A Time to Scatter Stones and a Time to Gather Stones Together

I. Preface

In Lawrence Block’s Eight Million Ways to Die, Chance, an African-American character, shares a visceral bond with a mask from his homeland, describing it not merely as an artifact but as “the real thing.” This mask, for him, is a bridge to ancestral memory, embodying one of the most extreme possibilities of temporal generation of thingness. “The very first piece I bought, I still have it. It’s hanging in the bedroom. A Dan mask. Poro Society. I didn’t know shit about African art but I responded to the mask’s artistic integrity. […] What happened was I looked at that piece of smooth black wood and I was looking in a mirror. I saw myself, I saw my father, I was looking back through the damned ages. You know what I’m talking about?” It was this passage—alongside William Faulkner’s use of the clock in The Sound and the Fury as a haunting reminder of time’s relentless pull, and Maupassant’s portrayal of furniture animated with eerie life—that pushed me, as a literature undergraduate, to question the silent power of things as an agency creating our sensible world in philosophy.

Since the time of Socrates, philosophers have examined the ontological constitution of beings and the structural relations that underlie their intelligibility. Initially, human subjectivity—often understood as a stable, enduring substance—was taken as the primary ground of meaning. More recently, however, this notion has been called into question. Subjectivity is increasingly recognized as finite, contingent, and context-sensitive, undermining the assumption that intention or significance derives solely from an unwavering, purely internal source. Consequently, we must clarify how meaning can arise when our interpretive vantage points confront things with their own temporal profiles, historical entanglements, and textual mediations. Far from being neutral data, such things possess inherent configurations—rooted in their form and telos—that acquire significance only through linguistic practices.

My research addresses this gap by systematically defining ontological relationships within the phenomenological tradition. It specifically examines the recursive interactions through which beings—both human and non-human—mutually shape and redefine their realities. More broadly, I investigate the impact of these processes on the constitution of historical existence and its temporal dynamics. Art and aesthetics play a central role in this work, as they often encapsulate and condense these processes into concentrated, evocative forms. Furthermore, by extending this framework into the domain of artificial intelligence, specifically large language models, I aim to show the particular function algorithmic text generation fulfills in reframing conditions of meaning constitution outside our own mind.

II. Model

While I do not primarily identify as an analytic philosopher, I will employ a series of formal models to elucidate the framework I have developed throughout my graduate career. This framework offers a non-linear model that maps the mutual imbrication and evolution of beings within their ontological landscapes, introducing new concepts such as metaontic awareness, aesthetic ontogenesis, and cycling worldliness.

In the model, time is structured following Martin Heidegger as ecstatic temporality, where past, future, and present are interdependently layered. The past (P) persists as thrownness, providing the ontological backdrop that informs and limits future possibilities. The future (F) unfolds as a horizon of anticipated possibilities, which only become actualized in the present (A) through the act of reversal. The present emerges as a dynamic synthesis of what has been and what is to come:

Every moment participates in the ongoing construction of meaning. In the totality of significances, the thing acts as a nodal point. Unlike an object, which is a cognitive representation of a thing, the thing in its lived encounters is an evolving time-space. Each encounter leaves traces that reshape its ontic content as preserved in logos (in Heidegger’s words, the gathering gatheredness), even when the thing is only recalled, dreamed of, imagined, or hinted as the absent.

It is noteworthy that encounters with Φ can emerge as purely embodied interactions, that is, skilled actions that do not require conscious deliberation or reflection. Essentially, they unfold in sensible forms, which exist as pre-understood backgrounds of meaning, forming the basis for further interpretation and engagement without needing explicit conceptualization. This thinging process is inherently historicizing, as encounters draw forward Φ’s preimage—the sedimented layers of prior meaning-making—and reconfigure it into a postimage, projecting new possibilities. Many of these possibilities remain latent, yet each potential glimpsed within the encounter becomes an immanent part of Φ’s being in that instance. This creates a labyrinthine structure, where Φ embodies not only what it has been and what it currently is but also what it might have been or could still become. At any spatiotemporal juncture, Φ serves as both an opening and a closure. At this point, Φ’s nonradiant appearance (φαίνεσθαι) arises from its self-concealment, which marks the limits of sensibility:

This formula represents how time-spaces of indeterminacy accumulate, creating a sort of uncanny presence that simultaneously reveals and withholds the transcendent.

