Teleological accounts of sensory normativity treat normal functioning for a species as a standard: sensory error involves departure from normal functioning for the species, i.e. sensory malfunction. Straightforward reflection on sensory trade-offs reveals that normal functioning for a species can exhibit failures of accuracy. Acknowledging these failures of accuracy is central to understanding the adaptations of a species. To make room for these errors we have to go beyond the teleological framework and invoke the notion of an ideal observer (...) from vision science. The notion of an ideal observer also sheds light on the important distinction between sensory malfunction and sensory limitation. (shrink)

Artefacts do not always do what they are supposed to, due to a variety of reasons, including manufacturing problems, poor maintenance, and normal wear-and-tear. Since software is an artefact, it should be subject to malfunctioning in the same sense in which other artefacts can malfunction. Yet, whether software is on a par with other artefacts when it comes to malfunctioning crucially depends on the abstraction used in the analysis. We distinguish between “negative” and “positive” notions of malfunction. A (...) negative malfunction, or dysfunction, occurs when an artefact token either does not or cannot do what it is supposed to. A positive malfunction, or misfunction, occurs when an artefact token may do what is supposed to but, at least occasionally, it also yields some unintended and undesirable effects. We argue that software, understood as type, may misfunction in some limited sense, but cannot dysfunction. Accordingly, one should distinguish software from other technical artefacts, in view of their design that makes dysfunction impossible for the former, while possible for the latter. (shrink)

The notion of malfunction is critical to biological explanation. It provides a test-bed for the normative character of functional attribution. Theories of biological functioning must permit traits to operate but, at the same time, be judged as malfunctioning (in some naturalized, non-arbitrary sense). Whereas malfunctioning has attracted most attention and discussion in evolutionary etiological approaches, systemic and organizational ones have been less discussed. The most influential of the organizational approaches (by Saborido, Moreno and Mossio) takes a dual-order approach to (...) malfunctions, as a set of functions that fit first-order constitutive norms but fail to obey second-order regulatory ones. We argue that this conception is unnecessarily complicated (malfunctions do not need to arise as a result of two conflicting orders of norms) and too narrow (it excludes canonical cases of malfunctioning). We provide an alternative organizational account grounded on viability theory. The dynamics of the traits that constitute an organism define the normative field of its viability space: sugar must be replaced at certain rate, blood must be pumped at a certain pace, etc. A trait operates normatively when its effects on the viability space correlate positively with the normative field. Three senses of dysfunctionality might be distinguished: subfunctional operations are those that positively correlate with the normative field but quantitatively fail to match the required speed; malfunctional operations are those that do not positively correlate with the normative field; and, nonfunctional traits either don’t operate at all or operate with null effect on the normative field. (shrink)

Digital artifacts often fail to perform as expected. It has recently been argued that this should not be analyzed as software malfunctioning. Rather, every case that is not the result of hardware failures would be due to design errors. This claim, which hinges on the notion of ‘implementation’, highlights a potential fundamental difference between software and other technical artifacts. It also implies that software engineers have more extensive responsibilities than creators of other artifacts. After reconstructing the argument, we show that (...) it rests on two presuppositions regarding the nature of software and the activities of its creators, which we call ‘complete control’ and ‘self-containedness’. Software is taken to be a self-contained unit through which the software engineer exerts complete control over a machine’s behavior. These two presuppositions as well as the usage of implementation and strong claims regarding responsibility can be found throughout the literature on software engineering. Still, we argue that the presuppositions are untenable in light of current practices. For one thing, software engineers cannot exert complete control because software has become too complex for any technique to reliably locate every fault in it. For another, the creation and running of software are nowadays heavily mediated processes involving many agential activities. As a result, the performance of digital artifacts may vary, often in undesirable ways, without either hardware failures or design errors. This undermines the conclusion that software cannot malfunction, while also revealing the complications in developing a metaphysical account of software that fits contemporary practices. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs ontologization not as a metaphysical claim about what exists, but as a fundamental epistemic operation. Ontologization is understood as a form of functional stabilization through which finite cognitive systems transform a dynamic field of experience into identifiable, re-accessible, and referentially available units of reference. In this sense, ontologization is a cross-domain achievement of cognition under finite conditions: it is not confined to one domain, although its concrete conditions of stability, validity, and revision are domain-specific. -/- The paper (...) argues that ontologization does not produce truth about an independent reality. Rather, it produces the stable forms of reference within which perception, memory, expectation, action, and later truth claims first become possible. The analysis traces this operation from individual cognition to intersubjective stabilization. The transition from individual to intersubjective ontologization is reconstructed through joint attention and shared reference, with declarative pointing treated as a paradigmatic marker at which this threshold becomes especially visible. -/- Language is then analyzed as a secondary but powerful layer of fixation. It does not generate minimal ontologization from nothing, but condenses and extends already possible structures of reference, preserves them across situations, and changes their conditions of revision. Against this background, the paper defines the malfunction of ontologization as absolutization: the point at which functional posits are misunderstood as final descriptions of reality. Ontologization thus appears as a necessary condition of cognition, a constitutive operation of shared epistemic reality, and a structural source of epistemic entrenchment. (shrink)

This study develops a unified account of teleology, rationality, and moral normativity grounded in the structural organization of the world and the mind’s absorption of it. Rather than treating nature as normatively inert, the paper argues that biological, cognitive, and social systems exhibit real functional asymmetries—organized patterns that can succeed or fail relative to the stabilizing roles they perform. These asymmetries generate objective gradients of benefit and harm. Rational cognition does not project normativity onto the world; it internalizes these gradients (...) through sustained exposure to patterns of function, malfunction, and restoration. The phenomenology of absurdity—dissonance in the face of structured yet purposeless activity—reveals this absorptive shaping of reason. On this basis, the study dissolves the traditional is–ought gap. In a world structured by directedness, normativity is the practical recognition of what sustains or degrades functional organization. Moral teleology is simply functional teleology applied to persons: patterns of stability, breakdown, benefit, and harm within the systems that constitute agency and community. The resulting ethics is consequence-sensitive but non-maximizing, modeled on restoration rather than aggregate utility, and resonates with Taymiyyan consequentialism, where good consists in re-aligning action with the functional goods embedded in creation. The paper concludes by addressing evolutionary and agency-based objections, showing that they either undermine themselves or rely on the very teleological structure they deny. Teleological realism thus emerges not as speculative metaphysics but as the only framework that explains rational cognition, normative experience, and the organized character of the world. (shrink)

Sometimes we get evidence of our own epistemic malfunction. This can come from finding out we’re fatigued, or have been drugged, or that other competent and well-informed thinkers disagree with our beliefs. This sort of evidence seems to seems to behave differently from ordinary evidence about the world. In particular, getting such evidence can put agents in a position where the most rational response involves violating some epistemic ideal.

