Abstract

Starting from the premise that formal-mathematical modes of awareness are “discourses”, this chapter traces the connections between postmodernism, the rise of the instrumentalist mode of thinking that has enabled the creation of artificial intelligence, and the attack on the notion of identity, the combination of which tends to strip away the humanity from the modern “subject”, which is apprehended as “selfcreating” from this perspective. It then describes how nations and cultures are sucked into the all-encompassing technologization trap through the promise of better living through technology, reinforced by the trends of globalization, even if that means accepting the poison pill of dehumanization on an individual level. What follows is a discussion of “traditional” cultures which reject this ideology of self-creating subjects in favor of their traditional religious beliefs. We then discuss the value of transcendental subjectivity in opposition to both of the afore-mentioned ideologies, pointing to the ways that this mode of awareness embraces multiplicities and rejects the totalizing or encompassing mathematization of experience. The chapter concludes with an exposition of the importance of meaning-making—that is, the signitive—to all these modes of perception, and its actual foundation in transcendental subjectivity.