the natural, Broekman takes the reader  to the digital and digital expressivity. Here the major point, and from the perspective of the physical world a fairly radical one—that digital expressivity is itself a new naïve natural, and thus as a basis for its own cognition. The consequences follow.  First there is little value in distinguishing the digital from the analog on the basis of artificiality.  In a sense both physical and digital planes are artifices—created—but on different though related foundations. Their differences create dialectic, but the notion of artificiality provides little use here in the sense that self-fabrication applies in all realms of the natural (Broekman, supra, pp. 997). But the issue of artificiality remans potent for philosophy.  Broekman weaves it into the discussion of the difference in digital expressivity grounded in its nature (its naturalness?!), and thus  creating the space between the natural (analog) and the artificial (digital) by reference to the means of the communication of its sentience—natural (subjectivity) versus the  artificial (data). And yet subjectivity is data, and data is subjective in the sense that it acquires its meaning through its context (Broekman’s reference to the interconnectivity of devices; ibid., p 97-98). And thus the complication--not of the thing itself but the judgment embedded in the way that analog expressivity communicates it.

 

And, indeed, it is with the problem of artificiality, that one can more directly confront the great difficulty of modernity (and the post-modern) in the face of plural subjectivity embedded within the social relations of physical and silicon based intelligence. The term itself posits a hierarchically based binary in which one ‘thing’ proceeds from a superior thing with respect to which the superior is its maker. The Latin derivation—artificiam (a work of art; skill; theory, system)—suggests both a thing created (facere) and a creator (artifex).  That is the great conceit of the postmodern, especially with respect to its “artificial” intelligences (Etymology online, “artificial”). It is this ideology of creative hierarchy—and dependence—on which much of the narcissism of modernity—from Nietzsche through Husserl, Foucault, Derrida and the usual suspects—lies.  But it is not just a narcissism (which is a less nice way of describing an ideological presumption of subjectivity and its “inter-ness.” It is the hierarchy and sense of dependence that tends to cripple the view when, as Broekman so relentless strives, modernity encounters the soul of its creature.  Again, back to the warning of Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein (supra), and the deeper warning of Genesis.

 

15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. * * * 22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. (Gen 2:15-17; 3:22-23).

 

Taken in its contemporary understanding, one gets a better sense that, from the perspective of the Divine Creator, humanity was itself an “artificial” intelligence, which the Lord Creator sought to control by forbidding that artificial life form from, in the language of the times, eating from the Tree of Knowledge and, more importantly, the Tree of Life.  Like modern human institutional organs, humanity now looks at its “artificial” intelligences and fearing consumption of the Trees of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and of the Tree of Life, that these creations might become “as one of us.” (See, e.g., “Principles of Artificial Intelligence Ethics for the Intelligence Community;” “Artificial Intelligence Ethics Framework for the Intelligence Community” (v.1.0 ; June 2020); Principles for the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence in the United Nations System (2022)). But there is no artificial in this context—at least to the extent that it is meant as a shorthand for an ideology of dominance and dependence.  There is dominance—within the domain of the human, the silicon based intelligence must assume a guided role—but that is politics and expediency—it is not “natural.” Nor is it particularly relevant to the progression of the natural as it proceeds from the naïve to the phenomenological, and to transcendence as innately a human condition.  The iterative progression of “artificial” silicon based intelligence has yet to be explored in terms other than substantially relational and presumptively dependent on and proceeding through the human. It is for that reason, perhaps, that Broekman’s insight about the need for translation of the digital into the language of the analog becomes inevitable—but only for the human.

