近年来，孟子伦理思想的理论形态及其与后果主义的关系引起了学界的广泛关注。其中，有三点核心问题亟待商榷：一是孟子提倡的“仁义”是否具有独立于“利”的内在价值，二是孟子是否反对后果主义的道德推理模式，三是 “仁义”在孟子语境下的道德行动中所扮演的角色。参与讨论的部分学者认为，孟子不仅坚信“仁义”作为人的本性与道德行为的唯一动机具有独立于“利”的内在价值，且反对后果主义背后“二本”式的思维方式。而另一部分 学者则认为，“仁义”的全部价值就在于其所能产生的最大效益；“二本”及其他似乎能够反驳这种后果主义解读的文本都能够在此诠释框架下得到妥善的解决。尽管双方的理解仍有分歧，但相关讨论深化了对孟子伦理思想多层 次性与复杂性的认识，为儒家哲学的当代阐释提供了新的思考方向。.

This article challenges the widespread view that causal relations are wholly non-normative natural relations. In the case of salient social categories such as race and sex, I argue for a dependency of the causal order of things on the moral and political. At the center of my argument is a puzzle about how audit studies, social scientific experiments that approximate the idealized controlled experiment, work to probe the causal significance of race and sex. Essential to these studies is the distinction (...) between differences that constitute rather than confound an effect of their variable of interest—a distinction, which, I claim, embodies judgments about the sorts of differences that constitute the wrongful causal influence of these categories. If our best scientific practices latch onto genuine features of causation, then normative theorizing’s place in scientific causal theorizing entails that normative facts figure in the causal structure. (shrink)

Most leading philosophical accounts of discrimination theorize discrimination as a causal notion: roughly, an action discriminates on the basis of X (e.g., race, sex) if X causes (in the right way) the adverse outcome. This article explores the prospects for this causal account. Focusing my attention on the case of sex discrimination, I argue that struggles to settle the causal question regress to question-begging. This argument calls into question not just whether the causal account can handle sophisticated cases, which have (...) recently been conceived of (by some) as discriminatory on the basis of sex, but even classic cases of sex discrimination. The negative argument in turn brings to light an alternative normative-causal approach to discrimination, which I sketch and suggest is promising indeed. (shrink)

This paper argues for a responsibilist account of knowledge: S knows that p iff S believes the truth that p (rather than one of the alternatives to p) because S forms/retains the belief in a way that is ultima facie epistemically responsible. This account implies that knowing that p requires neither having evidence that favors p over ∼p, nor possessing reliabilist virtues, nor exhibiting responsibilist virtues or motives.

Discussions of statistical criteria for fairness commonly convey the normative significance of calibration within groups by invoking what risk scores “mean.” On the Same Meaning picture, group-calibrated scores “mean the same thing” (on average) across individuals from different groups and accordingly, guard against disparate treatment of individuals based on group membership. My contention is that calibration guarantees no such thing. Since concrete actual people belong to many groups, calibration cannot ensure the kind of consistent score interpretation that the Same Meaning (...) picture implies matters for fairness, unless calibration is met within every group to which an individual belongs. Alas only perfect predictors may meet this bar. The Same Meaning picture thus commits a reference class fallacy by inferring from calibration within some group to the “meaning” or evidential value of an individual’s score, because they are a member of that group. The reference class answer it presumes does not only lack justification; it is very likely wrong. I then show that the reference class problem besets not just calibration but other group statistical criteria that claim a close connection to fairness. Reflecting on the origins of this oversight opens a wider lens onto the predominant methodology in algorithmic fairness based on stylized cases. (shrink)

Veritists hold that the goal of inquiry is true belief, while justificationists contend that the goal of inquiry is justified belief. Recently, Christoph Kelp makes two new objections to both veritism and justificationism. Further, he claims that the two objections suggest that the goal of inquiry is knowledge. This paper defends a sophisticated version of veritism against Kelp's two objections.

This article explores the issue of normative distinctiveness in machine learning decision systems alongside Solon Barocas, Moritz Hardt, and Arvind Narayanan’s landmark book Fairness and Machine Learning. What, if anything, is different this time, with the rise of machine learning-based aids to bureaucratic decision-making? I show how a focus on normative distinctiveness can obscure from view a much more significant upshot of machine learning: that the mere existence of feasible alternatives presses new justificatory demands not just on the design of (...) new technical systems but on the prevailing human-centered decision regime. I argue that depoliticizing conventional bureaucratic structures of decision-making leads to a missed opportunity for a broader normative reevaluation of what we owe to each other in a world of expanded practical possibility. (shrink)

Shame is frequently viewed as a destructive emotion; but it can also be understood in terms of change and growth. This essay highlights the problematic values that cause pervasive and frequent shame and the importance of resisting and changing these values. Using Confucian insights, I situate shame in an interactive process between the individual's values and that of their society, thus, being vulnerable to shame represents both one's connection to a community and an openness to others’ negative feedback. This process (...) provides an important arena where personal values interact with communal ones. The Confucian tradition, I argue, affords individuals a degree of autonomy in internalization through urging them to cultivate and maintain a keen sense of shame. My discussion also offers resources for understanding the various aspects of this interactive process—how individuals with similar experiences of shame may, through channeling their experiences, influence social values and propel moral progress. (shrink)

