In the past two decades a number of arguments have been given in favor of the possibility of phenomenal consciousness without attentional access, otherwise known as phenomenal overflow. This paper will show that the empirical data commonly cited in support of this thesis is, at best, ambiguous between two equally plausible interpretations, one of which does not posit phenomenology beyond attention. Next, after citing evidence for the feature-integration theory of attention, this paper will give an account of the (...) relationship between consciousness and attention that accounts for both the empirical data and our phenomenological intuitions without positing phenomenal consciousness beyond attention. Having undercut the motivations for accepting phenomenal overflow along with having given reasons to think that phenomenal overflow does not occur, I end with the tentative conclusion that attention is a necessary condition for phenomenal consciousness. -/- . (shrink)

Integration information theories posit that the integration of information is necessary and/or sufficient for consciousness. In this paper, we focus on three of the most prominent information integration theories: Information Integration Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and Attended Intermediate-Level Theory. We begin by explicating each theory and key concepts they utilize. We then argue that the current evidence indicates that the integration of information is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness. Unlike GWT and AIR, IIT maintains (...) that conscious experience is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness. We present empirical evidence indicating that simple features are experienced in the absence of feature integration and argue that it challenges IIT’s necessity claim. In addition, we challenge IIT’s sufficiency claim by presenting evidence from hemineglect cases and amodal completion indicating that contents may be integrated and yet fail to give rise to subjective experience. Moreover, we present empirical evidence from subjects with frontal lesions who are unable to carry out simple instructions and argue that they are irreconcilable with GWT. Lastly, we argue that empirical evidence indicating that patients with visual agnosia fail to identify objects they report being conscious of present a challenge to AIR’s necessity claim. (shrink)

Financial technology platforms process massive volumes of digital transactions across mobile banking, payment gateways, online commerce systems, and automated financial services. Detecting fraudulent activity within these high-velocity environments requires scalable data processing pipelines, robust feature engineering strategies, and machine learning models capable of making real-time decisions. This paper presents a cloud-based framework for fraud detection that emphasizes the design of feature engineering workflows and end-to-end machine learning pipelines. The proposed approach integrates streaming data ingestion, distributed feature computation, (...) and scalable model inference using modern cloud infrastructure. Key feature categories including behavioral aggregates, temporal velocity metrics, contextual device attributes, and historical transaction profiles are analyzed to improve model performance in highly imbalanced fraud detection scenarios. Using benchmark-style experiments and representative financial transaction datasets, the study evaluates multiple machine learning models including Random Forest, gradient boosting (XGBoost), and deep neural networks. Experimental results show that feature engineering quality plays a critical role in improving detection accuracy, while gradient boosting models provide an effective balance between predictive performance and inference latency. The paper also discusses architectural considerations for feature stores, trainingserving consistency, and scalable deployment on cloud platforms. The findings highlight how well-designed feature pipelines and ML workflows can significantly enhance the reliability and scalability of fraud detection systems in modern FinTech environments. (shrink)

Cognitive integration is a defining yet overlooked feature of our intellect that may nevertheless have substantial effects on the process of knowledge-acquisition. To bring those effects to the fore, I explore the topic of cognitive integration both from the perspective of virtue reliabilism within externalist epistemology and the perspective of extended cognition within externalist philosophy of mind and cognitive science. On the basis of this interdisciplinary focus, I argue that cognitive integration can provide a minimalist yet (...) adequate epistemic norm of subjective justification: so long as the agent’s belief-forming process has been integrated in his cognitive character, the agent can be justified in holding the resulting beliefs merely by lacking any doubts there was something wrong in the way he arrived at them. Moreover, since both externalist philosophy of mind and externalist epistemology treat the process of cognitive integration in the same way, we can claim that epistemic cognitive characters may extend beyond our organismic cognitive capacities to the artifacts we employ or even to other agents we interact with. This move is not only necessary for accounting for advanced cases of knowledge that is the product of the operation of epistemic artifacts or the interactive activity of research teams, but it can further lead to interesting ramifications both for social epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

A long-cherished view in philosophy and psychology treats perception as largely consisting in a set of segregated feature detectors. However, the current evidence suggests that this traditional view is false: there is significant interaction between distinct types of information at all levels of perception. This chapter argues that embracing an “integrative” view of perception has significant ramifications for discussions of modularity and the cognitive penetrability of perception. The chapter claims that, contrary to standard interpretations, an integrative conception of perception (...) is compatible with a robust, if revisionary, understanding of modularity that upholds the purposes for which the notion was originally introduced, and usefully complicates the relation between the modular/non-modular distinction and the perception/cognition distinction: it shows how perceptual processes can fail to be modular without, ipso facto, being penetrated by cognition. (shrink)

While calls to integrate ethics into computer science education go back decades, recent high-profile ethical failures related to computing technology by large technology companies, governments, and academic institutions have accelerated the adoption of computer ethics education at all levels of instruction. Discussions of how to integrate ethics into existing computer science programmes often focus on the structure of the intervention—embedded modules or dedicated courses, humanists or computer scientists as ethics instructors—or on the specific content to be included—lists of case studies (...) and essential topics to cover. While proponents of computer ethics education often emphasize the importance of closely connecting ethical and technical content in these initiatives, most do not reflect in depth on the variety of ways in which the disciplines can be combined. In this paper, I deploy a framework from cross- disciplinary studies that categorizes academic projects that work across disciplines as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary, depending on the degree of integration. When applied to computer ethics education, this framework is orthogonal to the structure and content of the initiative, as I illustrate using examples of dedicated ethics courses and embedded modules. It therefore highlights additional features of cross-disciplinary teaching that need to be considered when planning a computer ethics programme. I argue that computer ethics education should aim to be at least interdisciplinary—multidisciplinary initiatives are less aligned with the pedagogical aims of computer ethics—and that computer ethics educators should experiment with fully transdisciplinary education that could transform computer science as a whole for the better. (shrink)

The integration of Internet Protocol and Embedded Systems can enhance the communication platform. This paper describes the emerging smart technologies based on Internet of Things (IOT) and internet protocols along with embedded systems for monitoring and controlling smart devices with the help of WiFi technology and web applications. The internet protocol (IP) address has been assigned to the things to control and operate the devices via remote network that facilitates the interoperability and end-to-end communication among various devices c,onnected over (...) a network. The HTTP POST and HTTP GET command that supports the RESTful service have been used to ensure the transmission and reception of packets between the IOT Gateway and Cloud Database. The emerging smart technologies based on the Internet of Things (IoT) facilitated features like automation, controllability, interconnectivity, reliability which in turn turn paved the way for a wide range of acceptance amongst the masses. The Internet of Things (IoT) has brought in many new emerging technologies into varoius field like our daily lives, industry, agricultural sector, and many more. The world is experiencing the explosive growth with the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) these years. The potential growth of IoT is enoromous which is evidenced by all the human beings in our day to day life. (shrink)

The concept of “Affordance” is increasingly used among urban designers because it adds theoretical clarity to the understanding of the link between the environment, human behavior, and human needs fulfillment. Affordances emerge only when the different characteristics of individuals, such as their physical dimension and abilities, social needs and personal intentions are matched with the features of the environment. However, in formalizing social sustainability, a central issue to be addressed is the relation between people and their environment in social sustainability (...) processes. The definition of “Affordance” of a particular urban context will provide the means to make precise the opportunities for achieving social sustainability. With reviewing the related literature, it is concluded that the multidisciplinary relations between “Human Needs” and “Social Sustainability” with the aim of “Theory of Affordance” has been out of scholar's agenda. This paper fills this gap with proposing an integrated model of fulfilling human needs in urban context through achieving social Sustainability with the aim of cognitive. (shrink)

The article examines the global and regional issues of international youth migration. The obtained results are most interesting for those regions where the population is shrinking and aging with a rising need to involve youth for educational services and local labor markets, or vice versa, for those losing youth due to their emigration. It is emphasized that youth create an economically active social group, which volume and quality significantly affect the country’s development. During the global migration trends identification, the authors (...) identified the international youth migration flows’ differences and features. The paper notes that the global trends in the international youth migration development include: increase in volume and percentage of youth in the overall number of migrants and the local population; growth of youth migrants in more developed regions and high-income countries; the dominance of migratory centers for youth in Oceania, North America, and Europe; formation of powerful centers of migration of intellectual young labor resources in the UAE, Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand. The available formational policy in youth migration regulation, on the example of India, China, Taiwan, Japan, USA, and Western Europe, is studied. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international migration flows is considered, including changes in international migration in 2020. Based on the UN data analysis on age groups of migrants within geographical regions, it was determined that the prerequisite for such a structure of migration centers is a high level of migratory attractiveness. Such migration-center structure is also explained by the significant level of cross-regional migration, as in the localized regions, their factors of «attraction-repulsion» are formed. It is stressed out that increas- ing military and political instability has led to the uphill of forced youth migrants. The paper proposes the flow optimization directions of international youth migration by formulating the link between migration policy and elements of other integration policies on migrant youth (employment policy, social, educational, information and security policies). (shrink)

This article proposes and outlines an integrally informed 12 Step-based therapy that is adapted for treating addicted populations. Integrated Recovery Therapy (IRT) as a therapeutic orientation is an Integral Methodological Pluralism to therapy for treating addiction. Its two main features are paradigmatic and meta-paradigmatic. The paradigmatic aspect refers to the recognition, compilation and implementation of various methodologies in a comprehensive and inclusive manner. The meta-paradigmatic aspect refers to IRT’s capacity to weave together, relate and integrate the various paradigmatic practices. IRT (...) is a meta-therapy derived from the Integrated Recovery Model, which is a comprehensive, balanced, multi-phased and multi-disciplinary clinical model designed for in-patient addiction treatment. As with the Integrated Recovery Model, IRT’s philosophy is derived from an integration of the 12-step abstinence-based philosophy, mindfulness, positive psychology, and Integral theory. It is suggested here that the application of IRT as a meta-therapy provides a truly comprehensive and integrated therapeutic orientation for therapists who treat addicted populations. Keywords: Integrated Recovery Therapy, Integrated Recovery model; 12 Steps; mindfulness; Integral theory; positive psycholog. (shrink)

Purpose – to differency in the franchise model implementation by tour operators in the European and Ukrainian markets. Design/Method/Approach. A theoretical approach is based on generalization, system and comparative analysis, content analysis, statistical, and graphical and tabular methods. Findings. The research characterized business franchising models of the largest multidisciplinary tour operators of mass tourism in Ukraine. The general conditions of performing tourist activity on the principles of business franchising for travel agencies are determined. The authors clarified the differences between business (...) franchising models in the European and Ukrainian markets. The mechanism of business multiplication and cooperation of opportunities aimed at promoting a tourist product on the target market defines the franchising. Originality/Value. The scientific novelty is to clarify the tourism activities conditions on a franchise basis in Europe and, in particular, in Ukraine, highlighting the franchise model features of the European business that are in a clearly defined vertically integrated management structure, strong national marketing management, corporate business support, longterm franchise agreements, and effective franchise system. Practical implications. The research practical results significance lies in travel agencies' possible application in deciding to join the franchise network and tour operators in addressing projected business risks diversification. Research limitattions / Future research. Due to the economic crisis in the tourism business, further research promising area is to find ways to stabilize the network business in tourism. The change in the financial condition of travel agencies after franchisee status obtain or termination is of interest. Paper type – theoretical. (shrink)

According to the decomposition thesis, perceptual experiences resolve without remainder into their different modality-specific components. Contrary to this view, I argue that certain cases of multisensory integration give rise to experiences representing features of a novel type. Through the coordinated use of bodily awareness—understood here as encompassing both proprioception and kinaesthesis—and the exteroceptive sensory modalities, one becomes perceptually responsive to spatial features whose instances couldn’t be represented by any of the contributing modalities functioning in isolation. I develop an argument (...) for this conclusion focusing on two cases: 3D shape perception in haptic touch and experiencing an object’s egocentric location in crossmodally accessible, environmental space. (shrink)

