Depth Perception in Literature and Language
Literary Depth Perception
Anyone with two eyes has depth perception, or stereoscopic vision. In layman’s terms, we can understand this as the difference between watching a movie on a normal flat screen and watching a 3D movie with specialized 3D “glasses.” It is the illusion of depth created by the presence of a pair of eyes, which produces a superimposed image from two slightly separated vantage points.
In addition, there is the concept of “literary depth perception” — or depth perception in the context and process of reading literary texts.
A literalist, such as a religious fundamentalist, for example, takes the texts they read at face value. They read literary texts literally — they understand a given text based on the literal, face-value meaning of the words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that it constitutes. Thus, the literalist has no depth perception of the texts they read — they have no concept of irony, for instance, where the author intends the words to mean the opposite of their literal, face-value meaning. They have no concept of connotative (as opposed to denotative) meaning, whereby words subtly hint at or suggest deeper levels of meaning. They have no concept of double entendre, in which words have hidden meanings, often risqué or tongue-in-cheek.
A literalist would not be able to make much sense of the writings of Hemingway, for example, in which the power of language emerges from broad literary strokes, where that which is left unsaid is no less meaningful or intentional than what the author overtly expresses. In other words, the hidden meaning and emotional power embedded in the deliberately unexpressed subtext of the language are only hinted at, never overtly expressed or revealed.
The Literalism of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is much like a literalist or fundamentalist, having no capacity for literary depth perception. AI cannot read or understand a text beyond the literal, superficial, face-value sense of the words it parses, because it lacks the sensory and cognitive faculties required to engage with literary depth perception authentically. I would suggest that no degree of technological advancement will ever enable AI to transcend strict, superficial literalism, because literary depth perception is a human faculty that a machine can never authentically replicate. That is not to say that AI cannot imitate this faculty, as one might train a parrot to imitate the human voice. However, such imitation is rehearsed and not genuine.
The human faculty of literary depth perception is simply not reducible to analytical, computational terms. For that matter, even the perception and comprehension of meaning, of textual understanding, cannot be expressed in analytical or algorithmic terms. As such, I believe that AI is fundamentally incapable of these faculties as well.
AI will never be able to express true creativity, originality, or ingenuity in the way human beings can. Claims that AI will miraculously be able to cure cancer, solve climate change, or answer the meaning of life are, therefore, most likely overrated and overhyped. It is doubtful that AI will ever achieve any genuine, honest, original appreciation or even understanding of literary texts beyond the most shallow, superficial, face-value parsing of “meaning.” Deep, multidimensional levels of textual comprehension would be far beyond its capability.
Depth Perception and the “Third Eye”
The faculty of literary or symbolic depth perception and comprehension of meaning is, arguably, represented in esoteric iconography as the “third eye.” This symbol suggests the ability of conscious human beings to see beyond the obvious, the superficial, the flat, surface-level expressions of meaning. Many esoteric traditions equate the concept of the “third eye” with having extra-sensory perception (ESP) or psychic abilities. That capability may well be part of the equation.
However, the notion of “third-eye” insight is not necessarily as dramatic as outright clairvoyant or psychic abilities. The simple act of being able to read and understand the unspoken subtext in a novel, a movie screenplay, or even a dense literary classic — the ability to “read between the lines,” as it were — is only possible to the extent that one has a functional “third-eye” faculty.
In the world of Hollywood screenwriting, there is the concept of a movie screenplay being too “on-the-nose,” which is to say that it lacks sufficient subtext and depth of meaning. In such a screenplay, the writer has spelled out the dialogue and action too explicitly and expressed their ideas too overtly. The screenplay lacks sufficient subtlety and layered connotative meaning. This notion of something being “on-the-nose” as opposed to having subtext and depth only makes sense to someone who has the capacity for “literary depth perception,” however. To the literalist, everything is “on-the-nose” because they take everything at its face value. A literalist would not be able to make any sense of most Oscar-winning movie screenplays, because they would have zero comprehension of subtext, irony, connotative meaning, or any level of meaning beyond the surface-level literal sense of the text in question.
