Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador
en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in
Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.
A review of Tao Feng's article (2022): A New Harmonisation of Art and Technology: Philosophic Interpretations of Artificial Intelligence Art
Introduction: when the machine becomes an artistic "agent"
Is art generated by artificial intelligence a legitimate form of aesthetic creation or, on the contrary, a rupture with the millenary tradition that has defined the human? This question, which only a decade ago might have seemed speculative, has become a central debate in contemporary philosophy of art. Generative algorithms produce works that win painting competitions, are auctioned at renowned houses, and are exhibited in modern art museums. The public, meanwhile, oscillates between fascination and perplexity.
The Chinese philosopher Tao Feng, in an article published in 2022 in the journal Critical Arts, addresses this question with an original and nuanced approach . His central thesis is that AI art cannot be reduced either to a simple extension of human art or to a mere technological curiosity. Rather, it is a special form situated "between natural beauty and human art" , occupying an unprecedented territory that demands new interpretative categories.
Feng proposes a "new harmonisation" between art and technology —a balance that neither ignores the fundamental differences (AI lacks intentionality and consciousness) nor dismisses the creative possibilities it opens. From the perspective of our research on the S/Y/C model and Surgical Philosophy, Feng's work offers valuable conceptual tools for understanding what is at stake when a machine "creates" art.
Two methods, three levels: the architecture of AI art
Feng distinguishes, first of all, two major technical approaches in the generation of art by artificial intelligence: symbolism and connectionism .
Symbolism is based on the explicit manipulation of rules and symbolic representations. This is the classical tradition of AI, the one that attempts to codify human knowledge into formal systems. In the artistic domain, it translates into algorithms that follow predefined aesthetic rules —harmonic compositions, chromatic schemes, metric structures— to generate works.
Connectionism, on the other hand, uses artificial neural networks that learn patterns from large datasets. They are not programmed with explicit rules; they are shown thousands or millions of examples, and they themselves extract statistical regularities. This approach, which has given rise to models such as DALL-E or Midjourney, produces surprisingly creative results because it does not limit itself to applying fixed rules but can generate unprecedented combinations of styles and forms.
But beyond technique, Feng proposes an analysis at three levels of the human-machine system:
Human using machine: AI is a tool at the service of the human artist, like the brush or the camera. Control and intentionality reside entirely in the human.
Human guiding machine: there is a closer collaboration. The human defines parameters, selects training data, guides the process, but the machine generates results that the human has not foreseen in detail. It is a dialogue, not a one-way instruction.
Human-machine separation: AI operates autonomously, without direct human intervention. It generates works by itself, based on its own learned criteria. This is the most controversial level, because it raises the question of whether we can still speak of "art" without a human artist behind it.
This triple distinction is useful because it allows us to avoid excessive generalisations. It is not the same to say that an artist uses an AI filter in Photoshop as it is to claim that an autonomous algorithm produces paintings without supervision. The philosophical problems raised by each level are different.
AI art as an intermediate form: between nature and artifice
One of the most original aspects of Feng's analysis is his characterisation of AI art as a special form that does not fit neatly into traditional aesthetic categories .
On the one hand, AI art is not a natural aesthetic object. It is not a sunset or a rock formation sculpted by erosion. It is an artefact, a product of technique. This implies that its appreciation is mixed with interests —technological, commercial, cultural— and does not respond to the pure disinterested contemplation that Kant attributed to aesthetic judgment.
On the other hand, AI art is not equivalent to traditional human art. Feng states it clearly: AI has neither intentionality nor consciousness . There is no subject behind the work who wanted to say something, who poured their emotion into it, who seeks to communicate with the viewer. The AI-generated work is, in this sense, orphaned: it has no interiority to express.
However —and here lies the originality of the thesis— AI art is not a mere empty imitation either. Feng proposes that its artistic generation is a kind of "purposiveness without purpose" , a reformulation of the Kantian concept. The work seems to have purpose, seems to have been made for something, but that purpose does not reside in the mind of a conscious creator, but rather in the structure of the algorithm and in the statistical patterns it has learned.
This ambiguity —neither nature nor human art; neither chance nor full intentionality— places AI art in a conceptually unprecedented territory, demanding new philosophical tools to be understood.
The "actor network": rethinking authorship in the age of AI
Feng introduces a particularly fruitful concept to overcome the authorship dilemma: the "actor network" . Inspired by Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, this concept proposes that artistic creation is not the work of a single subject —the romantic genius, the individual artist— but the result of the interaction of multiple actors: humans, technologies, institutions, algorithms.
