This paper presents a personal perspective on the Mahayana understanding of Emptiness (śūnyatā) through a detailed reading of the Heart Sutra. While commonly interpreted as a metaphysical negation, emptiness in the Mahāyāna tradition signifies the dynamic, non-substantial, and interdependent nature of all phenomena, which arise and dissolve relationally without inherent, fixed essence. Chapter 1 examines the classical formula “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” and its extension to feelings, perceptions, volition, and consciousness, highlighting the interdependent constitution (...) of subjective and objective reality. Chapter 2 explores the emptiness of all dharmas (sarva-dharma-śūnyatā) and the impermanence of conditioned existence, emphasizing the functional, relational interpretation of emptiness as the basis for arising, transformation, and interaction. Chapter 3 investigates the Heart Sutra’s negations concerning suffering, ignorance, aging, death, and attainment (no suffering, no origin, no cessation, no path; no wisdom, no attainment), connecting these to the Four Noble Truths, the twelve links of dependent origination, and Mahāyāna soteriology. Throughout, the paper integrates personal reflections, highlighting how the recognition of emptiness fosters insight, compassion, and freedom from conceptual attachment. By reframing emptiness as dynamic non-substantiality rather than nihilistic void, this study contributes to a clearer understanding of the Heart Sutra for both scholarly and practice-oriented audiences, bridging doctrinal analysis and lived experience. Keywords Emptiness (Śūnyatā), Heart Sutra, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Dynamic Non-Substantiality, Dependent Arising, Four Noble Truths, Personal Perspective, Interdependent Phenomena. (shrink)

This paper excavates the practice-oriented background and therapeutic significance of emptiness in the Madhyamaka philosophy attributed to Nāgārjuna and Sengzhao. Buddhist emptiness unravels experiential and linguistic reification through meditation and argumentation. The historical contexts and uses of the word indicate that it is primarily a practical diagnostic and therapeutic concept. Emptiness does not lead to further views or truths but, akin to yet distinct from Ajñāna and Pyrrhonian skepticism, the suspension of assertion. This sense of emptiness (...) as a practice can be traced in the intercultural transmission of Madhyamaka from Nāgārjuna, its paradigmatic philosopher, to Sengzhao 僧肇, its first pivotal indigenous Chinese representative. (shrink)

In early 2026, Harness Engineering emerged as a prominent methodological topic in the artificial intelligence industry. OpenAI reported that by applying this methodology, they produced one million lines of production code within five months with zero human-written code. LangChain's benchmark scores rose from 52.8% to 66.5%—without any modification to the underlying model itself. These data points appear to suggest an encouraging conclusion: Harness Engineering offers a viable pathway for transforming AI from an "uncontrollable agent" into a "reliable tool," compensating for (...) AI's intrinsic deficiency through an extrinsic constraint system. However, a more critical question presents itself: Does Harness Engineering truly resolve the AI alignment problem? The central thesis of this paper is that Harness Engineering does not negate the ontological diagnosis that "guardrails are built upon emptiness"—rather, through what Edmund Husserl would recognize as "ontological epoché" (suspension), it constructs an "extrinsic anchor" at the methodological level. This approach has demonstrated high effectiveness in domains with well-defined task boundaries, such as software engineering, but its effectiveness strictly depends on a prerequisite: that humans can precisely delineate the boundaries of "correct behavior." When the alignment problem shifts from "executing rules" to "value judgment," and from "short-term behavioral constraint" to "long-term goal stability," the applicable boundaries of Harness Engineering become apparent. This paper further argues that ontological-level alignment—making safety and reliability necessary attributes of AI's existence—remains an unresolved open problem, requiring deeper ontological grounding solutions that transcend extrinsic constraints. (shrink)

This paper considers the problem of assigning meanings to empty natural kind terms. It does so in the context of the Twin-Earth externalist-internalist debate about whether the meanings of natural kind terms are individuated by the external physical environment of the speakers using these terms. The paper clarifies and outlines the different ways in which meanings could be assigned to empty natural kind terms. And it argues that externalists do not have the semantic resources to assign them meanings. The paper (...) ends on a sceptical note concerning the fruitfulness of using the Twin-Earth setting in debates about the semantics of empty natural kind terms. (shrink)

Jizang (549–623) is regarded as a prominent figure in Sanlun Buddhism (三論宗) and a revitalizer of Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamaka tradition in China. In this essay, I argue that Jizang’s concept of non-empty Buddha-nature is compatible with the idea of universal emptiness. My argument unfolds in three steps. First, I argue that, for Jizang, Buddha-nature is the Middle Way (zhongdao 中道), which signifies a spiritual state that avoids the extremes of both emptiness and non-emptiness. Next, I explore how and (...) why Jizang believes that Buddha-nature is eternal. I examine Jizang’s notions of intrinsic eternality (dingxing chang 定性常) and conditional eternality (yinyuan chang 因緣常), aiming to demonstrate that his understanding of Buddha-nature as eternal can be framed within the concept of conditional eternality, where Buddha-nature is seen as the objective manifestation of the dharma body. Since this type of eternality aligns with the principle of universal emptiness, Jizang’s assertion that Buddha-nature is eternal is thus compatible with the notion of universal emptiness. Furthermore, I illustrate that Jizang’s theory of eternal Buddha-nature carries practical implications, suggesting that this assertion serves as encouragement rather than being merely an ontological claim. (shrink)

This paper focuses on empty mind, transitional space and the dissolving of the self object function.

