Vibe-Creation: The Epistemology of Human-AI Emergent Cognition

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of vibe-creation as a new cognitive mode emerging from human-AI interactions, forming a Third Entity that challenges traditional metaphors and has profound implications for epistemology and education.

Contribution

It develops a multi-layered theoretical framework combining semiotics, tacit knowledge, individuation, phenomenology, and complexity theory to explain emergent cognition in human-AI interactions.

Findings

Defines the Third Entity as an emergent cognitive structure.

Introduces vibe-creation as a pre-reflective cognitive mode.

Proposes asymmetric emergence as a form of agency.

Abstract

The encounter between human reasoning and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) cannot be adequately described by inherited metaphors of tool use, augmentation, or collaborative partnership. This article argues that such interactions produce a qualitatively distinct cognitive-epistemic formation, designated here as the Third Entity: an emergent, transient structure that arises from the transductive coupling of two ontologically incommensurable modes of cognition. Drawing on Peirce semiotics, Polanyi theory of tacit knowledge, Simondon philosophy of individuation, Ihde postphenomenology, and Morin complexity theory, we develop a multi-layered theoretical account of this formation. We introduce the concept of vibe-creation to designate the pre-reflective cognitive mode through which the Third Entity navigates high-dimensional semantic space and argue that this mode constitutes the automation of tacit knowledge - a development with far-reaching consequences for epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and educational theory. We further propose the notion of asymmetric emergence to characterize the agency of the Third Entity: genuinely novel and irreducible, yet anchored in human intentional responsibility. The article concludes by examining the implications of this theoretical framework for the transformation of educational institutions and the redefinition of intellectual competence in the age of GenAI.