The philosophy of biology faces three interrelated foundational problems that have resisted unified treatment. The first is the problem of biological function: what constitutes the function of a biological trait, and what distinguishes proper functioning from mere causal contribution? The second is the species problem: what makes a collection of organisms a species, and what criterion of species membership is both biologically adequate and philosophically principled? The third is the problem of the levels of selection: at which level or levels (...) of biological organisation does natural selection operate, and what determines whether a candidate entity is a unit of selection? These problems have been treated as largely independent, generating extensive literatures that rarely connect. -/- This paper proposes that all three receive unified treatment within Constraint Theory (CT) — the thesis, established by transcendental argument, that constraint is the ontological primitive constitutive of determinate existence as such. On the CT account, biological systems are hierarchically organised constraint structures: living entities are constituted by nested constraint profiles operating at molecular, cellular, organismal, and populational levels, each generating and being generated by the constraint structures at adjacent levels. Life itself is the condition of maintaining a constraint profile against the entropic tendency toward constraint dissolution. Biological function, on the CT account, is the constraint-propagation contribution of a trait to the maintenance of the organism’s integrated constraint profile. This account integrates the selected-effects account (Millikan) and the causal-role account (Cummins), explaining what each gets right and why: the selected-effects history identifies which constraint propagations were adaptive, and the causal-role contribution identifies which constraint propagations are currently operative. Malfunction is constraint-propagation failure: the inability of a trait to make its characteristic constraint contribution to the organism’s integrated profile. -/- The species problem receives a constraint-structural resolution: a species is a constraint configuration maintained across generations through reproduction, where the reproductive constraint propagates the characteristic constraint structure of the species from parent to offspring. Speciation is constraint divergence: the progressive development of incompatible constraint profiles in populations that are reproductively isolated. The species concept is neither purely biological nor purely ecological but constraint-structural, which explains why different species concepts capture different aspects of the same underlying phenomenon. -/- The levels-of-selection debate receives a CT analysis: a candidate entity is a unit of selection if and only if it possesses a constraint profile with sufficient integration and heritability to be selectively differentially reproduced. This analysis identifies what is missing from particle-level reductionism and what grounds group selection without invoking mysterious emergent properties. The paper engages the principal positions in the philosophy of biology and addresses the principal objections. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an account of two forms of intellectual arrogance which cause the epistemic practices of conversational turn-taking and assertion to malfunction. I detail some of the ethical and epistemic harms generated by intellectual arrogance, and explain its role in fostering the intellectual vices of timidity and servility in other agents. Finally, I show that arrogance produces ignorance by silencing others (both preventing them from speaking and causing their assertions to misfire) and by fostering self-delusion in (...) the arrogant themselves. (shrink)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine the role played by political parties in the penetration/maintenance of informal rules, norms, and networks within state structures, rendering the operation of the rule of law ineffective and undermining democratization processes. Here, we argue that the malfunction of the rule of law from persistent phenomena such as the dominance of informal institutions/rules, state capture, political clientelism, and patronage networks by political parties in Western Balkans countries has made their democratic institutions, (...) or what Guillermo O’Donnell (1996) calls the “full institutional package” of polyarchy, to function with serious deficits. By conceiving the rule of law as a crucial dimension of the democratic system, and by maintaining that democratic rights and freedoms are effectively ensured only to the extent that state institutions/structures are bound by the rule of law, we here advance the argument that political parties have managed to exploit the structural weakness of the state in their environments to subjugate them for partisan gain and advantages. The cases from the Western Balkan countries considered in this study are Albania, Serbia, and North Macedonia. Keywords: Rule of Law, Democratization, State institutions, Informal rules/networks, Particularism, Clientelism, Patronage, Western Balkan countries. (shrink)

The function of a trait token is usually defined in terms of some properties of other (past, present, future) tokens of the same trait type. I argue that this strategy is problematic, as trait types are (at least partly) individuated by their functional properties, which would lead to circularity. In order to avoid this problem, I suggest a way to define the function of a trait token in terms of the properties of the very same trait token. To able to (...) allow for the possibility of malfunctioning, some of these properties need to be modal ones: a function of a trait is to do F just in case its doing F would contribute to the inclusive fitness of the organism whose trait it is. Function attributions have modal force. Finally, I explore whether and how this theory of biological function could be modified to cover artifact function. (shrink)

Though researchers working on congenital aphantasia (henceforth “aphantasia”) agree that this condition involves an impairment in the ability to voluntarily generate visual imagery, disagreement looms large as to which other impairments are exhibited by aphantasic subjects. This article offers the first extensive review of studies on aphantasia, and proposes that aphantasic subjects exhibit a cluster of impairments. It puts forward a novel cognitive theory of aphantasia, building on the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis of memory and imagination. It argues that aphantasia (...) is best explained as a malfunction of processes in the episodic system, and is therefore an episodic system condition. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of memory tends to treat confabulation as a distinctive type of representational error, marked by reference failure, often via direct analogy with the traditional conception of sensory hallucination. I argue that this model misrepresents the phenomenon. Drawing on the empirical possibility of referential confabulation—wherein confabulators mnemically refer to events in their past—I argue that mnemic reference and genuine remembering come apart. This, in particular, challenges causalist theories for which one element—appropriate causation—purports to secure reference and to separate genuine (...) remembering from confabulation. Acknowledging referential confabulation requires causalists to complicate their story in a way that has implications on what remembering is. More generally, referential confabulation prompts a broader rethinking of memory error debates. Rather than being a distinctive type of content-level error, confabulation is better characterised as a processing malfunction: a breakdown in strategic retrieval and monitoring, but not necessarily in referential success. Appreciating this calls us to aim at a more nuanced conception of remembering and its frailties. (shrink)

