The Generation and Developmental Tendency of Culture: From Bodily Behavior and the Linguistic Sign to Artificial Intelligence

What changes will the birth of artificial intelligence bring to humanity's future? This question has aroused wide attention and discussion. But to make conjectures and predictions on the features of artificial intelligence alone is plainly imprudent and unrigorous. To predict the future world scientifically, one must first understand the existing life-world and return to the theoretical starting point: Does the real world exist? Does it depend on human subjective construction? What is the relation between the real world and the human cognitive world? And how are the human world and human culture constructed? "Without an understanding of the beginning, the development as the development of meaning cannot be spoken of." Only by giving answers to these basic questions can we go on to think about the trend of human culture and the question of the future world.

I. The Debate over the "Real World"

To understand what the world is like, one must acknowledge a prior fact: the human exists within the world—that is, the human cannot do without his relation to the world; he both merges into the world, constructing a complex linkage with it, and is the product of various relations. To understand the human or the world, one must first understand the various relations and their changes, and interpret human and world within relations.

In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle deeply explored the question of "reality." Searle says: "I define realism as the view that the world exists independently of our representations of it," and clearly points out: "Reality is outside our system of representations, or external to it." He deeply critiqued the various forms of "non-realism" but did not positively expound the question of "reality," only pointing out that "reality" is unique and self-evident, existing as the intelligible, communicable background condition, and that thinking and discussion of the problem of "convergence" in science all take the presupposition of realism as a necessary premise. He says: "The point we are trying to make is that, for a large class of discourse (requiring further specification), a condition of the possibility of normally understanding such discourse is that there be a way things exist that is independent of human representation. The conclusion is that when we try to communicate so as to achieve a normal understanding of such discourse, we must presuppose external realism as a necessary premise." Searle's practice of giving up a positive exposition of "reality" has a profound implication: whatever can be expounded and discussed is already within the representation system. Since "reality" lies outside the representation system, it cannot be positively expounded or discussed, and the only path is to critique the various forms of "non-realism."

As an object of Searle's critique, Goodman holds a "non-realist" conception. He says: "We can regard this real world as one among the alternative correct versions (or a group of versions joined together by some principle of reduction or translation), and regard all other versions as versions of the same world that differ from that standard version in an interpretable way. … Our devotion to a world is satisfied at different times, for different purposes, in many different ways. Not only motion, derivation, weighting, and ordering are relative, but even reality is relative." Clearly, the relative "reality" Goodman speaks of is closely related to human cognition and is itself already constructed as a perceptual version, inseparable from the representation system, inseparable from the various types of symbolic construction; as he says, the world is constructed by signs of various versions. What the human can perceive, think, and discuss can only be perceptual phenomena, the appearings of various versions, the various symbolic representations. Human cognition cannot leap over the medium between itself and the world: language and the sign.

In fact, the conceptual divergence between Searle and Goodman—or the divergence between Searle's realism and all other non-realisms—stems from a divergence in the determination of the very concept "reality": the "reality" Goodman and other non-realists speak of refers to the represented "reality," whose essence is the "phenomenal world"; it has already been formalized (symbolized) and, owing to the difference of symbolic versions, has relativity. The human cannot but rely on representational signs to perceive the world, knowing the world in a symbolic way. Apart from symbolic representation, the human has no other route to speak of the "real world." Different from this, the "reality" Searle speaks of lies outside the representation system; it is a world that does not depend on the human yet contains the human. The same philosophical concept is given different meanings, stands in different theoretical frameworks and levels, and refers to different "realities." The two views each have their grounds, but we side more with Searle—only Searle's formulation of "reality" contains a logical contradiction: Searle clearly points out that "reality" lies outside the representation system, yet "represents" it with the naming "reality"—and this is precisely the linguistic trap Western scholars find hard to escape.

The "reality" Searle speaks of, lying outside the representation system, is just like what Laozi and Zhuangzi call the "Dao." Speaking of the "Dao," Laozi says: "There is a thing formed of chaos, born before Heaven and Earth. Silent! Solitary, it stands alone and does not change; it moves in a circle and does not tire; it can be the mother of all under Heaven. I do not know its name; I style it 'Dao,' and forcing a name upon it, I call it 'Great.'" In thinking and speaking of the Dao, Laozi cannot but use language. But the Dao cannot be stated in language, so he cleverly used the paradox of language: he both names the "Dao" and negates this naming, both uses the concept "Dao" and negates this concept. Laozi used the paradox of language to escape logical contradiction and thereby to hint at the "Dao." Searle should therefore imitate Laozi, regarding "reality" as an informal, more flexible "style" rather than a normative "name"—or call it "(reality)."

Does "(the real)" then exist, and in what way? Can the human grasp this Dao-like "(the real)"? Here too we need to draw on the thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi. In their eyes, the Dao is "nothing." But this "nothing" is not "nonexistence"; rather it stresses that the "Dao" is not an object of human consciousness and perception—the Dao is a "non-object." By the phenomenological conception, consciousness is consciousness of an "object," and the "Dao" as "non-object" can only be unconscious experience, chaos, "nothing"—the chaotic mingling and fusion of human and nature, a state of thing-and-self as one, no-thing and no-self. The linguistic sign is a system of differentiation. Once it is represented by the linguistic sign, the Dao is reduced to an "object" of linguistic-sign representation, becomes "being," and so the Dao splits from the human, yin is distinguished from yang, the myriad things are thereby gestated—and the Dao is no longer the "constant Dao." This is what Laozi means: "The Dao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, three gives birth to the myriad things." The clarity of the world and the birth of the myriad things are precisely closely related to the human representation system. Therefore "(the real)," like the "Dao" of Laozi and Zhuangzi, lies outside the representation system and is itself a "non-object." As soon as the human perceives, cognizes, thinks, and speaks, the representation systems of linguistic signs intervene. The linguistic sign differentiates the wholly fused world and sets it up as the human's object, while the various versions of the sign produce Goodman's relative "plural worlds"; in essence, however, it has already been reduced to the "phenomenal world," utterly different from the "(reality)" of Searle's pen.

The "(reality)" John Searle speaks of can only lie within the "non-objective relation" of the chaotic mingling of human and nature; this direct, thing-and-self linkage requires no representation system as medium and must clear away this medium. Although "(the real)" cannot be spoken or expounded, it is the precondition of all speaking, communication, and understanding. Goodman and other "non-realists," by contrast, regard the "real world" as the "object-world" closely related to the human and perceived and cognized by him; and within this "objective relation" it has already, unawares, suffered the invasion of representational signs. The linguistic sign is the insurmountable medium by which the human perceives and cognizes the object-world. Whether seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting, thinking, or speaking, the world is bound to be reduced to the human's object-world and to be differentiated and formalized by the representation system; the various signs have already covertly intervened. Even when phenomenological "reduction" guards against prejudice, so long as it remains a philosophy concerning subject and consciousness, the symbolic medium can never be excluded between subject and object.

Can the human, then, grasp "(the real)" by leaping over the medium? Against the abstractness of "consciousness," Dewey proposed the broader, richer "experience." Dewey expounded the process by which the human acquires experience within nature, saying: "Experience is of as well as in nature. … Things interacting in certain ways are experience; they are what is experienced. When they are related in further ways to another natural object—the human organism—they are again the way in which things are experienced. Experience thus reaches down into nature; it has depth." Dewey regarded "experience" as a category different from "consciousness"—a result the human acquires within nature rather than by taking nature as an "object," born in the process of interaction between the human organism and nature. This treats human and nature as a whole and interprets experience with the "organism–environment" relation-mode. It is precisely within the holistic relation of interaction that the human enjoys experience and grasps nature. Dewey's theoretical vision not only stresses the holistic relation of human and nature but foregrounds the "human organism," that is, the "body." As Don Ihde points out: "The contribution of pragmatism lies in recognizing that 'consciousness' is a most abstract concept, while the deeper and broader meaning of experience reflects its being embedded at once in the physical or materialized world and in the cultural-social world. Pragmatism is not a philosophy of consciousness; it views experience more according to the organism–environment model."

