The Tartarus of AI - Artificial Immanence in the Dungeons of Ontology. Antiquity to Middle Ages
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: From Plato’s mimesis to Aquinas’ doctrine that art produces only accidental forms, the Western metaphysical tradition has systematically denied artefacts a sui generis mode of existence. Across Antiquity and the Middle Ages, artificial objects appear as imitations, derivative composites, or perceptual media—never as autonomous loci of ontogenesis. This paper reconstructs this long genealogy, tracing how Plato’s theory of imitation, Aristotle’s hylomorphism, Epicurean–Lucretian simulacra, and the Aristotelianism of Averroes and Aquinas converge in an architecture of exclusion: technical beings borrow being from life, divinity, or nature but never generate it. I argue that this inherited configuration underwrites modern default attitudes toward machines, including those in the digital sphere: AI, algorithms, and virtual artefacts are often treated as instruments of human intentionality rather than entities with their own ontological trajectories. By recovering the metaphysical roots of this bias, I show why debates on digital agency must either perpetuate or reconfigure these ancient–medieval categories. The paper thus forges a bridge between historical ontology and contemporary philosophy of technology, offering conceptual tools for thinking technical being beyond the dungeon of imitation and accident.
Author: Garattini, Ludovic
Institution: Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7077489463
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