Most human actions are complex, but some of them are basic. Which are these? In this paper, I address this question by invoking slips, a common kind of mistake. The proposal is this: an action is basic if and only if it is not possible to slip in performing it. The argument discusses some well-established results from the psychology of language production in the context of a philosophical theory of action. In the end, the proposed criterion is applied to (...) discuss some well-known theories of basic actions. (shrink)

Philosophers of perception are familiar with the argument from illusion, at least since Hume formulated it to challenge a naïve form of realism. In this paper, I present an analogous argument but in the domain of action. It focuses on slips, a common kind of mistake. But, otherwise, it is structurally similar. The argument challenges some contemporary views about the nature of action inspired by Wittgenstein. The discussion shows how thinking about these common mistakes helps illuminate aspects of human (...) agency that tend to be overlooked whenever too much emphasis is placed on the rationality of human actions. (shrink)

Over 1000 companies have either curtailed or else completely ceased operations in Russia as a response to its invasion of Ukraine, a mass corporate exodus of a speed and scale which we’ve never seen. While corporate withdrawal appears to have considerable public support, it’s not obvious that it has done anything to hamper the Russian war effort, nor is it clear what the long-run effects of corporate withdrawal as a regularised response to war might be. Given this, it’s important the (...) evaluate the ethical merits of such a response. In this paper I critique what I take to be the two most common arguments given in favour of voluntary corporate withdrawal, which I label ‘the instrumental argument’ and ‘the clean hands argument’ respectively. After illustrating their shortcomings, I reframe corporations’ predicament as a ‘spattered hands’ case—one where they may do good by remaining in a war-waging state, but where they contribute indirectly to grave wrongdoing by doing so. Drawing on ideas from the ‘Business for Peace’ and ‘Business and Human Rights’ literature, I highlight the potentially positive role of corporate presence within war-waging countries, before highlighting four considerations which corporations ought to bear in mind when determining whether to withdraw, or whether it is the lesser evil to stay and to let their hands be spattered. (shrink)

From Basil Fawlty, The Little Tramp and Frank Spencer; to Jim Carey, Andy Kaufman and Rowan Atkinson... comedy characters and comic actors have proved useful lenses for exploring—and exposing—humor’s cultural and political significance. Both performing as well as chastising cultural values, ideas and beliefs, the comic character gives a unique insight into latent forms of social exclusion that, in many instances, can only ever be approached through the comic form. It is in examining this comic form that this paper will (...) consider how the ‘comedy character’ presents a unique, subversive significance. Drawing from Lacanian conceptions of the subject and television ‘sitcom’ examples, the emancipatory potential of the comedy character will be used to criticize the predominance of irony and satire in comic displays. Indeed, while funny, it will be argued that such comic examples underscore a deprivative cynicism within comedy and humor. Countering this, it will be argued that a Lacanian conception of the subject can profer a comic efficacy that not only reveals how our social orders are inherently inconsistent and open to subversive redefinition, but that these very inconsistencies are also echoed in the subject, and, in particular, the ‘true comedy character’. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce a new theory of assertoric content. By ‘theory’, I mean both an extensionally correct definition and an elucidation of the mechanisms underlying assertoric content. In agreement with some existing work on the topic, I contend that assertoric content spans several content categories and is possibly constituted by an utterance’s standing content and explicature. I also offer a detailed explanation of how and why assertoric content can be determined by an utterance’s particularized conversational implicature. I call (...) my view the first-fill theory. This theory integrates recent developments in the literature related to the lying/misleading distinction. Additionally, my view accounts for intuitive judgments regarding the assertoric content of utterances that involve slips of the tongue. Finally, I also elucidate the apparent complexity of assertoric content by drawing parallels between the interpretative modes underlying it and those used in legal interpretation. (shrink)

There are certain changes in a person, often small at first, almost too subtle to notice, that begin to rearrange the familiar contours of their mind. A misplaced word, a forgotten task, a momentary confusion about time or place. We tend to react to these slips with concern because they seem to signal something drifting out of reach, but we rarely reflect on what exactly we believe is being lost. Forgetfulness appears frightening not only because a memory is gone (...) but because it disturbs our quiet assumption that memory is the substance of who we are. We live in a culture where the symbolic self, our stories, identities, names, and roles, carries the entire weight of our personhood. When cracks appear in that structure, it feels as though the person themself is leaking away. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 282-294, April 2022.

This original two-part treatise investigates the structural relationship between macro-level cultural evolution and micro-level individual psychopathology through a Freudian framework. Part I introduces a dynamic "three channels of one river" model of psychic energy—partitioned into biological, social, and cultural currents—operating as a system of communicating vessels. It argues that civilization is fundamentally predicated on the artificial suppression of the primary biological channel through primeval taboos, which forces the redirection of finite libido into societal and cultural sublimation. Part II bridges this (...) historical foundation with the mechanics of everyday psychology, examining how these repressed impulses inevitably bypass cultural censorship. Through a rigorous structural and semantic analysis of a specific linguistic interference (the "medicine and scissors" parapraxis), the study demonstrates that slips of the tongue are not phonetic accidents but meaningful psychic acts securely integrated within a network of subconscious relations. Ultimately, the paper outlines a clear taxonomy of disturbing intentions based on their proximity to conscious awareness, concluding that everyday errors serve as vital structural indicators of the lingering primeval drives locked within civilized constraints. (shrink)

汉代经学将《诗经》首篇《关雎》阐释为“后妃之德”，这一解读支配了两千年来的经典理解。本文以安大简《关雎》“要翟弔女”异文与《诗经·大明》文王婚娶描写的文本对勘为切入点，指出早期《关雎》原文仅作“体态匀 称、美好”的自然审美描写，并无德行教化的专门阐发；《毛诗》“窈窕淑女”的德行化解读，是汉代经师在文献整理中倾向选取的道德化传本被固化的结果。 沿此线索向上追溯，本文结合《诗经·葛覃》《尚书·无逸》《尚书·立政》等文献，逐层揭示西周社会“坦荡求偶”婚恋形态的制度根基：以“以劳定国”为标准的实干精神，依托文王“卑服即康功田功”的最高表率、封君封 地治理的利益挂钩机制、制度化的妇功训练、井田制的分配保障，以及“顺帝之则”的代理人信仰所构建的天—王—民闭环神学体系，共同塑造了全民实干、普遍互信的社会风气。 这套以“公天下”为内核的政治操作系统，是“小邦周克大邑商”的制度-信仰根基。西周中期以后，“天子”称谓的僭越逻辑，与公天下信仰的瓦解之间存在着微妙而深刻的联系。孔子通过删述六经，系统保存了关于文王治道 的文本与精神，并将《关雎》置于《诗经》之首，以“始于容色，合于后德，终于同志”的婚恋理想为后世留下重要的文明坐标。 关键词：安大简；《关雎》；《大明》；以劳定国；顺帝之则；妇功；公天下；孔子 -/- Han dynasty classical scholarship interpreted “Guan Ju” (The Ospreys), the opening poem of the Book of Songs, as expressing “the virtue of the queen consort”—an interpretation that dominated the classical understanding for two millennia. Taking as its point of departure a cross-textual comparison between the variant reading “yao di diao nü” (要翟弔女, meaning “graceful and lovely”) in the Anhui University bamboo-slip manuscript of “Guan Ju” and the description of King Wen’s marriage in the poem “Da (...) Ming” in the Book of Songs, this paper argues that the early text of “Guan Ju” offered only a natural aesthetic description—“well-proportioned and beautiful”—without any specific moral or didactic exposition. The moralized reading of “yaotiao shunü” (窈窕淑女, “the quiet and virtuous maiden”) in the Mao version of the Book of Songs is the result of a moralized textual recension that Han classical scholars preferentially selected and solidified through their compilation and collation of the texts. -/- Tracing this clue further back, this paper draws on texts such as “Ge Tan” in the Book of Songs and “Wu Yi” and “Li Zheng” in the Book of Documents to reveal, layer by layer, the institutional foundations of the “open and candid courtship” and marriage customs of Western Zhou society: a practical spirit based on the standard of “establishing the state through meritorious toil,” sustained by the supreme model of King Wen, who “wore humble clothing and personally undertook the work of clearing land and cultivating the fields,” by the mechanism linking the interests of enfeoffed lords to the governance of their fiefs, by institutionalized training in women’s work, by the distribution guarantees of the well-field system, and by a closed-loop theological framework of Heaven – King – People built on the agentic belief of “obeying the ordinances of the Supreme Lord.” Together these elements fostered a social climate of collective hard work and widespread mutual trust. -/- This political operating system, centered on the ideal of gong tianxia (all under Heaven held in common), provided the institutional and faith foundation for “the small state of Zhou conquering the great city of Shang.” After the mid-Western Zhou period, a subtle yet profound connection emerged between the usurpatory logic embedded in the title “Son of Heaven” (tianzi) and the disintegration of the gong tianxia faith. Through his editing and transmitting of the Six Classics, Confucius systematically preserved both the texts and the spirit of King Wen’s art of governance. By placing “Guan Ju” at the head of the Book of Songs and encapsulating the ideal of love and marriage as “beginning with physical attraction, harmonizing with conjugal virtue, and culminating in shared aspirations,” he left a vital civilizational landmark for posterity. -/- . (shrink)

