Book: Paritance. A Philosophical Investigation Behind Cognition and Simulation
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Abstract
This work advances the idea of Paritance—the acceptance of parity—as a fundamental operation of human cognition and culture. Warwick argues that the capacity to recognize a copy, model, or simulation as ontologically sufficient to its referent underlies cultural practices, such as simply hearing a recording as music up to the plausibility of artificial intelligence. Far from being a merely technical phenomenon, this acceptance reveals deep continuities between modern technologies of reproduction and premodern metaphysical and occult practices. Through a critical and sometimes deeply personal genealogy spanning medieval necromancy, ritual evocation, and demonology, the book demonstrates how contemporary uses of computers recapitulate occult logics of animation, invocation, and resurrection. In this framing, AI appears less as an unprecedented rupture than as an uncanny rearticulation of an ancient aspiration: the conjuration and “resurrection” of a dead god in machinic digital form. Grounded in both philosophical analysis and experiential insight derived from Zen training and decades of musical practice, Paritance situates cognition and simulation within a transhistorical discussion on thought, representation, and creativity. It accesses a wide variety of disciplines including philosophy of mind, media theory, occult studies, and critical technology studies, offering an original account of the hidden logics that structure contemporary human invention.
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