The Ghost in the Machine: Meaning as Non-Performative Being

1. The Tautology of Meaning

What is the "agentic projection" of meaning into the world? It appears we cannot conceptualize meaning as anything other than the byproduct of conceptualization itself. Meaning is the intrinsic, immediate result of our capacity for reference - the very act of applying language.

How are we to penetrate this inconceivable link? It is a connection we can only assert, yet never fully grasp. Meaning is "nowhere" - not merely in a spatial sense, but in a conceptual one. Our existence is meaningful by the very fact of its being, yet that meaning remains nowhere to be found as a discrete entity, as a projection.

2. The Mystery of Infusion

Consider the raw capacity for conceptual behavior - for speech. I hear myself articulate words, yet I do not "hear" the meaning of the articulation itself. How, then, is this meaning "infused"?

A falling object is at once trivial and mysterious, much like the act of conveying meaning. However, we can construct a conceptual model for the falling object; we cannot do the same for the act of meaning. We cannot examine the latter from the outside; we can only be it. How, then, do we even begin to formulate the mystery?

3. Generation vs. Transmission

I generate and absorb speech in a manner fundamentally different from a radio receiver. The distinction is not merely that I am "conscious," but that I am a genuine generator of meaning. An algorithm may process, but it does not originate.

This path is treacherous and prone to error, yet we must persist. Meaning emerges from the absence of certainty - from indeterminacy. We must ask: can an algorithm operate upon truly uncertain ground? When a process is indeterminate, what guides its operation?

Probabilities? Their mathematical manifestation? What do these have to do with meaning?

4. Indeterminacy and the Priority of Existence

In algorithmics, indeterminacy usually refers to a lack of predictability in results. But we are speaking of a deeper indeterminacy: the nature of the act itself.

The indeterminacy of human operation stems from the fact that we are not merely performativeentities. Our existence precedes our performance - both materially and conceptually. By contrast, an algorithm begins and ends, in every sense, within its performance. It has no "being" outside of its execution.

Procedural dynamics and trajectories are foreseeable; ontological states are not. The 'how' is predictable; the 'is' remains a mystery.

The ground is slippery, but we proceed.

The Paradox of the Empty Category

Why are we driven to inquire into this abstract, "metaphysical" self? We find ourselves searching for the source of Agency—the prime mover behind every action—yet we must ask: does this Agency ever truly manifest itself?

The answer is a resounding no. Agency never presents itself as an observable or otherwise conceivable phenomenon. It is, paradoxically, a category without particulars. While a Labrador is an instance of the category "Dog," and the Tower of London is a particular of the category "Castle," the same logic does not apply to the self. Neither I, nor my uncle, nor any other human being constitutes a "specimen" of Agency in the same way we are specimens of a species, a gender, an ethnicity, or a temperament (even sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic have instances in the world).

If the category is empty of empirical particulars, what is the object of our bewilderment? We are forced to confront a startling possibility:

• "I inquire about the 'me' only cecause I articulate it."
• "I am investigating a phenomenon that may be nothing more than a linguistic application."

We are not exploring a "thing" in the world, but the shadow cast by the word "I".

Beyond the metaphorical 'shadow', however, lies a more radical truth: we are investigating a state that is conceptually contingent upon the use of the word, rather than one that exists prior to it. We are exploring a subject that is generated by, and inseparable from, its own linguistic expression.

We proceed.

Inquiring into the 'I' is a pursuit of a ghost that never manifests in the light of objective observation. From the first-person perspective, the 'I' is never seen; it is only ever articulated. We do not encounter our subjectivity; we merely hear ourselves declare it.

Why, then, do we seek to 'know' a subject that we only experience through the echo of our own voice? What do we strive to understand in a 'substance' that reveals itself but in the act of its own articulation and exists only as a recurring linguistic act? What is the nature of this peculiar wonder? Where are its roots truly anchored?

Far from being marginal concerns, these questions arguably hold primacy over all other philosophical investigations into the mental realm.

We proceed.

What is the nature of the 'subject' that remains when all its predicates are stripped away? I am an organism, a parent, and a professional; yet, I find myself puzzled by the 'me' that supposedly inhabits these roles without being defined by them.

In probing the 'I' that resides within my biological and social shell, what am I actually questioning? Beyond the tally of my roles and attributes - from my physical organism to my history as a student or an athlete - what is this elusive core of subjectivity that I find so puzzling?

Exploring agency as an object requires the paradox of agency acting upon itself. It is no more illuminating than expecting an engine’s roar to reveal its own mechanical design.

Just as we do not consult the roar of an engine for an understanding of its mechanics, we should not expect the act of thinking to yield insights into the foundational possibility of its own emergence.

For some strange reason some of us nevertheless do.

We proceed.

To move and to react are not two different kinds of action.