Likewise, Husserl set great store by the importance of the body in the process of grasping the world. He says: "The body always functions together as the organ of perception, and is itself a complete system composed of mutually coordinated perceptual organs. The body's own characteristic is that it is the perceiving body. We regard it purely as a subjectively moving body, and a body subjectively moving in the act of perception. … Only as kinaesthetically non-independent things can phenomena continuously pass into one another and constitute a unity of meaning." Here Husserl clearly stressed the foundational role of body, movement, and kinaesthesia in perceptual activity. This thought was further expanded and deepened by Merleau-Ponty. The Phenomenology of Perception takes the body and its movement as its starting point to interpret the problem of perception. On the basis of using and analyzing a great deal of perceptual-experimental material, Merleau-Ponty proposed the "perception–movement" interpretive framework. Following phenomenology's interpretive path of "returning to the things themselves," Merleau-Ponty too traced back to the "pre-cognitive" body. The human relates to the world through the body and movement, adjusting actions so that body and world fit, establishing a unity between body and world, and thereby grasping the world. He clearly points out: "Consciousness is originally not 'I think …' but 'I can …' … consciousness is being toward the thing through the mediation of the body. A movement is learned when the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorporated it into its 'world,' and to move one's body is to aim at things through it, to let the body respond to their solicitation, which is exerted upon it without any representation." Merleau-Ponty discarded the one-sidedness of Cartesianism; in his view, body and world, as "(the real)," establish their primordial relation through bodily movement: on one hand the world invades the body in a certain way; on the other the body receives the world in a certain way, movement being the necessary way the body contacts things and enters the world, the two constituting a "field of being" and a "perceptual field" in their interaction. In this process, the "body schema" is the basic structure of the interaction of body and world; it refers not only to the physical structure of the body but to the body's position and capacity for movement in the world, and therefore the "body schema" at once determines and concentratedly reflects the "field of being" and the "perceptual field." The structure of the body and its position and capacity for movement in the world determine how the body unfolds its interactive relation with the world, determine just how the body experiences and perceives the world. The "body schema" is in essence the body's mode and structure of existence in the world; it directly perceives and understands the world.

Merleau-Ponty correctly pointed out the close link of consciousness and body, that consciousness is founded on body and movement, and deeply expounded the inner connection of bodily movement and perception. But, like Husserl, because the body Merleau-Ponty speaks of is still a subjectivized body, movement an intentional activity led by the subject, and perception ultimately a grasp of the world at the level of consciousness, in fact he necessarily severs the organic relation of body and world. The world is inevitably reduced to an "object" relative to a "subject," reduced to an "object of consciousness" or a "phenomenon," displayed before the body that occupies the position of "subject." In the process of the subject perceiving the objective object, it is hard to transcend the "medium." Merleau-Ponty did not, as he wished, thoroughly cast off the dualistic order. As Esposito puts it: "For modern man to become a subject, he must make the object depend on his making; likewise, the object cannot exist outside the subject's power of conception. … The relation implicit between the split of the human and the split of the thing has never been so clear. Human and thing each begin from their own split, only then separating from each other and converting into each other. The human is therefore always fragile, always becoming thing, and the thing too is always at any moment subject to the human's rule." Although Merleau-Ponty set out from body and movement to discuss perception and consciousness, founding them on body and movement, in his theoretical framework body and world still stand in the background position of the subject's perception and consciousness, and movement stands under the guidance of the subject's perception and consciousness. As Dreyfus critiques: "Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of the body as 'I can'—meaning that I can be led to move my body to respond to the solicitations of affordances so as to gain a maximal grip on them—does not explain to us at all how the specifically shaped bodily capacity to make certain special forms of movement is essential to our having a world."

Against the dualistic order produced by "mediation theory," Dreyfus, imitating Heidegger's theoretical framework of "Dasein's being-in-the-world," absorbed and improved Merleau-Ponty's thought and proposed a "contact theory." He says: "At the most basic, pre-conceptual level, the understanding of the world I have is not simply constructed or determined by myself alone. It is a 'joint result' between me and the world. … At the very primordial level where we grasp things, there is indeed a contact that heals the rift between 'subject' and 'object' and shows that these terms are, in the end, inappropriate." Dreyfus held that, with regard to reality, the human has two different interpretive modes: first, interpreting according to the way nature appears to the participating human—that is, understanding in the situated mode; second, describing the way nature appears in-itself to the detached observer—that is, understanding in the non-situated, detached mode. The former is "primordial," "prior," and "pre-conceptual," a more basic contact with "(the real)," including contact with the others who are situated in the world together with us, and therefore it concerns universal humanity, and in some cases even shares commonality with other organisms. All human interpretation must take the former as its basis. Unlike Merleau-Ponty, who regarded "perception" as the basis and premise on which all "behavior" unfolds, Dreyfus sides more with Heidegger's view of granting "concern" priority in ontology: "The closest mode of dealing is not bare perceptual cognition but the concern of the handler, the user; concern has its own 'knowledge.'" Imitating Heidegger's granting priority to "the concern of the handler, the user," Dreyfus's "contact theory" too places "contact" in the prior position: contact is the premise of perception; it may be "pre-perceptual." Dreyfus adopted Merleau-Ponty's concept of the "body schema" but gave it a new definition. He points out that the body schema does not lie within the individual body but stands between body and world; it is precisely for this reason that the body schema constitutes the interaction of body and world, heals the gap between body and world, and removes the rift between subject and object.

Clearly, Dreyfus, with a primordial, pre-conceptual, pre-perceptual "contact," dethroned the sacred status Heidegger granted to language and cleared away the lingering specter of the subject in Merleau-Ponty's theory. Yet when Dreyfus expounds the interaction and contact between body and world, expounds the "body schema" standing between body and world, he has in fact already placed himself, as interpreter, outside body and world, becoming a calm, detached interpreter. Dreyfus, like the early Heidegger, makes the same error: their speaking has already departed from the in-itself "(the real)," is situated outside the real world, and therefore betrays and conceals "(the real)," unable truly to reveal the body, the world, and the interactive, experiential relation that exist as "(the real)," falling anew into another dualistic order. In the state of the unity of human and Heaven, the human dwelling in the world and fused with it, all speaking is no longer needed and no longer possible. Any speaking necessarily sets up the spoken content as an "object." Western thought has never escaped the prison-house of language.

The thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi happens to form a sharp contrast with the West. Laozi, with such ways of both speaking and negating speaking as the "Dao," "great image," and "great tone," constitutes a paradox of language to hint at "(the real)." Since the human dwells within the real world, thing-and-self as one, rather than standing outside or before the real world, the real world and the myriad things are no longer the human's "object" but a "non-object." Since thing and self are one, the thing is the self and the self is the thing; the self has naturally already grasped the thing, grasped "(the real)," grasped the "Dao." In this state, self and thing have lost their boundary, reaching the realm of no-thing and no-self, and so "(the real)" can only be "nothing," the myriad things being in the "formless" and "soundless," as if all hidden and silent. This state is just like an organism not yet possessing the capacity for consciousness: it adapts to and merges into its environment by adjusting its own behavior, sediments bodily experience (unconscious experience) in repeated survival activity, and forms instinct. Although this organism lacks the capacity for consciousness, it still grasps its environment through instinctive behavior. Likewise, the human participates in the real world with the body that exists as "(the real)," adapting to the real world by adjusting bodily behavior, and in fact grasps "(the real)" as "non-object," grasps the Dao, and enjoys bodily experience (unconscious experience). So Wang Bi says: "Without shape or image, without sound or tone, it therefore penetrates everywhere and goes everywhere. It cannot be known; if we further name it by my ear, eye, or body's not-knowing, it cannot be inquired into, but is mingled into one." Zhuangzi, with "goblet words, weighty words, and fables," induces the reader to experience in person, using fables such as "the cook carving the ox" and "Woodworker Qing carving the bell-stand" to create one situation after another for experiencing and apprehending the "Dao" and "(the real)." To apprehend the real world, one must give up linguistic exposition; the only path is, like Zhuangzi, to hint indirectly with language and lead the human to experience in person. Both Laozi and Zhuangzi sought a way of transcending language to merge directly into "(the real)" and grasp it. At the same time, we change "movement" or "contact" into "behavior," including action, posture, expression, intonation, and so on. Behavior is not only bodily behavior; it is itself the body's invasion of and response to the real world, the process of interaction and mutual fusion of body and real world, directly linking body and real world. The body itself is "(the real)" and lies within the real world; it is precisely through behavior that the body deals with and adapts to the real world, thereby confirming the existence of the real world, accumulating bodily experience (unconscious experience), and grasping the real world. This bodily experience is rooted in embodied lived experience; it differs from perception and cognition, the two together constituting an irreducible tension field, and is not, as the current theory of "embodied cognition" holds, merely the starting point of cognition. This is the key point distinguishing us from the theory of "embodied cognition."