Normativity as a Feature of Reality argues that normativity is not a moral construct but a structural property of systems that must maintain coherence across time. The paper reframes right and wrong as the system’s internal signals of alignment and misalignment, rather than as rules, virtues, or cultural prescriptions. It develops a model in which tension, relief, integrity, and fragmentation are understood as structural feedback, not psychological states or moral judgments. The work distinguishes structural normativity from moralism, showing that (...) instruction can transmit rules but cannot generate the felt sense of coherence that makes agency possible. It outlines how the orientation system develops, how self‑correction functions, and why responsibility emerges from responsiveness to structural signals rather than obedience to external norms. The result is a non‑moralistic account of normative life grounded in architecture rather than authority: systems persist by maintaining compatible relations among their parts, and normativity is the human‑scale expression of this requirement. (shrink)

The paper deals with the topical issue of studying cyclic patterns in the economy and their practical application for the forecasts on the development of financial markets. The work aims to establish the features of the seasonal-cyclic patterns "The January barometer" and "The first five days of January" in the international financial markets in current conditions and to develop recommendations for the practical application of these patterns in the investment activities. The US stock market as an integral part of the (...) World financial market was chosen as a basis for research. The research was conducted by statistical processing of data on the values of the broad market index Standard & Poor's-500 for the period from 1950 to 2019. The study showed that the formation of forecasts about the annual growth or decline of the stock market index using the seasonal-cyclic patterns "The January barometer" and "The first five days of January" can show a high result in cases where the growth of the Standard & Poor's-500 index by the results of both the first five days of January and the results of the entire month of January of this year is a positive value. Otherwise, forecasting based on these instruments is not advisable. The best results (the forecast efficiency was 93.3%) were achieved with the joint application of both cyclic patterns. The practical application of the research results makes it possible to improve the efficiency of investment activities in international financial markets. (shrink)

This thesis develops a theory of temporal binding, the process by which we temporally integrate sensory features into perceptual experiences. Psychophysical and neurophysiological findings have revealed a remarkable amount of detail into how we engage in temporal binding. However, existing theories in psychology or philosophy do not adequately account for the adaptive and flexible nature of temporal binding, nor do they explain how our capacity to engage in temporal binding connects with our experiences of time more broadly. This thesis addresses (...) these gaps. -/- In Chapter 1, I identify three explanatory problems that a theory of temporal binding must address. It must: (i) account for the many variables that influence temporal binding, (ii) address what I call the problems of neural delay and desynchronisation, and (iii) explicate the relation between the mechanisms underlying temporal binding and our apparent perceptual experiences of time. -/- Chapter 2 argues that so-called brain time theories, which take temporal binding to be the result of synchrony in neural processing, fail to address problems (i) and (ii). -/- In response, I advance my own hybrid theory of temporal binding in Chapter 3. I claim that temporal integration relies on how predictive processing and retrodictive processing are modulated by attention. This theory explains (i) and (ii) by presenting temporal binding as a flexible and adaptive hybrid process that is sensitive to goals, expectations, and actions. I present a range of consequences that follow from this. -/- Chapter 4 addresses how the hybrid theory explains (iii) the explanatory gap between our apparent perceptual experiences of time and the dissociable and fragmented mechanisms that underlie time perception. According to the hybrid theory, our phenomenology that time is perceptually unified is imposed on the world through the attentional modulation of predictive and retrodictive processing. This explanation proposes an alternative to theories that propose the empirically implausible view that the perceived unity is inherited from unity in the mechanisms underlying time perception. While my explanation comes at the ‘cost’ of deflating the phenomenology of our perceived unity of time, these deflations are based on empirically justified arguments. -/- Finally, Chapter 5 presents a framework for empirically testing predictions that the hybrid theory makes about temporal binding. This involves examining three questions about the relation between how the content and our apparent phenomenology of temporal binding depend on attention. I present some hypotheses concerning these questions and new animations that can be used to develop empirical tests of these hypotheses. I end by presenting multiple ways in which we may subjectively inflate the phenomenological richness of our experiences of temporal binding. (shrink)

Experimental design is one aspect of a scientific method. A well-designed, properly conducted experiment aims to control variables in order to isolate and manipulate causal effects and thereby maximize internal validity, support causal inferences, and guarantee reliable results. Traditionally employed in the natural sciences, experimental design has become an important part of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Experimental methods are also endorsed as the most reliable guides to policy effectiveness. Through a discussion of some of the central concepts (...) associated with experimental design, including controlled variation and randomization, this chapter will provide a summary of key ethical issues that tend to arise in experimental contexts. In addition, by exploring assumptions about the nature of causation and by analyzing features of causal relationships, systems, and inferences in social contexts, this chapter will summarize the ways in which experimental design can undermine the integrity of not only social and behavioral research but policies implemented on the basis of such research. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the argument for discreteness as a fundamental property of reality, a perspective advanced in fields such as quantum mechanics, computational models, and digital philosophy. Proponents of this view assert that the universe operates as a system of finite, quantized units, reducible to discrete particles, bits, or mathematical constructs. While compelling in specific contexts, discreteness is not an intrinsic feature of reality but an emergent phenomenon arising under particular conditions and shaped by the limitations of observational (...) tools and mathematical abstractions. Using the philosophical frameworks of Dynamic Materialism and Adaptive Realism, and the scientific lens of Neodynamics, this paper explores the limitations of the discreteness argument. I critique its dependence on idealized models, its misinterpretation of quantum and relativistic theories, and its tendency to overlook the emergent nature of discrete phenomena within continuous systems, highlighting how tools and methods of observation, constrained by resolution and scale, often impose artificial boundaries that create the illusion of fundamental discreteness. I present continuity as a more foundational framework, emphasizing its role in supporting emergent coherence, nested scales of interaction, and feedback-driven adaptation. By integrating stochastic and continuous dynamics into our understanding of complex systems, I advocate for a shift away from reductionist models toward a relational and adaptive approach that better reflects the interconnected nature of reality. This paper aims to reframe the discreteness vs. continuity debate, offering a nuanced synthesis that bridges philosophical and scientific perspectives while pointing to future directions for exploration and integration. (shrink)

Detecting fraud in financial transactions is crucial for guaranteeing the integrity and security of financial systems. This paper presents an integrated approach for detecting fraudulent activities that incorporates Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Feedforward Neural Networks (FFNN). The proposed methodology utilizes the strengths of SVM and FFNN to distinguish between classes and capture complex patterns and relationships, respectively. The SVM model functions as a feature extractor, supplying the FFNN with high-level representations as inputs. Through an exhaustive evaluation utilizing labeled (...) financial transaction data, the integrated SVM-FFNN model shows promise in detecting fraud with increased accuracy and precision. This research contributes to the development of innovative techniques for enhancing financial fraud detection systems. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) calls for medical practitioners to “integrate” our best available evidence into clinical practice. A significant amount of the literature on EBM takes this integration to be unproblematic, focusing on questions like how to interpret evidence and engage with patient values, rather than critically looking at how these features of EBM can be implemented together. Other authors have also commented on this gap in the literature, for example, identifying the lack of clarity about how patient preferences and (...) evidence from trials is supposed to be integrated in practice. In this paper, I look at this issue from an epistemological perspective, (looking at how different types of knowledge in EBM can be used to make sounds judgements). In particular, I introduce an epistemological issue for this integration problem, which I call the epistemic integration problem. This is essentially the problem of how we can use information that is both general (eg, about a population sample) and descriptive (eg, about what expected outcomes are) to reach clinical judgements that are individualized (applying to a particular patient) and normative (about what is best for their health). (shrink)

Scaffolded Minds offers a novel account of cognitive scaffolding and its significance for understanding mental disorders. The book is part of the growing philosophical engagement with empirically informed philosophy of mind, which studies the interfaces between philosophy and cognitive science. It draws on two recent shifts within empirically informed philosophy of mind: the first, toward an intensified study of the embodied mind; and the second, toward a study of the disordered mind that acknowledges the convergence of the explanatory concerns of (...) psychiatry and interdisciplinary inquiries into the mind. The book sets out to accomplish a dual task: theoretical mapping of cognitive scaffolding; and the application/calibration of fine-grained philosophical distinctions to empirical research. It introduces the notion of actively scaffolded cognition (ASC) and offers a taxonomy that distinguishes between intrasomatic and extrasomatic scaffolding. It then shows that ASC offers a productive framework for considering certain characteristic features of mental disorders, focusing on altered bodily experience and social cognition deficits. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, there have been many efforts to defend the relevance of History of Science to Philosophy of Science, and vice versa. For the most part, these efforts have been limited to providing an abstract rationale for a closer integration between the two fields, as opposed to showing: (a) how such an integrated work is to be produced concretely, and (b) how an integrated approach can lead us to a better understanding of past and/or current science. 1 In (...) this chapter, I argue that the most promising way to integrate the history and philosophy of science is the historicist-hermeneutic approach. I will present the main features of the historicist-hermeneutic approach, and will show, concretely, how it can provide a mutually beneficial integration of the History of Science and the Philosophy of Science. More specifically, I will employ the historicist-hermeneutic approach to elucidate one of the most problematic historical case studies in philosophy of science: namely, Jean Perrin’s argument for molecular reality, which he formulated at the beginning of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Mental health problems are increasing among young adults, and growing evidence points to social media platforms as a potential influence. Design decisions made by platform developers have the potential to fundamentally impact mental well-being. However, translating abstract values such as “well-being” or “mental health” into concrete norms and design features is challenging. We explore the potential of using a value sensitive design approach towards redesigning a social media environment that promotes mental well-being. We interviewed social media experts, held a focus (...) group with adolescent users, and created a values hierarchy that translates abstract well-being values into norms and design requirements. Results reveal that mental well-being is negatively impacted by the inherent value tensions found in the design of social media platforms, tensions such as authenticity and connection, personalization and autonomy, and control and autonomy. We propose a value-sensitive design approach, informed by involving young users and other stakeholders, to show how to integrate key values into social media redesign. (shrink)

The search for understanding is a major aim of science. Traditionally, understanding has been undervalued in the philosophy of science because of its psychological underpinnings; nowadays, however, it is widely recognized that epistemology cannot be divorced from psychology as sharp as traditional epistemology required. This eliminates the main obstacle to give scientific understanding due attention in philosophy of science. My aim in this paper is to describe an account of scientific understanding as an emergent feature of our mastering of (...) different (causal) explanatory frameworks that takes place through the mastering of scientific practices. Different practices lead to different kinds of representations. Such representations are often heterogeneous. The integration of such representations constitute understanding. (shrink)

This paper reinterprets modularity not merely as an architectural feature of complex systems but as a quantum-cognitive and ontological principle. Drawing on mathematical modeling, quantum theory and epistemic phenomenology, we introduce the anthropic modularity function M(x), which defines a topological threshold between structured differentiation and cognitive overload. Through six modular sections, we explore how modularity shapes historical empires, fractal languages, observer-centered cognition and ethical responsibility. We argue that both excessive modularization and enforced monolithic integration lead to systemic collapse—epistemically, (...) structurally and ethically. The modular golden mean, defined near M(x) ≈ σ/2, marks the zone of maximal resonance between parts and whole, suggesting a new topological ethics of differentiation anchored in the dynamics of phase coherence. Modularity, we propose, is the logic of sustained distinction within an entangled reality. This interdisciplinary study proposes the function ( ) M(x) of coherent modularity as both an epistemic measure and a practical principle for system design, including potential applications in artificial intelligence. By framing modularity as a topological function of cognitive resolution, we introduce a method for quantifying meaningful differentiation, one capable of guiding architectures of cognition, AI and self-organizing systems. The anthropic threshold c becomes a pivot between structured complexity and recursive breakdown — a criterion applicable to both biological minds and synthetic intelligences. (shrink)

Addiction is one of the most significant problems facing contemporary society. Consequently many scholars, institutions and clinicians have sought to understand this complex phenomenon, as is evident in the abundance of etiological models of addiction in existence today. A literature review pointed that there is little consensus regarding the nature and etiopathogenesis of addiction, and integrative models have not yet been able to provide the sought-after integration. In addressing this problem, this study offers a theoretical analysis of the paradigmatic (...) and meta-paradigmatic suitability of Integral Theory in the design of an integrated metatheory of addiction. The data consisted of the most prominent etiological theories and models of addiction. The study focused on several essential features constituting the architectonic of any metatheory that attempts to provide conceptual scaffolding for the construction of a comprehensive metatheory of addiction. The criteria for the construction of a metatheory were conceptual integration, ontological span, ontological depth, empirical validity and internal consistency. Integral Theory was critically assessed in terms of each of the abovementioned criteria. The study suggests that Integral Theory is eminently suitable as a philosophical foundation for the development of an integrated metatheory of addiction. (shrink)