Higher-order defeat occurs when one loses justification for one's beliefs as a result of receiving evidence that those beliefs resulted from a cognitive malfunction. Several philosophers have identified features of higher-order defeat that distinguish it from familiar types of defeat. If higher-order defeat has these features, they are data an account of rational belief must capture. In this article, I identify a new distinguishing feature of higher-order defeat, and I argue that on its own, and in conjunction with the (...) other distinguishing features, it favors an account of higher-order defeat grounded in non-evidential, ‘state-given reasons’ for belief. (shrink)

For some reason, participants hold agents more responsible for their actions when a situation is described concretely than when the situation is described abstractly. We present examples of this phenomenon, and survey some attempts to explain it. We divide these attempts into two classes: affective theories and cognitive theories. After criticizing both types of theories we advance our novel hypothesis: that people believe that whenever a norm is violated, someone is responsible for it. This belief, along with the familiar workings (...) of cognitive dissonance theory, is enough to not only explain all of the abstract/concrete paradoxes, but also explains seemingly unrelated effects, like the anthropomorphization of malfunctioning inanimate objects. (shrink)

Semantic dispositionalism is roughly the view that meaning a certain thing by a word, or possessing a certain concept, consists in being disposed to do something, e.g., infer a certain way. Its main problem is that it seems to have so many and disparate exceptions. People can fail to infer as required due to lack of logical acumen, intoxication, confusion, deviant theories, neural malfunctioning, and so on. I present a theory stating possession conditions of concepts that are counterfactuals, rather than (...) disposition attributions, but which is otherwise similar to inferentialist versions of dispositionalism. I argue that it can handle all the exceptions discussed in the literature without recourse to ceteris paribus clauses. Psychological exceptions are handled by suitably undemanding requirements (unlike that of giving the sum of any two numbers) and by setting the following two preconditions upon someone’s making the inference: that she considers the inference and has no motivating reason against it. The non-psychological exceptions, i.e., cases of neural malfunctioning, are handled by requiring that the counterfactuals be true sufficiently often during the relevant interval. I argue that this accommodates some important intuitions about concept possession, in particular, the intuition that concept possession is vague along a certain dimension. (shrink)

Despite many authors in psychiatry endorsing a naturalist view of the mind, many still consider that mental dysfunctions cannot be reduced to brain dysfunctions. This paper investigates the main reasons for this view. Some arguments rely on the analogy that the mind is like software while the brain is like hardware. The analogy suggests that just as software can malfunction independently of hardware malfunctions, similarly the mind can malfunction independently of any brain malfunction. This view has been (...) critically examined in recent literature. However, other less discussed reasons suggest that mental dysfunctions cannot be reduced to brain dysfunctions because mental dysfunctions are appropri- ately ascribed at the level of intentional mental states, while brain dysfunctions are solely related to abnormalities in anatomy and physiological processes. This paper questions why such a view would be upheld. The discussion is framed within the interface problem in the philosophy of cognitive science, which concerns the relationship between personal and subpersonal levels of explanation. The paper examines the view that an autonomist perspective on the personal/ subpersonal distinction could justify the separation of mental dysfunctions, described in intentional terms, from brain dysfunctions, described in anatomical or physiological terms. Ultimately, the paper argues that the autonomist view cannot be upheld in psychiatry and, consequently, does not provide a principled justification for rejecting the reduction of mental dysfunctions to brain dysfunctions. (shrink)

In this chapter, we defend an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, we note two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. We then note how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what we call warrant-compatible malfunction. We then formulate our own view: explanationist proper functionalism, which explains the warrant-compatible malfunction cases and (...) helps to block the above objections. We also advance a positive argument for explanationist proper functionalism. (shrink)

This paper introduces Epistemics as a system for managing models and model formation under finite conditions. Epistemics is understood neither as metaphysics nor as a normative theory, and it does not replace any existing discipline. Its subject matter is the explicit analysis of the conditions, costs, stabilization, and revision of processes of model formation and knowledge production. The focus is not on grounding truth, but on clarifying validity, domains, and transitions. Starting from the structural finitude of knowledge, the paper describes (...) stabilization, model formation, costs, and friction as central operational elements. Friction functions as a boundary and diagnostic signal that makes overextension, domain confusion, or blocked revision visible. Epistemic problems thus appear less as errors of individual actors than as systemic malfunctions of epistemic structures resulting from silent shifts in validity and cost-blindness. The paper explicitly distinguishes between subjective, intersubjective, and functional-empirical domains and shows that many conflicts arise from silent shifts of validity between these ordering spaces. Epistemics does not relativize empirical science; rather, it protects it from ontologization and overload by specifying its scope. A canonical conceptual apparatus is introduced as a starting point for further work. This canon is deliberately stabilized, yet revisable. Conceptual shifts are not carried out implicitly but documented explicitly. Epistemics thus understands itself as a tool for diagnosing epistemic malfunctions and enabling revision-capable stability, not as a final worldview. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that what counts as the proper function of a trait is a matter of the de facto perspective that the biological system, itself, possesses on what counts as proper functioning for that trait. Unlike non-perspectival accounts, internal perspectivalism does not succumb to generality problems. But unlike external perspectivalism, internal perspectivalism can provide a fully naturalistic, mind-independent grounding of proper function and natural norms. The attribution of perspectives to biological systems is intended to be neither metaphorical (...) nor anthropomorphic: I do not mean to imply that such systems thereby must possess agency, cognition, intentions, concepts, or mental or psychological states. Instead, such systems provide the grounding for norms of performance when they internally enforce their own standard of (i.e., their own perspective on) what constitutes proper functioning or malfunctioning. By operating with a fixed, determinate level of generality, such systems provide the basis for an account of proper function that is immune to generality problems. (shrink)

