The Haft and the Eye: Being, Representation, and the AI Epoch
Figshare July 18, 2026 DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.33027701 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Narrative Embodied cognition Consciousness Representation politics Proposition Immediacy Epistemology Aesthetics Realism |
| Key points | Argues that AI represents the completion of the Western representational project and may force a return to practice as primary, inflected by representational consciousness. |
Abstract
How does Being know itself, and what is lost in that knowing? Using William Golding’s TheInheritors as narrative foundation, this paper draws on Heidegger, Wittgenstein, N■g■rjuna,Hofstadter, and Kastrup to show that consciousness requires fragmentation of primordial unity:the perspectival “I” is both necessary for self-knowledge and the wound of separation. Tracingan epochal arc from pre-Socratic immediacy to artificial intelligence, it argues that AIrepresents the completion, not merely the intensification, of the Western representationalproject. Where Homo sapiens displaced Neanderthals by combining embodied practice withabstract representation (blade and haft), AI inverts this structure: it perfects the haft whilepossessing no hand. This forced displacement may accomplish what philosophy argued butculture refused — a return to practice as primary, and the emergence of a third condition:practice permanently inflected by having passed through full representational consciousness. Acompanion paper develops the linguistic-structural and empirical grounding for this argumentthrough Halliday’s stratification model and gerontolinguistic evidence; the present papermakes the philosophical and epochal case.