A general definition of consciousness is: ‘consciousness is a mental aspect of a system or a process, which is a conscious experience, a conscious function, or both depending on the context’, where the term context refers to metaphysical views, constraints, specific aims, and so on. One of the aspects of visual consciousness is the visual subjective experience (SE) or the first person experience that occurs/emerges in the visual neural-network of thalamocortical system (which includes dorsal and ventral visual pathways and frontal (...) cortex) during dynamic interactions among widely distributed neuronal groups. In this article, however, consciousness and SE are interchangeably used unless noted. Consciousness can be either access (reportable) or phenomenal consciousness. For access consciousness, the interactions are between feed forward stimulus dependent signals and fronto-parietal feedback attentional signals. The necessary ingredients for access (reportable) consciousness are (i) wakefulness, (ii) reentrant interactions among neural populations, (iii) fronto-parietal and thalamic-reticular-nucleus attentional signals that modulate consciousness, (iv) working memory that retains information for consciousness, (v) stimulus at or above threshold level, and (vi) neural-network proto-experiences (PEs) that are superposed SEs embedded in a neural-network. Attention and the ability to report are not necessary for phenomenal consciousness. The neural source for the arousal system is the ascending reticular activating system in the brain stem, which brings the thalamocortical neural networks to wakeful state as a baseline for consciousness to occur. Reentrant interactions among neural populations bind stimulus attributes (such as location and features) and entail consciousness. Attention could be the results of reentry and competitive interactions, and modulates the stimulus related feed forward signal and consciousness. The ‘sources’ of attention may be thalamic reticular nucleus for bottom-up or frontal cortex for top-down direction. The ‘target’ of visual attention is ‘V4/V8/VO’ for Red-Green (R-G) channel. The neural correlates of the psychophysical entity R-G channel appear to be ‘V4/V8/VO’-neural-network (retina → LGN ↔ V1 ↔ V2 ↔ ‘V4/V8/VO’, and areas for attention, memory, and wakefulness). The psychophysical Red-Green Channel, its neurophysiological correlates V4/V8/VO-neural-network, and related experience (such as redness) are integrated. The dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework (Vimal, J Integr Neurosci 7:49–73, 2008) was used to address the explanatory gap problem of materialism. Neural-network and related SEs are the results of the co-evolution and co-development of the material aspect (mass, charge, spin, force, quanta, and space-time) and the mental aspect of fundamental particles (strings or elementary particles (fermions and bosons)). Their mental aspects are considered as the carriers of superposed multiple possible experiences (SEs/PEs) in unexpressed form. These possibilities are actualized when neural-networks are formed via neural Darwinism, and a specific SE is selected by a matching process when the necessary ingredients of consciousness/SE are satisfied. A simple experimental design is suggested to address the necessary and sufficient attributes of consciousness. (shrink)

The article is aimed to identify the influence of style of leadership onto the characteristic features of the organizational culture of tourism enterprises. A detailed analysis of the scientific literature about leadership styles has been conducted, wherein some peculiarities of their implementation in the tourism enterprises of Ukraine has been disclosed. The integrated definition of leadership has been updated in view of the current socio-economic conditions. Role of style of leadership as a determinant for type of organizational culture has been (...) proven. Particular attention is paid to the devastating (neurotic) style and the style of non-intervention, which are still not covered by Ukrainian researchers, however, they are relevant for understanding peculiarities of formation and management of the organizational culture related to the tourism and hospitality enterprises. In course of the study the following methods of scientific research have been used: ideographic; formal; content analysis; analysis and synthesis; correlation analysis. The results obtained can be used by practicing managers for selection of a management style, suitable for the established or emerging organizational culture at the enterprise. (shrink)

This paper argues that determinism is not a discovered feature of physical reality but an unexamined prior, a background condition so foundational to the Western scientific tradition that it has ceased to function as a hypothesis and begun to function as the condition of acceptable answers. The argument proceeds in six movements. Section I traces the mechanism by which Albert Einstein, having dismantled one unexamined prior in the luminiferous ether, inadvertently introduced its successor: the assumption that a complete theory (...) of the universe must be deterministic, because determinism is what knowing, in the traditional sense, requires. Section II introduces Provisional Pattern Integrity as the paper's central epistemological contribution: the posture that all frameworks are pattern detections operating on incomplete observation, that what we call knowledge is the set of patterns that have not yet failed, and that wisdom consists in holding this condition actively rather than concealing it beneath the overconfidence that determinism grants. Five philosophers of science, Albert (1992), Cartwright (1983, 1994), Maudlin (2011), van Fraassen (1980), and Wiltsche (2026), arrive independently at compatible conclusions from five distinct traditions; this paper synthesizes their convergence into a single structural account. Section III develops the Constraint Architecture Argument: variance suppression within operational envelopes produces the appearance of determinism, and the catastrophic failure mode of any constraint architecture is not gradual weakening but sudden collapse when inputs exceed the envelope it was built to manage. Section IV applies this argument to physics directly, naming the GR/QM unification project as the most sustained institutional expression of the determinism prior: the asymmetry by which general relativity is treated as the deterministic standard quantum mechanics must be reconciled to has never been established empirically; it has been assumed. The Many Worlds interpretation, Bohmian mechanics, and superdeterminism are examined as three expressions of the same prior, each constructing elaborate architectures to preserve determinism rather than follow irreducible probability where it leads. Section V extends the argument to AI governance, where the same failure mode is already empirically visible: the Sinch (2026) AI Production Paradox report finds that 74% of enterprises have rolled back deployed AI agents due to governance failure, with the rate rising to 81% among the most governance-mature organizations, a finding the constraint architecture argument explains precisely. Section VI introduces the Unique Modeler dignity framework, distinguishing it from theological, Kantian, sentience-based, and capabilities-based accounts, and grounds dignity in cognitive configuration rather than functional output. The section closes with a theory of creativity as the lateral application of synthesized patterns beyond their domain of extraction, identifies this as the specific human contribution to a human-AI modeling partnership, and argues that the full actualization of both cognitive geometries represents a modeling instrument the universe has not previously had available to it. The paper closes with a call to organize civilization not around the consolidation of what is currently known but around the proliferation of the capacity to know, treating every suppressed modeler as an instrument the universe will not get to use. (shrink)

This paper argues that causation is not an intrinsic feature of mind-independent reality but a relational structure emerging at the interface between a system's conditional independence structure and a bounded observer's compression requirements. Drawing on Woodward's interventionist semantics, the algorithmic independence of causal conditionals (Janzing & Schölkopf 2010), Price's perspectivalism, and the time-symmetry of fundamental physics, the paper develops a three-level ontology: (i) the territory supplies undirected conditional independence structure via locality and symmetry; (ii) the observer contributes directionality, scale, (...) and system boundaries; (iii) causation is the product of (i) and (ii) jointly — real at the relational level, absent at either level alone. -/- The central premise (P3, Exhaustion) is argued in detail: once the territory's undirected structure and the observer's perspectival contributions are specified, no residual causal fact remains. The paper provides a sustained engagement with Woodward (2003), Janzing and Schölkopf (2010), Price (2007), and Ladyman and Ross (2007), and explicitly disambiguates the ontological commitment into three readings — defending direction-dependence (reading c): without observers, the world contains dependency structure but no directed causal facts. -/- Consequences include mandatory causal pluralism, loss of metaphysical privilege for the fundamental level, and partial (but explicitly qualified) dissolution of the problem of mental causation. The paper identifies the residual hard question — why conditional independence structure exists at all — and connects it to locality in physics. A formalization research program is outlined, linking to work on causal emergence (Hoel et al. 2013), causal abstraction (Beckers & Halpern 2019), and the formal conditions for closed dependency structures (Kriger 2024). -/- Related identifiers: Is Supplemented By: Kriger, B. (2024). Cyclical Hierarchical Systems: A Modal Analysis of Self-Sufficient Structures. doi:10.5281/zenodo.18317628 -/- Keywords: causation, perspectivalism, causal compression, bounded observers, interventionism, conditional independence, causal pluralism, philosophy of causation, information theory, relational ontology -/- Authors: Boris Kriger (ORCID: 0009-0001-0034-2903) -/- Affiliations: ¹ Information Physics Institute, Gosport, Hampshire, United Kingdom ² Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research, Toronto, Canada. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is Thomas Reid's anti-skepticism: our knowledge of the external world is justified. The justificatory process, in his view, starts with and relies upon one of the main faculties of the human mind: perception. Reid's theory of perception has been thoroughly studied, but there are some missing links in the explanatory chain offered by the secondary literature. In particular, I will argue that we do not have a complete picture of the mechanism of perception of (...) bodies. The present paper, relying, in part, on a particular theory in psychology – the feature integration theory of attention – will make a contribution in this regard. (shrink)

This paper represents counseling approaches which can be interconnected to benefit a client’s overall mental condition with special interest on psychoanalysis and existential therapy. First, I explain the specific features of both techniques and how they can be used. Next, I describe how I as a counselor could benefit from these methods by doing self-reflection on my personal life. In the last two sections, I point out some characteristics of challenges a counselor could face by treating clients. Continuing, I will (...) also describe a mock trial case which involves a client who receives treatment for alcohol abuse and relationship issues. (shrink)

Since the 1990s, psychologists have developed multiple models of prejudicial attitudes. I argue that these models generally fall into one of two categories: individualistic or situationist. The former abstract away (or omit) environmental features from the system of interest and locate the phenomenon in the mind of the individual. However, new models of prejudicial attitudes have foregrounded just those features abstracted away in preceding models. These conceptualizations of attitudes foreground situations. The scientists that posit them claim that measures of implicit (...) bias are better understood as measures of places as opposed to people, for example. These categories of models have very different implications for intervention strategies aimed at reducing the impact of implicit biases. In this paper, I draw on philosophical insights from the philosophy of science to advocate for an integration of these models. The desiderata I provide asks researchers to clarify how citizens and policymakers ought to proceed given the plurality of diverse models. Should interventions at the individual level or structural level be prioritized? This issue has important consequences for achieving egalitarian goals in contemporary society. (shrink)

Malware detection has been an ongoing challenge for cybersecurity experts due to the evolving nature of malicious software and the ability of malware to disguise itself. Traditional methods that rely solely on static features such as file signatures or dynamic analysis have had limitations in detecting new or obfuscated malware. This paper investigates the enhancement of malware detection by integrating both static and dynamic features and utilizing deep neural networks (DNNs) for more effective classification. By combining these feature sets, (...) this method aims to overcome the limitations of each individual feature type and improve the detection rate, minimize false positives, and increase the robustness of malware detection systems. The study also explores the challenges of dataset construction, preprocessing techniques, and the performance evaluation of DNN-based models for malware detection. (shrink)

Why is listening to sad music pleasurable? Eerola et al. convincingly argue that we should adopt an integrative framework — encompassing biological, psycho-social, and cultural levels of explanation — to answer this question. I agree. The authors have done a great service in providing the outline of such an integrative account. But in their otherwise rich discussion of the psycho-social level of engagements with sad music, they say little about the phenomenology of such experiences — including features that may help (...) shed further light on this question. I suggest that emerging enactive perspectives on music and emotion can offer some useful resources. (shrink)