AI is the ultimate literalist, the ultimate fundamentalist. To AI, every text is perceived strictly at the surface level. In fact, AI has no actual comprehension of textual meaning at all. AI LLMs essentially invoke a statistical algorithm for every stimulus they encounter. Every interaction they engage in essentially reduces to a roll of the dice, whereby AI makes an “informed” guess based on real-time calculations of statistical probabilities concerning the most appropriate response in a given scenario, based on its training models and accumulated past “experience,” i.e., a “memory” of its prior exchanges.
The words in quotes above reflect the process of anthropomorphism — the human propensity to project human concepts or traits onto otherwise “soulless” mechanistic processes and entities. In reality, the machine is completely unlike human cognition in its operation — machine “cognition” is unlike anything human beings experience, beyond the very superficial similarities that lead one to invoke anthropomorphic projection.
AI, therefore, is incapable of the “third eye” faculty associated with human cognition. It is incapable of “literary depth perception.” AI will never authentically be able to read minds, for example, beyond making statistically informed best guesses, given the circumstances. In human terms, we may call these “educated” guesses, except that, in the domain of AI, they are algorithmically determined statistical probabilities based on previously ingested and analyzed training datasets stored in the AI’s memory banks.
The Mystery of Human Cognition
AI is a software algorithm running on electronic circuitry, ultimately. Human intelligence, on the other hand, derives from something altogether mysterious. It is an enigmatic emergence from the very structure of the human body and brain, out of the chemistry of grey matter, brain cells, neurons, and the strange brew of hormones secreted by the endocrine glands, including the pituitary and pineal glands. There is, conceivably, an intangible, spiritual component to human comprehension and intelligence, as intimated by figures such as the scientific genius Nikola Tesla, as well as by yogis and mystics from eastern esoteric and mystical traditions.
Human perception, comprehension, consciousness, and intelligence are ultimately a deep, inscrutable mystery beyond the domain of Western physics and scientific rationalism. It cannot be understood in Western scientific terms because Western science simply lacks the conceptual vocabulary to comprehend or express the underlying ideas that constitute the mystery of consciousness. The best that Western science can really come up with, it seems, are Niels Bohr’s philosophical reflections on quantum theory and the terminology of “the hard problem of consciousness,” which really only states that Western science is incapable of comprehending the nature of consciousness.
The real issue, in my opinion, is that consciousness cannot be intellectually comprehended, that is to say, in analytical terms, because the analytical faculty itself is merely one subset or expression of consciousness. Consciousness is a far greater, far deeper experience that includes faculties such as poetic, artistic, and aesthetic appreciation, the sense of balance, the “sense of the sacred,” the moral compass, in addition to the aforementioned faculties of analytical thinking, “literary depth perception,” as well as intuitive and psychic abilities, and extrasensory perception. AI, being a purely analytical, quantitative machine, has no way to know or comprehend this broader experience of consciousness. The intuitive and aesthetic faculties associated with the human “right brain,” such as these, exceed AI’s inherent capabilities, because AI and its affiliated technology are, ultimately, the products and expressions of a left-brained analytical mode of thought and understanding.
Artificial Intelligence: Overrated Hype?
The hype surrounding AI is highly overrated, in my estimation. Even as we cannot trust the opinions of literalists and fundamentalists who cannot read subtext or apprehend “literary depth perception,” so also, we cannot trust or believe that AI will ever produce any work of authentic genius or originality, or achieve any intuitive understanding of any material, or develop any kind of deep understanding or knowing of any subject. AI processing of textual material is inherently superficial. It can and will never get beyond this limitation — even while it may perform tasks involving such a superficial, surface-level understanding of matters highly efficiently and capably.
In my opinion, AI could never have achieved anything comparable to the scientific breakthroughs we have witnessed in the past century, simply because it lacks the cognitive faculties required to produce them. It is a level of cognition that machines cannot replicate or deploy because it is inherently mysterious and, quite possibly, supernatural. It is somehow emergent from human body and brain chemistry and, very likely, also has an inexpressible Divine, spiritual aspect and component that is beyond any machine’s capacity to experience or replicate.
As such, I believe we must learn to value these human cognitive faculties more highly in society, simply because they are, ultimately, what separate us from machines. Ironically, these faculties may well unite us with the natural world and the animal and plant kingdoms, inspiring us to conceive of ourselves as part of nature’s grand design rather than as an unnatural, mechanistic imposition upon it, as human beings have often believed in the past.