In this framework, artificial intelligence can be considered as an "agent" in the generation of art —not as a fully conscious subject, but also not as a passive tool. It participates in the construction of artistic logic, breaks traditional boundaries, and opens up possibilities that no human would have imagined alone.
The notion of "actor network" allows us, according to Feng, to avoid two equally impoverishing extremes: on the one hand, the radical anthropocentrism that refuses to recognise any novelty in AI art; on the other, the naive technocentrism that attributes to machines a creativity comparable to the human.
Art, from this perspective, is always a collective construction. And artificial intelligence is a new participant in this construction —not to replace the human artist, but to become part of a more complex creative ecology.
The problem of truth and falsehood in AI art
A fascinating aspect that Feng addresses is the question of authenticity . In AI art, the processes of generation, identification, and appreciation necessarily include a judgment about the true and the false. Is what the machine has made really art? Or is it a simulation, an imposture, a forgery?
This question is not merely academic. It has practical implications in the world of the art market, copyright, conservation, and criticism. Feng notes that AI art reflects a forced integration of intelligent technology into the artistic domain, an attempt to eliminate contingency, dialectics, and negativity which, for certain aesthetic traditions, are consubstantial with true art .
Human art, Feng reminds us, has traditionally been linked to risk, to uncertainty, to struggle with material, to the possibility of failure. AI, on the contrary, always produces within the margins of what it has learned, without true capacity for transgression. Its "creativity" is, at bottom, a statistical variation within a pre-defined space of possibilities.
What we need, Feng concludes, is not a substitution of human art by machine art, but a true harmonisation between art and technology . People should use aesthetic reason to guide AI technology, not passively submit to its logic nor idealise it uncritically.
Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)
Tao Feng's analysis resonates deeply with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence. His three levels of the human-machine system and his concept of the "actor network" can be reinterpreted in the light of our categories.
The S (Survival) dimension reminds us that human art is not a luxury but a tool for homeostatic regulation. AI, lacking a body and vital needs, cannot generate art in this full sense. It can produce formal objects, but it does not respond to the survival drive that, in humans, impels creation.
The Y (Symbolon) dimension is central to understanding the difference between the inhabited symbol and the manipulated symbol. AI can manipulate symbols efficiently, but it does not inhabit the symbol. There is no one inside who recognises or is recognised. AI art is, in this sense, an empty symbolon: it has the form, but not the lived experience.
The C (Wholeness) dimension points to the human need to close forms, to integrate parts into a coherent whole. AI can generate formally closed objects, but it does not experience the drive toward wholeness. There is no subject who feels relief when the pattern closes, nor anguish when it fragments, nor longing when a totality is intuited but not yet reached.
Surgical Philosophy, for its part, invites us to make a precise analytical cut in this debate. It is not about rejecting AI or accepting it without more. It is about distinguishing levels, excising categorial confusions —such as confusing product with process, or simulation with lived experience— and suturing a conceptual framework that integrates the new without losing sight of the essential: that art, in its origin and in its function, is a phenomenon of the living.
Feng offers, with his concept of the "actor network", a middle path that respects this complexity. AI can be one more actor in the creative ecology, without occupying the place of the human artist, but also without being reduced to a mere tool. It is an agent, yes, but of a special kind: devoid of intentionality, of consciousness, of a body. An agent that amplifies, that surprises, that proposes, but that does not feel.
Final considerations: toward a new harmonisation
Tao Feng's article reminds us that art is not an immutable essence, but a living practice that is transformed by technology. Artificial intelligence is not the first innovation to challenge our aesthetic categories —photography, cinema, conceptual art have already done so— but it may be the most radical, because it questions the very role of the creative subject.
Feng does not offer definitive answers, and that is a virtue. Instead, he proposes an attitude: that of harmonisation, not submission or rejection. To use aesthetic reason —that human capacity to judge beauty with sensitivity and reflection— to guide technology, not to be guided by it.
From our perspective, this implies remembering that art, in its Palaeolithic origin, was a biological technology in the service of survival, symbol, and wholeness. Artificial intelligence may be a new technology in this long journey, but it must not make us forget that art is, above all, an encounter between embodied subjectivities. An encounter that, for now, only living beings can protagonise.
References
Feng, T. (2022). A new harmonisation of art and technology: Philosophic interpretations of artificial intelligence art. Critical Arts, 36(1-2), 110–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2022.2111454
López Mallo, J. B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701
https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eus
López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196
López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C
López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197
López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage [Kindle edition]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1
Autor / Author
Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.
Enlaces / Links
Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects:
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens
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