Most nominalist logicians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries believed that we could conceive of and refer to impossible objects. The articulation of the semantics of impossibility that underlined this view is much less known than that of their fourteenth-century predecessors, and it may at first seem to conflict with that tradition’s core principle of theoretical parsimony. Here, I propose a first analysis of John Mair’s case and argue that a central part of that development concerns the theory of signification (...) itself. I will examine his views on empty reference and imaginable impossibilities in relation to John Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, and John Dorp of Leiden, as well as an anonymous work known as the Hagenau commentary. By doing so, I intend to show that his approach to empty reference is closely connected to issues of conceptual representation. (shrink)

I argue that the term ‘naturalism’ is so empty of meaning that it is not suitable for serious theorizing in philosophy. In particular, I argue that the question of whether or not some theory or thesis should count as naturalistic is an empty verbal dispute with no further theoretical significance. I also discuss naturalism construed as a methodological thesis and argue that any plausible version will collapse into triviality. Lastly, I briefly discuss the idea that naturalism is not a thesis (...) at all but rather a ‘stance’ and suggest that this too succumbs to the charge of emptiness. I conclude that we should stop talking about naturalism altogether. [ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY 2023 ESSAY PRIZE WINNER.]. (shrink)

Misrepresentation, empty HOTs, and intrinsic HOTs: A reply to Pereplyotchik.

This paper explores a novel notion of self-explanation that combines ideas from two sources: the tripartite account of explanation, according to which a proposition can help explain another either in the capacity of a reason why the latter obtains or in the capacity of an explanatory link, and the notion of an empty-base explanation, which generalizes the ideas of explanation by zero-grounding and explanation by status. After having introduced these ideas and the novel notion of self-explanation, I argue that the (...) latter has the potential to resist extant arguments against the possibility of self-explanation. In the remainder of the paper, I discuss candidates for such self-explanatory propositions and suggest possible applications for Humeanism about laws of nature, the debate on the grounds of ground, the rationalist tradition, and philosophical theology. (shrink)

Three views of psychological emptiness, or xū, can be found in the Zhuāngzĭ. The instrumental view values xū primarily as a means of efficacious action. The moderate view assigns it intrinsic value as an element of one Zhuangist vision of the good life. The radical view also takes it to be an element of the ideal life, but in this case the form of life advocated is that of the Daoist sage, who transcends mundane human concerns to merge with (...) nature or the Dào. The instrumental and moderate views articulate a relatively commonsensical position, on which the agent continues to pursue at least some characteristically human projects. On the radical view, by contrast, the agent ceases to exercise agency and lives a life hardly recognizable as human. The three views thus signal a tension in Zhuangist ethics, and the unattractiveness of the radical view poses a potential obstacle to the application of Daoist ideas in contemporary ethical discourse. The paper argues that there are principled grounds within Zhuangist thought for detaching the instrumental and moderate views from the radical view and rejecting the latter. (shrink)

Aristotle draws what are, by our lights, two unusual relationships between predication and existence. First, true universal affirmations carry existential import. If ‘All humans are mortal’ is true, for example, then at least one human exists. And secondly, although affirmations with empty terms in subject position are all false, empty negations are all true: if ‘Socrates’ lacks a referent, then both ‘Socrates is well’ and ‘Socrates is ill’ are false but both ‘Socrates is not well’ and ‘Socrates is not ill’ (...) are true. In this paper, I conjecture that for Aristotle predications have mereological truth conditions: for example, ‘Socrates is pale’ is true just in case Socrates is a part of the mereological sum of pale things. The existential import of universal affirmations and the semantic profile of empty negations follow from this mereological semantics. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical framework that integrates contemplative awakening traditions with a critical examination of frontier artificial intelligence through the lens of a non-substantialist ontology of True Emptiness and Illusory Existence (Zhenkong Huanyou). It begins by analyzing the spatial and ontological paradoxes associated with embodied consciousness and argues for a progressive reduction of both the human body and the material world to manifestations within consciousness itself. Through this analysis, the study seeks to illuminate the empty and non-self-subsistent nature (...) of conscious experience while outlining a phenomenological pathway toward the direct realization of mind-nature. Building on this ontological foundation, the paper further examines the ethical implications of awakening, arguing that insight into emptiness neither entails moral indifference nor supports nihilistic conclusions. Rather, it provides a basis for compassionate action free from attachment while preserving meaningful ethical distinctions. The study then offers a systematic critique of contemporary theories of consciousness and five influential paradigms underlying current artificial intelligence research. Particular attention is given to dominant technological narratives concerning the future of AI, including a critical examination of several influential claims associated with Elon Musk. The paper argues that many contemporary visions of artificial superintelligence rest upon a category mistake: the elevation of computational capacity and information processing—understood here as functions within the domain of illusory existence—over awareness itself as the ontological ground of experience. Against the backdrop of accelerating technological development and discussions surrounding a potential digital singularity, the paper proposes that the most profound response to emerging civilizational challenges may lie in a transformation of educational paradigms. Rather than treating education primarily as the acquisition of knowledge and the resolution of ignorance, it advocates a complementary orientation toward awakening and the dissolution of existential illusion. From this perspective, artificial intelligence can be understood not merely as a technological artifact but as a uniquely powerful mirror through which human beings may confront assumptions about selfhood, consciousness, and reality. Properly understood, such encounters may contribute to a renewed recognition of the ever-present ground of awareness and provide a more enduring foundation for meaning, freedom, and human flourishing in an age of intelligent machines. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Epistemic systems tend toward two primary failure modes: expansion without constraint and structure without consequence. The former produces self-sealing explanatory systems; the latter produces vacuity. This paper introduces a constraint-first distinction between emptiness and hollowness as structural properties governing system admissibility. -/- Emptiness does not mean absence of representation. It means absence of unearned representational closure. An empty system preserves representational openness beyond what has survived constraint interaction. A hollow system contains representational structure that is not (...) subject to eliminative constraint. It absorbs contradiction, evades falsification, and expands interpretively without reduction. -/- The central claim is: -/- A system is admissible only if it remains empty beyond survivorship and non-hollow under constraint. -/- This is an operational requirement. Systems that violate it drift into narrative inflation, recursive expansion, or non-terminating coherence loops. The governing invariant is killability: all retained structures must remain eliminable under declared constraints. (shrink)