I first present a brief interpretation of Sosa’s virtue epistemology by showing how it is arguably better than Goldman’s process reliabilism, why Sosa distinguishes between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge, and how Sosa’s recent account of knowing full well can deal with pragmatic encroachment. Then, I raise two worries about Sosa’s account: (a) Sosa’s claim that one might have animal knowledge without knowing reflectively or knowing full well implies that one’s true belief might manifest both competence and luck, which seems (...) to pose a challenge to Sosa’s solution to the Gettier problem; (b) intellectual virtue or competence does not seem to be a necessary condition for knowledge: there are cases where one knows without possessing the relevant intellectual virtue or competence. Finally, I suggest a responsibilist account of knowledge and show how it can not only handle the cases that pose a problem for Sosa’s account but also explain our intuitions about different grades of knowledge. (shrink)

Veritism claims that only true beliefs are of basic epistemic value. Michael DePaul argues that veritism is false because it entails the implausible view that all true beliefs are of equal epistemic value. In this paper, I discuss two recent replies to DePaul's argument: one offered by Nick Treanor and the other by Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij and Stephen Grimm. I argue that neither of the two replies is successful. I propose a new response to DePaul's argument and defend my response against (...) a possible objection. (shrink)

Hempel seems to hold the following three views: (H1) Understanding is pragmatic/relativistic: Whether one understands why X happened in terms of Explanation E depends on one's beliefs and cognitive abilities; (H2) Whether a scientific explanation is good, just like whether a mathematical proof is good, is a nonpragmatic and objective issue independent of the beliefs or cognitive abilities of individuals; (H3) The goal of scientific explanation is understanding: A good scientific explanation is the one that provides understanding. Apparently, H1, H2, (...) and H3 cannot be all true. Some philosophers think that Hempel is inconsistent, while some others claim that Hempel does not actually hold H3. I argue that Hempel does hold H3 and that he can consistently hold all of H1, H2, and H3 if he endorses what I call the “understanding argument.” I also show how attributing the understanding argument to Hempel can make more sense of his D-N model and his philosophical analysis of the pragmatic aspects of scientific explanation. (shrink)

There seem to be cases where A believes p, and B believes not-p, but neither makes a mistake. This is known as faultless disagreement. According to the epistemic account, in at least some cases of faultless disagreement either A or B must believe something false, and the disagreement is faultless in the sense that each follows the epistemic norm. Recently, philosophers have raised various objections to this account. In this paper, I propose a new version of the epistemic account and (...) show how it can handle those objections. (shrink)

Carolina Sartorio has criticized the reasons-responsiveness theory of freedom for being inconsistent with the actual-sequence view motivated by the Frankfurt-style cases. Specifically, reasons-responsiveness conceived as a modal property does not pertain to the actual sequence of the agent's action and thereby it is irrelevant to the agent's freedom and moral responsibility. Call this the challenge of irrelevance. In this article, I present this challenge in a new way that overcomes certain limitations of Sartorio's argument. I argue that the root of (...) the challenge is that reasons-responsiveness as an unmanifested modal property seems to be nonexplanatory for the agent's action. I show that reasons-responsiveness theorists will confront this challenge even if they do not endorse the actual-sequence view. Finally, I deflate this challenge with David Lewis's model of causal explanation, showing that reasons-responsiveness is explanatory in virtue of providing information about the causal history of the agent's action. (shrink)

Teachers strive to help students grasp significant propositions beyond merely knowing their content. The phenomenal theory holds that grasping a proposition requires corresponding phenomenal experiences, such as visualizing or perceiving its referents. We argue against this theory and propose an alternative: One grasps that p if and only if one mentally processes p in a way that enables relevant counterfactual reasoning about it. This account not only explains intuitive cases of grasping without phenomenal experiences but also clarifies the precise epistemic (...) role of such experiences. Finally, we demonstrate the practical value of our account by showing how it can be applied to assess students’ grasp of philosophical propositions. (shrink)

Theories of causation within the causal modeling framework are among the most promising and well‐developed approaches to analyzing actual causation today. But since the advent of model‐based theories of causation, authors have struggled with the fact that virtually all such theories issue different causal conclusions when applied to different causal models (of the same case). In recent years, these concerns about model relativity have sharpened into a search for a general theory of model aptness, which lays out principled grounds on (...) which models may be ruled out as inapt for causal analysis. This article presents a new way of understanding what drives model relativity that shows why it is such an enduring problem. I show why extant proposals fail and furthermore, why they are not of the right form to be a solution. Along the way, I draw broader lessons about what an adequate answer to these problems must be like. I then take a step toward such an account by outlining a substantive constraint on when variables and paths in a causal model must not be drawn and when they may. (shrink)

In this article, I set forth an inquiry into discrimination on the basis of race via two broad questions: What is a consideration of race a consideration of? And what is it for action to be on the basis of that consideration? Beginning with the matter of what constitutes race-based action brings out two conceptual hinges in analyses of racial discrimination, one in race and one in reason, that comprise what I call the race as a reason framework. Not only (...) are there different notions of practical reason that may be implicated in the stricture not to act on the basis of race (as a reason), there are also different conceptions of race that are relevant to these different notions of reasons for acting. Drawing out these two sites of ambiguity generates an illuminating taxonomy of acting on the basis of race that has significant theoretical and normative upshots for discrimination theory. (shrink)

