Externalization and the transcendental origin of language: An ontological reinterpretation in the age of artificial intelligence
This study reconsiders the origin of language through the concept of the human “desire for externalization,” arguing that externalization cannot be explained solely by historical, biological, or technical processes but rests on a transcendental ground. It first evaluates classical approaches from Aristotle to Humboldt, together with the analytic and phenomenological traditions, in the context of the problem of externalization. It then examines Leroi-Gourhan’s theory of exteriorization and Stiegler’s concepts of organology, epiphylogenesis, and the pharmakon, showing that these approaches describe how externalization occurs yet fail to account for its condition of possibility. The central claim is that externalization is not the transfer of ready-made thoughts to the external world but the manifestation of the transcendental synthesis that makes meaning, judgment, and linguistic structure possible. A transcendental philosophy of language was indeed developed after Kant, notably by Cassirer and Apel. What has not been undertaken is the transcendental grounding of linguistics as a science, that is, the exhibition of the a priori principles under which linguistic meaning is first possible. The present study does not carry out that grounding; it establishes its necessity and sets out the framework for doing so. The argument is then applied to the linguistic performance of large language models, and the study concludes that the fundamental distinction between the human being and artificial intelligence lies not in linguistic performance but in the transcendental capacity to constitute meaning.
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