Semantic and historical halos of doubling: from souls, shadows, and reflections to the AI-twin
The article examines the phenomenon of doubling in its historical and semantic dynamics – from archaic conceptions of the multiplicity of the soul to contemporary technotronic forms of digital twins. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to rethink the structures of human identity in the context of the rapid development of neural networks, which generate new types of reflected selves. Doubling is considered as a fundamental anthropological constant that expresses culturally conditioned models of personality fragmentation. The novelty of the approach lies in the reconstruction of the semantic and historical halos surrounding the key names of the double – from the Egyptian Ka and Ba to contemporary “avatars” and “digital twins.” The study demonstrates that the modern digital twin is not a fundamentally new phenomenon but rather a technological transformation of ancient representations of the human being’s external or internal reflection. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the phenomenon of doubling functions as a universal mechanism of cultural self-reflection. The contemporary digital environment reintroduces multiplicity, but on a new level – the level of a distributed, fragmented, and algorithmically supported self. This opens new hermeneutic perspectives for interpreting doubling, including the problem of the mirror.
While nobody left any comments to this publication.
You can be first.
Allen, J. P. (2001), “Ba”, in Redford, D. B. (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Vol. 1, Oxford University Press and The American University in Cairo Press, Oxford; New York; Cairo, 161-162.
Bacon, F. (1935), Novyy Organon [The New Organon = Novum Organum Scientiarum], Sotsekgiz, Leningrad, USSR (in Russ.).
Birch, S. (1899), “On the Word Ka in Egyptian”, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 7, 263-270.
Blok, M. (1998), Koroli-chudotvortsy: Ocherk predstavleniy o sverkyestestvennom kharaktere korolevskoy vlasti, rasprostranennykh preimushchestvenno vo Frantsii i v Anglii [Les Rois thaumaturges. Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre] [The Royal Touch: A Study in the Medieval Belief in the Supernatural Power of Kings], Transl. from French by Milchina, V. A., foreword by Le Goff, J., in Gurevich, A. Ya. (ed.), Shkola “Yazyki russkoy kul'tury”, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Bolshakov, A. O. (2001), Chelovek i yego Dvoynik. Izobrazitelnost i mirovozzreniye v Yegipte Starogo tsarstva [Man and His Double: Imagery and Worldview in Old Kingdom Egypt], Aleteyya, St. Petersburg, Russia (in Russ.).
Budge, E. A. Wallis (2010), An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, UK.
David, R. (2002), Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt, Penguin, London, UK.
Dvoretsky, I. Kh. (1958), Drevnegrechesko-russkiy slovar [Ancient Greek-Russian Dictionary], State Publishing House of Foreign and National Dictionaries, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Dvoretsky, I. Kh. (1976), Latinsko-russkiy slovar [Latin-Russian Dictionary], 2nd ed., revised and enlarged, Russkiy Yazyk, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Grieves, M. and Vickers, J. (2017), “Digital Twin: Mitigating Unpredictable, Undesirable Emergent Behavior in Complex Systems”, Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Complex Systems, in Kahlen, F.-J., Flumerfelt, S. and Alves, A. (eds), Springer International Publishing, Switzerland. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-38756-7_4
Hoffmann, E. T. A. (2019), Pesochnyy chelovek i drugiye nochnyye etyudyThe [Sandman and Other Night Studies], Transl. from Germ. by Galperina, R., Zhirmundinskaya, N., Karelsky, A. et al., Inostranka; Azbuka-Attikus, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Homer (1953), Odissey [The Odyssey], Transl. by Veresaev, V., Tolstoy, I. I. (ed.), State Publishing House of Fiction, Moscow, USSR (in Russ.).
Homer (1990), Illiada [The Iliad], Transl. by Gnedich, N. I., Zaitsev, A. I. (ed.), Nauka, Leningrad, USSR (in Russ.).
Jansen‑Winkeln, K. (1996), “Horizon and Transfiguration”, Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur [Studies on Ancient Egyptian Culture], 23, 201-215 (in Germ.).
Jung, C. G. (2009), Soznaniye i bessoznatel'noye [Consciousness and the Unconscious], 2nd ed., Transl. from Germ. by Bakusev, V., Akademicheskiy Proyekt, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Kantorowicz, E. H. (2014), Dva tela korolya: issledovaniye po srednevekovoy politicheskoy teologii [The king's two bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology], Transl. from English by Boytsov, M. A. and Seregina, A. Yu, Gaidar Institute Publishing house, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Kristensen, W. B. (1896), Aegypternes forestillinger om livet efter døden i forbindelse med guderne Ra og Osiris [The Egyptians' conceptions of the afterlife in connection with the gods Ra and Osiris], Kristiania, Norway (in Norw.).
Lévy-Bruhl, L. (1994), Sverkhyestestvennoye v pervobytnom myshlenii [The Supernatural in Primitive Thought], Pedagogika-Press, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Maspero, G. (1913), History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, UK.
Mirer, A. (1969), “The Main Noon”, Almanakh “Mir priklyucheniy” [Almanac “The World of Adventures”], Detskaya literatura, Moscow, USSR, 683-789 (in Russ.).
Mirer, A. (1976), Dom skitaltsev [House of Wanderers], Detskaya literatura, Moscow, USSR (in Russ.).
Öhman, C. (2022), “The Identification Game: Deepfakes and the Epistemic Limits of Identity”, Synthese, 200(4), article 319. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-022-03798-5
Renouf, P. Le Page (1884), Egyptian Mythology, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, UK.
Shakespeare, W. (1960), Polnoye sobraniye sochineniy: V 8 t. T. 6. Gamlet, prints Datskiy [Complete Works: In 8 vols. Vol. 6. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark], Iskusstvo, Moscow, USSR (in Russ.).
Slovar antichnosti (1989) [Lexikon der Antike] [Dictionary of Antiquity], comp. by Irmscher, J. Jone, R., Transl. from German by Gorbushin, V. I., Gratsianskaya, L. I., Kovaleva, I. I., Levinskaya, O. L. et al., in Kuzishchin, V. I. (ed.), Progress, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Stevenson, R. L. (2021), Strannaya istoriya doktora Dzhekila i mistera Khayda [Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde], AST, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Turkle, S. (2011), Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Basic Books, New York, USA.
van de Leeuw, G. (1918), “External Soul, guardian spirit and the Egyptian Ka”, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache [Journal of Egyptian Language], 54, 56-64 (in Germ.).
Wilde, O. (2022), Portret Doriana Greya [The Picture of Dorian Gray], Eksmo, Moscow, Russia (in Russ.).
Yee, N. and Bailenson, J. (2007), “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self‑Representation on Behavior”, Human Communication Research, 33(3), 271-290. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x