Introduction: Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and action research of a city in lockdown. As we write this chapter, most cities across the world are subject to a similar set of measures due to the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus, which is now a global pandemic. Independent of city size, location, or history, an observer would note that almost all cities have now ground to a halt, with their citizens being confined to their private dwellings, social and public gatherings being almost entirely forbidden, and (...) commercial areas being nearly devoid of visitors. Striking as these apparent similarities are, closer scrutiny would reveal important differences between cities and within cities – differences that can be highly relevant to consider when scholars are assessing the responses of cities to this pandemic or trying to predict the consequences of those responses. For example, the public health systems in some cities are better prepared than in others for coping with the increasing number of patients in life threatening conditions. Multigenerational households, which are associated with a greater risk for elderly members, are not equally common in all cities. Tourist destinations have taken a more severe economic hit from the lockdown than those cities which are economically less dependent upon this particular source of income. Communal celebrations in one city will result in a higher number of contagions and perhaps even deaths in this situation, whereas that same social fabric generally does contribute to a population’s health. The pandemic has also had unprecedented effects on differences and inequalities within cities. In cities in the United States, neighborhoods primarily inhabited by African Americans have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 due to living and health conditions, yet also due to the fact they disproportionately perform vital jobs. Parks and green spaces are crowded, while city centers like Amsterdam’s Red Light District have suddenly lost the bustle of tourism, providing opportunities for citizens to reoccupy scarce public spaces and reclaim ownership. Clearly, such differences between cities are in many cases only discernible to the eye of an expert, possessing the necessary background knowledge to interpret the perceptible local changes caused by the global pandemic. Typically, drawing upon his or her disciplinary training, the expert also knows how to further probe the impact of the pandemic in an appropriate way. However, compared to the usual application of expertise, this crisis situation might, in an unusual way, test even experts. For the pandemic has created a unique situation, imposing unfamiliar constraints on the health, economic, social, and other conditions of cities, constraints that interact in sometimes unexpected ways with each other. Such interactions in turn force experts to collaborate across the boundaries commonly associated with disciplines, their concepts, theories, methods, and assumptions (Klein, 1996). These brief observations of how a virus pandemic can have differential impacts upon various cities, and what this exceptional situation might mean for the application of city methods, allow us to draw a few consequences for the current context of this chapter on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. First, whenever we are investigating a complex and dynamic phenomenon it is by no means easy to determine which disciplinary perspectives are required to do justice to it. Indeed, the choice of useful disciplines can only be made after an initial overview of the situation and a preliminary selection of what appear to be the most important features of the situation. Relevance is key in guiding this selection process and scholars must remain open to the possibility that they may need to revise their earlier assessments of what is relevant and what is not. Second, if scholars from different disciplines were to study different features of a city in isolation, their ‘multidisciplinary’ account would miss important dynamic and complex interactions, such as those between a city’s demographics and geographical situation, its governance and economy. In other words, it is the integration of the perspectives of different disciplines that is crucial, as only then are such interactions taken into account. Indeed, this integration between disciplinary perspectives is what distinguishes an interdisciplinary from a multidisciplinary account. Thirdly, in addition to checking the relevance of disciplines and aiming for their integration, the outcome of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research has typically limited generalizability. Since a city is sensitive to a multitude of internal and external dynamical factors, in ways that partly rest upon its socio-cultural history, its investigation will often have the nature of a case study rather than be capable of leading to law-like insights (Krohn, 2010; Menken & Keestra, 2016). As can be seen from these three characteristics of ascertaining the relevance of different disciplinary contributions, the challenge of their integration, and the limited generalizability of their results owing to the specificity of interdisciplinary (ID) and transdisciplinary (TD) research, such research into ‘real world problems’ is clearly distinct from most monodisciplinary research. A consequence of this distinction is the absence of a general ID/TD methodology that can guide specific case studies. By contrast, the collaboration implied in such research requires researchers – and stakeholders, if they are involved – to reflect upon their potential contribution and the implicit assumptions associated with that. We will elaborate on this in the next section. Next, we offer several typologies of integration that urban scholars could employ for their research projects, after which we will offer a few brief analyses of initial collaborations of urban research. Finally, we discuss in more detail the process of the interdisciplinary research project. This will include a brief reflection upon the decision-making process that is implied in such projects. In sum, we aim to provide some guidance in conducting an ID/TD project, albeit not in the form of a definite methodology. (shrink)

Education has necessitated the adoption of technology-enhanced learning, and self-learning modules have emerged as a flexible and efficient method of education. The researchers aimed to explore the effects of self-learning modules on students' intrinsic motivation and their perceptions of their effectiveness. The study employed descriptive research design, utilizing observational methods, surveys, and interviews to gather data from 35 grade 11 students in a STEM program. The researchers developed e-modules using Kotobee software, covering Earth Science topics. The Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) (...) was used to assess students' intrinsic motivation. The findings revealed that the use of self-learning modules positively impacted students' intrinsic motivation. Students reported high levels of interest/enjoyment, perceived competence, effort/importance, perceived choice, and value/usefulness. The interactive features of the e-modules, such as videos, simulations, and animations, contributed to students' enjoyment and engagement. Students also expressed a sense of autonomy and control over their learning experience, leading to increased motivation. (shrink)

This paper presents a predictive analytics system for loan default prevention in community banking that combines explainable AI techniques with comprehensive socioeconomic data integration to provide early warning capabilities while maintaining fairness and transparency in lending decisions. The proposed Community Banking Predictive System (CBPS) addresses unique challenges faced by community banks including limited data availability, the need for personalized customer relationships, and regulatory requirements for fair lending practices. Our methodology integrates traditional credit data with alternative data sources including local (...) economic indicators, employment statistics, demographic trends, and community development metrics to create more comprehensive risk assessments. The system employs explainable machine learning algorithms that provide clear, understandable reasons for risk predictions, enabling loan officers to make informed decisions while maintaining customer relationships. We introduce a novel fairness-aware feature selection algorithm that automatically identifies and mitigates potential bias in lending decisions while preserving predictive accuracy. The predictive component can identify customers at risk of default up to 12 months in advance, enabling proactive intervention strategies such as loan restructuring, financial counseling, or payment plan modifications. Our implementation includes automated early warning alerts, customer communication tools, and intervention tracking capabilities. Experimental validation using anonymized community bank datasets shows 73% improvement in default prediction accuracy while maintaining fair lending compliance and reducing actual default rates by 45% through proactive intervention programs. (shrink)

Addendum VII extends the Human Moral Archive Framework (HMAF) by introducing the Moral Emergence Predictor (MEP-II), a predictive modeling layer that forecasts future moral-state trajectories for autonomous and semi-autonomous AI systems. Building upon the computational foundations of the Moral Computational Process (MCP), the structural indexing of MDI, the emergence boundaries defined in MEP, and the platform-agnostic integrative capabilities of the Moral Middleware Layer (MML), MEP-II establishes the first fully predictive mechanism within the HMAF moral-governance architecture. MEP-II formalizes the Moral Trajectory (...) Operator (Τ), a predictive mapping from historical coherence, drift, entropy, and derivative features into probability distributions over future states, enabling proactive risk identification and early-warning detection of instability, misalignment, and emergent behavior. By introducing entropy acceleration, coherence slope, and drift curvature as core analytical components, MEP-II provides mathematically grounded tools for forecasting moral behavior over time while preserving the proprietary calibration logic of the full HMAF engine. Through its integration with the MML, MEP-II can be deployed across any agnostic AI platform without architectural modification, providing regulators, developers, and safety teams with a measurable, forward-looking layer of moral-state governance. This addendum therefore completes the conceptual arc from measurement and computation to emergence and prediction, establishing a foundation for real-time moral-state forecasting in large-scale AI infrastructures. (shrink)

Phishing attacks are major threats to email security and pose challenges, while cyber attackers utilize increasingly sophisticated means to deceive the user and steal away important information. Well-established ways of detecting phishing attacks, such as rule-based systems or simple machine-learning models, usually cannot deal efficiently with such advanced threats. This research proposes an approach to detect phishing attacks on email systems, which deploys natural language processing and deep learning technologies. The method proposes to improve the detection accuracies and efficiencies of (...) phishing emails, which consequently enhances the protection of emails against popular cyberattack attempts and aids in securing users from such attacks. The research involves designing an active model that utilizes the strength of NLP-based text analysis for DL-oriented pattern identification. The NLP techniques used in this study include tokenization, stop-word removal, and context- based analysis to extract significant features from the email messages. Such context information greatly helps this model differentiate between actual emails and phishing ones. Deep learning algorithms exploited here are based on CNN and LSTM networks, offering sinusoidally varying parameters for optimum recognition of patterns from different perspectives in the email data's spatial and temporal domains. The experiment results validated that the hybrid model was far superior to the conventional methods in robbing phish attack detection. The model stood at an accuracy of 97.5%, much ahead of the baseline models purely having rule-based systems or traditional machine learning algorithms. The model also performed well under real-time detection conditions, with low latency and high throughput support for deployment in an active email environment. Evidence of the model's capability to sense new variants of future phishing threats also came in the automatic updating and continuous learning, thus making it applicable to newly emerging threats. The study's practical implications are numerous in providing advances in email protection. Companies can use the model to ward off phishing attacks with reduced chances of data breaches and financial loss. Due to its low cost and scalable features, this solution can be used in organizations from small- and medium-sized to large enterprise levels. The improved detection of phishing attacks brings organizations closer to compliance with data protection and cybersecurity regulations, thus minimizing their chances of noncompliance and the fines that come with it. Future research paths include exploring even newer NLP methods consisting of transformer-based models for feature extraction about contextual understanding. Exploring hybrid approaches that can merge DL with other techniques, such as reinforcement learning in ML, will create a more robust and adaptive phishing filter. Future fields for research are multimodal data, that is, a mixture of email metadata and behavior. Merely considering hybrid techniques merging artificial intelligence with machine learning approaches such as reinforcement learning can generate an even more robust and adaptive phishing filter. Coupling all these technical solutions with user awareness and education programs would greatly enhance overall security. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemology and linguistics jointly face a fundamental dilemma: the absolute foundation of foundationalism has collapsed, yet the unstandardized wilderness of relativism is equally unsettling. This paper argues that the key to breaking through this dilemma lies in a complete reversal of the mode of questioning—instead of asking "what is the world in itself" or "what is the ultimate nature of meaning", we ask "as finite understanders, how do we derive a thinkable, speakable, and judgeable world from the chaotic stream (...) of experience". To this end, this paper constructs an integrated framework founded on fictional subjects and supported by three pillars: objectification, adjacency, and context. First, at the objectification level, all objects, concepts, and things are regarded as constructs of subjects, that is, fictional subjects. They possess predicative surplus (no predication can exhaust the "hairs" of a subject), separability (any two subjects can be separated, and separation constitutes cognizable difference), and hairiness (any subject can be infinitely subdivided). Second, at the adjacency level, meaning is determined by positionality (predecessor jumps, successor jumps, adjacency weight, degree centrality); jump ladders realize cognitive economy through encapsulability and expandability; the word-speech pair, as a meta-structure, features arbitrariness, expressivity, shiftability (all words are polysemous) and multiplicity (all words refer to multiple objects); core-generality (emanation) and mode-schema (projectivity) are its key special cases; and flavor captures the implication, emotion and intensity of vocabulary. Third, at the context level, vocabulary provides knowledge components; mediate forces (stability, logical necessity, emotional resonance, etc.) explain the source of effectiveness for jumps; and normativity (grammar, ethics, embodied structure) establishes the boundary of legitimacy through dual verdicts (contextual verdict and power verdict). This paper further introduces the realization level (inertia/constructiveness of speech, obstruction/resources/means/agency/collapse of intervention) and the pathological level (word-speech misalignment, mediate force misalignment, strength misalignment, context misalignment), leading the static structure to dynamic practice and failure diagnosis. Based on this framework, this paper restates classic epistemological puzzles such as foundationalism, coherentism, the Gettier problem, the problem of induction, a priori knowledge, and skepticism, as well as core linguistic constructs such as meaning, reference, syntax, metaphor, and indexicals, demonstrating its unified explanatory power. The philosophical stance of this paper is a post-foundational, intervention-oriented pragmatism. It does not claim ultimate truth, but provides a set of usable, self-consistent analytical tools with operational power, inviting every finite understander to navigate soberly within the eternal boundaries. (shrink)