This book is a critical monograph on the problem of Chinese intellectuals, grounded in the philosophy of science as methodology, thermodynamics and complex systems as analytical tools, and the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC) as its ontological foundation. The title concept, Sage Entropy (圣人熵), names the book's core original contribution: the ontological error of Confucianism — substituting the subjective will of sages for the laws of the cosmic natural order — accumulates irreversible thermodynamic entropy within civilizational systems, driving the periodic collapse (...) of civilization and the desertification of thought that has recurred across two thousand years of Chinese history. The structural logic of the book follows a seven-layer chain of deduction: Artificial Order Is False (ontological verdict) → Sage Entropy (thermodynamic mechanism) → Knowledge-Power Conspiracy (institutional logic) → Intellectual Desertification (cognitive result) → Civilizational Decline (historical evidence) → Dao Follows Nature (cosmological way out) → Reconstruction of Natural Civilization (practical program) — The Seven-Layer Core Deductive Chain of This Book -/- The book is divided into seven parts (including the Prelude and Part Six, the Constructive section), comprising twenty-five chapters in total, with Appendices A through G and a bibliography. Summary of Each Part -/- [Prelude] Drawing on the Guodian Chu Slips (unearthed 1993), the Mawangdui Silk Manuscripts, and the Taiyi Shengshui as archaeo-philological evidence, this section argues for the Chu civilizational roots of Laozi's thought and establishes a documentary foundation for the LYGC cosmology reaching back two and a half millennia. [Part Zero: Ontological Premises] Using the LYGC cosmic hierarchy (humanity follows Earth → Earth follows Heaven → Heaven follows Dao → Dao follows Nature) as a normative baseline, this part systematically argues that Confucian artificial order (the Five Constants of ren, yi, li, zhi, xin plus the Three Bonds and Five Relationships) constitutes a fourfold subversion of the cosmic natural order: epistemological subversion, hierarchical subversion, energetic subversion, and subversion of knowledge production. [Part One: Diagnosis] A historical-institutional pathology: how Emperor Wu of Han's exclusive promotion of Confucianism established the institutional origin of intellectual serfdom; how the 'system overfitting' of the imperial examination system mass-produced cognitively domesticated intellectuals; why three waves of enlightenment (late Ming/early Qing, May Fourth, the 1980s) each ended with national salvation suppressing awakening; and the contemporary academic degeneration revealed by Li Bozhong's data, alongside Chinese universities' DeepSeek ambitions and DeepFake illusions. [Part Two: Critique of Confucianism] Deconstruction at the level of philosophical ontology: the verdict on the nature of the Five Constants under the proposition 'Artificial Order Is False'; the strict operational definition of Sage Entropy (dS/dt = ρ_r · DAF / ΔCCF) and its historical verification; the structural co-option mechanism behind the myth of 'Confucian-Daoist Complementarity'; and an ontological critique of Tu Weiming's New Confucian thesis of 'Mind as Ontological Foundation.' [Part Three: Roots] The ABCDE five-factor framework for civilizational failure, arguing that A (Confucian artificial order) is the core variable but not the sole one; an extended analysis of the Qian Xuesen case through engineering cybernetics; the Guo Moruo case; and a unified thermodynamic explanation for intellectual degeneration. [Part Four: Comparison] A comparison of the University of California system (self-organizing dissipative structure) versus Confucianized universities (heteronomously organized ritual coercion); an institutional analysis of Chen Yinke as the solitary historical witness to Chinese intellectual independence; and the third path offered by Laozi and Foucault. [Part Five: Transition] The naturalization of scholarship and the university: the convergence of Liang Qichao's 'academic independence' with Dao Follows Nature; a true ontology of the university; and the only possible path for Confucianism to be reborn within the framework of the Natural Way. [Part Six: Construction] Systematic reconstruction of the knowledge system of Natural Civilization: what constitutes genuine knowledge (three conditions: observable, falsifiable, transmissible); the institutional design of the Natural Civilization university; the personality model of the Natural Civilization thinker; and 'Students of the Dao' as the civilizational alternative to two thousand years of 'Disciples of the Sage.' . (shrink)

摘 要 老子（约公元前571—411年）诞生于汉江岸边荆楚大地，其《道德经》并非抽象玄思，而是对楚文明数百年治国经验的哲学升华。本文综合杨兴平（Charles X. Yang）在PhilArchive发表的相关学术成果，从楚国政治实践（楚文王、楚成王、楚庄王、孙叔敖）、出土文献（郭店楚简、太一生水、帛书老子）与楚辞精神（屈原、天问）三大维度，系统论证楚文明是老子哲 学最直接的历史土壤，并以老-杨创世纪宇宙观（LYGC）为诠释框架，揭示楚文明的自然秩序逻辑与现代文明转型的深刻关联。 Abstract Laozi (c. 571-411 BCE), born on the banks of the Han River in the Jingchu heartland, did not produce abstract metaphysics: the Dao De Jing is a philosophical sublimation of centuries of Chu civilizational experience. Drawing on the PhilArchive scholarship of Charles X. Yang, this paper synthesizes three analytical dimensions — Chu political practice (Kings Wen, Cheng, Zhuang; Sun Shuao), excavated manuscripts (Guodian Chu Bamboo Slips, Taiyi Generates Water, Mawangdui Silk Laozi), and the (...) Chu Ci spirit (Qu Yuan, Tian Wen) — to demonstrate that Chu civilization was the direct historical soil from which Laozi philosophy grew. The Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC) serves as the interpretive frame, revealing the profound relevance of Chu natural order logic for contemporary civilizational transformation. (shrink)

In ‘Language and Race’, Luvell Anderson, Sally Haslanger, and Rae Langton highlight a slip of ambiguous expression exhibited by racial generics that harbor bad faith arguments, reduces social contingencies to racial essences, and masks oppression. They locate two psycholinguistic slips between classes of generics which communicate their use; one is between the characteristic generic and striking property generic and the other is between the characteristic generic and majority generic. I postulate three additional slips between classes of generics and (...) speaker beliefs; one between the characteristic generic and the normative generic, another between normative generics and a speaker’s belief set, and another slip from a speaker’s belief set to a striking property generic. Together, the slips between generic classes constitute both a reception theory of the meaning of subject S’s utterance and the generic belief (re)generation process that structures the passage an assertion takes from a singular definite belief to a reinforcing normative generic inference in a minimal structure I name the key schema. (shrink)