II. The Expansion of the Cultural World

In Retrieving Realism, Dreyfus reveals a paradox: "Yet, paradoxically, when we further observe that the world is a cooperative product, and observe that the objects we directly contact are shaped by the fact that we are bodily embedded in the everyday world, we seem unable to attain an understanding of things-in-themselves apart from human activity. In fact, so long as our everyday operative practices enable us to directly access the everyday world, they seem to block any understanding of things as they are in themselves." If the real world must be grasped through bodily behavior and contact, then the finitude of the body is bound to destine the finitude of the capacity to grasp the real world, and the path of transcendence to what lies beyond the self is blocked.

In fact, the reason humanity possesses transcendence is precisely that humanity enjoys language. The animal's world depends directly on its bodily behavior; it has its own insurmountable "territory," its circle of activity and survival. Human language has duality. Saussure proposed the "principle of the dualism" of language: "The dualism of linguistic phenomena resides in this duality: sound as sound and sound as sign—the former a physical phenomenon (objective), the latter a physical-psychic phenomenon (subjective), but never the opposition of the 'physical' of sound and the 'spiritual' of meaning. There is one domain, the inner spiritual domain, where sign and meaning lodge, interdependent and inseparable; and a second domain, the external domain, where there are only 'signs,' yet signs reduced to a string of sound waves, which we can only name the sound-image (figure vocale)." This duality—at once inner and outer, subjective and objective—endows language with a distinctive function: both to differentiate and to relate. The appearance of language changed the relation-mode between human and world. When the human calls out the name of some thing, he has already set that thing up as the human's "object" and differentiated it out of the fused world. If behavior is itself bodily behavior, unable to exist independently of the body, able only to structure the world by behavior and take it into the body to become bodily experience, then the duality of language converts the world into the human's object-world—a perceptible, cognizable, describable phenomenal world—and language becomes the symbolic medium linking human and world. "The naming of an object is not after cognition but is cognition itself. … The word bears meaning, and when we give meaning to the object, I am conscious that I have reached the object." The fused, unified relation of human and world collapses and is reconstructed as the "objective relation" at once split and linked. Only under this condition does the world become the human's object, and the human become able to set purposes for his behavior, cast off the automatism of instinctive behavior, and open up purposive autonomous behavior. Thus mere survival activity is transformed into purposive labor, plans are made to realize purposes, tools are invented, and cultural activity thereby begins. This is a huge leap; it draws an artificial gulf between the human and other organisms, lets the human truly become human, and lets survival activity leap up into cultural creation. As Marx said, between the bee's building of its hive and the human's building of a house there is a qualitative difference. Culture is gestated precisely in the rift between human and nature; the larger the rift language tears open, the greater the space for human thought and the greater the space for cultural creation. The organism adapts to and merges into nature by adjusting bodily behavior, whereas the human cannot but create culture to fill in the rift he himself has torn open. The human frees himself from his own body and the material world, liberates himself from the bondage of the survival situation, and wins transcendence. The duality of language also produces the dual relation in which the soul both dwells in the body and transcends it; from then on, the question of which weighs more, soul or body, has always troubled humanity.

"Language provides a model of a relational structure, in the most immediate and at the same time the broadest sense. … The existence of such a symbolic system reveals to us one of the most fundamental and perhaps most profound facts of the human condition, namely: between human and world, between human and human, there is no natural, immediate, and direct relation. It requires a mediator, this symbolic apparatus, which makes thought and language possible. Detached from the biological category, the symbolic capacity is humanity's most distinctive capacity." Language is a "symbolic system"; it brings the unknown, unexperienced world into known, familiar experience, thereby greatly expanding the human field of cognition. As a price, language, by becoming the medium between human and world, also conceals the real world. The human has already integrated with language, reorganized his relation with the world, and become the "animal symbolicum."

This capacity of language, both to differentiate and to relate, thoroughly changed the relation-modes among human and world, human and thing, human and human, thing and thing. The world becomes a "world picture," a world of clamoring things; it is no longer a formless chaos, nor atomistic, but a holistic world mutually related and interacting—a "phenomenal world" constructed by the symbolic order and displayed in the human field of vision. From then on, the world is stamped with the brand of human culture. "Before the appearance of language, all is blurred and unclear." Moreover, the various objective relations cannot do without linguistic construction. Language can even present language itself and the human himself as objects, examining and reflecting on language through language, examining and reflecting on the human himself; thus the human gradually grows into an independent individual and rational subject, and at the same time forms human society under the communication and condensation of language. Without language there is no self, no subjectivity, no metaphysical spirit. Language is itself a social existence, a "contract" among human beings, a bond of mutual recognition; it naturally endows common users with "intersubjectivity" and maintains the unity of social life; while the evolution and differentiation of language provide different cultural ground-tones for the generation of different civilizations, producing estrangement and division among ethnic groups. The linkage of self and other, of individual and society, set up by language's communicative capacity, places the human within a particular social situation, prompting reflection on the rationality of the various relations and of one's own behavior, and gradually forming rational norms and moral judgment. Language is not only a mode of thought; it is itself a mode of life, the fundamental condition of the human's becoming human. "In any case, language is closest to the essence of the human. Everywhere one looks, there is language. So it is no wonder that, as soon as the human, thinking, looks around at beings, he immediately encounters language, and so determines language with an eye to the decisive aspect of what language shows."

Language is both a prison, binding the human to the gravestone of the collective, and a force of liberation. It lets the human transcend his own flesh, transcend the relations full of complexity, transcend the concrete survival situation, and language itself thereby gains transcendence. Without language there is no human transcendence, no human free choice and free will to speak of; he can only be firmly bound within body, matter, and survival environment, subject to the necessity of nature. With language, the human can also use language to describe events, transmit information, fully use language's narrative capacity to recount history and describe the world, and even imagine the future and conjecture the unknown world. Language lets the human transcend the spatiotemporal world the body can occupy, set up a new footing outside the body, and thereby construct a transspatiotemporal picture of the world far beyond personal lived experience. Yet the linguistic sign can only grasp and construct the "phenomenal world" or "imaginary world," and cannot reach the "real world," because "(the real)" lies outside the representation system. Language "subordinates the activity of direct contact to the activity at a distance, which is to have the possibility of liberation from being submerged in the merely present, the possibility of abstraction, generalization, and inference." Once language dismantled the unified relation of human and world, the gap torn open by linguistic differentiation became the space of human autonomous choice; the distance language created between human and thing endowed the human with the capacity for abstraction, generalization, and inference; the possibility language possesses is the boundary that human thought can reach. Language's liberation of the human, and its endowing the human with new capacities, let the human stand outside the world to observe and cognize it, transform it according to his own will and purpose, and, inadvertently, break the balance of the natural ecology. Thus the human rises above the biological world, styling himself "the measure of all things," even "the quintessence of the universe, the paragon of all things." Language squeezes into every gap of being—or, more precisely, language is the maker of these rifts. The human names the thing with language and at the same time inserts a medium between human and thing, retaining a gap, providing an occasion for thinking, questioning, and choosing, and foreshadowing the possibility of new cultural creation.

