The Topology of Multimodal Fusion: Why Current Architectures Fail at Creative Cognition
This paper identifies a structural limitation in current multimodal AI architectures that is topological rather than parametric. Contrastive alignment (CLIP), cross-attention fusion (GPT-4V/Gemini), and diffusion-based generation share a common geometric prior -- modal separability -- which we term contact topology. The argument rests on three pillars with philosophy as the generative center. The philosophical pillar reinterprets Wittgenstein's saying/showing distinction as a problem rather than a conclusion: where Wittgenstein chose silence, the Chinese craft epistemology tradition responded with xiang (operative schema) -- the third state emerging when saying and showing interpenetrate....
| Authors | Xiujiang Tan |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 6 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 1 May 2026 |
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