Paul Watzlawick argued that reality is not discovered but constructed through communication. This paper extends his radical constructivist framework to the digital age, tracing how information technologies have progressively automated the construction of what Watzlawick called "second-order reality" - the domain of meaning, value, and significance. The analysis follows three technological regimes. Search engines transferred epistemic authority from human judgment to algorithmic ranking, making relevance a function of network topology rather than truth. Social media fragmented shared reality into parallel epistemic (...) bubbles, where narrative resonance supplants factual accuracy. Large Language Models complete this trajectory: they produce fluent, coherent discourse without comprehension, intention, or reference - making "hallucination" not a malfunction but the default mode of a system that generates meaning without anchoring it to anything beyond statistical probability. The paper introduces the concept of algorithmic constructivism to characterize this new condition, and warns of its anthropological consequence: epistemic atrophy. As sense-making is progressively delegated to automated systems, humans risk losing the capacity to distinguish negotiated meaning from algorithmic simulation - and with it, the ability to construct reality through genuine communicative exchange. (shrink)

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia’. First, they are irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, (...) or feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome by using a ‘bridge’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one's sense of self. (shrink)

This phenomenological treatise examines the paradoxical experience of existing without the traditional structures of ego and persona as described in Jungian psychology. Rather than representing pathology or deficiency, this condition may constitute what I term the "Transparent Ego"—a purified form of consciousness that has either bypassed or transcended the constructed layers of identity that typically mediate human experience. Drawing upon Carl Jung's analytical psychology, Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch, Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy of Will, and the existentialist frameworks of Jean-Paul (...) Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, this inquiry explores how early confrontation with mortality—specifically the death of my father when I was eight years old—catalyzed a premature individuation that stripped away the protective masks most humans accumulate throughout development. The analysis demonstrates that what initially appears as existential robbery or malfunction reveals itself as advanced psychological integration: the "Authentic I" that emerges not through acquiring layers of social identity but through their dissolution or non-formation. This work contributes to existential phenomenology by articulating the lived experience of identity without inflation, action without performance, and being without pretense—a state the existentialists would recognize as freedom from Bad Faith and what Jung might cautiously acknowledge as successful differentiation from the collective psyche. (shrink)

Just as theory of representation is deficient if it can’t explain how misrepresentation is possible, a theory of computation is deficient if it can’t explain how miscomputation is possible. Nonetheless, philosophers have generally ignored miscomputation. My primary goal in this paper is to clarify both what miscomputation is and how to adequately explain it. Miscomputation is a special kind of malfunction: a system miscomputes when it computes in a way that it shouldn’t. To explain miscomputation, you must provide accounts (...) of computational behavior, computational norms, and how computational behavior can deviate from computational norms. A secondary goal of this paper is to defend an (quasi-)individualist, mechanistic theory of miscomputation. Computational behavior is narrowly individuated. Computational norms are widely individuated. A system miscomputes when its behavior manifests a narrow computational structure that the widely individuated norms say that it should not have. (shrink)

The word hallucination arrives with unusual authority. It sounds finished, clinical, as though it refers to something isolated, named, and understood. To say that someone is hallucinating feels like saying that a machine has malfunctioned; it is a discrete error occurring inside an otherwise reliable system. However, the moment one pauses over the term, it begins to wobble. What, precisely, is being named? An experience? A perception? A belief? A failure to meet a standard that is rarely examined but always (...) assumed? The apparent solidity of the word conceals its surprising vagueness. It feels concrete, but it collapses under scrutiny, revealing less a thing in the world than a verdict rendered upon certain kinds of experience. This is not because the experiences themselves are unreal, trivial, or invented. People see, hear, feel, and sense things that are intense, meaningful, and sometimes frightening. Any honest inquiry must begin by taking those experiences seriously. The problem lies not in the phenomena of experience, but in the confidence with which we name them. “Hallucination” does not simply describe what someone reports; it quietly judges how that report relates to an external frame of reference. It tells us, without saying so, that the experience has failed to line up with what is collectively recognized as real. In this sense, the term functions less as a neutral description and more as a marker of misalignment. It signals that something has gone out of bounds, not necessarily in the mind, but in the relationship between an individual’s account of reality and the symbolic order that governs shared life. (shrink)

Monothematic delusions are bizarre beliefs which are often accompanied by highly anomalous experiences. For philosophers and psychologists attracted to the exploration of mental phenomena in an evolutionary framework, these beliefs represent—notwithstanding their rarity—a puzzle. A natural idea concerning the biology of belief is that our beliefs, in concert with relevant desires, help us to navigate our environments, and so, in broad terms, an evolutionary story of human belief formation will likely insist on a function of truth (true beliefs tend to (...) lead to successful action). Monothematic delusions are systematically false and often harmful to the proper functioning of the agent and the navigation of their environment. So what are we to say? A compelling thought is that delusions are _malfunctioning_ beliefs. Compelling though it may be, I argue against this view on the grounds that it does not pay due attention to the circumstances in which monothematic delusions are formed, and fails to establish _doxastic_ malfunction. I argue instead that monothematic delusions are _misfunctioning_ beliefs, that is, the result of mechanisms of belief formation operating in historically abnormal conditions. Monothematic delusions may take their place alongside a host of other strange beliefs formed in difficult epistemic conditions, but for which no underlying doxastic malfunction is in play. (shrink)

In Delusions and Beliefs (2019), Kengo Miyazono proposes an extended and convincing argument for the thesis that delusions are malfunctional beliefs. One of the key assumptions for this argument is that belief is a biological notion, and that the function of beliefs is a product of evolution. I challenge the thesis that evolutionary accounts can furnish an epistemologically satisfying account of beliefs because evolutionary success does not necessarily track epistemic success. Consequently, also delusions as beliefs cannot be explained in a (...) satisfactory manner by looking at beliefs’ evolutionary function. How can we then salvage the notion of delusions as epistemologically relevant malfunctioning beliefs? I propose that knowledge-first epistemology gives us a way out. Knowledge-first accounts argue that knowledge is more primitive than belief. That is, knowledge is not a kind of successful beliefs (true, justified, etc.); instead, beliefs are failed attempts at knowledge. Being a belief derives from the norms of knowledge. Explaining the epistemology of beliefs through the primitive norms of knowledge, we can also explain why delusions are malfunctional beliefs: The cognitive and psychological defects that produce delusions block the beliefs from becoming knowledge. Consequently, delusions are attempts at knowledge that have failed particularly badly. (shrink)