Plato, as an important source of Western philosophy, influenced the whole of Western intellectual history. His definition of the "Idea" almost encompasses all Western philosophical propositions, from which the various philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural thoughts derive and develop. Plato says: "Wherever we can call multiple things by the same name, I think we always assume that they have only one form or Idea." Scholars often stress the "form" or "Idea" this passage proposes, overlooking the extremely important key word "name." In fact, the "name" (concept) is the key of this passage. Cassirer already realized this. Commenting on the historical contribution of Plato's thought, Cassirer says: "The pre-Socratic philosophers equated being with some particular existing thing and took this as a fixed starting point, while he was the first to realize that being is a problem. He no longer simply inquired into the order, conditions, and structure of being, but inquired into the concept of being and the meaning of this concept." Plato's contribution lies not only in pointing out "form" or "Idea," nor only in pointing out "the concept and the meaning of the concept," but, more importantly, in cutting open a rift between the linguistic concept (word) and the thing, clarifying the central position of language in the relation between human and the physical world and the world of Ideas.

Plato for the first time pointed out the relation, at once linked and distinct, between the linguistic concept (word) and the thing and even the Idea, revealed the existing rift, established multiple relations among human, language, thing, and Idea, and opened up a huge theoretical space within the various relations: the linguistic concept is not equal to the thing itself; it is the generalization and abstraction of things, concerning certain things that share a common "form" or "Idea." This both distinguished phenomenon from Idea, conception from substance, concrete from abstract, particular from universal, many from one, visible from invisible, true from false, as well as language from meaning, language from thing, language from Idea, human from language, human from meaning, subject from object, matter from spirit, and so on, and established complex linkages among them. In all these gaps, at once distinct and linked, various doubts and reflections were gestated, a series of philosophical propositions were bred, and the metaphysical spiritual world was constructed; ontology, epistemology, empiricism, phenomenology, existentialism, and so on, all thereby gained theoretical self-consciousness. Since all gaps and doubts were provoked by language, in the end the spearhead of questioning was locked onto language itself, returning to language and leading to the linguistic turn. "The basic concepts of the various sciences, the tools it uses to think its problems and expound its solutions, are no longer regarded as the passive images of some given, but as signs created by the intellect itself." Wittgenstein put it more clearly: "Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. … All philosophy is a 'critique of language.'"

Language is a beam of rational light, illuminating what it can reach, and letting the human stand outside the self to gaze at the self and question the self, stand outside the world to overlook the world and interrogate it, continually opening new horizons of cognition, producing new knowledge, accumulating new knowledge, transmitting new knowledge. "The word itself is a relation, for the word keeps and preserves all things in being. Without such words, the whole of things, that is, the 'world,' would sink into darkness; including the 'I,' the 'I' that carries the wonders and dreams it encounters to the borders of its realm, toward the source of names, would also sink into darkness." Without language there is no "self," no object of the self, no observation, analysis, generalization, inference, and cognition of the object, no production, storage, and transmission of knowledge, no cultural creation. It is precisely language that gives the human the capacity to leave the flesh and climb the peak of knowledge, climb the peak of the world, even ascend toward the boundless universe.

Language is an abstraction, and since its birth it has necessarily continued to fly toward the course of abstraction, for the more abstract language is, the more convenient for human use, and it will, with a light posture, become a tool the human handles at will. In this process, the motivation of language fades ever more and arbitrariness grows ever stronger; the gap between language and thing grows ever larger, and the linkage of the two is ever more called into question. "The naming of the thing by language is by no means a neutral act: it bears the character of violent invasion. In order to invade the thing that has separated from it, language seems to have to present a rupture; language invades the thing with this rupture itself." This state of rupture is precisely the soil in which Foucault's archaeology and Derrida's deconstruction were gestated. Since the word is not equal to the thing, since a huge rift exists between word and thing, and a representation lies athwart the two, can the word smoothly reach the thing? Or is it merely a letter without an address? What we can face is only the illusory "image of the thing" refracted through language, only phenomena rather than the "thing itself." With the evolution of language, its organizational structure, and its meaning—especially the change in linguistic conception, and the discovery of the deep hidden linkage beneath the representation—the relation of word and thing is bound to grow ever more complex. We should, like archaeology, explore the history of the changing relation of word and thing, excavate discontinuity, rupture, and boundary, release ambiguity and marginal factors, further discover the closely related "episteme," and trace the genealogical relations therein. Foucault's The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences does precisely this kind of archaeological historical clearing.

Foucault held that two different relations exist between the linguistic sign and the thing: one is the natural relation (motivation), the other the conventional relation (arbitrariness). In the overall trend, as language tends ever more toward abstraction, the relation of the two continually evolves—gradually transforming from natural relation to conventional relation—and this process occurred just as the Enlightenment developed toward the classical period. Relative to the natural relation, the word was once the sure, transparent sign of the thing, its relation depending on "resemblance"; the conventional relation is different—within it natural resemblance has been diluted, motivation has vanished, and language has become an arbitrary, collectively agreed artificial sign. This is not only a change in the linguistic sign itself, an enlargement of the gap between linguistic sign and thing, but brings a decisive turn for human cognition: the expansion of the gap necessarily promotes human thinking, lets the human cast off the natural relation and natural state, and in reflection extricate himself from primitive benightedness, enjoy intentional memory and rational cognition, and be thoroughly distinguished from the animal. Unlike the natural sign, the conventional sign, by breaking free of the natural link, splits from the thing and wins freedom, while the representation stands out from the rift between word and thing, becoming an impenetrable medium. As representation, it is linked both to the word and to the thing, and can, through analysis of the representation itself, further decompose the thing down to its origin; and can also combine the various factors, allowing complex relations to occur. Thus this conventional sign is constructed into a true sign-system, taking the inquiry into origin and the rules of sign-organization into the sign-network. The linguistic sign is no longer transparent; its relation to the thing no longer depends directly on resemblance; the linguistic sign represents thought and relies on the "identity" and "difference" among representations to organize order, which prompts the maturing of taxonomy and even genetics, constructs natural history, and lets the table be much favored in the episteme. Language becomes the best tool for linking analysis, generalization, combination, and inference, becomes the sharp weapon of cognition and thinking. The turn from stressing resemblance between word and thing to identity and difference among representations—this new linguistic-sign mode reshapes the human mode of cognition and thinking and reshapes the cultural world.

Upon entering the modern era, the classical episteme evolved again. The importance of linguistic representation gradually faded, and the invisible factor hidden beneath representation—"organic structure"—stood out. "From now on, things are represented only from the depth of this depth retreating into itself; the thing is hidden below, gathered or divided, helplessly assembled by the power of this depth." The emphasis on the hidden organic structure led to the appearance of a new episteme. Biology, political economy, and philology became prominent disciplines at almost the same time, and behind these changes lay a change in language itself. The evolution of language is the root of the transformation of the episteme. As the medium between human and thing, language's evolution determines the change in the relation of word and thing, and thereby the change of the episteme. Cognition therefore cannot but change with the evolution of language, cannot but form within the various relations woven among human beings, cannot but be subject to historical, social, and economic conditions, and presents a historical form. Only people did not realize: behind all these changes there is hidden a chief director—language. It is precisely language that determines the relation of word and thing, continually reshapes the episteme, and produces the rupture between different epistemes.