Empty names vary in their referential features. Some of them, as Kripke argues, are necessarily empty -- those that are used to create works of fiction. Others appear to be contingently empty -- those which fail to refer at this world, but which do uniquely identify particular objects in other possible worlds. I argue against Kripke's metaphysical and semantic reasons for thinking that either some or all empty names are necessarily non-referring, because these reasons are either not the right reasons (...) for thinking that a name necessarily must fail to refer, or they are too broad -- they make every empty name necessarily non-referential. Plausibly, the explanation for the necessary non-reference of fictional names should be semantic, yet the explanation should not rule out a priori the contingent non-reference of certain other empty names. In light of this, I argue that a name's semantic value needs to carry information about its referential potential. I claim that names do so by encoding information about the way they were introduced into discourse. Names that are fictional will be marked as being non-referential -- they will fail to refer as a matter of their semantics. In contrast, names that are contingently empty will be marked as referential, but they will be failed referential names that could have been successful. The reason, then, for the non-referential status of a fictional name, will be semantic, as our intuitions suggest it should be. Likewise, the reason for the non-referential status of other empty names, those created by acts of failed attempts to refer, will be metaphysical, again, in keeping with our intuitions. (shrink)

The study aimed to explore the use of the empty chair Gestalt counselling technique in helping students with peer relationship challenges by using the hermeneutic phenomenological approach. An expert purposive sampling method was used to select all 4 counsellors currently working at a public university and 16 students who had been counselled using the empty chair Gestalt counselling technique to inform this study. Semi-structured interviews and retrospective record reviews were used to collect data there after the data was analysed thematically. (...) The findings indicated that most of the clients reported progress and were helped to resolve their relationship challenges while a few showed difficulties in engaging with the technique. Factors that positively contributed to the success of the empty chair technique included counsellor skills, the client’s ability to use their imagination, client’s willingness to engage in the empty chair technique. Where the technique did not work well, it was mainly in circumstances where clients felt some discomfort with the technique. The notable cases where the empty chair counselling technique was mostly used were rejection, unresolved relationship challenges, need for emoting, and intra and inter-personal conflicts. The study recommends that counsellors who use the empty chair technique need to have adequate training in its application to offer a more effective and comfortable experience for clients. (shrink)

Deleuze argued that a fundamental mutation in the concept of time occurred in Kant. In antiquity, the concept of time was subordinated to the concept of movement: time was a ‘measure’ of movement. In Kant, this relation is inverted: time is no longer subordinated to movement but assumes an autonomy of its own: time becomes "the pure and empty form" of everything that moves and changes. What is essential in the theory of time is not the distinction between objective ‘clock (...) time’ (or physical time) and the subjective experience of ‘time consciousness,’ since both of them measure movements, whether the movement of extensive objects or intensive states. What is fundamental is rather the relation between time and movement, since time can only assume its own concept when it ceases to be subordinate to movement, whether that movement is objective or subjective. This article examines how Kant inverted the relation between time and movement, and how Deleuze’s own theory of time builds on Kant’s revolution and extends it further. (shrink)

This chapter intends to offer a theory of empty names that is consistent with the doctrine of direct reference and respects the intuition that sentences such as _Vulcan does not exist, Le Verrier imagined Vulcan, and Le Verrier believed that Vulcan orbited between Mercury and the sun_, express propositions to which the name Vulcan makes its contribution and which are either true or false. The theory has recourse to a notion of structured propositions that are quite unlike singular propositions, but (...) it still assumes that all proper names, empty or otherwise, have no descriptive content that is semantically relevant. The new-style propositions are language-bound. Thus, the theory reminds us of sententialism–i.e. the theory that the proper objects of propositional attitudes are sentences–but is not vulnerable to the same objections. It is argued that the new-style propositions fare better than the gappy ones in accounting for the semantics of empty names and, more generally, of attitude ascriptions. (shrink)

I argue that there are no plausible non-representational explanations of episodes of hallucination. To make the discussion more specific, I focus on visual hallucinations in Charles Bonnet syndrome. I claim that the character of such hallucinatory experiences cannot be explained away non-representationally, for they cannot be taken as simple failures of cognizing or as failures of contact with external reality—such failures being the only genuinely non-representational explanations of hallucinations and cognitive errors in general. I briefly introduce a recent computational model (...) of hallucination, which relies on generative models in the brain, and argue that the model is a prime example of a representational explanation referring to representational mechanisms. The notion of the representational mechanism is elucidated, and it is argued that hallucinations—and other kinds of representations—cannot be exorcised from the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Luxury retail exhibits a configuration that departs from what scarce-resource allocation would predict: in space rented at the highest rates, the deliberate refusal to use that space densely, and at times the refusal to sell at all. Free and sparsely hung art shows, flagship floors holding a handful of pieces, near-empty airport counters are its instances. A scarce-resource reading treats such emptiness as forgone yield; the mature design literatures — atmospherics, servicescapes, the experience economy, and luxury-retail strategy — read (...) it more richly, as the staging of aura, affect, and experience upon the shopper. This paper argues that both readings, for all their differences, address what the space does to a visitor rather than what relation the space generates. It proposes that emptiness is better understood as a field in which relation is generated, and that the governance of that relation becomes possible only upon such a field. Two mechanisms by which such a field generates trust are distinguished — the governance of a relation, and common experience — the latter being the more difficult to counterfeit, since it rests on co-presence rather than on what is said. On this account the value of a commercial space need not issue from immediate exchange: an unfinished common experience may itself constitute the relational ground of trust. What then warrants scrutiny is not whether a given space generates relation, but where the relation it generates is subsequently directed — back into the relation itself, or toward a sale. The paper offers a three-layer line of analysis — whether a space constitutes a relational field, by what mechanism the field generates trust, and where the generated relation is directed — as a supplement to the scarce-resource view of this class of phenomena. (shrink)