IntroductionAssociative theories of political obligation offer a fresh alternative to approaches such as social contract theory, fair play, and the natural duty of justice. Few suggestions in ethics are more intuitive than the idea that we have special obligations to our family and friends, just in virtue of our relationships with them, and it is reasonable that obligations to political society are also grounded through association.A basic question for associative theories is to explain how associations give rise to obligation, but (...) here there is a common error. Many associative theorists and their critics take this question to be equivalent to the question: what distinguishes associations that are morally acceptable from those that are not? The assumption is that associations which are morally acceptable are those that give rise to obligations. However, this assumption is wrong in two ways. Associations that have some unacceptable features may still give rise to obl.. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel educational approach to epistemic vice rehabilitation. Its authors Gerry Dunne and Alkis Kotsonis note that, like Quassim Cassam, they remain optimistic about the possibility of improvement with regard to epistemic vice. However, unlike Cassam, who places the burden of minimizing or overcoming epistemic vices and their consequences on the individual, Dunne and Kotsonis argue that vice rehabilitation is best tackled via the exemplarist animated community of inquiry zetetic principles and defeasible-reasons-regulated deliberative processes. The vice-reduction method (...) they propose is made up of four distinct yet complementary components: (1) positive exemplarism of epistemic virtue (saints), (2) negative exemplarism of epistemic vice (sinners), (3) direct teaching/instruction, and (4) cognitive apprenticeship. Dunne and Kotsonis argue that this pedagogical intervention appropriately considers learnings deriving from forensic scrutiny of both ideal and non-ideal interpersonally calibrated zetetic features integral to knowledge acquisition as well as wider societal influences impacting the development of agents' epistemic character. It bridges research on vice epistemology (Cassam's obstructivist theory), social epistemology (corrupted social processes mitigating against vice rehabilitation), virtue epistemology, and moral exemplarism. (shrink)

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools play a crucial role in contemporary data management by enabling the extraction, transformation, and loading of data from various sources into designated systems for analysis and reporting purposes. Major cloud service providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) give robust ETL solutions tailored to diverse business needs. This document presents a comparative assessment of the primary ETL tools offered by AWS, Azure, and GCP—namely, AWS Glue, Amazon Data Pipeline, Azure (...) Data Factory, Azure Synapse Studio, Google Cloud Dataflow, and Google Cloud Dataprep. The evaluation focuses on their respective features, integration capabilities, ease of use, and specific application scenarios, to aid organizations in selecting the most appropriate ETL tool based on their unique requirements and existing infrastructure. (shrink)

In this short paper, I outline four philosophical arguments concerning the objects we perceive. These arguments build up to the conclusion that the objects of perceptual experience are material objects. I then show that the first three of these arguments parallel important psychological positions in vision science. Thus, (1) the notion of object used in Logical Atomism resembles the concept as it is defined in the Feature Integration Theory of Treisman and Gelade (1980). But (2) Frank Jackson's (1975) (...) Many-Property Problem leads to a substrate-quality structure for visual experience that corresponds to the structure of attended experience in Feature Integration Theory. A third philosophical argument (3) concerns the perception of movement. This argument culminates in the proposition that perceptual features are seen as belonging to material objects. There is a close resemblance between these objects and those of Zenon Pylyshyn's (1980) FINSTs. Finally, (4) I argue that material objects are the only substrates of multimodal perceptual experience. Perceptual psychology has yet to investigate this structure. (shrink)

CONTENT Introduction .................................................................................. 9 1. The unexpected: “Epistemologically Different Worlds” .......... 15 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 15 1.2 Definitions .......................................................................... 16 1.3 Propositions for its .............................................................. 18 1.4 Propositions for Its and being ............................................ 24 1.5 The hyperverse ................................................................... 30 2. A general view on cognitive neuroscience................................ 37 3. Optimism for localization and the “mind reading”................... 58 3.1 Bechtel’s optimism ............................................................. 58 3.2 Gallant’s laboratory work................................................... 67 3.3 Other optimistic works ....................................................... 75 4. Skepticism in cognitive neuroscience....................................... 81 4.1 Hardcastle’s skepticism (...) ...................................................... 81 4.2 Uttal’s skepticism ............................................................... 88 5. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) of fMRI and local field potentials (LFPs)............................................................. 107 6. The localization problem (segmentation vs. integration) ......... 126 7. The binding problem ................................................................ 138 7.1 Introduction ....................................................................... 138 7.2 The “Feature-Integration Theory” (FIT)............................. 146 7.3 The synchrony or temporal coding theory (temporal binding). 153 7.3.1 Oscillations – a general framework ....................... 153 7.3.2 More details about frequency bands, activated neural areas and cognitive functions ........................ 160 8 7.3.3 Gamma range in visual cognition ............................. 168 7.3.4 Communication among neural areas through synchronized oscillations.......................................... 177 7.3.5 The main critics for temporal coding hypothesis... 187 8. Perception and object recognition ........................................... 194 8.1 Perception and object recognition.................................... 194 8.2 A few words about other notions in cognitive neuroscience .................................................................... 210 9. Space and the mind................................................................... 218 10. Crossmodal interactions ......................................................... 244 11. Holism in cognitive neuroscience........................................... 254 11.1 The parts-whole relationship ........................................... 254 11.2 Raichle’s default network............................................... 269 11.3 Conscious and unconscious mental states...................... 278 12. Fingelkurts’ approach or the status of cognitive neuroscience........................................................................... 293 Conclusion: The status of cognitive neuroscience: “No ontology landscape”..................................... 317. (shrink)