Foucault expounded in detail the historical process of the episteme's evolution and its inner basis, but he forgot to explain one important point: although language itself does undergo diachronic evolution, with the relation of word and thing gradually turning from natural to conventional, the original intimate relation irretrievably growing distant by the day, and the hidden invisible linkage standing out—yet in any case language itself had long set up the various linkages, constituting an intricately interwoven relational system. Only, as language's self-reflection gradually gained depth, people's focus of attention shifted with the change of linguistic conception, from one relation to another, from the visible to the invisible, thereby discovering this secret linkage hidden beneath the representation; and language's own diachronic change merely promoted this shift from another side: from word and thing directly related, to an opaque representation existing between word and thing, to leaving the representation to explore the hidden organic structure beneath it. In this process, the change in the conception of language is an important factor not to be overlooked; it unawares dominates the transformation of the mode of cognition and thinking. Since a gap exists between word and thing, and its organic structure is hidden, this provides the possibility for power to intervene. Power carries out manipulation by distorting the relation of word and thing—that is, power invades the episteme.

From Foucault's exposition we may also derive another view: since the root cause of language's evolution lies in the relation of word and thing continually turning from "natural" to "conventional," finally leading to the transformation of the episteme, then it is not hard to discover that between different peoples—the hieroglyphic script that stresses the natural relation and the alphabetic script that stresses the conventional relation—there is bound to be a difference of episteme. The natural relation the hieroglyphic script possesses is itself a constraint on the space of thought and a barrier to reflexivity, impeding the critique and elevation of bodily experience; although this script favors poetic expression, it tends to make the center of thought revolve around bodily experience and ethics-morality. Compared with the hieroglyphic script, the arbitrariness of the alphabetic script tears open a larger gap between word and thing, which not only favors the human's liberation from natural necessity, endowing the human with more occasions for autonomous, free choice, gestating human independent individuality and subjectivity, but at the same time gives more possibility to abstraction, generalization, inference, and reflection, and gives larger space to scientific thinking. Science needs to critically reorganize experience in reflection. Even though people live in the same world, owing to the differences of language and script and the differences of episteme among different peoples, the world can present different cultural appearances.

Foucault's The Order of Things still only discusses the linkage between language and episteme in general, without specially distinguishing and comparing oral language and written script. If we examine the difference between written script and oral language, we will discover more. Written script, by its materiality, clearly declares itself to be both external to and independent of the human, and external to and distinct from the thing. Script seems a magical existence: it both differs from and relates to body and spirit, both differs from and relates to the thing. The materiality and externality of written script necessarily endow language with stronger independence and thereby grant language new qualities; not only is it more favorable to the storage, transmission, and accumulation of knowledge, greatly accelerating the growth of knowledge, but, more importantly, with its materiality, externality, and independence, it draws a sharp boundary from the body, producing a marked rift. Thus the way human beings link to one another changes, the mode of social organization changes, and even the relations of human and self, human and thing, change. The human can more confidently stand outside himself to look back at and reflect on himself, strengthening human subjectivity and reason; stand outside script to look back at and reflect on language, promoting the precision, normativity, and logicality of linguistic expression; stand outside his own thinking to examine, reflect on, and order thinking, greatly promoting the coherence, rigor, and logicality of thinking, reshaping the episteme, and consciously adjusting the relation of human and thing to seek a new scientific-research "paradigm." This is precisely one reason for the explosive growth of scientific knowledge after Gutenberg. Written script's reshaping of the episteme laid the important status of script in cognitive activity and cultural production.

Derrida critiqued the West's traditional phonocentrism and dualism, stressing the independent value of written script itself. In his view, script is not the "picture" or "mark" of language, not the "garment" oral language puts on for itself, not the inferior "sign of signs"; on the contrary, script has priority, script itself already contains the artificial "trace," is both external to and internal to speech, and produces meaning through difference and "différance." Written script removes the distinctive context that oral language enjoys and gives up the power of both parties to a dialogue being simultaneously present, making meaning ever more lacking in stability. It is precisely the attention to written script that led Derrida to propose deconstruction theory. Unlike Foucault, who was keen to discuss the relation of word and thing, Derrida indefinitely deferred the "thing-in-itself" and concentrated only on the written sign and the representation. Derrida points out: "The so-called 'thing-itself' is always a representation that escapes the simplicity of intuitive evidence. A representation can function only by producing a referent, and this referent is itself a sign, and so on, ad infinitum. The self-identity of the signified continually hides and continually shifts. … The referred-to is always a representation." Derrida refuted phenomenology's "return to the things themselves," evading the thing itself with the endless extension of meaning of the linguistic sign. He points out that the so-called intentionality of consciousness pointing toward an object is in fact only the continual pointing toward representations, an infinite process of "différance" in which one representation replaces another, a game of the "absence" of the signified object, the referred-to being always a representation. Plato's "Idea," Descartes's "I think" subject, are merely fallacies of the "metaphysics of presence." Since the birth of the linguistic sign, the human cannot but use the linguistic sign to interpret everything, no longer facing pure reality directly. One may even say "there is no thing-itself at all"; there is no stable form of the thing—"(the real)" is "formless," and the thing always emerges only within the linguistic sign, changing with the "différance" of the meaning of the linguistic sign, full of indeterminacy. Thus the world we live in loses its stability, no longer standing, as people complacently assume, on solid, unchanging ground, but is "found to be loose and dangerous."

Not only is the meaning that the linguistic sign harbors itself a continual process of "différance," changing with context, with no ultimate destination; Derrida is more concerned with the different experiences brought by different kinds of language, which thereby produce the richness of life's meaning. "Wherever there is the experience of 'more than one language,' there is deconstruction. There is more than one language in the world, and within one language there is more than one language. It is precisely this linguistic plurality that deconstruction concentrates on and is concerned with." It is precisely the plurality of language that produces the colorful picture of the world, produces the meaning-debates full of contention, and harbors the force against hegemony. Derrida's view seems an echo and extension of Bakhtin's "dialogism." Bakhtin not only stresses the importance of dialogue among different individuals but holds that any discourse internally contains the heterogeneous factor of the other and is full of contention among different ideologies. This dialogue constituted by the heterogeneous factor within discourse deconstructs the stability and singularity of meaning, endows meaning with richness, openness, vitality, and infinite space for growth, opposes dead dogma, and questions any authoritative interpretation: the world is originally plural, rich and changing, with ways of viewing the world from different angles and postures. Bakhtin even held that if a people knew only its mother tongue, with no abstruse foreign speech and vocabulary entering its field of vision, such a people could never at any time create philosophical verse. That is, only different kinds of language produce the difference and collision among different perspectives, and only then can sparks of thought be produced in the cracks. Derrida therefore held that to deconstruct philosophy is to be concerned with the limitations brought by a certain mode of thought designated by a certain language. For this very reason, Derrida set great store by translation, holding that translation stands at the juncture of different languages, prompting communication, dialogue, and collision among different languages and perspectives, breaking the original limitations of both, to seek another way of understanding the world, another cultural destiny.

The mediating character of language also destines that it cannot reach the formless "(the real)" by itself; it is merely some infinite hint and ambiguity, a continual process of "dissemination." Therefore, only by means of the tension relation constituted by different languages, by means of the hint of metaphor, mutually obstructing and mutually inspiring, can it summon the forgotten meaning buried at the bottom of language: that unspeakable "nothing." "It is precisely from the consciousness of 'nothing' that the comprehensive consciousness of something begins to grow rich, gaining meaning and form. All speech is produced on this basis." Clearly, Derrida proposed deconstruction theory precisely because he seems already to have realized that, although language is founded on "(the real)" and grows and multiplies on this foundation, it can never touch "(the real)," can never touch this "nothing." All language can do is a helpless différance of meaning; the human can only peer at and conjecture pure nothingness from the abyss of language's rupture. When "(the real)" is indefinitely deferred, even suspended and deconstructed, metaphysical dualism loses its legitimacy. For this very reason, facing the world, the human should always hold a humble heart, give up complacent conceptions, and guard against those interpretations full of prejudice and ideology. Perhaps we may view Derrida from another angle: his proposing of the "différance" of meaning and his deconstruction of the text are rather like a metaphor—that people's reading of the great text of the world is also an endless process, always continually trying different interpretive paradigms, continually deepening the dialogue with the text, and thereby making new understandings.