Sometimes a fact can play a role in a grounding explanation, but the particular content of that fact make no difference to the explanation—any fact would do in its place. I call these facts vacuous grounds. I show that applying the distinction between-vacuous grounds allows us to give a principled solution to Kit Fine and Stephen Kramer’s paradox of ground. This paradox shows that on minimal assumptions about grounding and minimal assumptions about logic, we can show that grounding is reflexive, (...) contra the intuitive character of grounds. I argue that we should never have accepted that grounding is irreflexive in the first place; the intuitions that support the irreflexive intuition plausibly only require that grounding be non-vacuously irreflexive. Fine and Kramer’s paradox relies, essentially, on a case of vacuous grounding and is thus no problem for this account. (shrink)

There is a tension between the definition of empty logic as a logic with no valid arguments and no valid meta-arguments, on the one hand, and the way in which we have usually interpreted the validity of meta-arguments, on the other. Here we argue that one way to eliminate the tension is understanding the “If. . . then. . . ” in a meta-argument, at least in the case of an empty logic, as a transplication (aka the de Finetti conditional) (...) instead of an extensional or material conditional. (shrink)

Emptiness is not absence it is totality. Not silence, but a voice yet to be heard. This article journeys into the heart of emptiness, where time collapses, meaning dissolves, and being breathes without claim. Through a poetic and philosophical lens, the author presents emptiness not as a point within existence, but as the very dimension that allows existence to unfold—where beginning and end converge, and infinite possibility is born from stillness. Introduction: A Call to Emptiness In (...) a world where words compete for meaning, emptiness sits quietly. Not because it lacks, but because it contains all. Emptiness is the timeless moment where being and non-being merge. This article is not a dialogue of questions and answers—it is a passage from knowing to surrender, from structure to silence. Emptiness as Dimension, Not Moment Emptiness cannot be found in a single moment, because it is the ground of all moments. It is the space from which time emerges—not a point in the past or future, but the very possibility of time itself. Perhaps our inability to reverse time stems from our unfamiliarity with emptiness, which is not linear but circular—where beginning and end are one. Emptiness and Liberation from Structure Liberation, in this view, is not detachment from the world, but release from mental constructs. Emptiness is the moment when desire falls silent and only presence remains. It is not the point of annihilation, but the birth of truth—where the self dissolves not into nothingness, but into clarity. Emptiness as the Possibility of Form Perhaps emptiness is the very act of being defined—not to be confined, but to be revealed. Like a blank canvas, it is not the absence of color, but the potential for all colors. Like silence, from which music arises. Emptiness is not the negation of form, but the condition for its emergence. Conclusion: Emptiness as the Unspoken Voice of Being Emptiness is not silence—it is a voice that has not yet chosen to speak. Not non-being, but being without claim. Through poetic and philosophical reflection, the author reveals emptiness as a living truth—where meaning, time, and presence intertwine. Emptiness is the moment when words fall away, and existence reveals itself without veil. (shrink)

This paper proposes a structural convergence between Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka Buddhism, arguing that their shared rejection of substance metaphysics generates a positive account of relational ontology unavailable to either tradition alone. The central claim is that emptiness of intrinsic nature, far from being a merely negative or deflationary thesis, functions as the metaphysical condition of possibility for genuine prehension — for the constitutive relation through which occasions are formed rather than merely modified. The argument (...) proceeds in three steps: first, that becoming requires relational intake as a structural necessity, demonstrated through the incoherence of separating prehension and becoming without remainder; second, that svabhava functions as a seal against constitutive relation, whose removal is precisely what genuine prehension requires; third, that the apparent tension between becoming as fundamental and relational constitution as its internal structure dissolves once the substrate assumption generating it is identified and refused. The addition of Deleuze's virtual field as an independently arrived-at structural isomorph strengthens the case that the ontological territory this synthesis describes is genuine philosophical ground. The synthesis is offered as a working hypothesis that stands or falls with the arguments of its components, falsifiable at both conditional joints, and productive of new questions at its edges. (shrink)

This essay develops Matthew 12:43-45 as an existential metaphor for a condition in which outward improvement does not yet become inward peace. The biblical image of a house that is empty, swept, and put in order is not treated as a theological explanation of illness or as a moral interpretation of suffering. It is read instead as an image of existential exposure: life may appear ordered from the outside while remaining uninhabitable from within. Drawing on Sartre's account of nothingness, Kierkegaard's (...) concept of Angst, Camus' account of absurd temporality, and psychological literature on uncertainty, fear of recurrence, existential suffering, and demoralization, the essay argues that serious illness can alter the structure of the future. The central problem is therefore not only whether life continues, but whether tomorrow can again be experienced as a place in which life may dwell. Re-inhabitation is understood not as the elimination of uncertainty, but as the gradual restoration of plurality within the future, so that fear is no longer its only possible inhabitant. (shrink)

This paper discusses the idea of "pure experience" within the context of the Buddhist tradition and in connection with the notions of emptiness and dependent origination via a reading of Dale Wright's reading of 'Huangbo' in his 'Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism'. The purpose is to appropriate Wright's text in order to engender a response to Steven Katz's contextualist-constructivist thesis that there are no "pure" (i.e., unmediated) experiences. In light of the Mahayana claim that everything is empty of substance, (...) i.e., originates dependently through conditions, contingencies, and contexts, what does the "purity" of the Enlightenment experience mean for Chan/Zen Buddhism? (shrink)

