2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

250
A NACLASTIC SUPPLEMENTS
tempting to call their “external” features, so to speak. However, it is misleading to use the
term “external,” since by definition none of those features can violate the requirement of
total self-containment and therefore they cannot be “external” in the proper sense of the
word. I prefer to call the addition that is needed in order to fix the games in place, their
“supplementary” features, with reference to a concept whose articulation has been explored
by Jacques Derrida, and which will become important in the discussion of Structuralism.
The next two sections will be devoted to a comparison of search-spaces and structures that
will highlight their different ways to cope with the “supplementary features” of their ob-
jects. Such a comparison will allow me to criticize, on the basis on the Lévi-Straussian cri-
tique of formalism, Artificial Intelligence’s “supplement.” The last section of the chapter
will examine in details Lévi-Strauss’s solution to the problem.
3. Form and content
There is no doubt that search-spaces and transformation groups are both deeply de-
tached from the material substrate they account for. 8 However, there are several different
ways of being in a detached relation with a substrate, and, in fact, Artificial Intelligence and
Structuralism opt for two very different solutions. To get a grip on the difference, let us be-
gin by remarking that, generally speaking, structural relationships do not necessarily entail
a total separation from the substratum that bears them in order to work as such. On the con-
trary, in several cases, the materiality of the concrete substratum is in fact an integral part
of the structure itself. This is clearly the case in the perhaps prototypical meaning of the
8. My discussion of formality in this section follows, for the particular case of its use by Artificial Intelligence,
John Haugeland’s treatment in Artificial Intelligence. The very Idea. My understanding of formality
“at large”, e.g. as a particular and heavily theory-laden answer to a philosophical problem, is
deeply influenced by the work of Brian Cantwell Smith, who provides the best analysis of a seemingly
simple but really daunting philosophical notion. See Brian Cantwell Smith, The Rise of Objects …,
and especially The Age of Significance, vol. II Formal Symbol Manipulation….
Smith’s influence on my thoughts on formality translates into a much weaker, but I think more accurate,
definition than the one proposed by Haugeland for AI-systems. He splits formality into token-manipulation,
finite playability and digitality. Part of the first two notions is expressed above by
discreteness and closure but I think we diverge significantly on the third term, digitality. See John
Haugeland, Artificial Intelligence…,48 ff.