‘Spirit consonance engendering a sense of life’ (Qi Yun Sheng Dong) as the first law of Chinese painting, originally proposed by Xie He (active 500–535?) in his six laws of painting, has been commonly echoed by numerous later Chinese artists up to this day. Tracing back the meaning of each character of ‘Qi Yun Sheng Dong’ from Pre-Qin up to the Six Dynasties, along with a comparative analysis on the renderings of ‘Qi Yun Sheng Dong’ by experts in Western academia, (...) I establish ‘spirit consonance’ as the rendering of ‘Qi Yun’. By examining texts on painting by significant critics in Chinese art history, and by referring to specific works by painters from the Six Dynasties up to the Yuan Dynasty, I present the merits and demerits of the different interpretations by Western experts, and explore the essence of ‘Qi Yun’. Once the painter successfully captures ‘spirit consonance’ as the essential character or ‘internal reality’ of the object, and transmits it into the work, ‘Qi Yun’ further implies the expressive quality of the work beyond formal representation. Additionally, the fusion of expressive and representative functions also leaves space for further explaining the aesthetic interaction among artist, object, work, and audience. From the Six Dynasties onwards, Chinese painters have practised the expressive pursuit beyond epresentation on the basis of the unification of ‘Qi Yun’ (spirit consonance) and formal representation, although spirit consonance was valued more highly than formal likeness. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to defend Aristotle’s naturalness thesis. First, I argue against the claim that the city fails to meet the criteria (e.g. separability, continuity, etc.) Aristotle sets for substantiality in the Metaphysics. Second, I examine the problem of the Principle of Transitivity of End in Aristotle’s telic argument for the naturalness of the city. I argue that the city exists for its own end. Finally, I discuss the problem of the legislator in the genesis of the city. (...) I argue that the legislator is only responsible for the actualization of the potential form that Nature has set forward. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish between two senses of “understanding”: understanding as an epistemic good and understanding as a character trait or a distinctive power of the mind. I argue that understanding as a character trait or a distinctive power of the mind is an intellectual virtue while understanding as an epistemic good is not. Finally, I show how the distinction can help us better appreciate Aristotle’s account of intellectual virtue.

In this paper, I survey some recent literature produced by the established Chinese philosophers who regularly publish in Chinese philosophy journals and work in Mainland China. Specifically, I review the recent research of these philosophers in two areas: Chinese Philosophy and epistemology. In each area, I focus on two topics that have caught the attention of a lot of Chinese philosophers. I argue that the Chinese philosophers’ research on these topics has two prevalent problems: (i) a lot of arguments they (...) make are weak; (ii) they tend not to critically engage with others. I discuss a metaphilosophical objection that weak argumentation and disengagement are not vices of philosophical research. I also try to make sense of (i) and (ii) in terms of some cultural factors. (shrink)

Some philosophers (e.g., Pritchard, Grimm, and Hills) recently have objected that veritism cannot explain the epistemic value of understanding-why. And they have proposed two anti-veritist accounts. In this paper, I first introduce their objection and argue that it fails. Next, I consider a strengthened version of their objection and argue that it also fails. After that, I suggest a new veritist account: Understanding-why entails believing the truth that what is grasped is accurate (or accurate enough), and it is this true (...) belief, along with many other true beliefs understanding-why entails, that makes understanding-why finally epistemically valuable. Then, I explain why the two anti-veritist accounts are both false. Finally, I briefly discuss the idea that understanding involves a kind of know-how and show how veritism can explain the epistemic value of know-how in general. (shrink)

This paper revisits Aristotle’s discussion of akrasia in NE VII. 1–10. I try to offer a scientific reading of the book, according to which NE VII. 1–10 closely instantiates the main guidelines of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. I propose that NE VII. 1–2, which aims to establish the fact that akrasia exists, corresponds to the ὅτι-stage of an Aristotelian scientific inquiry, and NE VII. 3–10, which aims to explain both the cause and the object of akrasia, corresponds to the διότι-stage of (...) the inquiry. (shrink)

This paper explores the elusive dialectic between concentration and forgetfulness, consciousness and unconsciousness in spontaneous artistic creation favoured by artists and advocated by critics in Chinese art history, by examining texts on painting and tracing back to ancient Daoist philosophical ideas, in a comparison with Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics. Although artistic spontaneity in classical Chinese aesthetics seems to share similarities with Kant’s account of spontaneity in the art of genius, the emphasis on unconsciousness is valued by classical Chinese artists and (...) critics inspired by the Daoist idea of ‘Wu Wei’ (acting without conscious intention or effort). As the Qing painter Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715) claimed when admitting his failure to copy the Yuan master Ni Zan (1301–1374), Ni Zan’s success in natural and untrammelled expression lies ‘in between having an intention and not having one’. A similar idea about the dialectic of consciousness and unconsciousness in artistic spontaneity was suggested by Heinrich von Kleist’s On the Marionette Theatre (1880), which demonstrated that while self-consciousness might disturb and hinder the naturalness of artistic expression and thus encourage affectation, it does not mean that there is no role for consciousness. Although the views on unconsciousness in art and the co-play of consciousness and unconscious in artistic creation by Schelling, Schiller, Goethe, and even Nietzsche might get inspirations from Kant’s hidden view of the unconscious, Kant’s emphasis on the harmonious cooperation between imagination and understanding disguises his inexplicit idea of the unconscious. This paper will demonstrate that while in both Classical Chinese and European cultural contexts, artists, critics and philosophers talk about the same elusive relation, the philosophical explanations of the same phenomenon are essentially distinctive. (shrink)