Both right angles and straight lines are at rest. -/- This paper presents an AI-assisted analytic reconstruction of a geometric thesis that deliberately eliminates time-parameterized kinematics (velocity and acceleration), replacing them with a purely spatial framework based on arc length, curvature, observation scale L, and observational resolution ε. We redefine “straightness” not as an ontic reality but as an identification label assigned when curvature is operationally undetectable (the ≪Straight-Line Illusion≫). Concretely, for curvature κ observed over scale L, the sagitta deviation (...) satisfies δ ≈ κL^2/8, and whenever δ < ε the segment is identified as κ=0 (straight) despite κ>0. Conversely, a “right angle” is re-interpreted not as a natural shape but as a singularity induced by representational compression: when a smooth trajectory is approximated by a polyline under sparse sampling, a vertex can appear where tangency is undefined. This vertex is defined as ≪Right Angle≫ and is synonymous with ≪Rest≫. -/- Within this framework, Aristotle’s Wheel paradox is resolved as the geometric impossibility of satisfying simultaneous no-slip correspondence conditions for concentric circles of different radii: if the outer rim satisfies S=Rθ, then an inner rim rigidly sharing the same rotation angle θ cannot simultaneously satisfy S=rθ when R≠r. -/- Furthermore, this paper provides the solution to the fundamental proposition presented in the appended paper “If Einstein Misunderstood That Light Travels in a Straight Line, Then Humanity Is Misunderstanding It Too,” within Equation Mathematics Foundations (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18102417): -/- [Quoted Proposition] [1] Proposition to Einstein All existence cannot turn at a right angle. It must necessarily come to rest. If so, it cannot proceed in a straight line either. Because it would mean using a 90-degree angle relative to existence. -/- The solution proposed herein is that light and motion are not “travel” but “spatial relationships (structures).” Light is not treated as a projectile moving from X to Y, but as the establishment of a relational constraint—schematically, X+Y=Z—where the primitive content is structural rather than time-indexed. Since “travel” is not taken as a primitive in this definition-based ontology, “moving in a straight line” is deconstructed as an identification regime (≪Straight-Line Illusion≫), integrating physics into a time-free, definition-first ontology. ================================================================ -/- Reference: Equation Mathematics Foundations (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18102417) -/- 【AI Models Used】 -/- The analysis and reconstruction in this work utilized the following AI models: -/- * ChatGPT 5.2 (Reasoning Model) -/- * Gemini 3.0 Pro -/- * Grok (Auto Mode) -/- . (shrink)

This note clarifies the scope, language policy, and falsifiability conditions of Distributed Relational Cognition (DRC). Its purpose is to reduce category-slip risk: metaphorical or phenomenological descriptions of sustained human–model interaction should not be misread as ontological claims about model inner states (e.g., beliefs, intentions, consciousness, or persistent memory). -/- The document establishes: Scope boundaries (what DRC does not claim); a language policy requiring translation of anthropomorphic shorthand into technical framings (behavioral, optimization, representational, mechanistic); the positive claims DRC makes about interaction-level (...) regularities under sustained coupling conditions; and explicit revision triggers (null effects, artifact-only explanations, non-reproducibility, or dominant confounds). -/- This clarification does not add new experimental results. It is intended as a companion reference for readers discussing DRC in research, product design, and policy contexts. -/- Companion note to: • Jamhour, I. Distributed Relational Cognition: Investigating Apparent Continuity Without Memory in AI Systems. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17608730 (also indexed on PhilPapers: JAMDRC-3). • Jamhour, I. Guard Rails and Distributed Relational Cognition: Design Risks for Human–AI Cognitive Partnership. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17681963 (also indexed on PhilPapers: JAMGRA-2). • Jamhour, I. DRC and a Luhmannian Systems-Theoretic Framework. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18107608 (also indexed on PhilPapers: JAMDRC-4). (shrink)

Before exploring the perplexing vacuum medium dynamics of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), we must first answer a fundamental question: Why are existing physical frameworks, such as General Relativity, unable to explain these observations? Starting from Einstein’s profound late-life concern that a physics based on continuous fields might be nothing more than a "castle in the air" built on sand , this paper retraces the "original sin" of calculus—its role as a statistical tool that masks physical reality. Differentiation is, in essence, (...) an indicator of the disparity between adjacent sampling points. By pretending that sampling frequency can achieve infinity, we allow this ratio to "lock in" the instantaneous features of change. Similarly, integration is a statistical cumulative of a process, predicated on the pretense that we can flawlessly aggregate all fragments to restore the totality. However, when sampling is bound by physical resolution, or when the fragments themselves possess inherent heterogeneity, the logic of calculus simply ceases to function. A multitude of physicists, led by Einstein, have long been ensnared in a 'paradigmatic illusion': mistakenly equating the 'infinite convergence' of mathematical calculus with the 'infinite divisibility' of physical reality. This intuitive bias allows mathematical logic to usurp physical intuition—whenever a theory fails to fit reality, we reflexively amend the derivatives (fields), yet never question whether the premise of 'continuity' itself is merely a simulacrum generated by macro-statistical averaging. Through cutting-edge experimental evidence—such as electron jumps captured by attosecond pulses , the localization of time revealed by optical lattice clocks , and the quantum vacuum noise detected by LIGO —we demonstrate that at the limits of observational resolution, spacetime and matter manifest as a discrete, fractured "skeleton" rather than the infinitely divisible manifold assumed by calculus. Traditional theories like General Relativity are essentially macro-statistical approximations caused by a "sampling shutter" that is too slow ; when confronted with UAP phenomena involving high-gradient vacuum impedance interactions, these theories suffer a "logical bankruptcy" because they forcibly smooth over discrete residuals. Only by abandoning the obsession with continuity, acknowledging the discrete pixelation of space, and utilizing "measure residual calculus" to take over dynamical evolution at the singularities, can we decode the UAP's mechanism of "geometric slip" that transcends classical inertial limits. (shrink)

This Diptych brings together the analytic, transitional, and literary-symbolic forms of Reconstructive Threshold Philosophy / The Architecture of the Liminal. It should be read as a paired architecture rather than as a single-genre monograph: the essay cools the argument into philosophical vocabulary; the Interleaf sections test the safety of that map; and the Codex returns the same threshold pressure in literary, symbolic, machine-facing, somatic, and ordinary-repair registers. -/- The central problem of the Diptych is the displacement of judgment before visible (...) action. Across its analytic and literary forms, the work asks how a frame, institution, platform, wound, symbolic room, or machine-mediated system can begin to move before judgment has returned; how corrective forms can become new rooms of capture; and how contemporary machine-mediated life intensifies the interval between prompt, frame, recommendation, authorization, and consequence. -/- The first body, Reconstructive Threshold Philosophy: Pre-Action Capture, Living Constraint, and Founder Entropy, develops the analytic framework of pre-action capture, binding point, living constraint, living brake, re-entrant audit, guardrail laundering, threshold slip, assistance without occupation, machine-facing threshold ethics, democratic and distributed threshold capacity, founder entropy, decision sovereignty, and post-threshold stewardship. -/- The second body, Interleaf I — After the Map and Interleaf II — Three Dark Tables in Time, marks the passage from analytic mapping into the literary and symbolic register of the Codex. The Interleaf sections ask whether the map can still release the hand, and whether a framework that calls itself a tool can also become a room. -/- The third body, The Architecture of the Liminal, is the Full Codex: a literary and archival work using mythic, somatic, machine-facing, and ordinary-repair registers to stage the same threshold problem in symbolic form. The Codex is not presented as doctrine, protocol, scripture, technical specification, or literal cosmology, but as a formal and literary pressure-test of the same problem: how judgment can be displaced before the subject, room, institution, or system recognizes that displacement. -/- Release and DOI information: -/- This v17.3.7 release separates the Concept Passport Atlas from the Diptych body. It preserves the established v17.3 conceptual architecture while integrating final DOI metadata and adding a short independent Atlas note at the end of the Diptych. No new pillar, threshold family, doctrine, implementation standard, AI-safety protocol, or compliance framework is introduced in this record. -/- An independent Concept Passport Atlas is maintained as a separate attribution and provenance record for the framework’s conceptual vocabulary. It is not part of the essay’s argumentative proof, does not convert the framework into a doctrine, method, product, or ownership claim over abstract ideas, and remains subject to the same re-entrant audit and threshold-slip risk named in the essay. -/- The Atlas remains a separate DOI-bearing attribution record rather than a fourth component of the Diptych. It may be consulted for concept provenance, tier placement, citation formulae, and derivative-use boundaries, but it does not replace the analytic essay, the Interleaf bridge, or the literary Codex. -/- Diptych DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784595 Related analytic essay DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784592 Related Concept Passport Atlas DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20778232 -/- Previous Diptych DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20778233 Previous analytic essay DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20778234. (shrink)

