This paper suggests that learning a language is accomplished through the formation of new language identities and explains this process through the use of existential phenomenology. In order for learning (and specifically, the learning of a language) to happen, a permanent change in the identity of the learner must occur. The paper suggests the introduction of the concept of linguistic ego states as a model for such a change in learner identity which, in turn, brings about the embodied (not just (...) cognitive) retention of the acquired knowledge. In order for such retention to occur the situation must bring about anxiety, an existential crisis, or the distress and turmoil mentioned in the article’s title. This leads to a leap of faith, or an irreversible, qualitative personal change, a move to a different existential mode of being. (shrink)

The development of artificial intelligence necessarily implies the anthropological question of the difference between human and artificial intelligence for two reasons: on the one hand artificial intelligence tends to be conceived on the model of human intelligence, on the other hand, a large part of types of artificial intelligence are designed in order to exhibit at least some features of what is conceived as being human intelligence. In this article I address this anthropological question in two parts. First I bring (...) into review and classify some of the main answers that have been proposed until now to this question. I argue that these variety of answers can be broadly classified in three categories, namely a (1) behaviorist, (2) a representational, and (3) a holistic understanding of human intelligence. In a second moment I propose an alternative way of understanding the difference between human and artificial intelligence, which is not essentialist but contextualist and content-related. Contrary to possible answers that I analyse in the first section, this alternative model does not aim at grasping the essence of human intelligence, which could or could not be reproduced in principle by artificial intelligence. It situates rather the fundamental differences between human and artificial intelligence in the context of human existence and the conceptual content of human intelligence, following the phenomenological description of one of its most fundamental features, namely its life-world. Grounding on this approach, it is possible to argue that human and artificial intelligence could be distinct, even if one could prove that they are eidetically, i.e. by their essence, identical. (shrink)

An algebraic interpretation of multigraph networks is introduced in relation to conscious experience, brain and body. These multigraphs have the ability to merge by an associative binary operator \(\odot \), accounting for biological composition. We also study a mathematical formulation of splitting layers, resulting in a formal analysis of the transition from conscious to non-conscious activity. From this construction, we recover core structures for conscious experience, dynamical content and causal constraints that conscious interactions may impose. An important result is the (...) prediction of structural topological changes after conscious interactions. These results may inspire further use of formal mathematics to describe and predict new features of conscious experience while aligning well with formal tries to mathematize phenomenology, phenomenological tradition and applications to artificial consciousness. (shrink)