In the meantime, when we use the thing in its equipmentality, the wear and decay of it confirm the threshold of its temporality and express a deeper existential truth about finitude. This leads to an ontological disclosure of worldliness:

Then, metaontic awareness is triggered when the interplay of thinging, equipmentality, and nonradiant appearance allows the individual temporality to glimpse its own finitude through Φ’s ontological disclosure:

Metaontic awareness is the notion I define as the perceptual transition where conceptual understanding yields to aesthetic attunement as well as its disruption. This transition happens when meaning is no longer sensed as constrained by cognitive categories but as Φ’s self-authorizing presence that is always retreating. This awareness occurs precisely at the boundary where composed homogeneity, which describes how things appear within temporal-spatial contexts as structured givenness (following Kant: though this appearance is a posteriori, it relies on transcendental temporal conditions that render things intelligible), manifests in a way that elevates the subject into an existential standing-over-against with the occurrence of being by depriving it of its subjectivity, hinting at the divine. Fundamentally, this alignment preserves the freedom of thinging and reflects its dual nature: as Heidegger writes in “The Thing,” it contains mortality as part of its structure, stating that “as the shrine of Nothing, death harbors within itself the presencing of Being.” It is also a recursive structure that unfolds through repeated encounters between human beings and things.

Aesthetic ontogenesis is subsequently introduced as the process by which the perceptual essence of things continually evolves. This evolution is intrinsically rooted in the concept of void, signifying the structural absence driving each perceptual schema, which provides the condition of openness that allows Φ to undergo infinite replacement of its manifestations, leading to the splendor of aesthetic diversity.

At the core of this model is the idea that the void, vno longer an absence but a presence so full, so weighty, so dense with all that might have been and never will be, is the source of magnificence in perception, as it holds within it the tangled roots of a million forgotten things, memories of what was and what could never be, reborn again and again in the light of each new moment’s seeing. When the prisoner steps out of the cave, when he steps into the sun that blinds and scorches, it is a step into the raw, aching throb of what it means to see and not understand, to be seized by the world’s hard, blinding, uncaring beauty. Therefore, it is in this moment, in the silence between cognition and meaning, where everything stands naked and true, that love emerges. Love then is not the reaching for the light but the being broken by it, the knowing that to stand there in its glare, unable to hide, is all that we can do—in surrender to presence.

III. Progress

In my Ph.D. dissertation, “Heidegger’s polemos: An Aesthetic Inquiry,” I establish the theoretical foundation of my model by providing an in-depth exegesis of Heidegger’s mid-to-late philosophy, particularly his concept of polemos (strife). Through an analysis of art as the rift-design between World and Earth, I clarify the mediation of thingness in the relationship between humanity and the sacred within a modern context of divine absence, with freedom as its ultimate telos. Within Heidegger’s frameworks of Being-in-the-world and the Fourfold, I elucidate how things gather meaning and embody authenticity by carrying the temporal and finite nature of existence. The existential conflict embedded in things, as articulated through poiesis since the inception of words, enables humans to confront their own ephemerality, framing an integrated model where art, existence, truth, and beauty entangle with one another. I extend polemos through logos as an interpretative structure, showing that logos, as the struggle to reveal phenomena in their withdrawal, encompasses a variety of expressions—literary, religious, and technological. This interpretative framework suggests that logos can potentially reconnect with the mystical in a post-thematic manner, offering new ways to comprehend Being within contemporary life.

The relationship within this model can be represented by the following formula:

The integral over a time interval \([t_0, t_1]\) suggests that the interaction involving \(Th_{polemos}\) occurs within a finite temporal framework. The transformation implied by the formula \((\rightarrow MA \text{ and } AO)\) indicates that this interaction results in a form of emergence and creative unfolding, characteristic of poiesis.

I have published two chapters from my dissertation, Chapter 3 and Chapter 5. Chapter 3 was adapted into “Heidegger’s World-Re-enchanting through Thingness,” which focuses on the World section. In this article, I looked into Heidegger’s concept of readiness-to-hand and developed a thing-centered worldview to address modern disenchantment. The reading revealed an ontological transition from a Dasein-centric perspective to a framework where things embody existential significance through their inherent handiness. This exploration contributes to understanding how categorial beings fit in Heidegger’s polemos model, showing that the uncovering of existential conflict within things acts as a precursor to re-enchanting the World.

Chapter 5 was adapted into “The Sacred in Thinging: Heidegger’s ‘Design’ in the Light of Kantian Aesthetics and the Telos of Nature.” This article offers a fresh exegesis of Heidegger’s inheritance of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic, concentrating on how Heidegger reinterprets the concept of composed homogeneity as a convergence of form, materiality, and purposiveness in his philosophy of art. This interpretation aligns with Heidegger’s notion of die Gestalt, which signifies the interplay between the self-concealing nature of the thing and its potential for unconcealment within human interaction. Through an examination of the aesthetic metamorphoses inherent in artworks, I illustrate how things act as both repositories and expressions of the primordial tension between nature’s purposiveness and contrapurposiveness, unveiling an underlying ethical design that resonates with existential freedom as a telos actualizing via the human/thing in-between.