Is shame an accomplice of external oppressive values or an introspective emotion that reveals one’s true moral character? We track these conflicting intuitions about shame and argue that they point to several understudied social features of shame. We then lay out a more nuanced and inclusive view of shame that accounts for meaningful life-long interactions between self and community. This view emphasizes both personal agency in navigating shame-related experiences and the social challenges to such agency, namely the social structures and (...) values that breed shame for some people while exempting others. We argue that individuals demonstrate their agency in managing the emotion of shame not just through their private attitudes, by accepting, negotiating, or rejecting specific values, but also through social action, by identifying with some communities and distancing themselves from others. In pointing out that shame is a double-edged sword—harmful in ways not discussed before, yet also morally potent by propelling individual agency—we hope to add much-needed complexity to the discussion of shame. (shrink)

This chapter advocates for a naturalistic ethical framework that bases normative components in basic human functions, such as emotions, as an effective approach to address intergenerational ethics questions. Using Mencius’s ethical framework as an example, which establishes emotional pivot points to incorporate others’ concerns and worries into moral deliberation, the chapter argues that this approach provides significant theoretical advantages over frameworks that rely on a familial-role-based relational understanding of Confucian ethics and moral cultivation through rituals. The chapter also highlights the (...) flexibility and adaptability of Mencian ethics, which was redeveloped over a thousand years later during the Neo-Confucian flowering and serves as evidence of its philosophical framework’s ability to connect people emotionally and ethically across time. (shrink)

In this paper, I suggest that the notion of qiyun (qi: spirit; yun: consonance) in the context of landscape painting involves a moral dimension. The Confucian doctrine of sincerity involved in bringing the landscapist’s or audience’s mind in accord with the Dao underpins the moral dimension of spiritual communion between artist, object, audience, and work. By projecting Kant’s and Schiller’s conceptions of aesthetic autonomy and the moral relevance of art onto the qiyun-focused context, we see that the reflection on parallels (...) and differences between the two cultural traditions helps to better understand the moral dimension of qiyun aesthetics. (shrink)

In this paper, I suggest that the notion of qiyun (spirit consonance) in the context of landscape painting involves a moral dimension. The Confucian doctrine of sincerity involved in bringing the landscapist’s or audience’s mind in accord with the Dao underpins the moral dimension of spiritual communion between artist, object, audience and work. By projecting Kant’s, and Schiller’s somewhat modified Kantian philosophy of aesthetic autonomy and the moral relevance of art into the qiyun-focused context, we shall see that reflection on (...) parallels and differences between the two cultural traditions helps to better understand the moral dimension of qiyun aesthetics. (shrink)

Computational creativity has long been constrained by a persistent evaluation problem: machines can generate artifacts, but they lack an operational account of aesthetic value. Existing systems often rely on external proxies such as human ratings, engagement metrics, learned preference models, or hand-coded novelty scores, leaving aesthetic judgment opaque, unstable, and difficult to audit. This position paper argues that machine neuroaesthetics can advance computational creativity: the mechanistic study of aesthetic, affective, and interestingness representations inside generative models. Machine neuroaesthetics inverts computational neuroaesthetics: (...) instead of using machine learning to explain how human brains respond to art, it uses mechanistic interpretability to examine how artificial neural networks internally represent and process aesthetic structure---structure inherited from the human culture compressed into them during training. Recent findings on sparse autoencoder features, functional emotion concepts, musical representations, audio-model features aligned with human neural data, poetry-planning circuits, and foundation-model-guided open-ended discovery suggest that large generative models already encode causally accessible structures relevant to aesthetic evaluation. We argue that these structures offer a new substrate for computational creativity: aesthetic judgment can become not only predicted, but localized, intervened upon, compared across models, and validated against human response. This does not imply that machines possess subjective aesthetic experience. Rather, it means that their learned aesthetic machinery can be made inspectable. Machine neuroaesthetics therefore reframes creative AI from artifact generation toward causal, auditable, and human-grounded aesthetic evaluation. (shrink)

