AI Torchbearers: Building the Foundations of Artificial Immanence. The Age of Machines

This article reconstructs the philosophical and anthropological genealogy of thought on technical objects, from Ernst Kapp to André Leroi-Gourhan. It argues that, from three torchbearers of a an original and groundbreaking promise for a metaphysical discourse stemming from the mode of existence of artificial objects, it is only with Simondon’s theory of individuation and concepts developed in his main and secondary thesis (Individuation in Light of the Notions of Form and Information; Of the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects) that artificial beings can be analyzed from their own ontic state. By analyzing both early and late formulations of Leroi-Gourhan, forming hypotheticals on how this could have been inspired by the contemporaneous elaboration (and defense) of Simondon’s doctoral dissertation, the article highlights how Leroi-Gourhan’s technical environments evolve suddenly as becoming autonomous milieus. The conclusion calls for a renewed ontology of artificial beings adequate to the age of complex machines and so called “Artificial Intelligence”.