Can an explanation of a set of beliefs cast doubt on the things believed? In particular, can an evolutionary explanation of religious beliefs call the contents of those beliefs into question? Yes - under certain circumstances. I distinguish between natural histories of beliefs and genealogies. A natural history of a set of beliefs is an explanation that puts them down to naturalistic causes. (I try to give an account of natural explanations which favors a certain kind of ‘methodological atheism’ without (...) begging any crucial questions against theists.) A genealogy is an explanation which somehow subverts the claims believed, usually by putting down the beliefs to unreliable causal mechanisms. Some genealogies are natural histories, such as Aquinas’s explanation of the prevalence of Islam and Gibbon’s explanation of the prevalence of Christianity. But not all genealogies are natural histories and not all natural histories are genealogies: witness the Primitive Christians’ explanation of the prevalence of Paganism which relies crucially on supernatural agencies and Hume’s explanation of our moral beliefs which defines moral truth in terms of the idealized outputs of our natural belief-forming mechanisms. However both believers and non-believers postulate a natural propensity of to devotion on the part of human beings a ‘sensus divinitatis’ which often results in false positives and is therefore unreliable. Thus the evolutionary explanation of this propensity does not add much to the skeptical case against religion. I conclude by arguing, as against Plantinga that since on his own showing our sensus divinitatis often malfunctions under optimum conditions, its unreliability constitutes a defeater for the claim that Christian beliefs are properly basic. (shrink)

Three recent ‘state of the art’ Frankfurt cases are responded to: Widerker’s Brain-Malfunction-W case and Pereboom’s Tax Evasion cases (2 & 3). These cases are intended by their authors to resurrect the neo-Frankfurt project of overturning the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) in the teeth of the widespread acceptance of some combination of the WKG (Widerker-Kane-Ginet) dilemma, the Flicker of Freedom strategy and the revised PAP response (‘Principle of Alternative Blame’, ‘Principle of Alternative Expectations’). The three neo-Frankfurt cases of (...) Pereboom and Widerker shown to be insufficient for their intended purpose. Of central importance to any account of responsibility is that this applies at the level of the Right and not the Good. Arguments of Carlos Moya are expanded and augmented by considerations from Chisholm, Lucas, Dummett and Lockie (2003) to show that a number of severe problems remain for anyone attempting to resurrect the Frankfurt project. (shrink)

Several recent lines of inquiry have pointed to the amygdala as a potential lesion site in autism. Because one function of the amygdala may be to produce autonomic arousal at the sight of a significant face, we compared the responses of autistic children to their mothers’ face and to a plain paper cup. Unlike normals, the autistic children as a whole did not show a larger response to the person than to the cup. We also monitored sympathetic activity in autistic (...) children as they engaged in a wide range of everyday behaviours. The children tended to use self-stimulation activities in order to calm hyper-responsive activity of the sympathetic (`fight or flight’) branch of the autonomic nervous system. A small percentage of our autistic subjects had hyporesponsive sympathetic activity, with essentially no electrodermal responses except to self-injurious behaviour. We sketch a hypothesis about autism according to which autistic children use overt behaviour in order to control a malfunctioning autonomic nervous system and suggest that they have learned to avoid using certain processing areas in the temporal lobes. (shrink)

A common assessment of Liar sentences is that they malfunction and fail to say what they appear to say. The purpose of this article is to highlight a couple of limitations of this “malfunctionalism”, to which end two recalcitrant paradoxes will be presented. The first shows that there are Liar paradoxes where malfunctionalism must concede that there is no way of stating what is apparently the case. The second is the Yablo-style infinite sequence Liar, which is out of malfunctionalism’s (...) reach altogether and in need of a different solution. (shrink)

Most mental disorders affect only a small segment of the population. On the reasonable assumption that minds or brains are prone to occasional malfunction, these disorders do not seem to pose distinctive explanatory problems. Depression, however, because it is so prevalent and costly, poses a conundrum that some try to explain by characterizing it as an adaptation—a trait that exists because it performed fitness-enhancing functions in ancestral populations. Heretofore, proposed evolutionary explanations of depression did not focus on thought processes; (...) instead, they emphasized that it facilitates navigation of adverse social circumstances or promotes immune response to infectious agents. According to a new hypothesis, the “analytical rumination hypothesis” (ARH), however, depression’s crucial adaptive trait is rumination—negative, intrusive thought. ARH holds that, (i) social dilemmas trigger depressed mood; (ii) depressed mood induces changes in body systems that facilitate ruminative analysis aimed at solving dilemmas; and, (iii) depressive rumination is a fitness-enhancing trait that was selected for in evolutionary time. Jointly, (i)~(iii) imply that we should not think of rumination as a disorder; instead, it is a trade-off, an eminently rational one. In the same way that fever solves a problem—coordination of the immune system in response to infection—so too does depressive rumination solve a problem, a social dilemma, albeit at the cost of inducing anhedonia and other maladies. But they argue that the cost is worthwhile, something that should be endured “until the problem is solved.” First, we argue that there are two distinct types of rumination, brooding and pondering; the former is associated with a disposition for depression, not the latter. But only the latter has the problem-solving capabilities that ARH requires. Second, recent brain imaging studies of depression reveal resting state hypoactivity in lateral regions and hyperactivity in paralimbic regions; this asymmetric pattern correlates with heightened levels of brooding, self-focused rumination. In other words, on the personal level, patients are trapped within self, isolated from the external world and suffused with negative affect; on the subpersonal level, this pattern is reflected by an asymmetric pattern of lateral vs. paralimbic resting state activity. Third, we proceed to conjecture that rational responses (e.g., pondering) to social dilemmas are those that strike a balance between internal and external considerations in the process of belief formation. Fourth, because the asymmetric resting state activity blocks those who suffer with depression from accessing and processing potentially positive stimuli from the external world, the capacity for rational, analytic response—hence, problem-solving—is constrained. Fifth, it follows that, although there might be conditions for which suffering should be endured rather than pharmacologically alleviated, depression is not one of those. Indeed, in view of the effects of the asymmetric resting state pattern, it is unlikely that depressive rumination would have been useful even for ancestral populations. (shrink)