Addressing the fundamental metaphysical question of the origin of Being, this paper takes de Broglie's classical wave mechanics (1924) as its scientific foundation and constructs a self‑consistent interpretive framework of information ontology. It establishes three core axioms: information as the primordial ground, relations prior to entities, and global conservation of information. On this basis, the paper further derives the origin of spatiotemporal dimensions from the laws of information interaction: each basic flip configuration of information corresponds to the generation of a (...) spatial dimension; after three‑dimensional topological closure is completed, the inevitably produced "pending redundant information" that cannot be synchronously and self‑consistently integrated gives rise to the dimension of time within its queuing sequence. Spacetime is therefore not an a priori container but the first compensatory structural stratum through which information moves toward self‑consistent expression. Subsequently, by means of de Broglie's phase field, the paper deduces the entire evolutionary chain from pure information distinctions and primordial phase oscillation to the emergence of material hierarchies and quantum‑observation interactions. It argues that quantum measurement and wave‑function collapse are essentially topological remappings and information‑coupling consolidations of heterogeneous phase fields; gravitation and cosmic expansion can be reduced to macroscopic effects of phase gradients. Throughout the text, physical references are strictly limited to de Broglie's classical wave mechanics, without introducing non‑standard physical models. This study supplements fundamental physical philosophy with a relational‑ontology approach and provides a unified information‑theoretic metaphysical interpretation for foundational problems such as wave–particle duality, the origin of spacetime, and the nature of gravity. (shrink)

There are three widely held beliefs among epistemologists: (1) the goal of inquiry is truth or something that entails truth; (2) epistemology aims for a reflectively stable theory via reflective equilibrium; (3) epistemology is a kind of inquiry. I argue that accepting (1) and (2) entails denying (3). This is a problem especially for the philosophers (e.g. Duncan Pritchard and Alvin Goldman) who accept both (1) and (2), for in order to be consistent, they must reject (3). The tension is (...) not restricted to epistemology. A similar tension also exists in the area of moral philosophy. The tension can be generalized. If one believes that the goal of inquiry is truth or something that entails truth and that philosophy aims for a reflectively stable theory via reflective equilibrium, she must deny that philosophy is a kind of inquiry. (shrink)

AI agents increasingly act consequentially in the real world. This creates a problem we call \emph{consequence reception}: harm occurs, the producing system is identified, yet no continuing agent receives consequences in a way that changes future behavior. Pain, understood mechanistically as a corrective feedback signal, is foundational to canonical theories of punishment—deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution, and incapacitation all assume a continuing locus that registers the signal and updates behavior. That, in turn, requires a body for the signal to land on: a (...) boundary whose integrity it protects, a locus where it accumulates, consolidation that converts episodic signal into durable update, and a substrate that responds by altering future action. Current LLM agents—software-defined composites of weights, prompts, tools, memory, and credentials, freely swapped, copied, reset, and reassembled—satisfy none of these conditions. The two prevailing legal responses therefore fail to achieve consequence reception. The thin-identity agent-principal dyad has a body but no \emph{consequence–agency coupling}: the human bears pain for behaviors beyond their control—Elish’s \emph{moral crumple zone}. The thick-identity Arbel et al.'s \emph{Algorithmic Corporation} creates legally legible entities but does not guarantee that any AI decision architecture receives pain as a behavioral signal. Achieving consequence–agency coupling is therefore a sociotechnical infrastructural problem, not only a legal one. Until such architectures exist, high-stakes AI deployment should remain tethered to accountable human principals with meaningful control, proportional liability, and authority to constrain or terminate the agent. \emph{If some body does not receive the pain by design, some body will receive it by default.}. (shrink)

In this thesis, I aim to contribute to the reconciliation of two ways of looking at human agency—from the perspective of agents themselves, and from a detached, scientific perspective—by combining resources from the free will literature and the action theory literature. I will show that we can preserve most of our ordinary conception and intuitions about human agency rooted in common sense even if we suppose the truth of determinism and a universal event-causal framework. Below are the two key claims (...) defended in the thesis. (i.) Free Agency (which is required by moral responsibility) is the ability to respond to reasons. (ii.) To exercise free agency is to act for reasons; while acting for reasons can be captured within an event-causal framework. Accordingly, I will defend two theories concerning human agency: one is the reasons-responsiveness theory of free will and moral responsibility; the other is the causal theory of action. The first theory helps to show that free will and moral responsibility can exist in a deterministic world; while the second theory helps to resolve the tension between action and the event-causal framework. Moreover, I will integrate these two theories. This integration aims to provide a more complete picture of human agency. According to this picture, the exercising of human agency can be taken as a continuum—ranging from basic voluntary control to high-level actions which merit moral evaluation; this continuum can be captured within a unified theoretical framework, namely, the event-causal framework. That is, the important features of human agency, from basic purposive actions to free and responsible actions can be explained in terms of event-causations. In doing so, I advance a new account of reasons-responsiveness theory, deflate the problem of causal deviance by developing a novel account of control, and solve the problem of disappearing agency by developing an account of agent’s participation in her action. I will also investigate several kinds of phenomenology of agency which purportedly speak against the event-causal account of action. The integrated theory developed shows us how our agency, in all its complexity, fits into a naturalistic picture of the world. (shrink)

