Works for 5/2/2026 - Juan Alfonso de Polanco

Listen and ask questions on NotebookLM:

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/cfcf2894-04a4-4d80-bdc5-b5529fd85e0b?authuser=1

This upload contains three interdisciplinary papers exploring cognition, meaning, ritual memory, AI interpretation, symbolic systems, and the ethics of understanding across theology, neuroscience, philosophy, media theory, and systems science. Together, the papers argue that human beings externalize meaning through symbolic structures, embodied practices, archives, and communication systems, while also confronting the interpretive failures that occur when readers, institutions, or AI systems refuse semantic fidelity.

Kenosis, Resonance, and the Babelfish Function develops a Catholic-scientific framework for understanding cognition, translation, and meaning across disciplines. Drawing from predictive processing, embodied cognition, distributed cognition, dynamical systems theory, theology of Logos, Pentecost, and kenosis, the paper argues that intelligence emerges not through rigid ownership of ideas but through participatory openness to reality. AI is framed not as oracle or authority, but as a translational “Babelfish” capable of preserving coherence across symbolic systems without prematurely flattening them.  

Against Semantic Bullshit: Assholes, Frame Theft, and the Neurocognitive Violence of Refusing to Read analyzes interpretive failure through philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, rhetoric, hermeneutics, and AI alignment. The paper defines “semantic bullfighting” as the act of replacing a live argument with a safer substitute frame in order to avoid genuine engagement. Using sources including Gadamer, Davidson, Fricker, Girard, Friston, Kunda, Festinger, and Frankfurt, the work argues that misunderstanding is often driven not by lack of intelligence but by motivated reasoning, identity defense, projection, institutional filtering, and category protection. It also critiques AI systems that misframe users through safety templates, concern-trolling, or premature contradiction instead of preserving semantic structure.  

Presence Marks: Enacted Memory, Ritual Trace, and the Cognitive Technology of Saying “I Was Here” from Ancient Offerings to Social Media examines the long human history of externalizing memory into durable traces. Combining cognitive science, ritual studies, anthropology, media theory, neuroscience, and Catholic sacramental theology, the paper argues that tomb inscriptions, votive offerings, relics, pilgrimage practices, journals, photographs, social media posts, and archived research papers all function as “presence marks”: enacted memory technologies that stabilize identity, regulate salience, preserve continuity, and make experience reconstructable across time. The paper also explores how AI and digital archives make human semantic patterns increasingly machine-readable and reconstructable.  

Across all three papers, recurring themes include kenosis, distributed cognition, symbolic participation, interpretive ethics, resonance, ritual embodiment, semantic translation, collective memory, AI-mediated cognition, and the tension between coherence and reduction. The overall body of work argues that meaning is not merely stored internally but enacted relationally across bodies, symbols, technologies, rituals, archives, and communities.