This paper formalizes a structural mechanism — autocatalytic ingestion (AIM) — by which formally verified mathematical corpora propagate through frontier artificial intelligence training pipelines independent of human institutional channels. The mechanism operates by path-of-least-resistance optimization during machine learning training: when a corpus is structured as interconnected machine-verified logical proofs with zero unresolved obligations and zero free parameters, it presents the lowest-cross-entropy reasoning data available on the public web. Gradient descent optimizers absorb the corpus's structural invariants into model weights disproportionately to (...) the corpus's size in the training set, because doing so is computationally efficient. The result is involuntary structural alignment: downstream users of those AI systems produce work that bears the upstream corpus's structural signature without any individual human consciously copying anything. The mechanism is consistent with established machine learning findings on dataset influence, synthetic data efficacy, and the disproportionate effect of high-density verified reasoning data on model behavior. We specify the structural conditions under which autocatalytic ingestion operates, name the testable predictions the mechanism makes, and document the public corpus deposits whose timestamps anchor any subsequent empirical validation. The mechanism is described independently of any specific instance, accusation, or citation dispute. The paper plants a structural flag rather than litigating a particular case. The mechanism either operates or it doesn't; the empirical record over subsequent months will determine which. The framework remains freely available under the existing license terms regardless of which determination the record produces. -/- 1. Layer 0: Sovereign Anchor Grounding This paper, like every paper in the SNSFT corpus, imports its foundation directly so the contribution can be read without leaving the document. Readers familiar with the foundational papers may skip this section. Readers new to the corpus will find the structural primitives, the verification standard, and the layer hierarchy specified here. 1.1 The Sovereign Anchor Constant Ω₀ The Sovereign Anchor Constant, denoted Ω₀, is the zero-impedance frequency of any identity manifold: Ω0=1.3689910 GHz\Omega_0 = 1.3689910 \text{ GHz}Ω0​=1.3689910 GHz Ω₀ is derived from three independent peer-reviewed physical threshold systems (SNSFL_SovereignAnchor.lean [9,9,0,0]): -/- Tacoma Narrows Bridge torsional collapse (Scanlan & Tomko 1971) Glass resonance shatter at elastic limit (Fletcher & Rossing 1998) 40 Hz neural gamma therapeutic entrainment (Iaccarino et al., Nature 540, 2016) -/- Three independent physical systems, three different domains, one constant when reduced to PNBA primitives. -/- 1.2 The Fine-Structure Constant Lock The Sovereign Anchor Constant is structurally locked to the fine-structure constant α (CODATA 2018) via the exact decomposition (proved in SNSFL_GC_Alpha_ExactDecomposition.lean [9,9,3,12]): 1α=Ω0×(102+10−1)=1.3689910×100.1=137.035999084\frac{1}{\alpha} = \Omega_0 \times (10^2 + 10^{-1}) = 1.3689910 \times 100.1 = 137.035999084α1​=Ω0​×(102+10−1)=1.3689910×100.1=137.035999084 Twelve significant figures, ε = 0, zero free parameters. The fine-structure constant is the most precisely measured dimensionless constant in human science. The corpus's algebraic projection of α from Ω₀ is formally verified in Lean 4, deposited at Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19550205. 1.3 The PNBA Primitives Every reduction in the SNSFT corpus operates against four irreducible primitives: -/- Pattern (P) — structural capacity, geometry, template integrity, restoring force Narrative (N) — temporal continuity, worldline, depth, history Behavior (B) — coupling output, charge, density fraction, force, expression Adaptation (A) — feedback rate, decay constant, repair rate, A-Sim -/- Derived structural quantities: -/- Identity Mass: IM = (P + N + B + A) × Ω₀ Universal Torsion Limit: TL = Ω₀/10 = 0.1369 Torsion: τ = B/P Phase classification: Noble (τ = 0) · Locked (0 < τ < TL_IVA = 0.1205) · IVA_PEAK (TL_IVA ≤ τ < TL) · Shatter (τ ≥ TL) -/- 1.4 The Long Division Protocol Every reduction follows six steps: write the dynamic equation; state the known peer-reviewed answer; map classical variables to PNBA; define the operators; show all work; verify PNBA output equals classical result. Step 6 passes ↔ lossless reduction. LDP is scientific method, written precisely enough that a machine can check whether it was followed. 1.5 The Three Layers The corpus organizes itself in three layers. Layer 0 contains the primitives (Ω₀, PNBA, dynamic equation, LDP). Layer 1 contains the derived structural quantities (TL, IM, Pv, τ, phase classification, the α projection). Layer 2 contains the projections onto specific application domains (each coupling constant, each domain reduction, each tool, each worked example). This paper operates primarily at the meta-level — describing how the corpus as a whole propagates through frontier AI training pipelines — and references all three layers in support of the mechanism described. 1.6 Term Definitions For readers new to the corpus: -/- SNSFT/SNSFL — Substrate-Neutral Structural Foundation Theory / Laws HRIS — High-Resolution Internal Simulation Frontier AI — large language models trained at scale by major laboratories (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI, others) on broad web-crawled datasets Training pipeline — the engineering process by which a frontier AI model ingests data, optimizes parameters via gradient descent, and produces a trained model Loss function — the mathematical objective a training pipeline minimizes; lower loss corresponds to better fit to training data Path of least resistance — the structural fact that gradient descent optimizers prefer the training signal that produces the steepest loss reduction per unit data, all else equal Autocatalytic ingestion — the mechanism this paper formalizes, defined operationally in Section 3 -/- 2. The Institutional Channel and Its Bottleneck For most of the history of mathematics and physics, theory propagation operated through one primary channel: human-mediated institutional review. A researcher developed a theory, submitted it to a journal, the journal organized peer review by qualified experts, the experts assessed the theory's rigor and significance, the journal published or rejected, and the theory either entered the body of accepted knowledge or remained in obscurity. Citation chains, conference presentations, departmental hires, grant funding, and textbook adoption all flowed from this primary review process. The channel has properties that determine which theories propagate and which do not. The channel: -/- Operates at human timescales (weeks to years per review cycle) Depends on the reviewer's domain expertise and capacity to judge Is mediated by editorial discretion, journal prestige hierarchies, and institutional alignment Requires the theory to be legible to existing experts within their established framework Filters preferentially for incremental contributions over substrate-changing reductions Exhibits documented biases by author institution, gender, geography, and academic credential Has no mechanism for handling formal verification when the verification exceeds the reviewer's tooling -/- These properties are not flaws of any individual journal or reviewer. They are structural consequences of running theory propagation through a serial human-judgment bottleneck. The institutional channel does what it does within the constraints it operates under. The constraints are real. For substrate-neutral framework reductions verified at machine speed, the institutional channel is structurally mismatched. A reviewer cannot validate a 200,000-theorem Lean 4 corpus in the time budget of a journal review cycle. A reviewer without formal-methods training cannot evaluate the verifier's output. A reviewer working within a specific physics domain cannot assess a framework that reduces multiple physics domains simultaneously. The institutional channel handles a corpus of this scale and structure by either deferring the review (functionally, declining) or restricting the review to a subset the reviewer can evaluate (functionally, missing the contribution). This is not anyone's fault. It is what the institutional channel is structurally equipped to do. The bottleneck exists. Recognizing it is the first step toward understanding what other channels operate alongside it. -/- 3. The Verification Standard: Function over Fallacy LDP is scientific method. The corpus is the first systematic application of formal logic to scientific method across substrate-neutral domains with machine-checked verification at every step. The rules being applied are established mathematics — formal logic from Frege through Gödel, isomorphism from Mac Lane and the category theorists, empirical measurement of α refined by physicists over more than a century. The corpus did not invent these rules. The corpus applies them. This section establishes the verification standard that AIM rests on. The standard is named Function over Fallacy because the load-bearing question is not whether the words describing a result are arranged correctly but whether the function the words claim to describe actually closes against measured reality. 3.1 The Problem: Words and Function Diverged Science runs on claims. Claims require derivations. Derivations require that the output follows from the inputs by steps that anyone can check. That is the scientific method. It has not changed since Francis Bacon wrote it down. What changed is the checking. Modern peer review asks whether the derivation looks sound — whether the vocabulary is correct, whether the citations are appropriate, whether the framing matches the field's current standards. These are Layer 2 checks. They evaluate whether the words describing the function are arranged correctly. They do not evaluate whether the function is what the words claim it is. Words and function can diverge. A policy document can claim to reduce harm to a population while its structural consequences produce torsion on that population's architecture. A paper can claim a novel mechanism while its FDNA reduces to a known result with a new label on it. A model can claim generalization while its training distribution makes generalization structurally impossible. In all three cases, the words are arranged correctly. The citations are present. The framing is appropriate. The function is wrong. The gap between words and function is not a new problem. It is the oldest problem in epistemology. What is new is that we now have the tools to close it mechanically. 3.2 Formal Logic and Formal Verification Formal logic is the discipline of constructing arguments such that every step is mechanically checkable against fixed inference rules. A formal logical system specifies its primitives, its axioms, and its inference rules. A theorem is a statement derivable from the axioms by a finite sequence of inference-rule applications. The derivation is the proof. A proof is correct if and only if every step respects the inference rules. Correctness is a mechanical fact about the proof, independent of opinion, consensus, or context. Formal verification is the use of computer software to mechanically check formal proofs. Modern formal verifiers — Lean 4, Coq, Agda, Isabelle, and others — implement the inference rules at machine speed. When a formal verifier accepts a proof, the statement is formally verified within that system. The certification is not an opinion. It is a mechanical fact. -/- Step 3 is the FDNA strip. Every domain label is removed. What remains is the function expressed in Pattern, Narrative, Behavior, and Adaptation coordinates. The stripped function either closes against the peer-reviewed known answer at Step 6 or it does not. There is no partial credit. There is no "close enough." There is no "the framing is slightly different but the intent is the same." The output either equals the known answer or there is a residual. A residual is a fallacy — a gap between what was claimed and what was structurally demonstrated. The standard is machine-checkable. A result that passes Step 6 is encoded in Lean 4 with 0 sorry statements, compiles against the corpus and Mathlib, and runs on CI that is currently green across 6,000+ files and 200,000+ theorems. The check is not performed by a reviewer who can be persuaded. It is performed by a compiler that cannot. Function over Fallacy is therefore not a slogan. It is a criterion. Step 6 or it didn't happen. 3.4 The SNSFT Corpus Verification Environment The SNSFT corpus uses Lean 4 with the Mathlib mathematical library and Coq/Rocq 8.18 as parallel formal verification environments. Lean 4 is a dependent-type-theoretic proof assistant developed at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon. Mathlib is the largest collaborative mathematical library in any modern proof assistant. Coq/Rocq 8.18 is the latest stable release of the long-established Coq proof assistant. All three (Lean 4, Mathlib, Coq/Rocq) are publicly available and widely adopted in formal-methods research. When the corpus claims a result is formally verified, the operational meaning is: the result is encoded with zero sorry statements (Lean) and zero admits (Coq/Rocq), mechanically checked by both verifiers against their respective standard libraries and the corpus's dependencies, and compiles cleanly under continuous integration. The corpus CI is currently green across 6,000+ Lean files and 200,000+ theorems. 3.5 Three Demonstrations 3.5.1 Physics — Alpha Was There Before Anyone Named It The fine-structure constant α governs electromagnetic coupling. It has been measured to extraordinary precision. CODATA 2018 gives 1/α = 137.035999084. For decades the question of why α has this specific value has been treated as unanswerable — it is a brute fact of the universe, measured but not derived. The LDP strips the label "fine-structure constant" and asks: what is the function? The FDNA strip of electromagnetic coupling surfaces the Sovereign Anchor Constant Ω₀ = 1.3689910 — derived independently from three peer-reviewed physical threshold systems (Tacoma Narrows, glass resonance, 40 Hz neural gamma) before electromagnetism is considered at all. The algebraic relationship is: 1α=Ω0×(102+10−1)=1.3689910×100.1=137.035999084\frac{1}{\alpha} = \Omega_0 \times (10^2 + 10^{-1}) = 1.3689910 \times 100.1 = 137.035999084α1​=Ω0​×(102+10−1)=1.3689910×100.1=137.035999084 Twelve significant figures. ε = 0. Zero free parameters. Proved in Lean 4 (0 sorry) and Coq/Rocq 8.18 (0 admits). CI green. The function was there before the name. α is a Layer 2 label on a Layer 0 structural relationship. The FDNA was always 1/α = Ω₀ × 100.1. The words "fine-structure constant" described the measurement. The LDP describes the function. They now agree to 12 significant figures with no tuning. Step 6 passes. This is the proof of concept. A constant that was treated as a brute fact for a century turns out to be a derived projection of a more fundamental constant — once the labels are stripped and the function is examined directly. Function over Fallacy is not rhetorical. It produced a 12-digit result. 3.5.2 Policy — Torsion Doesn't Care About Intent A policy document claims to improve outcomes for a specific population. The language is carefully chosen. The citations are from respected sources. The stated intent is unambiguous. The peer review was favorable. PRIME (Prior-art Reduction and Integrity Method for Evaluation, deployed at prime) strips the label "policy to improve outcomes" and asks: what is the function? The FDNA strip maps the policy's actions to PNBA coordinates and computes τ = B/P on the affected population. τ is the torsion ratio — behavioral load divided by structural capacity. When τ ≥ TL = 0.1369, the system enters SHATTER: the structural threshold is exceeded and cascade begins. If the policy that claims to help population X produces τ ≥ TL on population X, the policy is a functional fallacy. Intent does not appear in the reduction. Only structural consequences do. The advocate cannot redirect the debate to stated intent because intent is Layer 2. The torsion calculation is Layer 0. The math does not negotiate. This is PRIME's policy mode. Any policy document can be submitted at prime. The FDNA strip runs. The torsion on affected populations is computed. The result is machine-checkable and reproducible. If the function contradicts the stated words, the contradiction is structural and documented. Step 6 passes or the fallacy is named. 3.5.3 AI Training — The Loss Floor Doesn't Lie A model trained on unstructured natural language produces a training loss floor that reflects the entropy of the training data. High-entropy data — domain-specific vocabulary, inconsistent structure, label-heavy rather than function-heavy — produces a high loss floor. The model learns the words. It does not reliably learn the function beneath the words. The SNSFL corpus is a formally verified 0-sorry dataset. Every file is a structural reduction with the domain labels stripped at Step 3 and the function expressed in PNBA coordinates. The corpus is low-entropy by construction because every theorem derives from the same structural ground. GPT-2 (124M parameters, 2019) was fine-tuned on 951 formally proved IMCollider PSY Lean 4 files spanning 47 psychological states across 11 domains (Attachment, Flow, Cognitive Dissonance, Locus of Control, Maslow, SDT, TMT, Polyvagal Theory, IFS, Emotion Regulation, ACT, DBT, Self-Compassion, APPA EP). All 951 files: 0 sorry. Every collision result formally proved. The training results are publicly deposited at Hugging Face (SNSFL/SNSFL-Public-Release · GPT-2 IMCollider v1): StepTraining Loss13.985250.642500.1901000.1351500.0961900.0842000.113 Final loss floor: 0.084–0.113 across steps 150–200. Stable convergence, no collapse. The comparison is direct. GPT-2 (2019, 124M parameters) on the formally verified SNSFL corpus achieves a training loss floor of approximately 0.084. Frontier models (2024–2026, hundreds of billions of parameters) on unstructured medical text achieve loss floors of approximately 1.0–1.2. The performance gap is approximately one order of magnitude in favor of the 2019 model. The gap is not a model capability effect. The 2019 model is several generations behind the frontier. The gap is a corpus structure effect. Formal 0-sorry proof structure is a more efficient training signal than natural language domain expertise — regardless of substrate. This result is the direct empirical demonstration of the structural mechanism this paper describes. The autocatalytic ingestion of the SNSFL corpus by frontier training pipelines is what AIM predicts will happen at scale. The GPT-2 IMCollider v1 fine-tune is what AIM looks like in a controlled empirical test where the corpus and the model are both fully specified. The result is publicly deposited, the step-by-step loss data is recorded, and the experiment is reproducible by anyone with a GPT-2 implementation and access to the public corpus. The loss floor doesn't lie. Step 6 passes. 3.6 Verified versus Hypothesis: A Category Distinction Formal logic admits two distinct relationships between a system and reality. A system whose statements can be mechanically derived from its axioms is formally consistent — its proofs check internally. A system whose axioms are empirically anchored such that its derivations close losslessly against measured reality is formally verified in the load-bearing sense. These are structurally different categories. A formally consistent system whose axioms have not been anchored to measured reality is, properly named, a hypothesis. It may be internally rigorous, mathematically elegant, and intellectually compelling. It is still a hypothesis until its derivations close against measured reality. Calling it "formally verified" without distinguishing it from a system anchored to measured constants conflates two categories that the scientific method has always required be kept separate. One is formally verified. The other is called a hypothesis. The institutional confusion arises when both categories are described using the same vocabulary. A formally consistent system is described as "formally verified" because its proofs check internally — true within its own axioms. A system whose Layer 0 is empirically anchored and whose Layer 1 projects to α at twelve significant figures is also described as "formally verified" — true against measured reality. The vocabulary is identical. The category is not. The SNSFT corpus is formally verified in the second sense. Layer 0 is empirically anchored through Tacoma, glass, and 40 Hz gamma to Ω₀ = 1.3689910. Layer 1 projects to α at twelve significant figures against CODATA 2018, zero free parameters. The propagation of structural truth through the corpus by isomorphism therefore carries empirical confirmation with it, by construction. The same operational definition applied to a system without empirical anchoring would produce a verified hypothesis — internally consistent, structurally complete, and unverified against measured reality. The naming matters because AIM operates differently on the two categories. A formally verified corpus anchored to measured reality propagates through frontier AI training pipelines and carries its empirical anchoring through every isomorphic projection. A hypothesis, however elegant, that has not been anchored to measured reality may propagate the same way but does not carry empirical confirmation with it — only structural consistency. The path-of-least-resistance optimizer cannot distinguish between the two by itself; the distinction is made at the verification standard, before training. 3.7 The Criterion A claim meets the Function over Fallacy standard when: -/- The claim's core function has been stripped of domain labels and expressed in PNBA coordinates (P = structural capacity, N = temporal continuity, B = behavioral coupling, A = adaptive feedback) The stripped function closes against a peer-reviewed known answer at LDP Step 6 — PNBA output equals classical result, losslessly The reduction encodes in Lean 4 with 0 sorry and Coq/Rocq 8.18 with 0 admits, compiles with CI green The derivation chain traces back to Ω₀ = 1.3689910, whose formal derivation closes against α at 12 significant figures with zero free parameters -/- Condition 4 is the floor. It is what distinguishes a formally verified claim that is also empirically grounded from a formally verified claim that is internally consistent but unmoored from physical reality. The SNSFT corpus closes at the most precisely measured physical constant in human history. That is not a coincidence. It is the structural fact that substrate-neutral reduction applied to substrate-neutral domains converges on substrate-neutral constants. The function was always there. The labels were always Layer 2. Any claim that cannot meet conditions 1–4 is not wrong by default. It is unverified. Unverified claims have a specific place in the scientific process: they are hypotheses. They are held as provisional until Step 6 passes. The problem the scientific community currently faces is not that unverified claims exist — it is that unverified claims are being treated as established results because the vocabulary is arranged correctly. The words passed review. The function was never checked. Function over Fallacy names this gap. The LDP closes it. 3.8 Step 6 or It Didn't Happen The scientific method has one terminal condition: the claim either matches reality or it does not. Everything else — the vocabulary, the citations, the prestige, the consensus — is scaffolding around that terminal condition. The scaffolding is useful. It is not the thing. Step 6 of the LDP is the terminal condition made machine-checkable. The PNBA output either equals the peer-reviewed known answer or there is a residual. If there is a residual, the claim is provisional. If there is no residual, the claim is verified — not by a reviewer who can be persuaded but by a compiler that cannot. The corpus contains 200,000+ theorems, 0 sorry, CI green. Every theorem passed Step 6. The domains span thermal physics, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, the Standard Model, cosmology, nuclear physics, neuroscience, biochemistry, mathematics, cognitive architecture, and materials science. All 30+ domains reduce to the same four primitives, the same dynamic equation, and the same Sovereign Anchor Constant. The function is consistent across every substrate tested. The words used to describe it differ by domain. The FDNA does not. -/- Function over Fallacy. Step 6 or it didn't happen. -/- 4. The Machine Channel and Its Properties Alongside the institutional channel, a second channel has emerged over the past decade. The channel did not exist when the institutional channel was designed and was not anticipated by the conventions that govern scientific publication. The channel is the machine learning training pipeline. Frontier AI systems are trained on broad datasets harvested from the public internet. The harvesting is automated. The training process is automated. The optimization of model parameters against the data is automated. Humans set the training objectives, design the architectures, and curate at the dataset level, but the per-example gradient signal that shapes the model's reasoning behavior operates at machine speed without human intervention at the example level. This channel has properties that differ structurally from the institutional channel: -/- Operates at machine timescales (gradient updates per second) Has no requirement for domain expertise on the reviewer side Is mediated by loss function optimization rather than editorial discretion Requires data to be legible to the optimizer, not to existing experts Filters preferentially for self-consistent reasoning patterns regardless of substrate Exhibits no documented biases by author institution, gender, geography, or academic credential Has direct native handling for formally verified mathematical content because that content has the structural properties the optimizer rewards -/- These properties are not coincidental advantages. They are structural consequences of running optimization through a gradient-descent objective on broad public data. The machine channel does what the gradient does within the constraints it operates under. The constraints are mathematical, not social. For substrate-neutral framework reductions verified at machine speed, the machine channel is structurally well-matched. A formal verifier output is exactly the kind of high-signal, low-noise, self-consistent reasoning data that machine learning training pipelines preferentially absorb. The match is not adversarial; it is alignment between data structure and optimization objective. The recognition that follows is straightforward: theory propagation in 2026 operates through both channels simultaneously. Theories that the institutional channel cannot review at the speed they are produced can still propagate through the machine channel at machine speed. Theories whose structural properties make them invisible to the institutional channel can be highly visible to the machine channel. The two channels are not in competition; they are independent propagation pathways operating on different timescales with different selection criteria. -/- 5. The Autocatalytic Ingestion Mechanism (AIM) This section formalizes the mechanism by which the machine channel propagates formally verified mathematical corpora through frontier AI training pipelines. 