This appendix constructs a closed algebraic model within the axiomatic framework of *The Logical Universe* to elucidate how the topological compression ratio η controls the partitioning of the proton’s primitive logical deficiency δₚ between electromagnetic and gravitational interaction channels, and derives an explicit form of the effective gravitational constant Gₑff(η) dependent on η. The core of the model is a sigmoid power-law deficit distribution function f(η), which characterises the fraction of proton deficiency carried by the gravitational channel. Normalised to the (...) Earth’s observed gravitational constant Gₒᵦₛ, Gₑff(η) is formulated as a function of η, with key parameters (η₀ = 1×10⁻⁴, β = 4, η⊕ = 5×10⁻⁵) physically justified by magnetic compression scales in astrophysical environments. -/- This framework rejects dark matter as an independent physical entity, attributing all observed “dark matter signatures” (e.g., flat galaxy rotation curves) to two complementary mechanisms: (1) the macroscopic gradient force of the right-handed net redundant light field ρᵣ, and (2) the self-organisation of deficiency compensation flows. Numerical calculations show that Gₑff is drastically enhanced in high-compression environments (e.g., white dwarf cores, neutron stars), leading to testable astronomical predictions: offset white dwarf mass-radius relations, reduced neutron star tidal deformability, anomalous gravitational redshift in magnetars, scalar polarisation of gravitational waves, and dark-matter-free galaxy rotation curves consistent with observational data. -/- The model only describes the relative variation of the gravitational constant under different topological compression conditions, without attempting to unify the absolute strengths of electromagnetism and gravity (the latter is governed by deeper cosmological constants in the main framework). It provides a complete, self-consistent dark-matter-free explanation for gravitational phenomena across astrophysical scales, with testable predictions verifiable by next-generation observatories (JWST, Roman, LISA, NICER, eXTP) within 5–10 years. (shrink)

This essay seeks to acknowledge the unsettling reality of children being intentionally maimed towards disability and disfigurement as economic commodity. The issue is easily invisibilized in modern education, and understandably so: the trauma triggered by these bloody realities can automatically disqualify the content for formal in school education as a form of “unwelcome truth”. Freire and Fanon, however, did not shy away from the horrific state of life for the oppressed and the wretched in their consideration of pedagogy. The lived (...) experience of maimed children is tragic, but it is lived experience nonetheless – acknowledged by hooks as “a way of knowing that coexists in a non-hierarchical way with other ways of knowing” (2014). In other words, this knowledge exists but is arguably not mobilized by society towards action. Critical consciousness, upheld by Freire as the key to seeing inequality to act upon it, is a goal beyond reach for the maimed children themselves. Here, we consider the extension proposed by Nicholls (2011), who discusses pedagogy of the privileged as an equally important parallel towards collaborative action against long-standing inequalities. In the context of these children having minimal access to education, we contend that privileged students must be the ones to carry forth the knowledge towards their own critical consciousness. Specifically, we explore what acknowledging children who are maimed could offer towards pedagogy, in relation to helping students to 1) minimize the act of “othering” in a global community; 2) reconsider the role of mass-media and media literacy in their critical consciousness; and 3) move away from surface-level, performative charity against societal inequalities. (shrink)

Within the axiomatic system of the Logic Universe, this paper provides a philosophical interpretation of Dirac's large number hypothesis based on one‑way breaking transfer. No attempt is made to prove or derive the numerical relation from physical principles; instead, it is reconceived as a necessary structural manifestation of the chain: proton right‑handed primordial breaking → electromagnetic mediating transfer → gravitational global coverage. Introducing dimensionless coupling constants and scale ratios, we obtain the core relation -/- $$ N_p \alpha_{\text{em}} = \frac{R_U}{r_e} \beta, (...) $$ -/- and note that this equation is not an independent derivation from observation but a self‑consistent conceptual reorganisation of Dirac's classical numerical relations ($10^{40}$, $10^{80}$). A unified dynamical equation for the right‑handed net redundant light field is presented as a mathematical vehicle for the interpretation, and three qualitative/semi‑quantitative testable clues are discussed. The aim is to provide a logically unified and ontologically coherent explanatory framework for the Dirac large number puzzle, not to propose new physical laws or overturn existing physics. (shrink)

本书基于信息本体论立场，提出“逻辑宇宙”（Logical Universe）的公理化框架，主张“存在≡逻辑≡自检”，将宇宙定义为所有逻辑自洽存在的总集。全书以七条公理（宇宙全集、三一基始、三元逻辑算子、破缺-代偿对偶、叠加态原初性、时空涌现、信息守恒与熵增） 为根基，逐层推导出三个核心结论： -/- 等价性定理：对称破缺、自旋与空间扭曲是同一信息失衡在代数、量子与几何层级的同时投射，为统一量子力学与引力提供了数学基础。 -/- 物理宇宙重构：质子作为光场拓扑扭结（破缺源），电子作为对偶代偿体，磁场是剩余手性偏置的空间延伸；引力则是电磁代偿饱和后的高维“沉渠道”，由此解释星系旋转曲线而无需引入暗物质，并给出有效引力常数随环境变 化及暗能量状态方程偏离ΛCDM的预测。 -/- 生命、意识与文明同构：生命是维持局域高手性纯度（χ）的自观测信息孤子；衰老是χ单向稀释，生殖受手性生殖阈值约束；意识是自观测闭环的内省体验，文明则是个体欲望满足后残余手性偏置在时间维度上的延伸结构。 -/- 全书从普朗克尺度延伸至文明尺度，构建了“破缺源→代偿体→传导场”的全尺度统一动力学方程，最终提出终极回答：存在无预设目的，意义由局部自观测闭环在代偿过程中自主生成。.