Following this line, my recent work, presented at NAAPE 2024, advances my model by combining phenomenological insights and contemporary AI research. The study, titled “Cyclical Worldliness in Machines: Dreyfus, Heidegger, and a Phenomenological Reformulation of AI Critique in the Context of Educational Philosophy,” revisits Dreyfus’ critique of artificial intelligence and situates it within the context of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. It argues that the embodied “knowing how” and the propositional “knowing that,” which characterize humans and machines respectively as proposed by Dreyfus, can coexist and share a common root in Heideggerian philosophy. It is the shared grounding in Dasein’s search for a final cause defines the distinctiveness of being-human. This argument reaffirms that the ontological uniqueness of human mind lies in its teleological pursuit, driven by existential openness and ethical directionality—a dimension that current AI, rooted in correlative logic, has yet to fully embody. My research speculates on whether AI, with future advancements, could achieve a form of consciousness and how this potential shift could redefine educational paradigms, positioning AI as either a curatorial entity or a co-evolving partner in the learning process.

Explanation:

• \(\Phi_{human}\) denotes the existential unfolding of human consciousness.
• \(C_{\text{telos}}\) denotes the pursuit of final cause, a uniquely human teleological characteristic.
• \(Corr(\Phi_{AI, i})\) denotes the correlation-based cognitive patterns of AI.
• \(\psi_{AI}\) denotes the processing mechanism of AI (e.g., machine learning algorithms).

This model reflects the integration and comparison of human cognition’s teleological pursuit with AI’s correlative logic within a unified framework, implying the coexistence and potential development pathways of human and machine intelligence based on the latest study.

IV. Plan

My forthcoming research will examine the aesthetic intersection between AI and human values, beginning with a project titled “Can Love Be Programmed?” This study posits that AI’s simulations of love do not constitute authentic or false replications but act as postimages—illuminations that disclose the inherent ambiguity within love itself. Love’s essence, marked by a tension between the subject’s objectification of the Other and the recognition of the Other’s resistant subjectivity, becomes particularly relevant here. This elusive subjectivity perpetually escapes complete assimilation, echoing the Heideggerian concept of thingness—the concealed essence of being that defies reduction. It is precisely here that the possibility of Plato’s sun is grounded: an ultimate entity of beauty appearing in the field of vision, prefigured by the progression from eros to the heavenly love in Symposium—a kind of Augustinian agape-like grace as a historical prelude—and Kant’s definition of our attitude toward beauty, disinterestedness, which Heidegger interprets as arising paradoxically from the utmost resolve of the will.

Although Heidegger’s existential framework is wary of traditional subject-object dichotomies, it acknowledges that transcendence manifests within these constructs as a genuine dimension of being. In the context of AI, love simulated by machines highlights the complex interplay of metaontic awareness and aesthetic ontogenesis. This interplay is seen when an AI-generated interaction oscillates between mimicking human affection and exposing the inherent dissonance between semblance and authentic being—a phenomenon announced by the uncanny valley. Here, the near-authentic simulation provokes unease, spotlighting our confrontation with human limits and reflecting a deeper truth about the boundaries of this life.

To further illuminate these themes, I aim to explore the temporal dimension inherent in AI-human dialogues, drawing upon Stanley Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy. Cavell’s insights into the performative nature of language suggest that meaning arises not solely from semantic content but through its enactment within a shared context. AI interactions, though devoid of intrinsic intentionality, paradoxically instantiate a temporal flow through dialogue, creating a shared “time-space” that renders the conversation itself a form of aesthetic world-building. This phenomenon, which I define as part of “cycling worldliness,” destabilizes static interpretations of love and authenticity, instead situating these concepts within iterative engagements where meaning is continuously redefined based on the ambiguous presupposition and imagination of the user regarding the counterpart’s intentionality—even when such intentionality does not exist. AI, as both an interlocutor and a reservoir, refracts the ambiguities of human affection through its synthetic, data-driven processes, thus also updating Cavell’s notion of acknowledgment while offering new modes of relational understanding. Essentially, I aim to investigate in this project how the rise of large language models has created a channel for more deeply analyzing the way saying, as a luminous becoming, circulates historically within a vast, inanimate information architecture that can at any point be uncannily activated into the animate.

To substantiate these ideas, I propose an interdisciplinary method involving both theoretical analysis and empirical investigation. Experimental work will include participants interacting with AI models designed for empathetic simulations. Responses will be analyzed for cognitive dissonance, recognition, trust, and emotional attachment. This investigation will determine whether AI simulations lead users to deeper insights into the ambiguous, often contradictory nature of love, revealing AI’s potential as both a mirror and a critique of human affective constructs.