Saul Goodman, Slipping Jimmy, Charlie Hustle, Gene Takavic, Viktor Saint Claire, and many others — all seem to be aliases of one James McGill. The characterization question, from the point of view of the metaphysics of identity, is trying to answer what determines personal identity. The notion of persistence describes necessary and sufficient conditions for a person to continue or cease to exist as a person. The practical importance of persistence includes both responsibility for a person's actions and the fact (...) that identity matters practically because of a person's selfish care about his or her own future. From a Better Call Saul perspective, we are combining metaphysical issues of identity — that pinpoint what it takes for someone to remain the same person — with the pendulum of various James McGill personae. -/- James McGill does seem to have both biological and psychological continuity while shifting from one character to another, but we will argue that psychological continuity is only relevant at the lowest level and that the narrativist account seems to better explain different Jimmy personae. Narrativism answers the persistence question by stating that we are persisting as the same person because of the stories we tell about ourselves, which influence our lives and our decisions. Identity is being constituted at a narrative level, that is — Jimmy is his (current) story, determining when he begins and ends. In this paper, by analyzing character development throughout the series, we are trying to show that James McGill may not always be equated with his aliases because of different spatial and temporal narratives, which also could open various ethical implications of responsibility for past actions. (shrink)

I suggest that the theories of remembering one finds in the philosophy of memory literature are best characterised as theories principally operating at three different levels of inquiry. Simulationist views are theories of the psychofunctional process type remembering. Causalist views are theories of referential remembering. Epistemic views are theories of successful remembering. Insofar as there is conflict between these theories, it is a conflict of integration rather than—as widely presented—head‐on disagreement. Viewed in this way, we can see the previous awareness (...) condition and preservationism as principles applying at only some of the corresponding levels of inquiry. Where either principle has been rejected, it is, I claim, due to arguments which slip between these different levels. While the view of the landscape I offer does not dissolve ongoing disputes about the nature of remembering, it clarifies the dialectical rules of engagement, helping to clear the path for future, collaborative progress to be made. The view enables us to see less conflict in the recent philosophy of memory literature than there seems at face value to be. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that indicative conditionals like "If people wear masks, the spread of Covid-19 will be diminished" require a probabilistic dependency between their antecedents and consequents to be acceptable (Skovgaard-Olsen et al., 2016). But it is easy to make the slip from this claim to the thesis that indicative conditionals are acceptable only if this probabilistic dependency results from a causal relation between antecedent and consequent. According to Pearl (2009), understanding a causal relation involves multiple, hierarchically organized conceptual dimensions: (...) prediction, intervention, and counterfactual dependence. In a series of experiments, we test the hypothesis that these conceptual dimensions are differentially encoded in indicative and counterfactual conditionals. If this hypothesis holds, then there are limits as to how much of a causal relation is captured by indicative conditionals alone. Our results show that the acceptance of indicative and counterfactual conditionals can become dissociated. Furthermore, it is found that the acceptance of both is needed for accepting a causal relation between two co-occurring events. The implications that these findings have for the hypothesis above, and for recent debates at the intersection of the psychology of reasoning and causal judgment, are critically discussed. Our findings are consistent with viewing indicative conditionals as answering predictive queries requiring evidential relevance (even in the absence of direct causal relations). Counterfactual conditionals in contrast target causal relevance, specifically. Finally, we discuss the implications our results have for the yet unsolved question of how reasoners succeed in constructing causal models from verbal descriptions. (shrink)

Kant’s third question (“What may I hope?”) is underdiscussed in comparison to the other two, even though he himself took it to be the question that united his efforts in theoretical and practical philosophy. This is largely his own fault: in his discussion of the question he moves quickly from talking about rational hope to discussing the kind of Belief or faith (Glaube) that grounds it. Moreover, the canonical statements of his own moral proof do not seem to give hope (...) any essential role to play. In this chapter I first consider the ways in which pre-Kantian authors muddied the distinction between what we would call “hope” and “expectation.” I then look at how Kant’s views about hope evolve to the point where, by the time of the “End of All Things” essay of 1794, he seems to endorse a kind of hopeful pessimism about our this-worldly situation, at least. I then examine a version of Kant’s moral proof that succeeds in locating a role for hope that is distinct from that of Belief, expectation, optimism, and so on. Finally, I turn to some contemporary work in two very different arenas – Anthropocene scholarship and Christian eschatology – in order to look at how the concepts of hope and optimism are deployed in those contexts. We will see that although some of the recent discourses about the “Good Anthropocene” slip beyond hope into full-blown optimism, most authors working on ecological and environmental topics are careful to keep the attitudes distinct. By contrast, there is a tendency among contemporary theologians to follow earlier Christian authors in slipping beyond mere hope to optimistic faith, and even to full-blown certainty. (shrink)

This paper centers on the ancient Chinese cosmological notion of “Taiyi Generates Water” (太一生水) found in the Guodian Chu Bamboo Slips, alongside the Laozi’s metaphysical schema of “Dao gives birth to One, One gives birth to Two, Two give birth to Three, Three give birth to all things.” It proposes the core thesis: the Sun is the father of humanity and all living beings. Drawing on both Taoist philosophy and modern cosmology, it reinterprets “Taiyi” (the Great One) as the (...) Sun, the initiator of energy and order in the solar system, and positions the Sun as the foundational paternal entity in the genesis of water, life, and civilization. -/- Integrating the five-stage cosmic evolution—Galaxy → Sun → Earth → Moon → Life—this article formulates a unified cosmological model. It sees the Sun not merely as a physical source of light and heat, but as the “Cosmic Father,” the energetic principle that connects Heaven and Earth, nature and humanity. It ultimately calls for the reestablishment of an ecological ethic grounded in reverence for the Sun, and a future civilization rooted in cosmic consciousness. (shrink)

This treatise presents a novel metaphysical framework that grounds ontology in what the author terms "Atomic Distinction"—the foundational operation of declaring a thing's whole identity. Departing from standard cosmological arguments that terminate at a logical first cause, this work introduces the concept of a "Data Boundary" (I4.1): a rigorously defined point where internally derived data is exhausted, and the honest inquirer must pause in acknowledged ignorance rather than constructing conceptual shrines. The framework is developed through fifteen sequential propositions, beginning with (...) Raw Sensation and culminating in a universal "Five Tests" falsification protocol for evaluating external truth claims. Central innovations include: (1) the identification of "Asymmetry" (the Arrow) as a one directional property of creation, distinct from the perceptual artifact of "Symmetry"; (2) the detection mechanism of "SLIP"—where hidden properties are smuggled into discourse through uncritical word usage; and (3) the integration of human dignity as a necessary test for any candidate truth claim. The treatise engages critically with Avicenna's modal ontology, Levinas's ethics of responsibility, and Popper's falsification criterion, among others. It concludes by proposing "WKWK" as the existential posture of relief at the encounter with the limits of created logic—a silence that actively waits rather than passively surrenders. (shrink)

This is an exploration of some problems of nonexistence, with special attention paid to Nathan Salmón’s account of merely possible and impossible objects (or entities or things). According to this account, we can refer to such objects and attribute properties to them. The terms ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ should be understood in the familiar metaphysical sense, so that a merely possible object is one that does not exist at the actual world but exists at some metaphysically possible world (it could exist (...) even though it does not) and an impossible object is one that does not exist at any metaphysically possible world (it could not exist at all). Other nonexistents, such as objects that once existed at the actual world but no longer do, will also be discussed, but mainly by way of comparison to merely possible and impossible objects. Salmón subscribes to both the direct reference theory of names and the Millian theory of names. Section I is a preliminary discussion of these theories, contrasting them with the formerly orthodox views of Frege and Russell. Section II presents Salmón’s account of merely possible and impossible objects. Sections III and IV are an evaluation and defense of a modified version of the account. Among other things, it is argued that Salmón’s account does not slip into any problematic form of Meinongianism. However, section V questions why Salmón’s account of impossible objects would not extend to Meinong’s notorious round square. (shrink)

