The Semiotic Collapse of Aniconism: How the Prohibition of Idols Became the Negation of Non-Linguistic Agency
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2026
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| author | Sophia, Franny Philos |
| author_facet | Sophia, Franny Philos |
| contents | <p>This paper offers a phenomenological description of a three-stage cognitive<br>architecture embedded in Abrahamic monotheism. The original prohibition of<br>cult images (pesel, ) functioned as a semiotic command against<br>fabricating counterfeits of the divine—a specific injunction within the<br>competitive religious politics of the ancient Near East. Through a process of<br>semantic expansion spanning roughly a millennium, this prohibition<br>transformed into an ontological principle: the negation of non-linguistic<br>agency as such. The mechanism of this transformation is identified in the<br>Logos doctrine—the theological claim that divine being is co-extensive with<br>linguistic articulation (John 1:1; the Islamic uncreated Quran; the Jewish<br>memra)—which installed as cognitive infrastructure the implicit axiom that<br>what cannot be linguistically articulated does not exist. Against this,<br>cognitive science of religion demonstrates that distributed agency-attribution<br>across non-human entities is the maturationally natural default of human<br>cognition: animism is not a primitive error but the baseline from which<br>monotheistic cognition departs through active, institutionally sustained<br>suppression. The paper further describes how the monopolization of divine<br>agency in a single, linguistically complete being structurally necessitates a<br>delegation system in which interpretive authority over divine language<br>functions as the primary source of human power. This architecture, taken<br>together, constitutes the cognitive infrastructure for what subsequently<br>manifested as ecological disenchantment and colonial epistemicide. No<br>normative claim is advanced. The paper is offered as phenomenological<br>description of a cognitive system whose internal structure has consequences<br>that can be traced.</p> |
| format | Recurso digital |
| id | zenodo_https___doi_org_10_5281_zenodo_18876394 |
| institution | Zenodo |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| publisher | Zenodo |
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| spellingShingle | The Semiotic Collapse of Aniconism: How the Prohibition of Idols Became the Negation of Non-Linguistic Agency Sophia, Franny Philos aniconism Logos doctrine animism cognitive science of religion semiotic ideology ontological naturalism disenchantment <p>This paper offers a phenomenological description of a three-stage cognitive<br>architecture embedded in Abrahamic monotheism. The original prohibition of<br>cult images (pesel, ) functioned as a semiotic command against<br>fabricating counterfeits of the divine—a specific injunction within the<br>competitive religious politics of the ancient Near East. Through a process of<br>semantic expansion spanning roughly a millennium, this prohibition<br>transformed into an ontological principle: the negation of non-linguistic<br>agency as such. The mechanism of this transformation is identified in the<br>Logos doctrine—the theological claim that divine being is co-extensive with<br>linguistic articulation (John 1:1; the Islamic uncreated Quran; the Jewish<br>memra)—which installed as cognitive infrastructure the implicit axiom that<br>what cannot be linguistically articulated does not exist. Against this,<br>cognitive science of religion demonstrates that distributed agency-attribution<br>across non-human entities is the maturationally natural default of human<br>cognition: animism is not a primitive error but the baseline from which<br>monotheistic cognition departs through active, institutionally sustained<br>suppression. The paper further describes how the monopolization of divine<br>agency in a single, linguistically complete being structurally necessitates a<br>delegation system in which interpretive authority over divine language<br>functions as the primary source of human power. This architecture, taken<br>together, constitutes the cognitive infrastructure for what subsequently<br>manifested as ecological disenchantment and colonial epistemicide. No<br>normative claim is advanced. The paper is offered as phenomenological<br>description of a cognitive system whose internal structure has consequences<br>that can be traced.</p> |
| title | The Semiotic Collapse of Aniconism: How the Prohibition of Idols Became the Negation of Non-Linguistic Agency |
| topic | aniconism Logos doctrine animism cognitive science of religion semiotic ideology ontological naturalism disenchantment |
| url | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18876394 |