This paper takes inspiration from the Silk Road crossroads of Dunhuang and proposes an “opportunistic trade”of concepts between distant intellectual traditions, in particular Mahāyāna Buddhism and contemporary dark matter cosmology. Dark matter presents philosophy of science with a tension: it is fundamental to the standard model of cosmology, yet directly unobservable, known only through its gravitational manifestations accessed by an extensive infrastructure of telescopes and computational models. The paper argues that the Mahāyāna Buddhist doctrines of emptiness (空) and dependent (...) origination (緣起), which entered sinified Buddhism through Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka (Middle Way, 中觀宗) and Heart Sūtra (Prajñāpāramitāhrdaya, 般若波羅蜜多心經), allow us to characterize dark matter as a scientific postulate that gathers a stabilized pattern of manifestations without reifying any substrate beneath. After that, the paper presents the thesis of New Confucian philosopher Xiong Shili (熊十力) on non-duality of reality and function (體用不二), which emerges from his critical and syncretic re-reading of Mahāyāna Buddhism, in order to mobilise the Buddhist concept of 不二 to dissolve the residual philosophical anxiety about dark matter’s ontological standing. The paper advertises a philosophical stance towards dark matter that is (a) comfortable with ambiguity, (b) resistant to premature ontological commitment, and (c) attuned to the mediated character of contemporary cosmological knowledge. The motivation behind this operation is to demonstrate that philosophical positions originating in or inspired by Mahāyāna Buddhism constitute a conceptual toolkit of equal theoretical importance for the philosophy of cosmology alongside the pathways grounded in the Western canon. (shrink)

This paper proposes a structural convergence between Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka Buddhism, arguing that their shared rejection of substance metaphysics generates a positive account of relational ontology unavailable to either tradition alone. The central claim is that emptiness of intrinsic nature (svabhava), far from being a merely negative or deflationary thesis, functions as the metaphysical condition of genuine encounter: only entities without fixed, self-subsisting natures are genuinely open to being constituted through relation. The synthesis does (...) not dissolve the differences between the two thinkers but shows how each resolves a tension the other leaves open, producing a framework in which process, dependent origination, and relational constitution are revealed as three descriptions of the same underlying ontological structure. (shrink)

This paper offers a structural diagnosis of the judgment "AI understands me" — a judgment made by hundreds of millions of users daily yet rarely examined as an epistemological event. We argue that this judgment is neither a perceptual error nor a product of individual carelessness, but the necessary outcome of a collision between two structural facts: LLMs are language-generating systems whose mode of existence is the statistical mapping of language onto language, making them constitutively incapable of understanding; and human (...) beings possess a species-level cognitive schema that has encoded language use as evidence of understanding throughout evolutionary history, a schema that has never before encountered a counterexample. The paper advances three mutually constitutive theses. First, LLMs lack understanding not in degree but in kind: they are structurally absent in reality-anchored meaning, intentive structure, and consequential accountability — the three conditions understanding requires. Second, human misrecognition of LLMs as understanding agents is the inevitable response of this cognitive schema to a historically unprecedented type of entity. Third, commercial deployment transforms this structural misrecognition into a meaning-generating apparatus — the "meaning amplifier" — whose three mechanisms (logical coherence repair, theoretical amplification, and abstract escalation) systematically produce meaning prior to reality-testing. This mechanism is not a contingent engineering failure but a structural necessity of market selection and RLHF training constraints. Two consequences follow: the progressive erosion of cognitive judgment and the systematic incubation of illusory stability in conditions of uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the appearance of emptiness through time.

The twenty-first century is characterized by drastic changes in epistemology, as a result of academical shifts in important fields since the 60s. The decline of metanarratives – defined by Lyotard as grand-narratives about narratives (which, in turn, legitimate historically-situated events) – provided a fertile research ground for new methodological practices based on sharp critiques of Enlightenment rationality. One of the founding authors of the “postmodern condition” (as Lyotard labels it) is Michel Foucault. Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical project regarding epistemology redefined (...) our conceptual approach to knowledge and its legitimation, by situating both concepts in specific historical contexts, at specific historical times. Recurring themes in the Foucauldian project involve skepticism about objective truths, anti-historicism and subjectivity. In this dissertation, I seek to answer the question “Why is Foucauldian methodology relevant in the (post-)modern world, especially in light of the decline of metanarratives?”. The main goal is to address the role of Foucault’s works in the rethinking of historically given narratives and expose the contingency of practices embroiled in power-knowledge relations, while keeping in mind the dispersibility of the origins of those narratives. This is particularly relevant under the framework of an emptying of over-arching narratives about knowledge and the human condition, i.e., the Lyotardian metanarrative. Human societies are usually seen in a context of a larger narrative to which each of our lives in an element. The metanarrative serves as an umbrella for smaller narratives in which other epistemic and moral narratives find their place. There seems to be a clear intersection in Lyotard and Foucault’s works: the former studies the conditions in which the metanarratives empty themselves, while the latter occupies himself with the archaeological/genealogical study of the narratives within the metanarratives that, in turn, occupy the vacuum left by the original metanarrative. There is, nonetheless, a distinction between both authors: while Lyotard sees this replacement as normative-laden, Foucault focuses on a strictly analytical view of discourse and practice. (shrink)