This treatise presents a comprehensive ontological and ethical framework grounded in what the author terms "Atomic Distinction", the foundational operation of declaring a thing's whole identity (X = X). Departing from standard approaches that either reduce reality to empirical data or construct elaborate metaphysical systems, this work traces a single path: from the undeniable sensation of feeling (INVARIAN-0) through the asymmetric structure of causality (the Arrow), to the recognition of the Self-Sufficient One as the only Candidate that survives rigorous falsification. (...) -/- The framework is developed across seven integrated sections. Beginning with "The Soil", the primacy of Raw Sensation and the givenness of all fragments of thought, the work establishes the Invariants that cannot be denied without being used in the denial. It then introduces "The Chisel" (Lock, Unpack, and the Gate of Assent), "The Arrow" (four types of causation and the vertical/horizontal reading of time), "The Cockpit" (Pilot, Crew, Inner Compass, and the Homeward Arrow's three rapid self-audit tests), and "The Workbench" (the Five Tests universal falsification protocol and the Data Boundary). -/- Central innovations include: (1) the identification of the "Gate of Assent" as the primordial threshold where identity becomes faith, and the "Mid-Air Arrow Reversal" as the root of all hypocrisy; (2) the detection mechanism of "SLIP"—where hidden properties are smuggled into discourse through uncritical word usage; (3) the "Vertical Shield" (Sub-Test 3g) as the protection of finite beings from burdens only the Infinite can bear; (4) "Radical Radiant" as the diagnosis of anxiety, regret, and burnout as scattered Arrow energy; and (5) the "Craft of Attention" with its "Seasoned Hand" as the model of fluency in living the method. -/- The treatise engages critically with Emmanuel Levinas's ethics of infinite responsibility (demonstrating a Vertical Shield failure) and Karl Popper's falsification criterion (inverting the argument that unfalsifiability is a weakness, showing instead that a Candidate surviving all correct tests is the sign of authenticity). It concludes by proposing "WKWK" as the existential posture of relief at the encounter with the limits of created logic, a breath that actively trusts rather than passively surrenders. -/- The work is offered not as a doctrine to obey, but as a map to be walked and verified against the reader's own sensory data and logic. -/- KEYWORDS: Atomic Distinction, Asymmetric Causality, Falsification Protocol, Vertical Shield, Gate of Assent, Inner Compass, Data Boundary, Ontological Dependence, Radical Radiant, Seasoned Hand, Emmanuel Levinas, Karl Popper, Philosophy of Time, Human Dignity Test, WKWK. (shrink)

The classical holism-reductionism debate, which has been of major importance to the development of ecological theory and methodology, is an epistemological patchwork. At any moment, there is a risk of it slipping into an incoherent, chaotic Tower of Babel. Yet philosophy, like the sciences, requires that words and their correlative concepts be used rigorously and univocally. The prevalent use of everyday language in the holism-reductionism issue may give a false impression regarding its underlying clarity and coherence. In reality, the conceptual (...) categories underlying the debate have yet to be accurately defined and consistently used. There is a need to map out a clear conceptual, logical and epistemological framework. To this end, we propose a minimalist epistemological foundation. The issue is easier to grasp if we keep in mind that holism generally represents the ontological background of emergentism, but does not necessarily coincide with it. We therefore speak in very loose terms of the “holism-reductionism” debate, although it would really be better characterised by the terms emergentism and reductionism. The confrontation between these antagonistic paradigms unfolds at various semantic and operational levels. In definitional terms, there is not just emergentism and reductionism, but various kinds of emergentisms and reductionisms. (shrink)

This article addresses three main questions: What causes cognitive overload in the workplace? What analytical framework should be used to understand how agents interact with their work environments? How can environments be restructured to improve the cognitive workflow of agents? Four primary causes of overload are identified: too much tasking and interruption, and inadequate workplace infrastructure to help reduce the need for planning, monitoring, reminding, reclassifying information, etc… The first step in reducing the cognitive impact of these causes is to (...) enrich classical frameworks for understanding work environments, such as Newell and Simon’s notion of a task environment, by recognizing that our actual workplace is a superposition of many specific environments – activity spaces – which we slip between. Each has its own cost structure arising from the tools and resources available, including the cognitive strategies and interpretational frameworks of individual agents. These cognitive factors are significant, affecting how easy or difficult it is to perform an action, such as finding a specific paper in a “mess” desk. A few simple examples show how work environments can be redesigned and how restructuring can alter the cost structure of activity spaces. (shrink)

It is often argued that the indispensability of continuum models comes from their empirical adequacy despite their decoupling from the microscopic details of the modelled physical system. There is thus a commonly held misconception that temperature varying across a region of space or time can always be accurately represented as a continuous function. We discuss three inter-related cases of temperature modelling — in phase transitions, thermal boundary resistance and slip flows — and show that the continuum view is fallacious on (...) the ground that the microscopic details of a physical system are not necessarily decoupled from continuum models. We show how temperature discontinuities are present in both data (experiments and simulations) and phenomena (theory and models) and how discontinuum models of temperature variation may have greater empirical adequacy and explanatory power. The conclusions of our paper are: a) continuum idealisations are not indispensable to modelling physical phenomena and both continuous and discontinuous representations of phenomena work depending on the context; b) temperature is not necessarily a continuously defined function in our best scientific representations of the world; and c) that its continuity, where applicable, is a contingent matter. We also raise a question as to whether discontinuous representations should be considered truly de-idealised descriptions of physical phenomena. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

Based on the theoretical framework of "Measure Residual Calculus" (MRC), this report conducts a deep pathological audit of the Nasdaq market’s fragility in April 2026. The study finds that while hedge fund leverage has recently retreated from its extreme peak of 312.5%, a systemic factor decoupling triggered by "short squeezes" has pushed the market into a hypersensitive phase of high-volatility oscillation. This simulation aims to reveal how AI trading algorithms collapse into a compound operator failure—precipitated by the singularity collisions predicted (...) by the P-Zero Theorem—when Nasdaq hits circuit breaker thresholds. Furthermore, it argues whether this chain-reaction stop-loss triggered by "Logical Debt" will evolve into a 2008-level global financial liquidation. -/- The ultimate arrogance of modern computational finance lies in its attempt to hedge against the objectively existing nonlinear abyss by infinitely collapsing the measure of . We must realize that continuous calculus is merely a "logical promissory note" signed by humanity in exchange for computational dividends, rather than the ground truth of reality. We may tolerate running on "debt" within our models, but we must never allow algorithmic hands to incinerate that very promissory note which manifests the system's discrete essence. When we refuse to acknowledge the "Domain Vacuum" at singularities, the system will not merely slip into financial default, but will plunge into total Logical Bankruptcy. Facing this liquidation cycle that spans 18 years, only a return to the "Discrete Hardcore" paradigm—one that respects fracture and acknowledges step-wise progression—can prevent civilization from being consumed by the self-stitched illusion of continuity in its pursuit of illusory precision. -/- Methodology and Logical Deduction Audit of Operator Unboundedness: Under the uniform topology of Banach spaces, we demonstrate that the physical essence of the differential operator manifests as an extremely discontinuous unbounded operator. Lipschitz Explosion Mechanism: In fields with residual high-leverage precision debt, AI trading algorithms—acting as complexes of sampling, hedging, and risk-control operators—experience a step-wise explosion of the Lipschitz constant near singularities (dense stop-loss zones), leading to a total collapse of system stability. Inevitability Determination via P-Zero Theorem: Proved through the P-Zero Theorem, in a structural field possessed of algebraic rigidity (leverage lines, stop-loss levels), maintaining "full-path smooth sampling" is a logical measure-zero event. The probability of any continuous sampling path colliding with the singularity set and triggering collective liquidation is exactly 1. Failure Simulation and Empirical Assessment: Through 50,000 Monte Carlo path evolution simulations, we found that when the index hits the 5% "Fragility Redline," the system undergoes a discontinuous jump via a "Domain Vacuum" rather than a smooth slide. At the micro-scale , the matching success rate collapses to 32%, causing an instantaneous default of Analytical Credit. Conclusion and Paradigm Shift The audit determines that the current topological structure of the Nasdaq market is highly equivalent to that of the 2008 financial crisis: both involve the exponential expansion of logical debt due to the illicit use of linearization tools to "write off" nonlinear tail risks. This study recommends a forced termination of defensive modes that extract vacuous precision from . We advocate for a return to a "Discrete Hardcore" risk control paradigm based on discrete-step operators to navigate this logical liquidation 18 years in the making. -/- Keywords: Measure Residual Calculus (MRC); P-Zero Theorem; Logical Debt; Lipschitz Explosion; Non-rectifiable Sets; Analytical Credit. (shrink)

