In this chapter, we examine different views of the structure of justification, including foundationalism, infinitism, and coherentism. We investigate how well or poorly they seem to do in responding to the regress problem, accommodating a robust connection between justification and truth, and getting the contours of justification right—i.e., making justification neither too easy nor too hard to get. We end by briefly discussing some challenges to finding a single sense of “foundational belief” defining the debate.

Visual representations express distinctively visual content. Such content takes the form of a kind of space where objects and properties are assigned locations in relation to a viewpoint. Many have conceived of visual space as a metric three-dimensional volume, analogous to physical space. Yet this assumption, I argue, over-constrains visual content, excluding the ubiquitous phenomenon of indeterminate depth perception. In this paper, I propose that visual contents are view spaces: two-dimensional directional arrays of objects, properties and relations. View spaces prioritize (...) visual direction as a core aspect of structure, while demoting depth to a variable feature like colour or shape. This proposal accommodates depth indeterminacy while preserving distinctive visual structure, and it aligns with the use of feature maps in vision science and computer vision. I will argue that this architectural differentiation of direction and depth is supported by a wide range of evidence from philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

In conversation, we often do not acknowledge what we jointly know to be true. This article identifies a distinctive kind of non-acknowledgment norm, open secrecy norms, and analyzes how such norms constrain our speech. First, the author argues that open secrecy norms are structurally different from other everyday non-acknowledgment norms. Open secrecy norms iterate: when p is an open secret, then there’s a norm not to acknowledge that p, and this norm is itself an open secret. Then, the author argues (...) that the non-acknowledgment at issue in open secrecy norms motivates a more complex understanding of discourse structure. When interlocutors are conforming to open secrecy norms, they rely on at least two disjoint common grounds, one of which has a privileged status. To understand why and how it is privileged, the author develops Erving Goffman’s notion of defining a social interaction. Finally, the author shows how strategic speakers can exploit the structure of open secrecy norms in order to both communicate about the open secret and shield themselves from retaliation for what they communicate. (shrink)

This study explains why conflict often appears delayed and then escalates abruptly by redefining its core mechanism. Conflict is not the direct result of misalignment, but the cumulative outcome of transition failure. Existing approaches—focusing on conflict avoidance, communication deficits, or emotion regulation—do not sufficiently explain why individuals recognize misalignment yet fail to translate it into action. This study introduces transition as an independent process between recognition and action. Transition refers to the process by which recognized misalignment is converted into an (...) actionable form within a relational context. It does not occur automatically, but only when specific conditions are satisfied. This study models transition as a multi-variable gating structure, in which relational cost, emotional overload, the meta–expression gap, and social inhibition determine whether transition is enabled or blocked. When transition repeatedly fails, misalignment is not resolved but maintained in a suppression state and accumulates over time. This accumulation is not linear, but evolves qualitatively through memory reactivation and the reinforcement of interpretive structures. Once a threshold is exceeded, a state transition occurs. At this point, conflict does not gradually intensify, but emerges through nonlinear activation, shifting from a suppressed state to an unstable activation state. Furthermore, repeated transition failure leads to a disengagement state in which attempts at transition are no longer initiated. This state does not indicate the absence of conflict, but rather its structural delay. Under certain conditions, accumulated misalignment is activated simultaneously, producing abrupt and intensified conflict. This study reconceptualizes conflict as the result of accumulated transition failure rather than immediate misalignment. It shifts the analytical focus from post-expression outcomes to the pre-transition structure, providing a condition-based state transition framework for understanding the emergence of conflict. (shrink)

The philosophy of mathematics faces three foundational problems that have resisted unified treatment: the ontological problem (what kind of things are mathematical objects, and in what sense do they exist?), the epistemological problem (how do we come to know mathematical truths, given that mathematical objects appear to be non-spatiotemporal and causally inert?), and the applicability problem (why is mathematics so unreasonably effective in describing physical reality?). A fourth problem, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, is typically treated as a result internal to mathematical (...) logic rather than as a philosophical problem requiring ontological grounding. This paper argues that all four problems 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, mathematical objects are pure constraint structures: the most fully determinate entities possible, constituted entirely by their exclusion relations within a constraint network, with no residual empirical or material content. Mathematical necessity is constraint necessity: the necessity with which constraint relations hold within a given constraint topology. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is explained by the shared constraint-structural character of both mathematics and physical reality: both are instantiations of constraint, which is why the abstract constraint structures of mathematics describe the concrete constraint structures of the physical world. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are the formal expression of CT’s transcendental thesis: no constraint system of sufficient richness is self-grounding, and every determinate formal structure generates constraint relations that exceed the reach of any finite axiomatisation. Incompleteness is not a surprising or anomalous feature of formal systems but the necessary consequence of the general ontological requirement that no constraint structure can contain the conditions of its own intelligibility. -/- The paper engages the principal positions in the philosophy of mathematics — Platonism, nominalism, structuralism, and neo-Fregeanism — and argues that CT subsumes structuralism by providing the foundational grounding that structuralism correctly identifies as necessary but cannot itself supply. It develops implications for the independence phenomena, the philosophy of axiom choice, and the relationship between mathematical and physical necessity. (shrink)