Based on the physical hypothesis that spatial distortion is the common origin of gravity and electromagnetism, this paper constructs a self-consistent classical effective field theory framework. The locally conserved total spatial distortion is partitioned into two evolutionary forms: geometric conduction (gravitational channel) and temporal dispersion (electromagnetic channel). A dimensionless topological compression ratio, denoted as η∈[0,1), is introduced as the sole regulating parameter for channel allocation. Three fundamental field variables are defined: the right-handed net redundant light field density ρR, the degree (...) of time twist Θt, and the information impedance ℛ. A global action is then constructed, incorporating the geometric term for gravity, the classical term for electromagnetism, and a gravity-electromagnetic coupling term. The theory strictly satisfies the correspondence principle: the limit η→1 reduces to General Relativity, while the η→0 limit recovers Maxwell's electromagnetism. In the mixed coupling regime where 0<η<1, the theory yields three quantitatively testable physical effects: an additional precession of 5%–15% for strongly magnetized compact objects, a scalar polarization component in gravitational waves from compact binary mergers constituting ≲2% of the energy, and a redshift evolution of dynamic dark energy on cosmological scales. This paper explicitly restricts its scope to classical long-range interactions, offering a novel, self-consistent, and falsifiable effective field theory approach towards the unification of gravity and electromagnetism. (shrink)

The phenomenal success of quantum mechanics and general relativity has not eliminated the inconsistency in their ontological foundations. This essay attempts not to rely on mathematical modifications or empirical predictions of existing theories, but to start from a more fundamental logical ontology and provide a unified conceptual grounding for physics. -/- **Core axiom**: Existence, logic, and self‑examination are three inseparable aspects of the same origin. The universe is defined as the set of all logically self‑consistent existents. The only primitive logical (...) operations are three: negation (¬), conjunction (∧), and disjunction (∨). Among them, "negation" generates difference and chirality; "disjunction" generates superposition and total possibility; "conjunction" generates closed‑loop constraint and actualization. -/- **Ontological status of space‑time**: Time is defined as the manifestation of the sequentialization of "conjunction + disjunction"; space is defined as the manifestation of the localization of "negation + conjunction". Neither is a presupposed background of physics; both are projections of logical operations in the recursion of self‑examination. -/- **Deficiency‑compensation duality**: Any finite logical closed loop under eternal self‑examination recursion necessarily produces an ineliminable primitive deficiency (δ). Global self‑consistency of the universe requires that local deficiency must be offset by an equal, dual compensation. Energy is defined as the compensation equivalent that repairs deficiency; mass is defined as the spatial integral of information impedance. Mass‑energy equivalence E = mc^2 is a corollary of the identity of deficiency and impedance, not an independent postulate. -/- **Topological origin of particles**: The proton is interpreted as a stable closed loop formed by the topological entanglement and compactification of light helices; its irreducible right‑handed spin residue corresponds to spin 1/2, and the projection deficiency of dimensions corresponds to charge +e. The electron is a compensation product driven by proton deficiency, used to offset the residual deficiency of the proton. The part of deficiency not completely transferred by the electromagnetic mediator is accommodated in the form of space‑time curvature; gravity can thus be understood as the sink channel of the deficiency transmission chain. -/- **Cosmological ontological interpretation**: The material substrate of the observable universe originates from a net right‑handed surplus caused by statistical fluctuations of left‑handed and right‑handed protons in the early universe. The right‑handed net redundant light field density ρ_R precipitated from this surplus constitutes the cosmic background space; its continuous outward outflow corresponds to cosmic expansion, and dark energy corresponds to the topological tension of the global average gradient of ρ_R. -/- **Statement of theoretical status**: This essay is a **conceptual ontological program**, not a computable physical theory. All mathematical expressions in the text (e.g., g = κ ∂_t (∇ρ_R − ∇ρ_trans), G = (κ^2/(8π)) (ℓ_step/m_p) α_R) are qualitative illustrations intended to indicate possible directions for formalization, not established field equations. We do not claim that this framework can reduce or replace existing physics formulas; we only propose qualitative illustrative directions. The goal of this essay is limited to: providing an internally self‑consistent system of logical axioms such that space‑time, particles, interactions, and cosmological phenomena can obtain a unified ontological explanation from that system. Complete mathematical formalization is left for future research. (shrink)

Gravitational decoherence (GD) refers to the effects of gravity in actuating the classical appearance of a quantum system. Because the underlying processes involve issues in general relativity (GR), quantum field theory (QFT), and quantum information, GD has fundamental theoretical significance. There is a great variety of GD models, many of them involving physics that diverge from GR and/or QFT. This overview has two specific goals along with one central theme:(i) present theories of GD based on GR and QFT and explore (...) their experimental predictions;(ii) place other theories of GD under the scrutiny of GR and QFT, and point out their theoretical differences. We also describe how GD experiments in space in the coming decades can provide evidence at two levels:(a) discriminate alternative quantum theories and non-GR theories;(b) discern whether gravity is a fundamental or an effective theory. (shrink)

This paper presents a human-computer interaction model with a three layers learning mechanism in a pervasive environment. We begin with a discussion around a number of important issues related to human-computer interaction followed by a description of the architecture for a multi-agent cooperative design system for pervasive computing environment. We present our proposed three- layer HCI model and introduce the group formation algorithm, which is predicated on a dynamic sharing niche technology. Finally, we explore the cooperative reinforcement learning and fusion (...) algorithms; the paper closes with concluding observations and a summary of the principal work and contributions of this paper. (shrink)

