Homo Semioticus: Body-less AI and the Human Monopoly on Meaning

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated theoretical framework synthesizing Active Evolutionary Theory, the Naked Insula model, Narrative. Outsourcing, and Active Inference within Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle to address the civilizational shift brought by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The paper treats the Naked Insula, Narrative Outsourcing, Artificial Insula, Secondary Surprisal, Semiotic Anchoring, and Meta-Outsourcing as heuristic constructs within a developing theoretical program rather than as established neuroscientific entities. Current AI systems can achieve extraordinary computational throughput in symbolic processing while lacking organismic interoception, biological autopoiesis, and the thermodynamic vulnerability characteristic of living bodies. We therefore propose four dimensions for examining the human–AI boundary: (1) Embodiment and Interoception, (2) Thermodynamic Finitude and Mortality, (3) Autopoiesis and Organismic Intentionality, and (4) Irreversible Time and Intersubjective Vulnerability. Wittgenstein’s later account of meaning as use and language-games is introduced as a philosophical bridge between private embodied experience and socially stabilized semiosis: biological experience may constrain significance, but meaning becomes operative through shared practices of use. Mapping these dimensions across eight domains of civilization, we propose AI as a Cognitive Backbone and Homo Semioticus as the agent of Semiotic Anchoring. The resulting concept of Meta-Outsourcing describes a division of cognitive labor in which information synthesis and pattern computation may be delegated to AI while problem definition, value assignment, and accountable boundary-setting remain human-led. The framework is intended as a conceptual synthesis and prospectus for a larger monograph rather than as an empirical demonstration of the proposed constructs.