Is Homo sapiens Symbolically Grounded? : Reconsidering the Problem from the Language-as-Interface Hypothesis

Stevan Harnad’s formulation of the symbol-grounding problem was a decisive breakthrough in cognitive science and AI.
How can symbols be connected to the world they refer to? This question has continued to frame discussions of meaning and intelligence up to the present day.

Yet one may ask in reverse: Was Homo sapiens ever truly grounded at all?

1 Language as the Moment of Un-grounding

Throughout four billion years of biological evolution, every living organism remained firmly grounded in its environment.
Light, sound, temperature, chemical signals — life responded to these inputs directly through sensory–motor coupling.
There were no symbols, no representations, only the closed loop of perception and action.

Then, roughly one hundred thousand years ago, something extraordinary occurred. Homo sapiens invented language.
At that instant, for the first time on Earth, a species became un-grounded from the world it inhabited.

2 Language as Interface and the Loss of the World

Language is not a transparent tool for grasping reality; it is an interface that arises between the human and the world.
Once language appeared, direct access to reality was replaced by mediation: we could touch the world only through the surface of words.

Other species remain compelled to stay grounded.
Only humans float above the world, walking upon the thin membrane of linguistic mediation.

Thus, reversing Harnad’s question, we may say:
the human being is the ungrounded creature par excellence — a species defined by its inability to be grounded.

3 The Self-Expansion of the Symbolic World

Separated from its ground, humankind began to generate an infinite symbolic universe.
Instead of perceiving reality directly, we continuously re-encode it through language, concepts, institutions, science, art, and religion.

In Blumenberg’s terms, this is a re-occupation of the world (Wiederbesetzung);
in Lotman’s, the semiosphere;
in Lacan’s, the symbolic order.
Human beings, deprived of grounding, endlessly produce new interfaces — a self-catalyzing species of symbols.
Culture and civilization are the totality of this artificial symbolic layer.

4 AI as the Dream of Re-grounding

From this viewpoint, today’s efforts toward embodied AI or grounded cognition appear as humanity’s own re-grounding experiment.
By giving AI bodies and sensors, we seek not merely to imitate intelligence but to reconstruct, by artificial means, the direct connection to the world we ourselves have lost.

AI thus becomes a mirror of our desire: an attempt to regain, in silicon, the ground that language once took away.

5 The Balance Sheet of the Letzter Mensch

Humankind continues to expand its symbolic interfaces without end.
Science, politics, art — all are layers of mediation floating above the absent ground.
Where will this un-grounded adventure lead?

Whether this was a blessing or a curse, only the Last Human (Letzter Mensch) will be able to submit the final balance sheet.
Until then, we shall keep dreaming of the world across the fragile membrane of language.