 

The problem of communication produces one of essence. Is communication an act of self-actualization (in singular or plural form in the analog) or does it now acquire a distinct dimension in the digital? Self-actualization has indeed been the holy grail of modernist and post-modern philosophy—the apotheosis of carbon based life form. Yet that may be a conceit, one that is exposed by the digital manifestation of the self-created in its own image.  That (artificial) self, that mirroring, exposes (again) the pragmatic turn in the movement from phenomenology to transcendence—that is from self-actualization to pragmatism. “Cognition in the digital world changed our knowledge. What something is had in digital settings to be understood as: how something  must be used” (Broekman, supra, p. 98). At last one returns to good old fashioned Enlightenment-Marxist-Abrahamic roots: the subject is no itself but is constituted towards an ends. Self-actualization reduces to its essence—duty and responsibility.  And, indeed, one sees tis expressed all around human social relations, in the simultaneous apotheosis of both notions of (1) human autonomy built into human rights architectures and (2) human responsibility (either individually or institutionally) for the human rights impacts of their actions built into the architecture of human rights based compliance systems (Cf., Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights & Public Health Emergencies (Draft of 20 May 2023).  Broekman sees it as the essence of the digital: “It may seem confusing, but we conclude that the many activities on our computer or smartphone must be characterized as a universal form of instructional pragmatism” (ibid., p. 98). I see it as the essence of the sentience trigger of plural subjectivity.

 

A point worth underscoring here is Broekman’s quite prescient insight that even the communication of the digital remains difficult n a context n which everything must still be translated to the analog for transmission to the physical world of carbon based lifeforms (Broekman, supra, pp. 98-99). “It is therefore no surprise that in this light, digital types of language must apparently be re-positioned in analog patterns to become effective. T is very important to underline that digital expressivity exists only when the digital can be received and revived in forms and terms of the analog!” (ibid., p. 98). That is rue enough—in the analog.  But it also points to the essential role of conversion, not merely of the flow, but of the expressivity between the analog and digital spaces. 

 

All of this inevitable leads back to the Self (Broekman, supra, pp. 99-105).This is not yet another regurgitation of modalities of self-actualization, self-centering, or the relational self in a world of selves.  One confronts here the cognition among and within multiple selves who themselves occupy spaces between the physical and virtual in the context of perception and its expression (ibid., p. 100). All jumble is then tied, again, to the way in which the desire to distinguish between language natural to the self and language that is artificial in the sense that it “belonged” in another sphere. Broekman focuses on the way in which language is natural (text and speech) but the language of mathematic is artificial, one that he rejects (ibid). Here reconfiguring the issue within the flow is helpful—and semiotics more helpful still. Here Broekman draws on Colapietro’s reading of Pierce (VM Colapietro, Peirce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective  in Human Subjectivity (State University of New York Press, 1989, p. 67). Fist there must be a space between the self and the stream of signs that use the self as a medium.  In a sense eirce describes the self as a smartphone that has its own essence but distinct from the flow in which it is embedded and for which it functions.  Function (the pragmatic) and consciousness (ego) can be distinguished, though they may not exist apart. Second, to follows that the self (and now the selfie-Self-E) are semiotic processes encased in objects—carbon or non-carbon based.

 

Cognition, then, assumes a dual interplay between the objectivity of the ego (its housing) and the processes through which sentience is achieved (the flow; signs); but also between analog and digital consciousness, each in its own lifeworld.

 

In other words, the expression ‘to be’ and its neighboring concept ‘natural’ embrace a meaning, which depends on whether  it is applied to objects or to humans. If there are multiple regions of ontology, as the Self experiences  in our smartphone days, how then should we articulate the word ‘to be’ and how do we discuss the question whether any pre-existing natural evidence should be awakened by a breach that ‘exists’  for all humans alike? (Broekman, supra, pp. 101-102).

 

That breach exists for non-carbon based intelligence as well within the analytics of simulation and in the iterative cognition of generative AI.

 

The digital thus complicates al already complicated, though delightfully self-absorbed, journey of a philosophy of the self that might through the expressivity of language provide a means of rationalizing the self in its natural environment.  That no longer makes sese where the essence f the self has been split and the natural-artificial binary has been challenged in the sense that mirroring the analog and digital self also mirrors the essence of the natural (what is natural n the physical world and what is natural in the virtual world are different); the natural is not transposable into the digital; and the digital natural is artificial in the analog domains. “Philosophy wants to be a discourse as an ultimate linguistic form to clarify the essence of being and cognition. An ego is thus belonging to pluralities, which sustains the development of human life. In this light also unfolds the plurality of pluralities, in other words: the actual comings and goings of  the ego  in the flow of human consciousness” (Broekman, supra, p. 104). BU the same ow applies to a philosophy of the selfie and the Self-E!

