Artificial Intelligence: Rethinking Human Consciousness and Agency in the Age of Machinic Simulation

The rise of generative AI (GenAI), exemplified by ChatGPT and Claude, has triggered profound debates about technology's impact on humanity. These systems, while powerful, lack embodied cognition, challenging assumptions about agency, creativity, and intelligence. This book critiques reductive narratives equating computational fluency with understanding, emphasizing the biological and intentional roots of human consciousness. It explores epistemological limits, ontological differences, and ethical considerations of AI, while rejecting hyperbolic claims of machine transcendence. By addressing AI's implications for language, creativity, and posthumanist thought, it reaffirms the irreplaceable role of embodied, intentional agency in defining humanity amidst technological upheaval.

Sergio Torres-Martíiacute;nez is professor of cognitive linguistics, semiotics and translation semiotics. Among his main interests are Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, Cognitive Semantics, embodiment theory, phenomenology, Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, Peircean semiotics and the cognitive applications of construction grammar (Applied Cognitive Construction Grammar). Current research projects include the conceptualization of construction grammar as an interdisciplinary field of endeavor connecting embodiment theory, neuroscience semiotics and philosophy for the construction of a comprehensive and systematic description of constructional attachment patterns across languages. Central to this research is the need to provide linguistics with a model of the mind that complements linguistic description.