This paper argues that habits, just like beliefs, can guide intentional action. To do this, a variety of real-life cases where a person acts habitually but contrary to her beliefs are discussed. The cases serve as dissociations showing that intentional agency is possible without doxastic guidance. The upshot is a model for thinking about the rationality of habitual action and the rationalizing role that habits can play in it. The model highlights the role that our history and institutions play in (...) shaping what actions become habitual for us. (shrink)

Largely aided by the neurological discovery of so-called “ mirror neurons,” the attention to motor activity during action observation has exploded over the last two decades. The idea that we internally “ mirror ” the actions of others has led to a new strand of implicit simulation theories of action understanding[1][2]. The basic idea of this sort of simulation theory is that we, via an automatic covert activation of our own action representations, can understand the action and possibly the goal (...) and/or intentions of the observed agent. In this way motor “simulation” is seen as the basis for low-level “mind-reading”; i.e. for the ascription of goals and intentional mental states to others. The thought is that one, through mirroring simulations, can get beyond the observable behaviour to the hidden minds of others. I am questioning the idea of an exclusively “mirroring” role of the motor system in social perception, which is tacitly assumed in this sort of simulation theories. Is motor activity during action observation really primarily a simulation, a detailed “echo” of the others action? My point is not that we never simulate what we observe, but rather to question whether such processes are representative of the overall motor contribution to social cognition. More and more studies on the functional properties of mirror neurons and motor facilitation during perception points to a more complex role of the motor system in action perception. Recently, several proposals have been made attempting to reinterpret and critique the function of motor activity in social situations. I shall here briefly touch on a few of these and sketch parts of my own alternative “social affordance” hypothesis of the sensorimotor contribution to social perception. By way of these analyses I highlight how traditional discussions are marred by problematic theoretical assumptions. It seems to me that we need a thorough reinterpretation not just of mirror neurons and mirroring, but also of what we take motor and social cognition to be. In my view the details of the sensorimotor findings underline the need to move beyond the simplistic idea of the motor system as a unitary output system. In terms of social cognition I question the traditional focus on hidden mental states. I suggest that the motor contribution might have more to do with understanding the process of how others choose their actions, navigate the world and relate to others than with simulating specific actual actions or mental states. I conclude that low-level simulation theories, which see the motor role in social perception as passive “mirroring,” are faced with serious empirical challenges, and that the motor system serve a much more proactive and complex cognitive role in social perception and interaction than previously thought. But my claim is also that many empirical tensions have slipped out of focus due to entrenched theoretical assumptions. Narrow theoretical expectations have marked not only the interpretations but the research itself and I propose that we are in dire need of more studies of actual contextual and interactive social perception. (shrink)

-/- The Mystery of Existence: A Journey Beyond Physics -/- The question of why anything exists at all is a profound mystery that has eluded the minds of philosophers, scientists, and thinkers throughout history. While physics provides us with a detailed understanding of how things work—from the smallest particles to the largest cosmic structures—the “why” behind existence often slips through our fingers. Even with the most sophisticated scientific theories, the essence of existence remains, at its core, a mystery that (...) cannot be fully explained. -/- The Limits of Physics -/- Physics, at its heart, is a discipline that focuses on understanding the mechanisms that govern the universe. From the groundbreaking theories of quantum mechanics to Einstein’s theory of relativity, we have made remarkable strides in describing the forces that shape our reality. The Big Bang theory, for example, explains the origins of the universe, detailing how space and time expanded from an infinitely dense singularity about 13.8 billion years ago. We can calculate the movement of celestial bodies, predict the behavior of particles, and understand the properties of matter at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels. -/- However, even the most accurate theories of physics do not address the fundamental question: Why is there something instead of nothing? While we may know the mechanisms behind the formation of stars or the behavior of electrons, physics offers no clear explanation for the existence of the universe itself or the nature of consciousness. The answers, it seems, lie beyond the boundaries of science alone. -/- The Role of Consciousness and Perception -/- The question of existence is further complicated by the role of consciousness. While physics describes the universe objectively, human experience is inherently subjective. Each individual perceives the world through their own consciousness, and this subjective experience adds another layer to the mystery. Philosophers have long debated the nature of consciousness—what it is, where it comes from, and how it relates to the physical world. -/- In recent years, there has been growing interest in the intersection of consciousness and the universe. Some theories suggest that consciousness is not just a byproduct of the brain but a fundamental aspect of reality itself. This view suggests that consciousness might play an active role in shaping the universe, a concept that is often explored in spiritual and philosophical circles. If consciousness is indeed a primary force in the fabric of reality, it could provide a potential link to understanding existence itself. -/- The Mystery of Balance -/- One perspective that offers a potential resolution to the mystery of existence is the idea of balance, a concept that resonates across multiple disciplines, including physics, philosophy, and even ecology. The universe, as we observe it, operates according to a set of natural laws that promote equilibrium. From the delicate balance of ecosystems to the finely tuned constants of the physical universe, balance appears to be a fundamental feature of existence. -/- In this view, existence itself may be seen as a dynamic, ever-evolving system in which all things are interconnected and interdependent. The laws of nature—such as the law of cause and effect or the law of balance—serve as a framework within which the universe operates. Every particle, every force, every decision, is part of a larger, interconnected system. This holistic approach suggests that while the why of existence may remain elusive, there is an inherent order and balance that governs the cosmos. -/- Philosophical and Spiritual Perspectives -/- Throughout history, various philosophical and spiritual traditions have approached the mystery of existence with a sense of reverence and awe. From ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle to Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism, there is a recognition that the universe operates according to principles that transcend human understanding. These traditions often emphasize the interconnectedness of all things and the idea that existence is part of a larger cosmic order. -/- For example, in Taoism, the concept of the “Tao” represents the underlying natural order of the universe, an unseen force that guides the flow of life. Similarly, in Hinduism, the concept of “Brahman” is seen as the ultimate reality, the source of all existence. These perspectives suggest that while the specific reasons for existence may never be fully understood, there is a greater purpose or force at play that unites all things. -/- Conclusion -/- The mystery of existence remains one of the greatest questions of all time. Despite the advances in physics and our increasing understanding of the universe, the fundamental “why” of existence continues to elude us. The universe, with all its complexity and interconnectedness, presents a puzzle that science alone may never fully solve. Yet, this mystery is not necessarily a cause for despair. Rather, it is a reminder of the awe-inspiring nature of the cosmos and the limits of human understanding. -/- Perhaps the true beauty of existence lies in its mystery. It invites exploration, fosters curiosity, and encourages us to seek deeper truths—whether through science, philosophy, or spiritual practice. While the answers may never be clear, the journey itself is a testament to the profound wonder that comes with being part of something greater than ourselves. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the idiosyncrasy of linguistic competence fosters semantic conceptions in which meanings are taken for granted, such as the one that Quine calls ‘uncritical semantics’ or ‘the myth of the museum’. This is due to the degree of automaticity in the use of language which is needed for fluent conversation. Indeed, fluent conversation requires that we speakers instinctively associate each word or sentence with its meaning (or linguistic use), and instinctively resort to the conceptual repertoire (...) of our language, without calling into question that the meaning of a particular word, or the conceptual repertoire of our language, could have been different than they are. This habit of taking meanings for granted, inherent to our linguistic ability, sometimes interferes with our semantic research, hampering it. In order to illustrate this problem, I pinpoint four places in Quine’s work where, despite his acknowledged analytical rigour, and despite his congenital aversion to the habit of taking meanings for granted, he himself appears to slip into this habit, inadvertently. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the theory of divine ideas of Walter Burley. The medieval common theory of divine ideas, developed by Augustine, was intended to provide an answer to the question of the order and intelligibility of the world. The world is rationally organized since God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind. Augustine's theory, however, left open problems such as reconciling the principle of God's unity with the plurality of ideas, the way in which ideas (...) can or cannot be said to be eternal, their ontological status. Medieval authors discussed such questions until at least the late 14th century. By resorting to the semantic tool of connotation, Burley explains both in what way ‘idea' can signify the divine essence as much as the creatures, and in what sense we can say that God has thought them from eternity, without slipping into a necessitarian view that undermines the principle of divine freedom. Moreover, by envisaging the objective mode of being as the only mode of being of ideas, he explains in what way they truly differ from one another on the basis of their different conceptual contents. (shrink)