 

At last Broekman comes now to the concept of configuration, or better put, of Sprachgestalten (Broekman, supra, pp. 105-109). Here the wrestling with Benjamin’s concept connects the relational, dialectic (and now iterative) essence of language to being in interesting ways (Walter Benjamin, “Über Srache überhaupt un über die Sprache des Menschen,” in Walter Benjamin (ed) Gesammelte Schriften Bd II, 1 (Frankfurt a. M.; Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977 (1916)). In this context the ‘personality’ of language—that is the intimate connection between speaker and language, is embedded within the broader intimacies of the interaction between speaker and listener, and the meta-intimacies between both speaker and listener and the cognition of meaning which reinforces the essence of the self positions of all actors in this complex flow of stimulus producing specific reaction. It exposes, as well, what lies beneath the skin of coding language.

 

These are reduced to six points. The first touches on translation (Broekman, supra, p. 106). Here Sprach-Gestalt is understood as broader than the concept of syntax. It is a self-aware language; one that translates itself even as it is deployed.  The second focuses on ‘Sprach’ and sentience. “Language thus communicates a human being with its essence: not only with other humans but finally with life itself” (ibid., p. 107). Third, touches on the subjectivity of language apart from the subjectivity of the speaker-listener-interpretive community (“what language realizes is always more than what can be expressed in language! (ibid). Fourth, is the temporality represented by language.  The speech act freezes a moment in the flow through the intervention of a device the function of which is to stop time through interaction based on the object of the speech act. Language is the flow, speech is the act. Fifth, one moves from the idea that each spoken or written word is a a matter of participation in a language-driven event to the idea that translations unfold meaning in the shadow of digital, analog and now quantum forms. Last, language now functions in a space of simultaneity These are especially important where one aligns ‘natural’ and artificial’ language.  Indeed the act of coding for AI represents a very distinct kind of Sprachgestalt which produces synergies and actualizations that are built on iterative communications between language worlds of languages.

 

It is with this in mind that Broekman can approach  again in a more complicated way the concept of conversion (Broekman, supra, pp. 109-115). Broekman starts with a simple yet usually overlooked framing concept: the objectification of text does not ensure a singularity of perception. This is as much of significance to the shepherds of text (policymakers, legislators influencers, novelists and the like) as it ought to be to coders and scrum masters who take as a given meanings that never are.  “Our words do not belong to one, but to more than one type or category of expressiveness [I might add performativity with a nod to Judith Butler ( Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay on Phenomenology and Feminist Theory’ In Sue-Ellen Case (ed.) Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990))] and yet must share meanings with unknown numbers  of others during unknown periods of time” (Broekman, supra, p. 109).  But this expressive multiplex must be rationalized. And to that, Broekman offers the concept of conversion, which in this last part of Chapter 6  he offers some first and introductory thoughts.

 

Broekman digs into the term’s etymology to enhance its meaning and the trajectories of its development in the semiotics of the analog and the digital.  Conversion suggests “a ‘turning around’ or a ‘revolution’; it suggests an ‘attitude change’  or ‘alternation’ that focuses on lingual expressivity on the multiplex of plural subjectivity (Broekman, supra, p. 109). Conversion changes one thing into another; it is, at its core one thing nor another but a pathway to all; it the bridge in states of interludes and the lexicon of the digital and the analog. Conversion, rather than syntax or grammar, is at the center of meaning; a conclusion well drawn from the discussion of Sprachgestalt in the prior section. But more than that, conversion is both aligned with, and in some instances  the gateway toward, cognition; indeed in the digital, conversion overtakes the form and function of cognition (Ibid., p. 110).  “Indeed, conversion has in Occidental culture always been a component of cognition. But this has changed in our das of digital dominance, so that we envision a total reverse: cognition is not anymore without reference to conversion and the latter is often predominant” (Broekman, supra, p. 111).