To define their difference simply as 'physical versus mental' is insufficient, as this classification merely acknowledges the division while leaving its fundamental nature unresolved.

They are not simply distinct types; they are fundamentally heterogeneous and share no common conceptual ground. They are alien to each other.

One is there, the other - nowhere. One is me, the other - it.

The fact that I can - or am disposed to - react is trivial. The fact that I can conceive of, rather than merely encounter, reaction is an utter riddle.

If 'conceive of' merely meant 'decipher', there would have been no problem.

But no one, alas, deciphers reaction (or intention), other than in encountering it (to encounter is indeed to decipher).

When one conceives of... something, one does something altogether different. But what?

What does one do when he/she conceives of something that is nowhere and is me or you?

What is it that we wish to understand in philosophy?

Cognitive encounters with the world yield many questions.

Cognitive encounters with cognitive behavior seem to yield only the same kind of questions.

We wish to understand why (which doesn't mean we'll succeed).

We proceed.

Physical objects are defined by their physicality; people/persons - by their agency.

The natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology etc.) establish and explore the constitution and behavior of the physical world. Hence, when we invoke the term 'physical object', we mean precisely that which these sciences define and investigate. The study is the definition.

The study of agency, however, lacks this congruence.

While disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other cognitive sciencesexplore the manifestations of agency, they do not engage with its constitution in the way the natural sciences engage with the physical world.

These fields focus on the observable consequences (behaviour, neurological mechanisms, reports about cognitive states and processes, which are themselves metaphors) but do not address the "fabric" of the mind (of subjectivity itself).

Therefore, when we use the term 'agent', we refer to something distinct from the observable phenomena that theses cognitive disciplines investigate.

Philosophy purports to fill that alleged gap. It sees the fabric of the mind (of what it is to be like something) as its holy grail and seeks to probe it like the natural sciences explore the observable universe. Based on what?

We proceed.

We proceed to explore the ontological status of Agency.

Agency stands apart from empirical reality because it lacks an accessible ontological identifier. We are unable to articulate its essence ("what it is"), but rather only to be it (to exist as agents).

The problem of definition is shared with empirical objects, but the consequences differ radically: We also cannot define the ultimate "reality" of a chair or any object, only its manifestation within empirical reality (i.e., how we perceive it or how nature configured it).

But for these empirical objects (and empirical reality as a whole), this manifestation is sufficient for their identity and being, as their entire existence is constituted by their participation in the observable world.

Agency - and only Agency - is fundamentally distinct in this respect.

Its core essence and definition resides in its self-manifestation - the principle of acting from within.

Agency is not merely a mechanism for input/output, nor is it the capacity to understand or be understood. It is fundamentally a self-subsisting reality independent of any devised mechanism or external process.

So, in contrast to any other object or notion, when we speak about it, we must speak about what it is as such, which we apparently cannot do.

Which should bring us back to the more basic question that must precede any positive explortatory endeavor: What is the true object of our discourse when we refer to Agency? What is it that we are trying to explain?

We proceed.

What constitutes a philosophical question?

Is the underlying source of philosophical curiosity fundamentally distinct from the curiosity that springs any other question?

Does it originate from the common human urge to know and understand the environment, or is its background primarily emotional? Is it merely another form of intellectual curiosity?

In philosophy, we seek to unravel the nature of cognition (meaningful perception and conception), much like physics seeks to unravel the mysteries of tangible reality.

But what is the source of the philosophical mystery itself?

In physics, I see the movement (the phenomenon) that I attempt to explicate.

Do I similarly see or otherwise perceive the cognitive reaction or act that I aspire to explicate in philosophy?

If I do see the cognitive act, then the puzzle dissolves into the domain of the cognitive sciences (psychology, biology, neuroscience etc.). No distinct philosophical mystery remains.

If I do not see the cognitive act, then what is the derivation of the wonder? What neverthelesscompels and bothers the philosophical mind?

The conventional view frames the puzzle as the Body-Mind Problem (the hard problem of consciousness): The puzzle is supposedly stirred by the shift from the strictly physical (chemistry, instincts etc.) to the intentional or behavioral-intentional (will, intention, subjective qualia). In otherwords, how does a strictly non-physical substrate (subjective experience) emerge from systems governed by physics, chemistry, and biology?

But where or how do we witness or detect or realise that this emergence actually occurs?

What is the observable fact or identifiable phenomenon that launches or necessitates this philosophical wonder in the first place? Where do the misty roots of the body-mind problem truly originate (not historically; ontologically!)?

Perhaps the search for the source of philosophical wonder is more fundamental than the mysteries that wonder seeks to solve…

We proceed.

How do complex physiological dynamics culminate in essential agency?

How does integration foster functionality on an entirely new level?

How does natural engineering translate into the story of existence?

These questions are always there, everywhere. Let's ask them in our own way.