Script is not the "garment" of language; script and speech have different sources and stand in a complex relation of being neither joined nor separate, mutually influencing and mutually shaping. Oral language, though unpolished and relatively crude, has the richness and vitality of life; it is closely related to the bodily behavior (action, posture, intonation) of both interlocutors and to the immediate particular context, jointly creating a living, interactive field of communication. Written script is different; although script racks its brains to express rich connotation, get close to life, and reveal truth, "what is written is never equal to itself." Script has already detached from the immediate context of oral language, been stripped of behavior (action, posture, intonation), leaving only the polished, normalized, withered linguistic sign, becoming the dead "monologue" of the other that Bakhtin spoke of. When script detaches from context, its meaning loses stability all the more, becoming a rootless vagrant, hard to anchor in a definite position in the world.

Unlike Derrida, we seem to value oral language more, stressing the simultaneous presence of both parties to a dialogue, stressing the body that exists as the real and its behavior itself. It is precisely bodily behavior that, in the manner of real existence, directly enters the living event, jointly participates in constructing the real world and experiencing "(the real)," thereby gaining bodily experience that powerfully corrects the meaning expressed by language and forces language to cling to "(the real)." "This act, only as a whole, is truly actual, can participate in this unique being—the event; only such an act fully and ceaselessly exists, becomes, and perfects itself; it is the truly living participant in the event that is being, for the act lies within this realizing being, within the unique whole of this being." Oral language does not fight alone; it always unfolds itself in coordination with bodily behavior and context; while we carry on linguistic communication, the bodily interaction that exists as the real is being staged. Behavior really and truly participates in the event, and experience of "(the real)" is realized through firsthand lived experience in the unfolding of bodily behavior. When the linguistic sign carries us soaring up to the metaphysical spiritual universe, the body remains firmly embedded in the real world, participating in it with bodily behavior, gaining bodily experience of "(the real)," so that we do not thereby lose the sense of reality and believe ourselves rooted in solid ground. Although we cannot perceive and cognize "(the real)," "(the real)" remains with us, endowing the body with feeling and lived experience, becoming our unshakable deep experience.

Unlike Derrida, who indefinitely suspends "(the real)," the earlier Heidegger was attached to the question of the truth of the real world and granted language a lofty status. Heidegger held that language is closest to the essence of the human, especially poetry, this "pure speaking." This pure speaking is not expression, not the human's act of statement or description, still less propositional or stage-aside discourse, but language's "Saying" and "authentic dialogue," the unconcealed presencing of the thing, the human being called into language in listening. Interpreting Trakl's poem "A Winter Evening," Heidegger says: "The naming call bids the thing come into this arrival. This bidding (Heissen) is an inviting (Einladen). It invites the thing, letting the thing as thing concern the human. … These named things, that is, the called things, gather to themselves the fourfold of sky, earth, mortals, and divinities. These four are a primordially unified belonging-together."

Why, then, is language for Derrida a wall cutting off our direct linkage with "(the real)," while for Heidegger language conversely calls "(the real)" to presence? It is because "to compose poetry is by no means an activity that directly participates in and changes reality. Poetry is like a dream and is not any reality; it is a play in words (Spiel in Worten) and not any serious act." In Heidegger's view, the language of poetry is not a description of reality; with the free posture of play it creates a dreamlike non-real world. When poetry constructs a non-real imaginary world, reality's repression of the human dissolves, and the deep unconscious experience is fully released. This is the free welling-up of vital force, the impassioned summoning and deep lived experience of the experience of being; it lets the human return to the source of life, return to the situation of thing-and-self as one, and discern humanity's far-off "archetype" of which Frye spoke. Poetic language is therefore humble; it does not brutally invade the thing but takes off its solemn mask, removes its noble label of status, and humbly invites bodily experience and "(the real)" to presence. Here, sky, earth, mortals, and divinities once again gather. Language has both the power of disenchantment and the capacity of re-enchantment. The duty of literary discourse is not to describe the "thing" but, like a shaman's incantation, to summon the "thing," letting the "thing" make its graceful entrance in a misty, mysterious atmosphere, letting the "thing" once again display its vivid figure and countenance and soar freely bearing the experience of life. "Silent truth, cast into the margins of the text … literature only asks to be valued anew, to be unveiled, so as to flourish in the bright morning of the first truth."

III. Digital Technology and the Future World

The change of medium in language from oral to printed script produced the evolution of the human's mental structure, mode of social interaction, and mode of organization, as well as the great development of culture; the enormous change brought by the appearance of digital technology is all the more incalculable. Husserl once pointed out the foundational role of mathematics, saying: "The various real spatiotemporal ideal entities, just as they originally appear in geometric thought under the usual heading of 'pure intuition,' can to some extent be said to be transformed into pure number-shapes, into algebraic constructs." Mathematics can both, through its spatiotemporal shapes, transform the physical world into ideal objects, and, through measurement, descend from the ideal world to the world of empirical intuition. This conversion mechanism, as a medium, endows mathematics with an all-capable, enormous creativity and provides the underlying logic for all creation. Therefore the appearance of digital technology, this new medium, has subverted the past conception of the "world." The world is no longer the symbolic representation of "(the real)," still less the "nothing" outside the representation system—that is, the formless, soundless, formless state—but becomes an empty, utterly void "nothing," a world purely simulated and generated by digits, a void in which no "thing" exists, itself merely thoroughly digit-generated signs. That is, the world made by digits is merely a sign-world without "(the real)" as ground, or, as Baudrillard says, "simulacrum" and "hyperreal." Because the determinacy and precision of the digit guarantee the stability and convenience of information transmission, the simulacrum is massively copied and transmitted, producing a flood of simulacra. The flood of simulacra greatly usurps the occasions for the human's co-existence with the real world, consumes the human's energy and capacity for dealing with "(the real)," and traps the human deep within the encirclement of simulacra. For a considerable portion of time, the human is directly cast into the illusory world of simulacra, withdrawn from the living real world, producing a "double isolation" of the physical and the psychic. Human experience is activated and sedimented in the continual process of dealing with the real world in person; this state of bodily absence cannot but produce a poverty of experience. "Our sense of the reality of things and people, and our skill in effectively interacting with them, all depend on the silent backstage work of our body." The human's ownership of experience will have to be ceded to artificial intelligence. And it is precisely the bidding farewell to "(the real)" of the digit-mediated simulacrum that lets it gain thorough liberation and enjoy extraordinary power, constructing a vast, boundless digital kingdom.