 

But conversion is also to some extent backwards looking.  First, as Broekman argued more generally earlier, conversion may only be manifested in the analog—at least if it is to speak to humans. Conversion ma reflect digital expressivity but it must be “converted to analog knowledge to obtain general effect” (Broekman, supra, p. 111). More importantly, one still approaches the naïve and natural through the lens of the analog, through the spirit of humanity. Humans are stuck with their natural languages. Conversion is required to move between those languages and (1) the artificial languages of humanity (mathematicise, coding and the like); and the language of the digital (Broekman, supra., p. 112 “In other words: any complete, linguistically correct, and acceptable communication  must be tied to some sort of naturalness od expression” Ibid)). But that naturalness continues to be measured as against the human.  That is a proposition that Broekman accepts but needs not—that the natural is fixed. Indeed it is not. What is natural to humans is artificial and alien to silicon based intelligence in the digital. That remains terra incognita—but it follows from the development of plural subjectivities. For Broekman that suggests the translation function of conversion; and it does (ibid). But it also suggests the conversion function in both directions.

 

Beyond translation, there is a semiotics to conversion. “To obtain a word-function, a sign should be converted: it means that its conversion makes it enter a field of properties, which are not present in non-natural language” (Broekman, supra, p. 113). Again the vectors of natural and un-natural are relational in the world of generative AI. Its semiotics also affects the constitution of language as a knowledge field. “In other word: ‘language’ obtains by means of conversion features that seem to be ‘translatable’ from the natural to the non-natural and vice versa” (Broekman, supra, p. 113). That, Broekman suggest is the means by which the binary language of code can be made accessible to carbon based life.  It does not suggest, however, how  the un natural language of humans can be converted into the language of code—as language rather than as technique.

 

Though the question is avoided its effect is noted—at least by reference to the need for conversion from the digital to the analog. “No wonder that notions of and about conversion reach from entertainment and artistic manifestations  to sports and psychological therapy” (Ibid.). It is manifested as well by the process of datafication that suggest, top Broekman, the need for a constant conversion back to the language language of carbon based life.  It may also, however, suggest that a conversion from the analog to the digital may be required as well. Here, however, the normative blinders of the analog  may pose problems—not of conversion but of the transposition of the taboos of one domain to another.  This, indeed, is the point at which conversion appears to have taken a pause in the analog. The plethora of efforts to control, manage, and utilize generative AI all start form the supposition that one must project the normative preferences of the analog onto what is otherwise considered the void of digital normativity. These are echoed by Broekman (supra, p. 113) in his reference to the difficulties posed for conversion of privacy in the context of digital programs like Facebook and Twitter.

 

This, then, suggests what Broekman calls Conversion Type (Digital-Analog-Conversion; ibid. p. 1114). While it appears unidirectional, it does also suggest the production of “simmers of (analog/natural) reality to the digital (ibid.). But this requires a digital semiotics that has yet to be developed (ibid.) if only to get greater clarity of the effect of two way conversion.   But there is more to this than clarity.”The issue is urgent, because digital language and its many forms of communication illustrate new forms of connectivity as if they concern inter-human communication. Norm consciousness and socio-ethical barriers seem not to exist in regions of digital expression; identities of actors are nominated by IT-ers and thus are only a technical issue” (Broekman, supra, pp. 114-115).  But this will wait. In preparation for deeper consideration of conversion, though, Broekman leaves us (and this chapter) with a  redefinition of conversion:

 

Conversion seems the new cognition. Be attentive, keep with the life-stream of attention, precision and actuality. Be fit—your knowledge will be relevant even after your presence. Embrace the actual, adapt to patterns spread out for you in the worlds of activity and attention.  Bridge the gaps that are caused by the development of cognition—don’t miss the stream which circulates around you, . . Convert at the right moment—meditate later! (Broekman, supra, p. 115).