Symbolic Cognition and AI: Interpretability and Meaning

This component contains a companion essay that extends the OSF-registered framework Astrology as a Symbolic Cognitive System: A Foundational Framework. The essay applies the framework’s core ideas to contemporary questions in artificial intelligence, with particular attention to interpretability, symbolic reasoning, and ethical limits. Rather than treating AI as a predictive or authoritative system, the essay examines how modern computational models, like earlier symbolic systems, externalize pattern recognition and meaning-making. It emphasizes interpretation, relational reasoning, and the risks that arise when symbolic outputs harden into authority. The essay also reflects on Indigenous sky-based knowledge systems as parallel expressions of symbolic cognition that resist centralization, offering historical context for current debates around AI governance and responsibility. This work is intended as a conceptual and ethical extension of the original framework, supporting interdisciplinary dialogue across the humanities, cognitive science, and AI research.