This abstract proposes Architectural Cognitive Externalization (ACE) as a fifth stage in the evolution of human cognitive externalization, extending Merlin Donald's four-stage framework (1991). While all previous stages — gesture, language, writing, and symbolic systems — externalized cognitive outputs, none externalized the cognitive architecture that produces them. Enabled by large language models and the method of Recursive Cognitive Externalization (RKE), it is now possible to formalize, archive, and generatively transmit the structural patterns of individual cognition: not what a mind thinks, but how it thinks. The empirical basis is the AUGMANITAI Compendium — 1,000 formalized cognitive terms extracted through RKE, each ISO-conformant (ISO 704, 1087, 30042), DOI-archived, and generatively validated. ACE is tested against five criteria for stage transitions (novel externalization object, transmissibility, durability, irreducibility, generativity) and meets all five. This constitutes the first formal proposal for a post-theoretic stage of cognitive externalization.
Andreas Ehstand (Fri,) studied this question.