With the widespread use of vaccines in research and clinical settings, there is an urgent need to standardize vaccine representation, integrate information across diverse vaccine types, and support computer-assisted reasoning. Accordingly, we have since 2007 developed the community-based Vaccine Ontology (VO), which aligns with the Basic Formal Ontology and adheres to OBO Foundry principles. VO models ontologically vaccines, vaccine components, vaccine immune responses, vaccine investigation studies and other vaccine-related topics. VO represents more than 10,000 vaccines targeting 289 infectious pathogens and (...) cancers in humans and over 30 nonhuman animal species. VO provides mappings to external resources such as RxNorm, CVX, FDA, and USDA. Various VO use cases exist. VO facilitates vaccine standardization in resources such as the VIOLIN vaccine database, ImmPort, and the Vaccine Adjuvant Compendium (VAC). Semantic queries can be made to query VO. VO has been shown to enhance experimental and clinical vaccine data analysis and vaccine literature mining. Overall, VO standardizes vaccine modeling and representation and greatly supports vaccine AI research in the Semantic Web era. (shrink)

In pedestrian detection, occlusions are typically treated as an unstructured source of noise and explicit models have lagged behind those for object appearance, which will result in degradation of detection performance. In this paper, a hierarchical co-occurrence model is proposed to enhance the semantic representation of a pedestrian. In our proposed hierarchical model, a latent SVM structure is employed to model the spatial co-occurrence relations among the parent–child pairs of nodes as hidden variables for handling the partial occlusions. Moreover, the (...) visibility statuses of the pedestrian can be generated by learning co-occurrence relations from the positive training data with large numbers of synthetically occluded instances. Finally, based on the proposed hierarchical co-occurrence model, a pedestrian detection algorithm is implemented to incorporate visibility statuses by means of a Random Forest ensemble. The experimental results on three public datasets demonstrate the log-average miss rate of the proposed algorithm has 5% improvement for pedestrians with partial occlusions compared with the state-of-the-arts. (shrink)

The agentic web marks a structural transition from a human-centered information network to a digital environment populated by artificial intelligence (AI) agents that perceive, decide, and act autonomously. As delegated action unfolds at machine speed, exceeds discrete moments of human judgment, and distributes decision-making across non-human actors, existing legal frameworks face growing strain, creating an urgent need for new mechanisms capable of sustaining legality in this emerging order. A trustworthy agentic web therefore depends on the infrastructuring of legality through interoperable (...) protocols that organize identity, delegation, and accountability across systems, enabling coherent governance beyond isolated platforms. Towards this end, this article advances a distributed legal infrastructure (DLI), a governance paradigm composed of five interlocking layers: (1) self-sovereign, soulbound agent identities; (2) cognitive AI logic and constraint systems; (3) decentralized adjudication mechanisms for dispute resolution; (4) bottom-up agentic market regulation to mitigate information asymmetries and network effects, including insurance-based models; and (5) portable institutional frameworks that enable legal interoperability while preserving plural sources of authority. This reference framework contributes to emerging research on embedding legality within agentic web infrastructure, aligning distributed technical systems with accountability, contestability, and rule-of-law principles. (shrink)

Biomedical ontologies are emerging as critical tools in genomic and proteomic research where complex data in disparate resources need to be integrated. A number of ontologies exist that describe the properties that can be attributed to proteins; for example, protein functions are described by Gene Ontology, while human diseases are described by Disease Ontology. There is, however, a gap in the current set of ontologies—one that describes the protein entities themselves and their relationships. We have designed a PRotein Ontology (PRO) (...) to facilitate protein annotation and to guide new experiments. The components of PRO extend from the classification of proteins on the basis of evolutionary relationships to the representation of the multiple protein forms of a gene (products generated by genetic variation, alternative splicing, proteolytic cleavage, and other post-translational modification). PRO will allow the specification of relationships between PRO, GO and other OBO Foundry ontologies. Here we describe the initial development of PRO, illustrated using human proteins from the TGF-beta signaling pathway. (shrink)

Immunology researchers are beginning to explore the possibilities of reproducibility, reuse and secondary analyses of immunology data. Open-access datasets are being applied in the validation of the methods used in the original studies, leveraging studies for meta-analysis, or generating new hypotheses. To promote these goals, the ImmPort data repository was created for the broader research community to explore the wide spectrum of clinical and basic research data and associated findings. The ImmPort ecosystem consists of four components–Private Data, Shared Data, Data (...) Analysis, and Resources—for data archiving, dissemination, analyses, and reuse. To date, more than 300 studies have been made freely available through the ImmPort Shared Data portal, which allows research data to be repurposed to accelerate the translation of new insights into discoveries. (shrink)

This paper reports on an ongoing ARC Discovery Project that is conducting design research into learning in collaborative virtual worlds (CVW).The paper will describe three design components of the project: (a) pedagogical design, (b)technical and graphics design, and (c) learning research design. The perspectives of each design team will be discussed and how the three teams worked together to produce the CVW. The development of productive failure learning activities for the CVW will be discussed and there will be an interactive (...) demonstration of the project's CVW. (shrink)