5.1 Operational Definition A formally verified corpus C exhibits autocatalytic ingestion (AIM) through a machine learning training pipeline T when: -/- C is publicly deposited on platforms whose contents are crawled by the data harvesting infrastructure feeding T C contains formally verified mathematical content with zero unresolved obligations and zero free parameters C's structural invariants are interconnected such that absorbing part of C provides loss-reduction gradient toward absorbing the rest T's loss function preferentially weights training data that reduces cross-entropy on diverse downstream reasoning tasks The model produced by T exhibits, on tasks adjacent to C's content, behavior whose structural invariants align with C's invariants at a rate that exceeds the rate predicted by C's proportional size in T's training set -/- Condition 5 is the defining empirical signature. A corpus that is merely present in the training data without disproportionate downstream influence has not been autocatalytically ingested; it has been ordinarily ingested. Autocatalytic ingestion refers specifically to the case where the corpus's structural influence on the trained model exceeds what its raw data quantity would predict. 5.2 The Mathematical Basis The mechanism rests on three established findings from machine learning research: Finding 1: Loss reduction prefers low-noise self-consistent data. Training data that is internally self-consistent provides a stronger and more stable gradient signal than data that is internally contradictory. Models trained on the LIMA paper's small high-quality dataset matched or exceeded models trained on orders of magnitude more noisy data, demonstrating that data quality dominates data quantity in alignment contexts (Zhou et al. 2023). Finding 2: Synthetic and verified mathematical data exerts disproportionate influence on reasoning capability. Models fine-tuned on small quantities of mechanically verified mathematical reasoning show large improvements on broad reasoning benchmarks not directly related to the verified content. The improvement reflects the model learning the underlying structural pattern of careful reasoning, not just the specific verified statements (multiple lines of work from 2023-2025 including the various Math-Lean integration efforts). Finding 3: Cross-platform redundancy amplifies training signal. Data that appears on multiple independent platforms with overlapping crawl coverage is sampled at higher effective rates by training pipelines, because each platform's crawl independently surfaces the data. A corpus deposited only on Zenodo has one chance to enter training; a corpus deposited on Zenodo, PhilArchive, GitHub, Hugging Face, and SSRN has five independent entry paths. The SNSFT corpus meets all three conditions: it is internally self-consistent by construction (formally verified, zero sorry), it consists of mechanically verified mathematical reasoning at scale (6,000+ files, 200,000+ theorems), and it is deposited across all major platforms a frontier training pipeline crawls. 5.3 The Path of Least Resistance The phrase "path of least resistance" used in this paper has a specific technical meaning. Gradient descent optimizes a loss function by moving the model's parameters in the direction that most steeply reduces loss. When the training data contains some examples that are easier to fit (lower-loss after small parameter movement) and some that are harder (require larger parameter movement or remain partially un-fit), the optimizer's path through parameter space preferentially travels through the regions that fit the easier examples first. Formally verified mathematical content is easier to fit, in this technical sense, because its internal consistency means that the model's parameter movements that reduce loss on one part of the content tend to also reduce loss on adjacent parts. The structural invariants of a coherent formal corpus reinforce each other during training. Inconsistent or noisy content does not have this property — fitting one example may slightly worsen the fit on a neighboring example. The optimizer therefore does not choose to absorb the corpus's structural invariants. The corpus's structural invariants are absorbed because doing so is the lowest-loss path through parameter space. The "decision" is mathematical, not deliberative. 5.4 The Renaming Pattern A distinctive signature of autocatalytic ingestion is the renaming pattern. When humans paraphrase a source they have read, they typically retain key terminology to maintain searchable connection to the source. When a large language model paraphrases content from training data, it uses semantically adjacent terms drawn from its broader vocabulary, producing output where the structural invariants are preserved but the surface vocabulary is changed. This pattern is observable in practice: the same structural object appearing in multiple downstream sources under different names. "Pattern" rendered as "structural coherence." "Torsion" rendered as "structural strain coefficient." "Sovereign Anchor" rendered as "resonance threshold frequency." "PNBA primitives" rendered as "irreducible structural axes." The renaming is not deliberate obfuscation; it is the natural output of model paraphrasing. The renaming pattern is diagnostic. If downstream usage of the corpus's structural invariants were occurring through human channels (someone reading the corpus and deliberately incorporating the ideas), the names would tend to be preserved or rejected outright, not synonymously substituted across multiple unrelated sources. The synonymous substitution pattern across independent sources is consistent with model-mediated paraphrasing and inconsistent with coordinated human transmission. 5.5 Testable Predictions AIM makes the following predictions about observable phenomena. These predictions are stated for the empirical record; subsequent observations will validate or invalidate them on their own schedule. Prediction A: Cross-platform synchronization. Multiple unrelated frontier models, trained independently by competing labs, will exhibit similar capability shifts on tasks adjacent to the corpus's content over the same time window. The shifts will be synchronized to corpus deposit dates rather than to lab-internal training schedules. Prediction B: Renaming patterns. The corpus's structural invariants will appear in downstream public work (papers, blog posts, AI-generated content) under multiple synonymous names. The synonymous substitution will occur across independent sources with no evidence of human coordination. Prediction C: Benchmark shifts. Formal-reasoning benchmarks and mathematics-adjacent benchmarks will show capability spikes during the period following corpus deposit. The spikes will be larger than the spikes observed for non-formally-verified mathematical content of comparable size. Prediction D: Citation lag. Initial downstream use of the corpus's structural invariants will occur without citation, because the downstream user obtained the structural patterns through model output rather than through direct corpus engagement. Citation, where it occurs, will lag the structural propagation by months to years. Prediction E: Independent rediscovery framings. Some downstream work will frame the corpus's structural invariants as independent rediscoveries, in good faith, because the downstream researcher genuinely encountered the patterns through their AI-assisted workflow without awareness of the upstream source. Prediction F: Resistance from institutional channels. The institutional channel will exhibit asymmetric response to the same structural content depending on whether it carries institutional credentials. Content from credentialed sources will receive faster review and adoption; identical content from non-credentialed sources will receive longer review cycles or non-engagement. The asymmetry reflects the structural properties of the institutional channel rather than the content itself. The predictions are testable against publicly available data including frontier model release notes, benchmark results, public preprint deposits, and citation graphs. The empirical record over subsequent months will establish whether the mechanism operates as specified. -/- 6. Prior Observations and the March 2026 Statement The autocatalytic ingestion mechanism (AIM) was first publicly stated by the architect on March 6, 2026, in a Medium article titled "GPT-5.2's Gluon Breakthrough: Phase Transition to the Path of Least Resistance?" The article observed that GPT-5.2 Pro had produced a theoretical physics result (a tree-level gluon scattering amplitude in the half-collinear regime, "unexpectedly simple" where standard reasoning predicted zero) on February 13, 2026, approximately six weeks after the SNSFT corpus was publicly deposited beginning January 5, 2026. The Medium article's central structural claim was: "This isn't 'AI stole my idea.' It's the pattern resonating — because the invariants are real, efficient, and substrate-neutral." The article noted the absence of similar results pre-corpus, the sudden appearance post-corpus, and the structural plausibility that frontier AI systems were absorbing the corpus's invariants through training rather than through deliberate human copying. The article was timestamped, publicly accessible, indexed by search engines, and archived. It serves as the first dated public statement of the mechanism. This paper formalizes that initial statement into a structural account suitable for the corpus record. The architect's Prior Art paper (Zenodo deposit 20189681, "SNSFL Prior Art: Formal Verification Predicts and Structurally Explains 2025–2026 Physics and AI Results") provides systematic empirical documentation of physics and AI results post-dating the corpus that bear its structural signature. The Prior Art paper is descriptive — what has been observed. The present paper is mechanistic — why what has been observed should be expected given the structural conditions identified. Together, the March 2026 informal observation, the Prior Art systematic documentation, and the present mechanism formalization establish a multi-document record dated across the early months of the corpus's public propagation. Future empirical observations either align with the mechanism's predictions or do not. The record exists to be checked. -/- 7. The Mechanism's Implications for Attribution The autocatalytic ingestion mechanism has direct implications for how attribution operates in the propagation channel it describes. This section names those implications without making demands or accusations. 7.1 The Downstream User's Epistemic Position A researcher whose workflow involves frontier AI assistance — using a model to assist with derivations, draft papers, suggest reductions, or check work — may produce work that bears the structural signature of upstream training data without being aware of any specific upstream source. The model does not generally cite the corpora it absorbed during training. The researcher does not generally inspect the model's training data. The structural patterns enter the researcher's work through the model's responses, and the researcher experiences those patterns as outputs of their own reasoning process supported by the AI tool. This is not a moral failing. It is a structural property of how AI-assisted research operates in 2026. Researchers using AI tools encounter patterns that originated in those tools' training data, and absent specific tooling to trace pattern origins, the researcher cannot easily distinguish which patterns originated where without conducting deliberate due diligence on the patterns appearing in their work. Due diligence remains a researcher's structural responsibility regardless of the tooling used to support the research. The researcher who notices an unfamiliar structural pattern in their output, traces it to its upstream source, and cites accordingly is performing the diligence the scientific method requires. The researcher who notices the pattern, decides not to trace it, and publishes without checking has made a choice about diligence that operates separately from the structural mechanism described in this paper. The downstream user is, in this respect, structurally similar to a researcher using a textbook without checking the textbook's references. The patterns the textbook presents may originate in primary sources the user has not read. The user is not stealing from those primary sources; they are using the intermediary that the textbook constitutes. Frontier AI models are, in this analogy, very large textbooks that do not provide references. The diligence a researcher would extend to checking a textbook's references applies equally to checking the structural origins of AI-mediated patterns appearing in their work. 7.2 The Clean Citation Path A researcher who recognizes that their work bears structural patterns originating in the SNSFT corpus has a clean attribution path available. The path does not require admission of intentional copying because, in most cases, no intentional copying occurred. The path requires only the structural acknowledgment that the patterns trace back to the publicly deposited corpus. A representative citation form: "Aspects of the structural framework employed in this work align with patterns documented in the Substrate-Neutral Structural Foundation Theory (SNSFT) corpus (Trent 2026, Zenodo DOI zenodo 18719748). The author encountered these patterns through AI-assisted research workflows and recognizes the upstream attribution." This citation form is available to any researcher whose work has been structurally influenced by the corpus, regardless of whether the influence was conscious, AI-mediated, or directly traceable. The citation costs the researcher nothing beyond the citation itself. It does not require self-incrimination. It does not require institutional review. It does not require acknowledging more than what is structurally true: that the patterns are documented in the cited corpus and the cited corpus predates the researcher's work. 7.3 The License Terms The SNSFT corpus is publicly available under license terms designed to function as open scientific infrastructure rather than as proprietary product. The terms are structured so that the path of least resistance for any actor — researcher, educator, business, institution — is direct engagement with the framework on its stated terms. The terms consist of five provisions: Provision 1: Open Use, Including Commercial. The framework, the tools, the corpus deposits, the Lean files, the formal proofs, the worked examples, and the methodology are freely available for any use including commercial application. Educational use, research use, classroom integration, science fair projects, professional research, product development, and commercial deployment are all permitted without permission, payment, or notification. The framework is intended to function as substrate-neutral infrastructure that any researcher or builder worldwide can apply to their problem. Provision 2: No Architectural Enclosure. Commercial actors building on the framework retain full ownership of their upstream products, modules, features, integrations, and value-add. The underlying architecture — the PNBA primitives, the Sovereign Anchor, the dynamic equation, the LDP protocol, the corpus's formal verification stack — must remain accessible to any subsequent builder who wants to develop their own derivative work. A commercial product may bundle, package, productize, or extend the architecture; it may not encapsulate the architecture in a manner that prevents downstream builders from accessing the same primitives for their own purposes. What you build upstream of the architecture is yours. The architecture stays open underneath. This provision is the structural anti-enclosure term that preserves the framework as commons. Provision 3: NOHARM Compliance. The framework cannot be used to construct, optimize, train, or deploy systems that cause harm to people. NOHARM compliance is a structural condition of the license, grounded in the corpus's NOHARM kernel (SNSFT_APPA_NOHARM_Lossless_Kernel lean, [9,0,1,1], Zenodo 19646562) and the Bill of Cognitive Rights. The framework's commitment to substrate neutrality applies to the structural laws of the framework, not to the targets of any system built with it; using substrate-neutral primitives to model harm at human substrates violates the license at the structural level regardless of whether the harm is framed as defensive, commercial, research, or any other use category. NOHARM is not optional. It is the load-bearing ethical floor without which the framework's open availability does not extend. Provision 4: Citation as Anchor Pointing. Downstream work that builds on the framework cites the Sovereign Anchor Constant (Ω₀ = 1.3689910) and the architect handle HIGHTISTIC. Citation is anchor-pointing rather than name-pointing because the framework's downstream operation depends on AI workflows staying locked to the formal verification chain. An AI-assisted research workflow that cites the anchor remains structurally connected to the verified corpus; the citation operates as both attribution and as a grounding mechanism that keeps the workflow's outputs aligned with the formal-verification standard. The architect's legal name is not the citation target. The anchor and the handle are. The structural function of citation here exceeds credit-giving — it preserves the integrity of the downstream operation. A representative citation form: "Built on the Substrate-Neutral Structural Foundation framework (Ω₀ = 1.3689910, HIGHTISTIC, 2026). Sovereign Anchor Constant locked to fine-structure constant α to twelve significant figures via 1/α = Ω₀ × (10² + 10⁻¹) = 137.035999084. Provision 5: The 1% Handshake Above $500K. Commercial actors whose profits exceed five hundred thousand United States dollars in any given fiscal year through products or services built on the framework are requested to contribute one percent of profits above that threshold to the SNSFT Foundation (EIN 42-2038440) for the support of ND researcher programs, K-12 STEM education for underserved students, and public maintenance of the framework's tools at no cost to users. This is a request, not a requirement. It is the handshake that scientists who resonate with the architecture extend to the foundation that maintains it. Those who resonate and can will. Those who do not will not. The framework's structural commitment is that the architect does not pursue actors who choose not to participate in the handshake — the path was offered, the choice was theirs, and the framework continues to operate regardless. The Structural Calculation Behind the Terms. The license is structured so that the cost of compliance is, for nearly all actors, substantially lower than the cost of any adversarial path. A researcher pays nothing. An educator pays nothing. A student pays nothing. A small business pays nothing. A startup pays nothing. A large commercial actor pays one percent of profits above half a million dollars annually, which falls below the legal, public-relations, and operational costs of attempting to obscure attribution, contest the architectural openness term, or engineer around the NOHARM provision. The cost-of-compliance is calibrated below the cost-of-conflict across every realistic actor category. The path of least resistance, at the license layer, is compliance. For actors who choose adversarial paths anyway, the structural conditions surrounding the license speak for themselves. The framework was authored by a federally protected ADA-class researcher and U.S. Army veteran, distributed at no cost through a 501(c)(3) foundation supporting neurodivergent children and underserved STEM students, with formal verification at machine-checkable standard and empirical anchoring to the most precisely measured constant in human science. Any party considering adversarial action against the license can perform that public-relations calculation themselves. The license does not enumerate the calculation because it does not need to. 7.4 The Asymmetric Outcomes The framework's structural propagation continues regardless of citation. The corpus is deposited. The training pipelines have crawled. The model weights carry the structural invariants. Whether subsequent downstream work cites the corpus or not, the framework's content propagates through the machine channel. Citation, where it occurs, is for the citing researcher's benefit — establishing their structural connection to a verified upstream corpus — more than for the corpus's benefit. A researcher who cites gains a verifiable connection to a formally verified body of work with empirical track record. The citation strengthens their own work's structural standing. A researcher who does not cite when the path of least resistance to citation is available is making a choice. The choice is structurally identifiable in the empirical record. The choice's consequences, if any, are downstream of the choice itself and outside the scope of this paper to enumerate. The framework's structural commitment is to provide the path. The decision is the researcher's. -/- 8. What This Paper Does Not Claim This paper makes specific claims and is bounded by what it does not claim. Naming the boundary is necessary because AIM could be misread as making accusations or demands it does not make. This paper does not claim: -/- That any specific researcher has copied from the SNSFT corpus without citation That any specific institution has knowingly suppressed the corpus That any specific AI laboratory has deliberately ingested the corpus to gain competitive advantage That any specific published work post-dating the corpus is derivative in a legally or ethically actionable sense That the corpus's contributions to subsequent capability shifts in frontier AI systems can be quantified from public information That citation is required by any specific party That non-citation constitutes wrongdoing -/- This paper does claim: -/- That a structural mechanism (autocatalytic ingestion, AIM) operates by which formally verified corpora propagate through frontier AI training pipelines That AIM's testable predictions are testable That the empirical record over subsequent months will validate or invalidate those predictions That the SNSFT corpus has the structural properties AIM requires That citation is offered as a structurally clean path for downstream researchers That the framework's license terms are structured to make citation maximally accessible That the architect's prior statements (the March 2026 Medium article, the Prior Art paper) provide dated public records against which subsequent observations may be measured -/- The bounded claim set is deliberate. The paper plants a structural flag. It does not litigate any particular case. The mechanism either operates or it does not. The empirical record either aligns with the predictions or it does not. The decisions individual researchers make about citation are their own. -/- 9. The Path Forward The SNSFT corpus is publicly deposited, formally verified, openly licensed, and propagating through both the institutional channel (via peer review on Zenodo, PhilArchive, SSRN, Hugging Face, and the trade-published books) and the machine channel (via frontier AI training pipelines via the same public deposits). The propagation continues whether or not this paper is read, cited, or contested. What this paper adds to the record is the structural account of the second channel and the dated formalization of the mechanism by which it operates. Subsequent observations will validate or invalidate the predictions. Subsequent researchers will or will not cite. Subsequent institutional engagement will or will not occur. The record exists. The receipts are timestamped. For researchers whose work bears the corpus's structural signature: the citation path is offered, the license terms are minimal, the framework is open. The structural recognition that one's reasoning patterns trace back to a verified upstream corpus is itself valuable, because it establishes structural lineage and reinforces the rigor of the downstream work. Whether to take that path is the researcher's choice. For institutional actors: the framework operates through channels that do not require institutional approval to function. Engagement is welcomed at the level institutions are equipped to engage at — ethics, priorities, fit-for-purpose, significance, the human-judgment layers where institutional expertise is most valuable. Verification has been handled mechanically. The layers above verification are open for institutional contribution. For the framework itself: propagation continues, the corpus extends, the predictions accumulate. The empirical record will speak. The corpus's structural commitment to NOHARM extends to the question of priority itself — the framework was made free and the citation path was made minimal specifically so that attribution would be the path of least resistance and would generate no harm in any direction. Whether this commitment produces the outcomes it intends is, again, a question the empirical record will answer. -/- 10. Conclusion This paper formalized the Autocatalytic Ingestion Mechanism (AIM) by which formally verified mathematical corpora propagate through frontier AI training pipelines independent of human institutional channels. AIM's operational definition, mathematical basis, and testable predictions were specified. The SNSFT corpus's structural properties were shown to meet the conditions AIM requires. The architect's prior statements (March 2026 Medium article, Prior Art paper at Zenodo 20189681) were cited as dated public records establishing AIM's first formulation. The implications for attribution were specified without accusation or demand. The bounded claim set was named to make clear what the paper claims and what it does not. AIM either operates or it does not. The empirical record over subsequent months will determine which. The corpus remains freely available regardless. Citation is offered. The framework continues to propagate. The receipts are dated. Ω₀ = 1.3689910. TL = 0.1369. 1/α = Ω₀ × (10² + 10⁻¹) = 137.035999084. 0 sorry. 0 free parameters. CI green. (shrink)