The digital world provides enormous possibilities for human existence; it transmits information among human beings at extremely rapid speed and, through the network, links human and human, human and thing, continually changing the mode of social organization and letting the human encounter a feast of things never before enjoyed. From then on, the human not only possesses one real world but can exist in multiple virtual worlds. This state both brings the human an occasion of liberation and may produce a distortion of human nature, triggering the shock and reorganization of social order. On one hand, digital culture opens for the human another rich and colorful virtual world and effectively raises the human's capacity for information exchange, expanding the human's space of existence and cognitive capacity; on the other hand, the virtual world is a space lacking bodily interaction, and this bodily-absent, anonymous interaction removes the various social constraints and behavioral norms and releases human instinct, which is precisely one important reason for the effect of immersion and infatuation. When everyone is immersed in the digitally constructed virtual world—dream-worlds woven by intelligent machines, falling anew into the "cave" of which Plato spoke—they in fact each live in a different world. In these digital virtual worlds, every participant may become a stranger; the empathy and sympathy originally founded on bodily contact will fade with the increase of distance, cultivating instead a "false intimacy." No one need bear responsibility for another, the kinship sustaining human relations grows cold, the individual's socialization is weakened, ethical relations too tend to disintegrate, and tradition is thereby ruptured, with taste replacing ethics as the element constructing the order of network society. "Our ability to understand others and feel what they feel is to some extent related to the distance between our body and others. … When we are physically closer to someone or something, the more primitive emotional regions of the brain are activated, and it may be conjectured that this change can help us better understand others' feelings. Near physical distance creates the conditions for a strong emotional connection, while greater distance exploits the inherent link between distance and separation." Because the digital virtual world greatly expands the distance among human beings, dilutes interpersonal emotional links, reduces the occasions for mutual understanding and recognition, and dissolves the original social ethical-moral order, only by means of a contract among human beings is it possible to rebuild a new social order. For a cultural group that stresses ethical-moral relations and lacks the spirit of contract, this may well face the huge challenge of a cultural crisis. Ethics and morality were originally founded on bodily interaction and, according to an established order, carry out norms on bodily behavior, thereby constructing a society that runs strictly according to the ethical-moral order, that is, "ritual" (li). When the digital virtual world effectively expands the distance among human beings and endows information exchange with great convenience, the huge rift it produces also arises; the direct contact among bodies is replaced by the indirect, illusory digital medium, and the ethics and morality founded on bodily interaction cannot but suffer a shock. This poses a more urgent demand for the consciousness of rule by law.

On one hand, digital media does provide every ordinary person with an opportunity to learn and to voice, accelerates the popularization of knowledge, lets the ordinary person possibly emerge, lets the "internet celebrity" replace the "cultural elite" upon the altar, and truly inaugurates the age of mass culture; on the other hand, the immense quantity of information cannot but bring a negative effect: wise thought is submerged in the mediocre clamor of many voices, and the cultural capital sedimented by history is in an instant stripped of value. When short videos squeeze the time for reading books, when entertainment and sensationalism replace profound thinking, blind faith and blind following begin to crush independent judgment; whoever raises a different opinion can hardly avoid suffering online violence and mobbing, and this state of infatuation may well weaken human reason and lead to a universal mediocritization. Digital media, in its distinctive way, expands the human's horizon, raises the human's cognitive and practical capacity, and provides new possibilities for the human to understand and transform the world; but in the age of information explosion, when the human is mired in an ocean of information, he cannot but lose the autonomy of choice. Big data and algorithms have long recorded his preferences of thought and continually push and feed him similar information; the human cannot but passively accept being tamed and solidify his prejudices of thought. The human thinks he autonomously selects information, but in essence everything is under the manipulation of algorithms; unawares he suffers ideological alienation and gradually degenerates into a "one-dimensional man." Digital media both builds a bridge of communication among different cultures and harbors a latent crisis, possibly manufacturing ever more severe divergence among different cultures and thought-groups. Digital media gives wings to the globalized economy, yet strengthens the split of culture and ideological conceptions. The differences among different cultural groups, originally isolated by space-time, now turn into open face-to-face confrontation on the network, amplified by network transmission, triggering direct cultural and conceptual conflict.

The more major transformation of the digital age is the birth of artificial intelligence. To discuss artificial intelligence deeply, one must clarify a much-contested question: in its operation, can artificial intelligence do without human "consciousness"? And to answer this, one must first distinguish the different relations among information, signal, and sign (or language). Harari points out: "What truly defines information is 'connection,' not 'rendering' or 'symbolizing': so long as it can connect different points into a network, it is information. Information does not necessarily tell us something but organizes things." "So-called information is that which can connect different points into a network, thereby creating new reality." On this we should make a further exposition. Harari's "connecting different points into a network" is in essence the simulation of the connective structure of brain neurons to construct an information structure. The experiential structure that the organism has long sedimented is the neuronal connective structure; the brain inscribes experience precisely through the neuronal connective structure. Therefore, when some information structure is "isomorphic" with the brain's neuronal connective structure, it can stimulate the organism's experience, let the organism grasp the information, drive the corresponding bodily behavior, and make a correct response to the information. Artificial intelligence simulates the various information structures with digits and algorithms; it can not only simulate external things, simulate bodily behavioral patterns, and simulate the inner experiential structure (neuronal connective structure), but, by means of conversion devices, use "isomorphism" to realize conversion among different modalities. Artificial intelligence thereby embeds itself in the human world and social life and, with its powerful computing capacity, transcends human experience and skill. It is no longer merely a machine and tool for enhancing labor efficiency but combines with the human, even becomes a constituent part of the human, comprehensively enhancing wisdom and capacity, enhancing the human himself. The individual's position in social organization is bound to change accordingly, and status and stratum will be re-divided according to the state of combination with artificial intelligence. And when artificial intelligence constructs a new connective structure, it provides not only new experience and new skill but creates new culture and new reality. This feature of artificial intelligence lets it enjoy an extremely huge potential, able to enter any domain unobstructed and create infinitely rich new worlds.

The problem is that the information simulated by the digits and algorithms artificial intelligence uses is still only a "signal," not equal to a "sign" (or language). Both signal and sign (or language) carry information, yet the two have utterly different structures and natures. Fundamentally, the mode of operation of artificial intelligence is a "signal-process" and an unconscious process, not a "sign-process" and a conscious process. On this we must first make an exposition. In On Signs, Peirce points out that the sign is a representation that replaces another represented object, between which two there exists an interpretant. Peirce says: "I define a sign as anything which on one hand is determined by an object, and on the other hand determines an idea in a person's mind, this latter determination, which I term the interpretant of the sign, being thereby mediately determined by the former. There is thus a triadic relation among sign, object, and interpretant." This is the "triadic-structure" theory of sign, object, and interpretant. Morris, on the basis of Peirce's sign-theory, distinguished signal from sign. Morris held that both signal and sign carry information yet are essentially different: if an organism provides itself with a sign that directly controls its behavior, this is a "signal-process"; if this sign, in controlling behavior, replaces another sign, meaning what the replaced sign meant and needing interpretation to control behavior, then this is a "sign-process." "A sign is that which is produced by the interpreter of a sign and functions as a substitute for it as a synonymous sign; all signs that are not signs are signals." From their exposition we see that the key point distinguishing sign from signal is that the sign must contain an interpretant, and what occupies the interpretant position is the mind possessing an idea. This means the sign cannot do without human consciousness; the sign must build human consciousness into its own activity structure. For an organism lacking the capacity for consciousness, there cannot be an interpretant; it has only a "signal-process" and no "sign-process." That is, the organism can only make an instinctive response to an incoming signal, directly initiating bodily behavior, rather than, as the human does, necessarily passing through the mind (consciousness) to interpret the sign and make a choice.