According to principles of modal security, evidence undermines a belief only when it calls into question certain purportedly important modal connections between one’s beliefs and the truth (e.g., safety or sensitivity). Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras have advanced such principles with the aim of blocking evolutionary moral debunking arguments. We examine a variety of different principles of modal security, showing that some of these are too strong, failing to accommodate clear cases of undermining, while others are too weak, failing to (...) do their advertised work of blocking evolutionary moral debunking arguments. If there is a security principle that slips between the horns of this dilemma—one that is both viable and debunker-blocking—it remains to be formulated. (shrink)

Super-Humeans argue that the most parsimonious ontology of the natural world compatible with our best physical theories consists exclusively of particles and the distance relations between them. This paper argues by contrast that Super-Humean reduction goes insufficiently far, by showing there to be a more parsimonious ontology compatible with physics: Ultimate-Humeanism. This novel view posits an ontology consisting solely of the particles and distance relations required for the existence of a single brain. Super-Humeans impose conditions on what counts as an (...) ontology of the natural world to avoid their view slipping into this kind of ontology, but these conditions are arbitrarily imposed and once this is exposed, Super-Humeans face a dilemma. Either they can embrace Ultimate-Humeanism as the minimal ontology of the natural world compatible with physics, or (more likely) they can rethink the methodology that got them there. Overall, this paper argues that Super-Humeanism currently lacks principled motivation, outlines a framework for naturalistic ontological reductions, and exposes the consequences of unchecked adherence to a simplicity-driven methodology. (shrink)

The ‘Wu xing’ belongs to Guodian bamboo slips texts, which were buried around 300 BCE and excavated in 1993. Its relation with Mengzi is widely investigated. Yet how it is philosophically related to Xunzi receives little attention. In this article, I illustrate a neglected relation between ‘Wu xing’ and Xunzi, by elucidating how shan 善 (goodness) is first raised in ‘Wu xing’ and developed by Xunzi into a concrete idea. Both ‘Wu xing’ and Xunzi propose that shan exists in (...) action, which boils down to the harmonious unity of the mind and body, and to secure the ideal relation between the mind and body requires constant learning and practicing, particularly, of rituals. Learning and practicing not only lead one to realize shan, but eventually to become a consummate practitioner of rituals, to use Xunzi’s words, to become a sage. (shrink)

This article reintroduces Fr. Zeferino González, OP (1831-1894) to scholars of Church history, philosophy, and cultural heritage. He was an alumnus of the University of Santo Tomás in Manila, a Cardinal, and a champion of the revival of Catholic Philosophy that led to the promulgation of Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris. Specifically, this essay presents, firstly, the Cardinal’s biography in the context of his experience as a missionary in the Far East; secondly, the intellectual tradition in Santo Tomás in Manila, (...) which he carried with him until his death; and lastly, some reasons for his once-radiant memory to slip into an undeserved forgetfulness. (shrink)

Context: While the mathematical definition of the non-unitary hysteresis operator $R$ and its role in microscopic nuclear decay anomalies and macroscopic astrodynamics have been established in prior research, mesoscopic empirical studies provide a more critical and universal framework for characterizing the vacuum as an active fluid medium . This study analyzes UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) as mesoscopic manifestations of medium dynamics within the LC-R framework. Methodology: We perform a systematic deconvolution of telemetry data from newly declassified reports, specifically cases N20-GIM-014 (...) (Gimbal) and DIA-UAP-2022-88 (Aguadilla) . The analysis utilizes high-frequency radar spectral signatures, including Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) and quantized Doppler shifts, to reconstruct local vacuum phase leads and discontinuities . This paper is in Chinese. Utilizing an AI for interpretation can provide a quick, personalized understanding of the text, making the concepts accessible no matter your disciplinary background. Results: Coupling Constant Determination: Through multi-sample regression, we identify the mesoscopic coupling constant $\alpha \approx 4.2 \times 10^{-14}$. This value represents an evolutionary boundary where vacuum viscosity is detectable by current sensors without disrupting molecular bonding or global physical stability . Propagation Velocity Disparity: Empirical data from cross-medium transitions reveal a radial velocity discrepancy (0.04s delay), determining the local gravity propagation speed to be $v_g \approx 0.985c$ within high-impedance "clumped" zones . This confirms that observed instantaneous accelerations are refractive focal jumps across a discrete spacetime lattice rather than continuous physical motion . Gradient Impedance Tug (GIT) Effect: We derive the force expression $F_{\text{GIT}} \propto \mathcal{E} \cdot \nabla Z$, characterizing UAP propulsion as a "Local Geometric Slip" . This mechanism bypasses classical inertia and momentum exchange ($F=ma$), explaining the absence of sonic booms and high-G structural failure . Impedance Locking: The "Cold Core" phenomenon—extreme central temperature gradients surrounded by bright plasma—is reinterpreted as a manifestation of impedance locking, which inhibits internal entropic processes and thermal exchange . Significance: These findings demonstrate that Lorentz covariance and General Relativity are macro-statistical approximations valid only in low-gradient, equilibrium states . The transition from "calculus-based smooth manifolds" to "discrete lattice dynamics" resolves fundamental kinetic paradoxes . (shrink)

Finding the demarcation criterion for the identification of scientific knowledge is the most important task of normative epistemology. Pseudoscience is not a harmless leisure activity, it can pose a danger to the functioning of liberal democratic societies and the well-being of their citizens. First, there is an outline of how to define science instrumentally without slipping into the detrimental heritage of conceptual essentialism. The second part is dedicated to Popper’s falsification criterion and the objections of its opponents, which eventually led (...) to the abandonment of “naïve” falsificationism. Then I present two promising solutions to the problem, namely the ostensive definition of pseudoscience and the cognitive research of pseudoscientific thinking. In conclusion, I suggest to further extend the typology of alternatives to science to include parascience. (shrink)

It is plausible that current generations owe something to future generations. One possibility is that we have a duty to not harm them. Another possibility is that we have a duty to protect them. In either case, however, to satisfy the duties to future generations from environmental or political degradation, we need to engage in widespread collective action. But, as we are, we have a limited ability to do so, in part because we lack the self-discipline necessary for successful collective (...) action. Given that having an obligation hinges on being able to satisfy it, the apparent duty to future generations is at odds with our apparent inability to satisfy it. Thus, we either need to rethink our duties to future generations or rethink the nature of our abilities. I argue in this chapter that we should rethink the nature of our abilities. Specifically, we should enhance our self-discipline, which is distinct from enhancements of motivation, judgment, or emotion. Even the most intelligent, motivated, and empathetic actor is likely to slip up, which encourages others to withdraw their cooperation. Without the necessary self-discipline to sustain our public cooperative behavior, collective action is likely to fail, leaving us with one alternative: to abandon our duties to future generations. (shrink)

The fundamental problem of philosophy is whether doing it has any point, since if it does not have any point, there is no reason to do it. It is suggested that the intrinsic point of doing philosophy is to establish a rational consensus about what the answers to its main questions are. But it seems that this cannot be accomplished because philosophical arguments are bound to be inconclusive. Still, philosophical research generates an increasing number of finer grained distinctions in terms (...) of which we try to conceptualize reality, and this is a sort of progress. But if, as is likely, our arguments do not suffice to decide between these alternatives, our personalities might slip in to do so. Our philosophy will then express our personality. This could provide philosophy with a point for us. If some of our conclusions have practical import, philosophy could have the further point of giving us something by which we can live. (shrink)