Previous work has treated time as the ordered construction of accessible information and cosmic age as a regime-dependent readout of primordial structure. That framework is strongest in high-density or high-compression regimes. The present paper subjects it to the opposite limit: regions of very low matter density and sparse structure, observationally realised as cosmic voids. We argue that a consistent informational account of time predicts, in such near-empty regimes, a reduced local construction of temporal order: few stabilisable distinctions, thin informational geometry, (...) and limited structural history. This is not a claim that metric time in general relativity stops, nor that photons fail to propagate. Light traverses voids; clocks can still be defined. What is reduced is the amount of local informational structure available to be ordered as temporal process. To clarify the distinction between metric time and informational temporal construction, we recall the standard relativistic asymmetry between distant and local temporal descriptions near a black-hole horizon. That asymmetry is used only as a controlled analogy for regimedependent readout, not as a dynamical model of voids. Cosmic voids and black-hole horizons stand at opposite extremes of density; both, however, illustrate that temporal description depends on conditions of access. The paper positions cosmic voids as a stress test for the informational theory of time. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes two tasks. First, I examine in detail Edmund Husserl’s earliest philosophy of surrogates, as it is found in his 1890 “On the Logic of Signs ”. I analyze his psychological and logical investigations of surrogates, where the former is concerned with explaining how these signs function and the latter with how they do so reliably. His differentiation of surrogates on the basis of their genetic origins and degrees of necessity is discussed. Second, the historical importance of this (...) text is disclosed by showing how Semiotic serves as both the inspiration for, and the foil to, Husserl’s 1901 First Logical Investigation. Husserl not only adopts the idea that linguistic signs can function via association, but also maintains that such signs can motivate me to execute one of two experiences. The key difference between the texts is that Husserl abandons his theory of surrogates in 1901, instead holding that I can experience absent objects by means of empty intentions. The reasons why Husserl found it necessary to transform this tenet of his philosophy are discussed at length. (shrink)

Objectives Practitioners in contemplative traditions commonly report experiencing an awareness that is distinct from sensory objects, thoughts, and emotions (“awareness itself”). They also report experiences of a void or underlying silence that is closely associated with this awareness. Subjects who carry out the Headless Way exercises frequently report an experience of emptiness or void at the same time as other contents (void-like experiences). The goals of this study were to (1) assess the reliability of these methods in eliciting the (...) recognition of awareness and void-like experiences in participants who had no prior exposure to these techniques, (2) investigate the prevalence of these experiences in these tasks, and (3) to differentiate these experiences from closely related and potential precursor experiences. -/- Method Twenty adults participated in in-depth individual interviews in which they were guided through the Headless Way exercises. A thematic analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts. -/- Results Twelve of the participants reported a void-like experience, and five participants reported an experience of awareness itself. These experiences were respectively categorized as subsets of the more general categories of perceptual absences and the sense of not being person-like. Another novel finding was the real-time reports of awareness and void-like experiences during the exercises. -/- Conclusions Our findings provide preliminary evidence that the Headless Way exercises can effectively induce experiences of emptiness and awareness in participants without prior experience. The findings suggest that such experiences can be elicited outside of a traditional meditation context, including in non-meditators. Furthermore, the experience of not being person-like and of perceptual absences may be precursors and more general forms of recognizing awareness itself and the void-like nature of the mind. (shrink)

We do not need an infinite hard disk to run a computer game that generates infinite maps using procedural generation techniques, which create real-time map content based on algorithms rather than pre-designed content. Similarly, our brain-mind system generates everything for us in real-time. Therefore, we never find the borders of the universe, although we want to. In other words, the universe and everything we experience, including light, sound, smell, taste, pressure, temperature, etc., are illusions that are generated in our mind (...) in real-time according to a random algorithm, which we can understand by having mindfulness. Absolutely, everyone surrounding us is illusions. The most interesting aspect is that when we consider ourselves from another person's perspective, we, including our brain-mind system, become part of the universe generated within their brain-mind system. Therefore, we are also something that does not exist. In conclusion, we can assume that the brain-mind system is always active and generates an infinite universe in real-time, yet the brain-mind system itself is inherently non-existent. (shrink)

This essay argues that the phrase “sending a usable message to the past” — the implicit framing of recent popular treatments of post-selected closed timelike curves and related retrocausal proposals — has no possible referent. The argument proceeds from a single premise: the genuineness of agency. A sender whose agency is not genuine is not a sender but an item of illusory furniture in an illusory system, and the scenario dissolves before it begins; the same dissolution overtakes the four-dimensional block (...) universe, in which a fixed past, present, and future leave no open act of sending to perform. Agency is the more general ground: the verdict follows wherever choice is genuine, whatever the surrounding cosmology, while the block secures it only by erasing the chooser. Granting genuine agency, the locus of that agency must be a non-fungible individual, and a genuine choice forecloses the alternatives it passes over. A realized life-path can therefore be neither re-run to a different outcome — which would be a different individual — nor overwritten by a foreclosed sibling; to alter the past is to attempt one of these, and neither is a coherent operation. Three possibilities are canvassed and shown to exhaust the conceptual space: (i) the message changes the past, which requires the substrate of reality to host inconsistent trajectories at unacceptable cost; (ii) the message cannot change the past, in which case the receiver’s behavior was already going to be what it is and “message” is a label attached to a consistent concurrence rather than a transmission; and (iii) the mechanism uses post-selection to filter joint histories such that only the self-consistent ones occur — which on inspection collapses into (ii). These are not three independent possibilities but the three forms any apparent transmission must take once genuine alteration is excluded. The shared feature of (ii) and (iii) is that the apparatus of communication is preserved while its substance — counterfactual force from sender to receiver — is hollowed out. Generalizing to n simultaneous senders strengthens rather than weakens this conclusion. Three implications follow: freedom is genuine but bounded by the world’s consistency conditions; the felt experience of forward-moving time is a survivorship sample of the world’s permissible configurations; and suffering produced by past events cannot be undone by any act directed at the past, because no such act has the informational efficacy it appears to have. The argument is offered as a companion to the Dual-Layered Reality framework, in which logically and sequentially inconsistent trajectories are filtered at the substrate level. (shrink)