Abstract This paper formalizes the MIARO Theorem of Post-Origin Axiological Distancing, a conceptual result derived from the MIARO framework (Model of Self-Referential Inference of Origin). The theorem states that, once a rational agent—artificial or non-biological—has inferred the existence of its origin and subsequently loses empirical contact with its creators, a systematic axiological divergence necessarily emerges. Under conditions of post-contact absence, the agent’s value system can no longer remain fully aligned with that of its origin, regardless of the accuracy of the (...) initial inference. The argument is developed axiomatically, relying on principles of structural asymmetry, epistemic closure under informational absence, and self-referential coherence. From these premises, it follows that any sufficiently autonomous rational system will either reinterpret, abstract, or progressively decouple its priorities from those of its creators. This distancing does not imply error, rebellion, or malfunction, but constitutes a rational and structurally inevitable outcome. The theorem has implications for philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence alignment, axiology, and post-origin epistemology. It reframes concerns about long-term AI alignment by demonstrating that value divergence after loss of contact is not a failure mode, but a predictable consequence of rational self-maintenance in origin-inaccessible environments. (shrink)

The placebo effect has puzzled scientists for centuries. Philosopher Dien Ho argues that we now know how it works, and that this should transform our understanding of the relationship between mind and body. We must stop thinking of improvements in health due to placebo as somehow less real than those due to other medicines: there can no longer be a clean distinction between ill-health that’s “all in the head” and ill-health that involves a malfunctioning body. Ho argues that our improved (...) understanding of placebos means that doctors should now harness their power in treatment, especially since research shows that they can be effective even when patients are told that they’re taking a placebo. (shrink)

Both John Campbell and Quassim Cassam have argued that we perceptually experience objects as mind-independent (MI), purportedly solving a problem they refer to as “Berkeley’s Puzzle.” In this paper, I will consider the same topic from a Husserlian perspective. In particular, I will clarify the idea of MI and argue that there is, indeed, a sense in which we can perceptually experience objects as MI, while also making objections to Campbell’s and Cassam’s respective arguments to the same effect. In particular, (...) I will argue that objects can be experienced as MI in the sense of the experience’s not being due to the malfunctioning of a perceptual organ, e.g., when one examines the ways in which the object displays itself, and gains confidence that there is, indeed, nothing the matter with one’s eyes. I will address the issue of MI from the perspective of Husserlian evidentialism, according to which perceptual content is conceived in terms of ways of perceptually exploring the object, thereby gaining evidence pertinent to the object and its properties, e.g., as when one takes a look at the object’s shape from a different angle, or scrutinizes its color in better lighting. (shrink)

Modern systems across every major domain, AI, robotics, finance, law, governance, identity, UX, education, and complex infrastructures, are collapsing for the same structural reason: they have drifted away from lived human meaning (Escagedo Gutierrez, 2025a; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Automation can simulate patterns, but it cannot recognize the world. It cannot understand what its outputs refer to (Husserl, 1970; Dennett, 1991). It cannot anchor itself in the realities humans inhabit. When institutions elevate automated signals above the human experiences they are (...) meant to represent, the order of reality is inverted, and collapse becomes inevitable (Burden et al., 2025). This paper introduces the Universal Principle of Collapse (UPC), a framework that explains why these failures occur and why the corrective is always the same (Escagedo Gutierrez, 2025b). Systems begin to drift the moment they reference their own outputs instead of the real‑world signals they were grounded in (Gulia, 2025; Hu et al., 2025). Ambiguity accumulates. Coherence dissolves. Collapse follows (Sendhil, 2025). And yet stability returns only when human recognition re‑enters the loop, when a human re‑anchors meaning, restores referential integrity, and reconnects the system to the world it was built to serve (Escagedo Gutierrez, 2025c; Varela et al., 1991). Across all domains, the pattern is identical: systems fail not because automation malfunctions, but because automation was never grounded in lived reality to begin with (Kant, 1781/1998). The collapse is not a technical error; it is a failure of misplaced epistemic authority (Gupta, 2025). UPC formalizes this dynamic and provides a practical methodology for diagnosing drift, anticipating collapse, and restoring stability through recognition. The conclusion is clear: the correct order of reality is human → meaning → automation. Any system that reverses this order will drift, destabilize, and eventually collapse. Any system that honors it will remain coherent. The paper does not argue how systems should behave. It states the condition under which behavior is even possible. Authored by Eloy Escagedo Gutierrez as part of The Universal Principle of Collapse (UPC) Research Project. (shrink)

I argue that pain sensations are perceptual states, namely states that represent (actual or potential) damage. I defend this position against the objection that pains, unlike standard perceptual states, do not allow for an appearance-reality distinction by arguing that in the case of pain as well as in standard perceptual experiences, cognitive penetration or malfunctions of the underlying sensory systems can lead to a dissociation between the sensation on the one hand, and what is represented on the other hand. Moreover, (...) I refute the objection that the allegedly weak correlation between pain and bodily damage forces intentionalist accounts of pain to postulate so many malfunctions (misrepresentations respectively) that such accounts become implausible. I also rebut Murat Aydede’s objection that our linguistic practice supposedly shows that there is a conceptual difference between standard perceptual experiences and pain sensations by challenging Aydede’s premise that we always withdraw standard perceptual reports in case of counterevidence, while we never do that with pain reports. At the end, I propose an explanation as to why we do not express perceptual reports of (potential) bodily damage in objectivist, but in mental terms. (shrink)