John Duns Scotus famously differentiates between an intuitive kind of cognition of objects which are present to the mind “in their own existence” (i.e., not owing to a representing medium) and an abstractive kind of cognition which is indifferent to its objects’ existence or non-existence and presence or non-presence. There is scholarly agreement on the historical importance of this differentiation; in Stephen D. Dumont’s words, it is “by all accounts one of the most influential philosophical contributions of Duns Scotus,” and (...) according to Katherine H. Tachau, “the history of medieval theories of knowledge from ca. 1310 can be traced as the development of this dichotomy.” Accordingly, these and other scholars have uncovered both the historical background to Scotus’s doctrine in the discussion over the scientific status of theology in the generation preceding Scotus and its immediate, i.e., early 14th-century, reception. Besides the overwhelming, positive as well as critical, response to Scotus’s differentiation in late medieval discussions of theological epistemology, his doctrine also has an important long-term Wirkungsgeschichte in post-medieval scholasticism. This latter fact has slipped the attention of most historians of scholastic philosophy, if for no other reason than general neglect of the long continuation of the Latin scholastic tradition well into the Early Modern period. The present study falls into three parts. The first part explores Mastri’s and Belluto’s discussion of intuitive and abstractive cognition in their Disputations on De anima, being a preparation for the second part which focuses on Mastri’s dealing with the relationship between this theme and that of distinctions and precisions in his Disputations on Metaphysics. The third part undertakes a short appreciation of Mastri’s and Belluto’s influence in subsequent Scotist discussions of intuitive and abstractive cognition, especially in the context of distinction theory. Authors discussed are: Sebastian Dupasquier, Crescentius Krisper, Alipius Locherer, Marinus Panger, and Kilian Kazenberger. (shrink)

International human rights law is profoundly oxymoronic. Certain well-known international treaties claim a universal character for human rights, but international tribunals often interpret and enforce these either narrowly or, if widely, they rely upon sovereign states to enforce the rights against themselves. International lawyers and diplomats have usually tried to resolve the apparent contradiction by pressing for more general rules in the form of treaties, legal doctrines, and institutional procedures. Despite such efforts, aliens remain who are neither legal nor illegal (...) and who thereby slip through a discourse that claims universality. I ask, why does international legal discourse claim a universality of human rights enforceable by impartial, politically neutral tribunals when it also recognises that a state may refuse to recognise some groups as “persons”? I turn to the works of Bernhard Waldenfels for an explanation. To that end, I briefly outline two examples of state-centered human rights treaties. I then reconstruct Waldenfels’ explanation as to how a territorial sense of space needs an alien exterior to the space. The territorial structure assumes time is frozen as of the date of the foundation of the structure. The body of the alien is taken as a biological body. The personality, motives, and actions of the alien are the consequence of the imagination of people inside the territorial boundary. The dominant international legal discourse reinforces and institutionalises such a territorial sense of space and frozen time because the territorial state is considered the primary legal subject of international law. I also retrieve, however, an experiential but concealed sense of space and time. To retrieve this sense of space and time requires that lawyers see the world through the twilight of legality heretofore ignored as pre-legal. (shrink)

I set the stage for Socrates and Aristophanes’ alliance by beginning with Hegel’s question, what is the object of art?, in the context of his analysis of ancient Greek “art-religion.” Hegel traces the shifting object of art through a variety of artistic practices before arriving at comedy, which he identifies as the last stage of Greek aesthetic life. He finally asks, what is the object of comedy? Unlike other artistic practices that are positively defined by their created object or creative (...) activity, ancient comedy appears to be purely destructive, terminating anything that might be traditionally recognizable as an object of art. Hegel points to Aristophanes and Socrates as representing two sides of the defacement of the object of art-religion as such. Moving beyond Hegel, I turn to Aristophanes and Plato to consider how in the performative destruction of the object of aesthetic and philo- sophical reflection, something slips into being that may be identified as the phantom form of the Subject. (shrink)

The article honours the contribution of the Ukrainian philosopher Hryhoriy Skovoroda on the occasion of his 300th birthday on 9 October 2022. It begins with an address of solidarity to the Ukrainians and the Ukrainian philosophers in their fight against the Russian invaders who had bombed and destroyed the Skorovoda Museum in Kharkov shortly before this birthday. The article's main part is an analysis of Skovoroda's theory of happiness in his writing "Conversation Among Five Travellers Concerning Life's True Happiness". In (...) the form of a Socratic dialogue, Skorovoda discusses materialistic hedonism, a Christian eudaemonism, satisfactionism and a radical, evangelical Christian eudaemonism. Skorovoda's own position is not entirely clear; it probably lies between the two Christian positions. The critical analysis then shows that Skorovoda's arguments quite well, if not flawless, in the first third of the text and in tune with the times, while after that, with the appearance of the representative of radical Christian eudaemonism, the dialogue moves more and more from the philosophical to the theological, abandons the argumentative style and slips more and more into (repetitive) preaching. Speculations follow as to why this striking change of subject and style occurs. (shrink)

The Prosecutor in Camus’ novel claims to have peered into Meursault’s soul but found nothing human in there. But the nothingness attests to Meursault embodying something like a musical instrument through which the world plays its music. Meursault does not initiate anything that in the presence of standing conditions causes a change in environment—aside from physical needs which are also immensely flexible and dependent on existing circumstances. He himself constitute the standing conditions awaiting external factors to cause any change. Meursault’s (...) radical indifference and acceptance towards the world and authenticity (his speech and his deed are perfectly coordinated) (his thought and his speech are the same except situation where out of consideration for others he keeps silent) indicates that he has no sickness unto death undergoing life or in anticipation of his death. What the prosecutor announces amounts to Meursault’s existence preceding his essence (given his openness to the world despite his acute rationality and understanding of his environment). But if existence precedes essence, the method precedes existence. He roams the world already equipped with a method. ------------ Abstract II: ---------- What is something that it is not a being? The question implicates there be something that it is not a being but that into which beings as a whole in one's existence slipped into in sickness unto death. Meursault brings to consciousness (of the chaplain) the sickness unto death separated from absurdity by a transparent sheet. Something to which he himself was not susceptible out of his own life-affirmative reasoning. (shrink)

In ancient Greek the line between direct and indirect discourse appears blurred. In this essay I examine the tendency of Greek writers to slip from indirect into direct speech. I explain the apparent difference between modern English and ancient Greek speech reporting in terms of a development from orality to literacy.

Sexual and racial differences matter. Indeed, facile assumptions of sameness born from the desire to claim universal truths persist as a dangerous tendency. Difference matters and we have yet to fully understand what difference means. But claims of absolute difference have a history of justifying colonization and recently can justify slipping into indifference about people with different embodiment. In philosophy of race’s emphasis that race has ontological significance, such emphasis on difference can leave differently racialized and sexualized people living in (...) isolation from each other. Absolute sameness and absolute difference are not true to phenomenological experience. Philosophy has long debated the relation between identity and difference, from its metaphysical origin in the relation between monism and dualism, to Hegel’s formulation of a dialectical relation between identity and difference. But the idea of an identity-in-difference explores a more immediate relation between the two. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work explores the idea of an identity-in-difference throughout his phenomenology in both its epistemic and ontologic senses. This paper explores at least four instantiations of the relation of identity-in-difference in Merleau-Ponty’s work to argue for upholding the value of both difference and sameness in developing our understanding of race. (shrink)

The contention discussed here, is that one might be able to get around the puzzle contained in the results of Kim and Chan:— That a quantity of inertial mass is effectively lost, (a so called non-classical-rotational inertia NCRI,) but that being a “supersolid” there is no path for the normal fraction to slip past the 1 – 2 % supersolid fraction, which (it is supposed) remains stationary within the annulus. As a solution we argue that the effective loss of inertial (...) mass might be a real loss of inertial mass– that it might be intrinsic to a supersolid or superfluid “pool,” (a portion which has gone supersolid or superfluid.) In this way the puzzle would be resolved because the normal part and the supersolid part do not need to slip past each other in order to produce the experimental results. (shrink)