Uncanny Insights: Sharing “What Does AI Lack?” In a recent post, the question “What does AI lack?” was posed as a way to probe the gap between artificial intelligence and human thought. The shared insight was that current AIs (like large language models) lack a genuine subjectivity and unconscious – in short, they lack the being that characterizes human thought. This insight was not merely about functional deficits, but about an uncanny difference: AI can mimic reasoning and

Or ... The Question of Thought in the Age of AI: Derrida, Freud, Lacan Or ... Does AI think? Rethinking Thought with Derrida, Freud, and Lacan Introduction: Rethinking the Question of AI Thought The question “Does AI think?” has become increasingly urgent with the rise of advanced language models. These AI systems generate text that is uncannily human-like—so much so that it provokes the unsettling impression that something resembling thought may be occurring within the algor

Course Level: Upper-division undergraduate (no prerequisites required) Institution: Oregon State University, School of History, Philosophy, and Religion Term: Fall 2025 (11-week quarter) Instructor: Eric W. Anders, Ph.D., Psy.D. Class Times: [Days] [Time] at [Location] Course Overview AI Ethics, Chaos Theory, Natural Language Models, and the Denial of Undecidability The deliberately provocative title of this course serves as a critical starting point—highlighting precisely th

The deliberately provocative title of this course serves as a critical starting point—highlighting precisely the symptomatic nature of how we name and understand complex phenomena within technology, language, and ethics. From a psychoanalytic perspective, particularly drawing upon Freud and Lacan, "working through" (Durcharbeitung) involves engaging rigorously and repeatedly with a symptom or symbolic conflict, moving beyond mere intellectual insight toward a deeper subjectiv

Alternate titles: Ethics in the Age of Undecidability: Why AI Lacks an Unconscious and What That Means for AI Governance The Symbolic Apparatus of AI: Lacan, Derrida, and the Limits of Ethical AI Design Introduction The convergence of psychoanalytic theory and artificial intelligence (AI) research has sparked debates over whether AI systems might possess something akin to an unconscious mind. Recent work by Luca Possati suggests applying a psychoanalytic lens to AI – even coi

When we talk about ethical AI, we often assume that artificial intelligence systems can—or at least should—be inherently ethical. But what if the problem isn't with AI itself, but with the deeper human desires and economic systems that shape its creation? AI today is fundamentally produced as a commodity: developed, marketed, and sold within a capitalist framework. Commodities inherently embody a human intention or teleology—they exist to satisfy desires, whether practical, s

Derrida’s Archive Fever: Memory, Language, and the Archival Impulse Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever (Mal d’Archive, 1995) is a penetrating meditation on how we remember, record, and forget. Crucially, Derrida frames the archive not as a mere institutional or technological repository, but as a concept rooted in memory, language, and psychoanalysis. He reminds us that the word archive comes from the Greek arkheion, the house of the archons – those magistrates who guarded offici

Introduction The digital age has ushered in unprecedented capacities to record, store, and recall information, leading the humanities into an “archival” turn magnified by technology. In this context, the term archive fever – originally coined by Jacques Derrida in Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression – takes on new resonance. Archive fever describes a compulsive desire to preserve the past, tinged with a paradoxical drive toward forgetting or destruction inherent in the act o

Introduction: The Misnomer of Chaos Theory The name “chaos theory” suggests a radical break from traditional scientific and mathematical models of order. One might assume that chaos theory embraces indeterminacy, unpredictability, and the breakdown of classical structures—but in reality, it does the opposite. At its core, chaos theory is not about chaos at all. Instead, it is a highly deterministic metaphysical framework, one that paradoxically reinforces the very structures

When The Chronicle of Higher Education recently resurfaced Timothy Brennan's seven-year-old critique—arguing that the Digital Humanities (DH) is a busted fad—it was a curious editorial decision. In “Revisiting DH Progress Since 2017,” I explore how the field has evolved substantially, propelled by new theoretical insights and, more crucially, advances in AI. By reprinting this article without considering how AI and DH have become intertwined, The Chronicle risks painting a st