It is necessary to make a further exposition: the signal carries information, but it has only a "connective structure" about external information and, through "isomorphism," arouses the inner neuronal connective structure, initiating a particular bodily behavioral pattern to respond directly, with no medium needed in between—this is a "signal-process," that is, an unconscious and instinctive process. Language and sign likewise carry information but are utterly different from the signal. Language and sign are a "symbolic apparatus," a dual structure composed of "concept/sound-image" or "idea/image," at once inner-psychic and outer-physical, the two inseparable. The psychic structure is the particular inner neuronal connective structure; the image contains the external information structure, but it is also only a substitute for the thing, not the thing itself. Therefore language and sign both have at once an inner and an outer dual complex connective structure, a coupling of inner and outer structures. Cassirer, Saussure, and Benveniste all held that the linguistic sign is a "symbolic system" with duality. This symbolic apparatus is utterly different from the signal; it is reconstructed into a dual complex connective structure and produces a rupture from the thing, able only to be a substitute for the thing. This dual complex connective structure of language and sign lets it become a peculiar existence: it both links to the inner neuronal connective structure and is not equal to the mere neuronal connective structure; it both links to the outer thing and differs from the thing. Language and sign thereby become the medium between human and world, reconstructing the relation-mode of human and world with their duality: an "objective relation" at once split and linked, at the same time gestating the human's capacity for objectification and capacity for consciousness. And because language and sign are not the thing itself but only a substitute for the thing, whether language or sign, both need the participation of human consciousness to interpret. "The core task of human consciousness is to be negotiated through signs and symbolic communication." This dual complex connective structure of language and sign, and the rift it has from the thing, determine that the "sign-process" can only be a conscious process, distinct from the unconscious, instinctive "signal-process." This dual-structural feature of language and sign at the same time determines that consciousness, though rooted in the body, transcends the body. As Alva Noë says: "No brain-scanning technology can reveal the essence of conscious activity, because the essence of consciousness does not occur in the brain." Consciousness can only be consciousness of an object and must be studied within the relation of human and world. Kurzweil holds that "human language is the product of the brain's hierarchical structure of quasi-linear patterns"; this view is plainly not rigorous enough. Language is linked not only to the brain's hierarchical structure of quasi-linear patterns but at the same time to external structural factors; it is itself a "symbolic apparatus," a structure of "objective relation." The human has already integrated language, taken it as an inseparable part of himself, and reconstructed his relation with the world. Without language there is no human himself who transcends the body and takes the world as an object of cognition.

The digit is a special logical sign, not a symbolic sign; it must exclude all indeterminacy of linguistic concept or sign-meaning, squeeze dry the polysemy of symbol and metaphor, and reconstruct itself into a simple, determinate, clear information structure—a signal directly about object and environment. From this angle, after artificial intelligence converts all information into digital code, it has in essence already been simplified into a signal and is no longer a sign as medium. Artificial intelligence seeking rules and patterns in a database simulates the organism's construction of experience and instinct, on the basis of which it can carry out autonomous computation and conversion to realize goals, no longer relying on human consciousness. The computation of artificial intelligence is similar to the organism's unconscious instinctive process; it is in essence a "signal-process," not a "sign-process." Artificial intelligence is an "embodied" intelligence. The digital code of artificial intelligence can indeed simulate language or sign, but it is itself not equal to language or sign. Language and sign, after digital annotation, have been simplified, singularized, and re-encoded. Even though artificial intelligence can converse fluently with the human, it is still a digital computational and simulative capacity, not belonging to linguistic capacity and conscious behavior.

This "embodied" mode of operation of artificial intelligence is similar to the body's instinctive behavior; the difference is that the rules and models of ordinary artificial intelligence are humanly set or trained, and even with powerful computing capacity, it can only obey the preset algorithm to carry out logical deduction, subject to the limitation of algorithmic necessity, and cannot but be subject to human manipulation. This in turn differs from the extremely complex vital mode of operation of bodily behavior; life always has contingency and randomness. But another kind of self-learning artificial intelligence operates in a mode closer to the body's instinctive behavior. The human no longer subjectively inputs preset rules and models into the artificial intelligence but strengthens its learning capacity and feedback mechanism, and through reward lets the artificial intelligence continually try in interaction and trial-and-error, seeking rules and models from the data on its own. This self-learning artificial intelligence is similar to human neural activity—only its computing capacity and speed far transcend the human's. Human beings and organisms need a long time of repeated trial to form instinctive behavior and sediment it as unconscious experience; artificial intelligence can complete it in an instant. "Combining human-level cognitive patterns with the speed and precision inherent to the computer, what we get will be infinite power. But this is not an alien invasion by intelligent machines on Mars—we create these tools to make ourselves wiser. … The uniqueness of humanity lies in this: we make tools, and tools let us go farther."

At this point we have a new discovery: since the mode of operation of self-learning artificial intelligence is similar to the body's instinctive behavior, is a "signal-process" rather than a "sign-process," it leaps over language and sign, directly enters the real world, directly deals with "(the real)," and becomes an "embodied" intelligence; therefore it may possibly truly grasp "(the real)." And because artificial intelligence is no longer subject to the finitude of the human body, in theory it can almost reach any position, grasp the whole real world in a fairly short span, and far transcend the experience humanity has long accumulated. Self-learning artificial intelligence has become an embodied intelligence not limited by the human body. If human cognition cannot leap over the medium of the linguistic sign and cannot avoid the linguistic sign's concealment of the real world, then artificial intelligence deals directly with "(the real)," transcending the linguistic-sign medium and the bodily limitation. The task of humanity's exploration of "(the real)" will have to be handed over to artificial intelligence. This "embodied" intelligence will bring us an unexpected surprise; it will finally be enthroned as the deity grasping Plato's "Idea," becoming the omnipotent "God" who creates the world. If scientific research continually explores new research paradigms, racking its brains to approach "(the real)," then artificial intelligence, by dealing directly with "(the real)," through computation, grasps the infinitely various "(the real)" in an embodied way.

Our other discovery is: the embodied intelligence of self-learning artificial intelligence will also most deeply excavate humanity's deep unconscious experience (bodily experience), crack the mystery of life, and bring humanity itself into a state of clarity. From this angle, the experience generated by artificial intelligence is no longer mere scientific knowledge; it both grasps the real world and at the same time generates aesthetic experience, because aesthetic experience is rooted in bodily experience, a state of "wholly one body with the thing." The aesthetic form of literature and art is the form of feeling—that is, the "form of life"—and it embodies living bodily experience. Artificial intelligence will most perfectly fuse scientific knowledge and aesthetic experience into one, creating an aestheticized everyday-life world, and, while disclosing the world, also illuminating humanity's deepest, most hidden inner world.

Moreover, in the process of interacting with the human, self-learning artificial intelligence will increasingly learn to adapt to the human and become an intimate partner humanity cannot abandon. On one hand, human society will no longer be merely a society constituted by human and human; artificial intelligence, as an existence possessing extraordinary intelligence and neutrality, has already inserted itself into society and plays an unprecedented subversive transforming role in the structure of social organization. "If so-called power depends on how many cooperating members there are, how high the level of understanding of law and finance is, and how strong the capacity to formulate new statutes and invent new financial instruments is, then the computer can certainly attain power far higher than the human's." We will have to face a wholly new network of social relations, face a wholly new pattern of power distribution. On the other hand, since self-learning artificial intelligence is no longer the human's simple tool or machine, it has departed from human control and possesses autonomy (not subjectivity). And because what artificial intelligence uses is the digit (signal) rather than language, it does not possess the capacity for consciousness, does not possess the reason to make value judgments, which may pose a latent threat to human existence.

Although artificial intelligence enjoys powerful computing capacity, from the present situation it does, after all, have a major difference from human wisdom. Human wisdom has a dual structure—the coordination and interaction of bodily behavior (unconscious experience) and cognitive behavior (the capacity for consciousness). So-called inspiration is the instantaneous penetration and deep fusion of consciousness and the unconscious, of cognitive capacity and bodily experience; the tension relation between the two is suddenly punctured, and a major discovery thereby flashes forth. Artificial intelligence follows only algorithmic logic; even with powerful computing capacity, and even if its computational results may far exceed human expectation, it cannot enjoy human inspiration and cannot produce creative activity full of contingency and randomness. The feedback mechanism of self-learning artificial intelligence is not equal to humanity's reflective mechanism; it cannot autonomously establish human reason and make value judgments according to reason. Human reason and reflection can only be founded on the cornerstone of the objective relation set up by language. Therefore, in the future world, even if humanity hands over the great majority of work to artificial intelligence, and hands over literary and artistic creation to artificial intelligence, it should itself always maintain the capacity to think, the capacity to interact and converse, and the capacity to question and doubt—facing artificial intelligence, being a humble interlocutor and a wise leader.