Research · the arc · artificial immanence

Machines,as beings.

The Western tradition has long denied artefacts a mode of existence of their own: technical beings “borrow being… but never generate it”. Artificial immanence starts from the other side. Machines are individuating beings, with norms, histories and milieus of their own; their immanence is operational, not a metaphysical projection, and their agency lies in regimes of functioning, not in imported life or mind.

A humanoid robot holding the scales of justice: the illustration made for the Lex Robotica conference (Cnam, 2017) — The illustration made for the *Lex Robotica* conference (Cnam, 2017), the arc’s first public stage.

The claim

Two faces,one concept.

The concept holds an ontology of the artificial and a horizon for the way technical ensembles are designed and governed.

An ontology

Operational ontogenesis

A machine is read by how it operates and how it becomes, not by the use it is put to: its level (element, individual, ensemble, network), its degree of concretization, its norms taken as ranges, tolerances and failure modes. This is where the work opens “the metaphysics and politics of machines as beings”.

A horizon

A program, not an accomplishment

Applied to governance, artificial immanence is “a horizon, not a fact”: the deliberate reincorporation of our technical objects, ensembles and governing machines (treaties, markets, metrics, funds) into the logic of the ecosystems. In the words of the 2026 article, “a program, not an accomplishment: an artificial inchoateness”.

A design stance

From output to relation

Inchoative design turns the ontology into a way of judging technical ensembles: evaluation shifts “from output efficiency to relational quality”, between symbiosis and coercion, for industries and institutions that can still change course.

The arc · 2010–2026

From the humanoidrobot to the climate.

Each stage opened where the previous one reached its limit.

2010–2015 · MachinesHumanoid robots in France and Japan; from ontology to ontogenesis: what the humanoid robot invites us to think about the human and technics (Degrés, 2015).
2017–2018 · CultureRobots against work (Tracés, 2017, with Camille Paloque-Berges) and, in Lex Robotica (LGDJ, 2018), the humanoid robot as a Trojan horse of technics in the cultural city.
2021 · The thesisL’être communicationnel des machines (Université Paris Cité): the technical object studied through its functioning rather than its use, in France and in Japan.
2022–2025 · In episodesA history of artificial beings, from the “dungeons of ontology” in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, through the Enlightenments and the age of machines, to modernity, ending with the operational ontogenesis of artificial immanence.
2025 · DesignThe ecology of the artificial and inchoative design, worked through on steel, ammonia, cement and plastics.
2026 · GovernanceThe inchoative failure of climate governance: artificial immanence and the ontological challenge of the post-COP30 Amazon, with Jessica de Mendonça Alves Mota (Novos Cadernos NAEA, 2026), the concept’s first peer-reviewed home.

Concepts · and where they come from

On the shouldersof Simondon.

The work stands on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of technics. What is borrowed is named as borrowed; what is new is named as new.

From Simondon

Individuation, ontogenesis. Beings are grasped in their becoming, not as finished substances.
Concretization, associated milieu. A technical object grows more coherent as its parts come to serve several functions, together with the milieu it creates.
Element, individual, ensemble, network. The levels at which technical reality exists.
Inchoative. The word itself is Simondon’s.

Moves of this work

Artificial immanence. The being of the artificial read as operational ontogenesis, and turned into a horizon for governance.
Inchoative design. “A metric and a method”, from output efficiency to relational quality.
The inchoation index. A heuristic continuum between symbiosis and coercion; a rubric under work, not yet a validated measure.
The technotope. “The joined techno-geo-eco-social field” in which a technical ensemble is judged.
France and Japan. An empirical and comparative study of machines as communicational beings.

Beyond the horizon · the reflection under way

Fivequestions.

Artificial immanence “requires a joint effort from philosophy, anthropology, STS, engineering, and climate science”. These are the questions the programme is being built around.

How is a machine described as a being?By level, degree of concretization, and norms read as ranges, tolerances and failure modes: a descriptive grammar that holds for an element as for a planetary network.
Can openness be assessed without a false metric?Whether a technical ensemble keeps its capacity to begin again, across its levels: the inchoation index is to be tested on real ensembles before anything is scored.
What would it take to reincorporate our ensembles into the ecosystems?Industries, markets, treaties, funds. Heavy industry was the first case; climate governance after COP30 the second.
How does the exclusion of artefacts look from traditions that never made it?The Japanese material of the thesis, and the thought of Nishida and Watsuji, as the first comparative test.
What would an ecology of machines mean in standards and policy?Embedding the index in standards and procurement, and the question of rights of technical objects.