Introduction: The Battle Over Complexity The field of complexity science has long been dominated by the belief that even the most intricate systems—ranging from financial markets to biological networks—are ultimately computable. The Santa Fe Institute (SFI), one of the leading institutions in complexity research, has championed models based on agent-based simulations, nonlinear dynamics, and emergent behavior, all of which assume that complexity can, in principle, be reduced

Introduction In recent years, the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) has become a major interdisciplinary hub for studying complex systems, artificial intelligence, and the nature of cognition. With roots in American psychology (particularly behaviorism and cognitive science) and analytic philosophy of science, many of its research programs implicitly assume that human intelligence is fundamentally “rational-calculable” and, therefore, amenable to comprehensive formalization or computa

The early 1990s witnessed a convergence of theoretical disruptions in physics, philosophy, and the nascent field of cognitive science—disruptions that challenged many of the bedrock assumptions of classical epistemology. In this context, Arkady Plotnitsky’s work on complementarity offered a means of connecting quantum mechanics, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis through a shared interrogation of what can (and cannot) be known or represented. Around the same time, Roger Penro

In recent years, the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) has become a major interdisciplinary hub for studying complex systems, artificial intelligence, and the nature of cognition. With roots in American psychology (particularly cognitive science and behaviorism) and analytic philosophy of science, many SFI research programs implicitly assume that human intelligence is fundamentally “rational-calculable” and, therefore, amenable to complete formalization or computational modeling. As a

The intersection of quantum mechanics, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis is not an obvious one. Yet Arkady Plotnitsky’s work demonstrates how these seemingly distinct fields share a fundamental concern with the limits of knowledge—what can be thought and what remains unthinkable. In his paper "The Thinkable and the Unthinkable in Psychoanalysis and Philosophy, From Sophocles to Freud to Derrida" (The Undecidable Unconscious: A Journal of Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis, 20

Analytic philosophy and academic psychology—two fields that often pride themselves on rigorous methods, formal logic, and testable theories—have historically pushed aside or marginalized approaches like deconstruction and psychoanalysis. At first glance, this can seem like a mere methodological clash: one side insists on measurable constructs, replicable data, and conceptual precision; the other emphasizes language’s instability, the unconscious, and the impossibility of fina

Course Title AI, Memory, and the Unconscious: Exploring the Politics of Digital Archiving Course Description This course examines the ethical, psychological, and social implications of artificial intelligence as a keeper of cultural memory. We will use a small selection of approachable readings—short articles, blog posts, and excerpted texts—to understand how AI systems can silence marginalized voices, reinforce historical biases, or open new avenues for representation. Drawi

Course Title Artificial Imagination: AI, Ethics, and Creativity Course Description This course examines the ethical and philosophical dilemmas that arise when artificial intelligence (AI) intersects with human creativity. We will explore key questions such as: Who owns creative influence? What does it mean for an algorithm to “learn” from copyrighted or culturally significant works? How do systems that function as “memory machines” shape culture, identity, and history? Drawin

In Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Jacques Derrida reveals how Freud’s notion of the death drive permeates the very structure of archival impulses. Far from being a simple record of the past, the archive—understood here in psychoanalytic terms—both preserves and imperils what it collects, maintaining traces of history even as it courts erasure and destruction. In the digital humanities, where AI emerges as an archivist of unprecedented scope, this tension reaches a new

Or ... The Cultural Unconscious and the AI Ego: Derrida, The Authors of Silence, and the Fevered Archive What does it mean to think of thought itself as unconscious? For Jacques Derrida, the unconscious is not a hidden repository of truths buried beneath conscious awareness but a dynamic, structural feature of meaning-making. While Freud’s unconscious holds repressed desires and memories that shape conscious thought indirectly, Derrida expands this notion into the realm of la