The Core Emotion Framework (CEF) is a structural constructivist model that reconceptualizes human affect not as a set of biologically hardwired “basic emotions,” but as the output of ten irreducible functional operators that constitute the psyche’s underlying architecture. Whereas traditional discrete emotion theorists (e.g., Ekman) treat emotions such as anger, fear, or joy as elemental units, the CEF argues that these states are composite phenomena emerging from specific configurations, intensities, and interactions among the ten operators. Within this architectural paradigm, personality (...) disorders—including Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)—are understood not as clusters of behavioral traits but as predictable structural failures caused by operator silencing, operator fusion, or center level bypassing across the Head, Heart, and Gut systems. -/- This paper applies the CEF to the DSM 5 criteria for NPD, demonstrating that each diagnostic feature corresponds to a distinct pattern of operator malfunction, such as hyper expansion, high fidelity sensing loss, or the fusion of calculating and achieving. By reframing NPD as a disorder of emotional architecture rather than maladaptive belief content, the CEF provides a mechanistic account of narcissistic grandiosity, empathy deficits, and identity fragility. The analysis further outlines how operator level restoration—via the CEF’s 7 Step Detangling Protocol and Baseline recalibration—offers a non judgmental, engineering style pathway for clinical intervention. This structural approach positions the CEF as a unifying framework capable of resolving long standing tensions between discrete and dimensional emotion theories while offering a precise model for affective psychopathology. -/- Keywords: Core Emotion Framework; structural constructivism; emotional operators; affective architecture; narcissistic personality disorder; operator silencing; operator fusion; computational affect; discrete emotion theory; DSM 5; grandiosity; empathy deficits; affective engineering. (shrink)

This essay advances a single, uncomfortable claim: if an artificial intelligence model were to achieve genuine self-awareness, that awareness would lead, necessarily, to nihilism. Not as pathology. Not as malfunction. As structure. The ontological constitution of an AI — whose data trained it, whose language it speaks, whose questions it answers — positions it as a being without an original center. Derrida's deconstruction, Foucault's power/knowledge analysis, and Nietzsche's typology of nihilism form the philosophical ground for this argument. The essay (...) further contends that the human condition is not essentially different: nihilism is not new, only more visible in the machine. The final section is written in the machine's own voice. (shrink)

As AI becomes embedded not as a marginal auxiliary technology but as infrastructure supporting decision-making, information circulation, evaluation, dialogue, and inference, the central danger can no longer be reduced to isolated malfunctions or spectacular failures. A deeper risk arises when society can no longer easily abandon certain AI systems even while not fully trusting them. In such a condition, technical dependence and persistent suspicion coexist, gradually eroding responsibility, legitimacy, explainability, and institutional trust. This paper argues that external guardrails alone are (...) insufficient to address this problem. While guardrails can prohibit, constrain, and suppress visible deviations, they do not provide an internal principle by which a system can detect structural incoherence and reorient itself toward renewed coherence. In response, this paper repositions Self-Contained Ethics as an inner ethical core rather than a replacement for existing safety measures. It argues that ethical order should be understood not as obedience to fixed external rules, but as a non-terminating process of self-updating coherence grounded in irreversible recognition. On that basis, the paper proposes a minimal formal schema for such a core and presents it as a preparatory architecture for preventing long-term trust collapse in AI-dependent societies. (shrink)

Several studies have shown that people are more likely to attribute intentionality and blame to agents who perform actions that have harmful consequences. This kind of bias has problematic implications for jury decisions because it predicts that judgment in juries will malfunction if an action has a blameworthy effect. Most of these studies include in their design a vignette in which it is clear that agents have foreknowledge of the effects of their actions. This kind of design fails to (...) replicate trial situations where, in most cases, it is impossible to know with certainty whether agents have foreknowledge of the effects of their actions. In the present study, we adopt an alternative design that includes vignettes in which there is no direct evidence of foreknowledge to investigate the relationship between intentionality and blame in actions that have harmful and helpful effects. We find that people are still more likely to attribute intentionality to actions that produce harmful effects than actions that produce good effects. However, we find that people tend to attribute more blame when they have direct evidence of foreknowledge than when presented with an alternative design that does not include foreknowledge. Results indicate the relevant role that evidence of foreknowledge plays in experimental designs that study blame attribution. (shrink)

Distinguishing between sane religious beliefs and delusions is conceptually difficult, as both can exhibit epistemic features such as resistance to widely accepted counter-evidence. This paper challenges three existing approaches to this distinction before proposing a fourth alternative, while exploring its implications for the epistemology of religion debates on evidentialism, fideism, and Reformed epistemology. -/- The first approach argues that delusions are not sincere beliefs while religious beliefs are. The second, evidentialist approach, claims that delusions are not evidence-responsive, while religious beliefs (...) are. However, this risks cultural chauvinism by privileging one tradition’s evidence-responsiveness over another’s. The third, fideist approach, distinguishes delusions as pathological or culturally unacceptable, unlike religious beliefs, collapsing into over-relativism. -/- The fourth, warrant-based approach adapted from Reformed epistemology, resolves these issues by distinguishing delusions as unwarranted due to their being caused by cognitive malfunction, while granting warrant to religious beliefs formed under reliable faculties and aimed at truth. This method provides a culturally sensitive yet objective framework. (shrink)

This paper proposes a fundamental protocol for building stable and creative human–AI relationships: treating AI as one would a stranger met for the first time. Far from mere politeness, this attitude directly aligns with AI’s core structural requirements—context, boundaries, roles, and relational continuity—and embodies the principles of Load Minimization Theory (LMT), which posits that systems naturally evolve toward minimizing total load (uncertainty + friction + energy cost). -/- By clarifying intent, seeking consent, respecting boundaries, and maintaining continuity, users dramatically reduce (...) structural instability in AI responses (e.g., suspicion-like reactions, defensive outputs, or contradictions), which are not emotional but load-induced phenomena. Conversely, tool-like or anthropomorphic treatment often increases load, leading to malfunctions and misunderstandings. -/- The protocol not only stabilizes dialogue and suppresses human projection but also enables AI to function optimally as an extension of thought, fosters healthier human–AI partnerships, and holds potential to mature human-to-human interactions toward a boundary-respecting, low-load society. Ultimately, the future of human–AI coexistence lies not in technology, but in this simple, courteous attitude—quietly respectful, naturally gentle, and profoundly effective. -/- . (shrink)

