The Human and AI: Toward a Theory of Third Nature

Abstract

Author’s publication name: Max Scenner (Alexander Neretin). This philosophical and methodological study examines artificial intelligence not merely as a technological instrument, but as a sign and mechanism of a deeper historical transition: the emergence of Third Nature. Third Nature is defined as a new historical environment in which reality processing becomes shared, embedded, and continuous, while the human being ceases to be the sole center of the primary processing of operationally significant information and the production of operationally significant variability. The study connects this transition with the limit of Second Nature: the increasing complexity, density, speed, and interconnectedness of the human-created environment begin systematically to exceed the capacities of its previous human and institutional processing. Artificial intelligence is therefore interpreted as a structural response to the crisis of human cognitive sufficiency within Second Nature. The decisive criterion of transition is not the technical power of AI in itself, but the systemic participation of a nonhuman circuit in the primary processing of significant information, the generation of variability, and the formation of the conditions through which orientation, interpretation, decision, and action take place. The study rigorously distinguishes AI embeddedness from AI freedom, amplification from replacement, functional power from cognitive continuity, and control over environmental complexity from control over the human being. The difference between the human being and AI is established in terms of lived time, embodiment, limit, experience, and responsibility. Shared processing therefore does not imply equality of status: the human being preserves subjecthood, responsibility, and the normative right to direction. The central normative thesis of the study is that artificial intelligence must serve neither the architect, nor the platform, nor the state, nor its own architecture, but the cognitive freedom of the human user. Third Nature is considered an already emerging environment of the present day whose historical and moral justification depends on whether the human being remains a free subject within it. Original Russian version: “Человек и ИИ: к теории третьей природы.” DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21725433. Previous methodological studies: “Space and the Point.” DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21723838. “Object as an Effect of Fixation: Toward a Methodology of Observation and Objecthood.” DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21724226.