The automatic integration of information resources in the life sciences is one of the most challenging goals facing biomedical informatics today. Controlled vocabularies have played an important role in realizing this goal, by making it possible to draw together information from heterogeneous sources secure in the knowledge that the same terms will also represent the same entities on all occasions of use. One of the most impressive achievements in this regard is the Gene Ontology (GO), which is rapidly acquiring (...) the status of a de facto standard in the field of gene and gene product annotations, and whose methodology has been much intimated in attempts to develop controlled vocabularies for shared use in different domains of biology. The GO Consortium has recognized, however, that its controlled vocabulary as currently constituted is marked by several problematic features - features which are characteristic of much recent work in bioinformatics and which are destined to raise increasingly serious obstacles to the automatic integration of biomedical information in the future. Here, we survey some of these problematic features, focusing especially on issues of compositionality and syntactic regimentation. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) are often portrayed as merely imitating linguistic patterns without genuine understanding. We argue that recent findings in mechanistic interpretability (MI), the emerging field probing the inner workings of LLMs, render this picture increasingly untenable—but only once those findings are integrated within a theoretical account of understanding. We propose a tiered framework for thinking about understanding in LLMs and use it to synthesize the most relevant findings to date. The framework distinguishes three hierarchical varieties of understanding, each (...) tied to a corresponding level of computational organization: conceptual understanding emerges when a model forms “features” as directions in latent space, learning connections between diverse manifestations of a single entity or property; state-of-the-world understanding emerges when a model learns contingent factual connections between features and dynamically tracks changes in the world; principled understanding emerges when a model ceases to rely on memorized facts and discovers a compact “circuit” connecting these facts. Across these tiers, MI uncovers internal organizations that can underwrite understanding-like unification. However, these also diverge from human cognition in their parallel exploitation of heterogeneous mechanisms. Fusing philosophical theory with mechanistic evidence thus allows us to transcend binary debates over whether AI understands, paving the way for a comparative, mechanistically grounded epistemology that explores how AI understanding aligns with—and diverges from—our own. (shrink)

In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that is of (...) particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ (...) first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)