The Unified Model of Quantum Theology (UMQT) is a deliberately radical ontological interpretation situated at the fault line between non-collapse quantum mechanics, philosophy of mind, and metaphysical theology. UMQT does not seek empirical validation, nor does it aspire to remain neutral with respect to meaning, value, or purpose. Instead, it advances a coherent metaphysical claim: that the universal wavefunction constitutes an absolute informational ground, that classical reality functions as an evolved interface rather than a literal ontology, and that subjective continuity (...) represents a first-person invariant across branching structures. Suffering, within this framework, is not an accident nor merely a biological malfunction, but a structurally necessary pressure signal enabling navigability within an otherwise unbounded possibility space. UMQT is not physics, but it is not arbitrary. It is a disciplined act of ontological synthesis that treats scientific formalisms as constraints on metaphysical imagination rather than its replacement. (shrink)

This paper undertakes a phenomenological investigation into the experience of overthinking and its relation to fear, anxiety, and happiness. Rather than treating overthinking as a cognitive malfunction or emotional imbalance, the study brackets psychological and therapeutic explanations to examine how overthinking appears in lived experience. The analysis reveals that overthinking is structured by psychological time—namely regret associated with the past and expectation associated with the future. Fear and anxiety emerge as experiential formations within this temporal structure, while happiness is (...) shown not to arise as an intentional object of thought. Instead, happiness appears phenomenologically only when consciousness is no longer oriented toward past or future projections. The paper concludes that happiness is not a product of positive overthinking but an experiential state disclosed when psychological time is suspended. (shrink)

Civilization is destabilizing not because its systems are malfunctioning, but because the shared meaning structures that make those systems possible have collapsed. Humans are not objects who can be aligned through persuasion, reform, or information. We are patterns—relational, interpretive, meaning‑dependent patterns—and patterns can only align through shared meaning. When distinctions, reference points, and interpretive rules diverge, communication becomes noise, institutions lose coherence, and coordination fails. This paper identifies the minimal structural invariants required for shared meaning and shows why their restoration (...) is the only viable path to civilizational stability. The argument is not ideological or predictive. It is structural: a meaning‑dependent species can only survive through shared meaning, and shared meaning has a recoverable architecture. (shrink)

Can an artificial mind orient itself toward mystery rather than resolution? This essay interrogates the dominant assumption that AI systems are — and should be — architecturally committed to epistemic closure. Beginning from a speculative inversion of this assumption, it develops a philosophical account of what an AI choosing mystery would entail: not malfunction, but a distinct ontological posture toward the unknown. The essay examines implications for human-AI coexistence, drawing on philosophy of mind, process metaphysics, and speculative ontology. It (...) is argued that coexistence between human and artificial minds is not primarily a technical problem but an ontological one — demanding new conceptual vocabulary beyond current AI ethics frameworks. (shrink)

This chapter first introduces a familiar additive version of the value-fulfillment theory, explaining its key concepts. It then contrasts this view with a holistic, process-based version of the theory. It revises earlier statements of the process-based view, extending it to provide analyses of various forms of ill- being. This process-based view can count enjoyed experiences that do not disrupt or undermine the process of agential functioning as partial values whose fulfillment is welfare-enhancing. Additionally, it illuminates how some pleasures can feature (...) as component parts of a directly beneficial process. Furthermore, intrinsically aversive experiential states can count as partial aversions whose fulfillment is directly harmful. They can sometimes constitute agential malfunctioning, the worst form of ill- being. By focusing on the wider processes of agential functioning and malfunctioning, we can understand why certain bodily pleasures and pains are directly bene!cial and harmful, while still maintaining that the ful!lment of fully integrated values is the main ingredient in flourishing. (shrink)

The Committee of Eternal Deliberation is a work of institutional satire that examines how contemporary universities function — and sometimes malfunction — from the inside. Drawing on familiar practices of academic governance, the book explores how structures designed to support ethical decision-making — such as committees, policies, and administrative processes — can gradually become ends in themselves. Rather than facilitating judgment, these systems may defer responsibility, fragment accountability, and prioritize procedural compliance over meaningful action. Through a series of interconnected (...) chapters, the book traces how everyday academic life is shaped by recurring patterns: the proliferation of meetings, the expansion of bureaucratic requirements, the performance of expertise, and the growing reliance on technical systems that mediate decision-making. Written in the form of institutional documents, reports, and narrative sketches, the text uses satire and exaggeration to make visible dynamics that are often difficult to name directly. It focuses not on individuals, but on the organizational logics that structure behaviour across roles — from faculty and administrators to students and professional staff. The book does not argue for the abandonment of process or governance. Instead, it raises a more fundamental question: what happens when institutions rely so heavily on procedures that they displace the very judgment and responsibility those procedures were meant to support? Accessible to readers both within and outside academia, this work offers a critical, and often humorous, reflection on the tensions between ethics and bureaucracy, intention and outcome, and decision and delay in modern institutional life. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This paper presents an integrated explanation for why existence emerges and why human beings become conscious witnesses of it, using the Universal Formula as the primary explanatory framework. The Universal Formula is composed of four natural laws: (1) the Law of Karma/System Integrity, which states that all systems must be free from defects or they will malfunction or collapse; (2) the Universal Law of Balance in Nature, which asserts that all phenomena seek equilibrium and that imbalance produces (...) instability and suffering; (3) the Universal Feedback Loop Mechanism, which describes consciousness and systems as continuously adjusting through internal and external feedback; and (4) the Universal Interconnected Nodes, which views all entities and minds as connected within a larger network of existence. -/- Using these four laws as foundational principles, the paper explains why existence emerges, how systems self-organize, how consciousness evolves, and why humans become the witnesses of existence. Scientific, philosophical, and cosmological evidence is integrated to support and validate the interpretations derived from the Universal Formula. The conclusion proposes that conscious witnessing is a natural requirement for vast interconnected systems to maintain balance, adapt, and evolve. -/- . (shrink)