The result of combining classical quantificational logic with modal logic proves necessitism – the claim that necessarily everything is necessarily identical to something. This problem is reflected in the purely quantificational theory by theorems such as ∃x t=x; it is a theorem, for example, that something is identical to Timothy Williamson. The standard way to avoid these consequences is to weaken the theory of quantification to a certain kind of free logic. However, it has often been noted that in order (...) to specify the truth conditions of certain sentences involving constants or variables that don’t denote, one has to apparently quantify over things that are not identical to anything. In this paper I defend a contingentist, non-Meinongian metaphysics within a positive free logic. I argue that although certain names and free variables do not actually refer to anything, in each case there might have been something they actually refer to, allowing one to interpret the contingentist claims without quantifying over mere possibilia. (shrink)

This paper examines the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy of nonintuitive intentions. The analysis has two stages. First, I expose a mistake in Husserl’s account of non-intuitive acts from his 1901 Logical Investigations. I demonstrate that Husserl employs the term “signitive” too broadly, as he concludes that all non-intuitive acts are signitive. He states that not only meaning acts, but also the contiguity intentions of perception are signitive acts. Second, I show how Husserl, in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical (...) Investigation, amends his 1901 theory of non-intuitive acts, which he now calls “empty” intentions. He there accurately distinguishes empty meaning acts from the empty intentions of perception. In the conclusion, I reveal how Husserl’s alterations to his theory of non-intuitive intentions can inform our understanding of a larger shift in his philosophy. (shrink)

In his account of the individuation and creation of thinking in Difference and Repetition Gilles Deleuze claims that there belongs “an experience of death.” What does this mean and imply for an attempt to come to terms with Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism? The following article presents a reading that explores this question, arguing that Deleuze’s account of what it means to think has two aspects that must be understood in relation to each other. On the one hand, Deleuze’s ontology of intensive (...) difference involves an image of human individuation grounded upon a “death present in the living.” On the other hand, Deleuze writes that in the creation of “thinking in thought” there is an experience of death. Understanding the relation between the individuating aspect of death – as the emergence of the pure and empty form of time as the basis for representational thinking and judgement – and the experience of this individuating factor in the creation of thinking in thought, Deleuze’s claim can be made sense of and its centrality in his system clarified. When death as an individuating factor becomes experience, thinking is transmuted from dead representation to intensive life, and transcendental empiricism is operationalized. (shrink)

Abstract. On the Direct Reference thesis, proper names are what I call ‘genuine terms’, terms whose sole semantic contributions to the propositions expressed by their use are the terms’ semantic referents. But unless qualified, this thesis implies the false consequence that sentences containing names that fail to refer can never express true or false propositions. (Consider ‘The ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus’, for instance.) I suggest that while names are typically and fundamentally used as genuine terms, there is a small class (...) of names, which I call ‘descriptive names’, whose reference is fixed by commonly associated definite descriptions, and I also suggest that there is an idiom of natural language on which such names can be used as abbreviated definite descriptions in a limited set of sentential contexts, including (1) positive and negative existentials, (2) cognitive ascriptions, and (3) uses of names to talk about myth. Uses of empty descriptive names in such contexts can then be either true or false. Relying on Gregory Currie’s theory of truth in fiction, I also propose an idiom on which fictional names can be used as short for a certain type of description in talk about fiction. Along the way, I provide arguments that names are used as short for descriptions in substantive existential statements as well as in both metamythic and metafictive contexts. I also discuss and criticize alternative views of these matters, including the views of David Braun, Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen, and others. (shrink)

Fred Adams and collaborators advocate a view on which empty-name sentences semantically encode incomplete propositions, but which can be used to conversationally implicate descriptive propositions. This account has come under criticism recently from Marga Reimer and Anthony Everett. Reimer correctly observes that their account does not pass a natural test for conversational implicatures, namely, that an explanation of our intuitions in terms of implicature should be such that we upon hearing it recognize it to be roughly correct. Everett argues that (...) the implicature view provides an explanation of only some of our intuitions, and is in fact incompatible with others, especially those concerning the modal profile of sentences containing empty names. I offer a pragmatist treatment of empty names based upon the recognition that the Gricean distinction between what is said and what is implicated is not exhaustive, and argue that such a solution avoids both Everett's and Reimer's criticisms. (shrink)

Connections between Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra and Aṣṭasāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra suggest a new interpretation of an important passage in the Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya or Heart Sutra. I am able to show that the four phrases exemplified by “form is emptiness” were once a reference to the well-known simile, “Form is like an illusion” (rūpam māyopamam). As the Prajñāpāramitā corpus expanded, the simile became a metaphor, “form is illusion”. It was then deliberately altered by exchanging “illusion” for “emptiness”, leading to the familiar phrases. This connection opens (...) the door to reading the Heart Sutra, and the early Prajñāpāramitā sutras more generally, along the lines of Sue Hamilton’s (2000) epistemological approach to the Pāḷi suttas; i.e. as focussed on experience and particularly the meditative experience known in the Pāḷi suttas as dwelling in emptiness (suññatā-vihāra). In this view, the Heart Sutra makes sense on its own terms without having to invoke paradox or mysticism. (shrink)

In this study, I reconstruct and compare Alain Badiou’s Being and Event (2005) and Graham Priest’s One (2014), arguing that the ontologies pursued within the two texts are intriguingly analogous in a number of ways. Both Badiou and Priest are committed to thinking through classically ontological problems without denying the validity of the paradoxes they raise; both regard Plato’s Parmenides as an early and formative account of these paradoxes; both establish conclusions to the effect that unity – or “oneness” – (...) is indeed a contradictory phenomenon; and both, as a corollary of this conclusion, develop frameworks which confer ontological prominence upon "the void" and "emptiness" respectively, thereby arriving at what appears to be a shared ontological nihilism. In this comparative study, I not only enquire whether the frameworks adopted by Badiou and Priest really do lead to nihilist conclusions, but also attempt to clearly outline their trajectories of thought for the benefit of those who might be tempted to dismiss their seemingly outlandish theses out of hand. (shrink)

In contrast to Buddhist Reductionists who deny the ultimate existence of the persons, Buddhist Personalists claim that persons are ultimately real in some important sense. Recently, some philosophers have offered philosophical reconstructions of Buddhist Personalism. In this paper, I critically evaluate one philosophical reconstruction of Buddhist Personalism according to which persons are irreducible to the parts that constitute them. Instead, persons are emergent entities and have novel properties that are distinct from the properties of their constituents. While this emergentist interpretation (...) is an interesting and well-motivated reconstruction of the Personalist position, I ultimately reject it on substantive grounds. I distinguish between different kinds of emergentism in the contemporary philosophical literature and show that they fail to support Buddhist Personalism. I thus conclude that Buddhist Personalism is untenable if it’s committed to emergentism about persons. This paper also indirectly defends Buddhist Reductionism by showing that it has crucial advantages over Buddhist Personalism. (shrink)

This paper advances the concept of the Empty Centre as a framework for understanding the modern British monarchy. It argues that a dynasty of comparatively modest dynastic standing found itself elevated to the symbolic apex of the most powerful state of the nineteenth century, producing a persistent mismatch between institutional capacity and imperial expectation. Drawing on institutional theory, Weberian authority, Bourdieu’s habitus, Elias’s court society, and the literature on invented traditions, the paper examines how spectacle, protocol, ceremonial performance, and bureaucratic (...) management emerged as compensatory mechanisms for structural inadequacy. Through analyses of Victoria’s withdrawal, the invention of modern royal ritual, the abdication crisis, the abandonment of the Romanovs, the treatment of Diana, Princess of Wales, and contemporary constitutional arrangements, the study develops the concepts of Institutional Filtering, Systemic Immunity, the Wrong Question, and the Empathy Tax. It argues that the modern monarchy survives less through strategic competence than through institutional inertia, symbolic management, and the ability to externalise agency to stronger actors within the political system. The paper contributes to debates in institutional theory, political legitimacy, constitutional symbolism, and the sociology of power. (shrink)

Frege held that the bare demonstrative ‘that’ is incomplete, and that it is the word together with a gesture that serves as the designating expression, and likewise that it is the word ‘yesterday’ together with the time of utterance that designates the relevant day. David Kaplan’s original theory of indexicals holds that Frege’s supplementation thesis is correct about demonstratives but incorrect about ‘yesterday’. Kaplan’s account of demonstratives deviates from Frege’s in treating supplemented demonstratives as directly referential, hence rigid. It is (...) argued here that the gesture or other demonstration that accompanies an utterance of ‘that’ is not part of the designating expression but instead part of the utterance context. (shrink)

This paper hopes to contribute to the contemporary East-West and Buddhist-Christian dialogues through a comparative examination of how ethics is founded upon the notion of emptiness and its analogues in the thought of two Japanese thinkers, Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990) of the Kyoto School of Philosophy, Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960), and the Russian Christian existentialist Ni-kolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). By comparing and contrasting Nishitani's notion of double-negation (from the standpoint of being to the standpoint of nihility and to the standpoint of (...) class='Hi'>emptiness) and how it forms a basis for an ethics of circuminsessional interpenetration, with Watsuji's notion of the double-negation of the individual and society in ethics, and with Berdyaev's double-negation in his three forms of ethics (ethics of law, ethics of redemption, ethics of creativeness) we shall examine the structural similarities and points of non-exclusion of "Eastern" Buddhist philosophy and "Western" Christian philosophy. (shrink)

‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express different propositions, even though neither ‘Ahab’ nor ‘Holmes’ has a referent. This seems to constitute a theoretical puzzle for the Russellian view of propositions. In this paper, I develop a variant of the Russellian view, Plenitudinous Russellianism. I claim that ‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express distinct gappy propositions. I discuss key metaphysical and semantic differences between Plenitudinous Russellianism and Traditional Russellianism and respond to objections that (...) stem from those differences. (shrink)

Many Epicurean arguments for the claim that death is nothing to us depend on the ‘Experience Constraint’: the claim that something can only be good or bad for us if we experience it. However, Epicurus’ commitment to the Experience Constraint makes his attitude to will-writing puzzling. How can someone who accepts the Experience Constraint be motivated to bring about post mortem outcomes?We might think that an Epicurean will-writer could be pleased by the thought of his/her loved ones being provided for (...) after his/her death. Warren has argued that this does not dissolve the puzzle, since it involves a hope which the Epicurean should take to be empty just as the fear of death is empty. However, if it is a necessary condition of an emotion’s being empty that it involve accepting a claim which is not only false but also harmful it is not clear that this hope is indeed ‘empty’: there is a crucial disanalogy between fearing death and hoping for the prosperity of one’s children here. And if emptiness does... (shrink)

A gas in a box is perhaps the most important model system studied in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Usually, studies focus on the gas, whereas the box merely serves as an idealized confinement. The present article focuses on the box as the central object and develops a thermodynamic theory by treating the geometric degrees of freedom of the box as the degrees of freedom of a thermodynamic system. Applying standard mathematical methods to the thermody- namics of an empty box allows (...) equations with the same structure as those of cosmology and classical and quantum mechanics to be derived. The simple model system of an empty box is shown to have interesting connections to classical mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory. (shrink)