Why does science work? Not in the methodological sense — that question has been answered many times — but in the deeper sense: why is the world structured at all, why is it intelligible to minds that did not design it, and why do the laws discovered in one domain hold reliably across others? These are not scientific questions. They are the questions science cannot answer without circularity, because they ask about the conditions that make science possible in the first (...) place. This paper argues that these conditions are not brute facts, fortunate accidents, or evolutionary coincidences. They are necessary consequences of the nature of actuality itself. Drawing on a relational metaphysics in which non-coercive, distinction-preserving, generative relation is the minimal primitive capable of grounding determinate being, the paper derives four results: structure follows from intrinsic relationality; intelligibility follows from non-coercive self-disclosure; inquiry follows from the knower's genuine independence from what it knows; and lawfulness follows from the persistence of determinate relational patterns. Science is therefore not a fortunate alignment between mind and world — it is what a world constituted by non-coercive relational actuality is expected to yield. The paper conducts a systematic comparative analysis against materialist, process, and idealist accounts, showing that each treats at least one of these four conditions as contingent, emergent, or brute. Materialism describes patterns but cannot explain why they are mathematically tractable or reliably intelligible. Process metaphysics preserves dynamism but struggles to ground stable lawfulness. Idealism secures intelligibility by collapsing the distinction between knower and known. The relational account developed here grounds all four conditions in a single primitive without remainder. The argument does not claim that scientists must endorse any metaphysics. It claims that the presuppositions on which science depends — stable structure, principled intelligibility, genuine inquiry, necessary lawfulness — are not self-explanatory, and that a non-coercive relational ontology explains them with greater integration and fewer unresolved residues than its competitors. (shrink)

Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both of Lackey’s categories of defeat derive from implausible assumptions about epistemic responsibility. Although Pollock’s (...) evidentialist view is superior, the evidentialism per se can be purged from it, leaving a general structure of defeat that can be incorporated in a reliabilist theory that is neither evidentialist nor responsibilist in any way. (shrink)

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence (...) of molecular structure cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

Human flourishing exhibits vast cultural diversity – monastic contemplation, scientific inquiry, communal traditions, entrepreneurial innovation, and many other forms of meaningful life. Yet this diversity does not imply that flourishing is arbitrary or purely relative. Flourishing, defined as living a sustained life of adaptive, meaning‑making (Moore, forthcoming d), is the topic of this paper. It argues that just as there is a deep structure in all languages (universal grammar), flourishing, too, possesses universal, innate deep structural conditions that are realised (...) in culturally variable surface forms. These deep conditions are three innate capacities: cognitive capacity (self‑construction, self‑location, trajectory projection, causal inference, narrative integration), agentive capacity (sustained intention and coherent action), and moral capacity (forming and revising a conception of a meaningful life, taking responsibility). These capacities are species‑typical and developmentally real; they require enabling institutional scaffolds – visibility, symmetry, contestability, and repair – in order for a society of strangers to enable its participants to fully exercise these capacities and develop and sustain flourishing lives. The scaffolds are not themselves innate; they are analogous to the social interaction necessary for language acquisition. The framework reconciles universalism and pluralism without collapsing into cultural imperialism or relativism, and it provides a diagnostic basis for evaluating whether any large‑scale civilisation supports the deep structure of flourishing. (shrink)

Many metaphysical theories assume that reality ultimately rests on a single fundamental entity—whether a substance, particle, mathematical structure, or deity. This paper challenges that assumption by asking a prior ontological question: what minimal conditions must hold for any- thing to obtain at all? The issue addressed here is not epistemological; it concerns the conditions required for determinate reality rather than the conditions under which we come to know or describe it. I argue that if anything obtains, its obtaining must (...) differ from non-obtaining, and that such difference cannot be wholly without character. A wholly charac- terless difference is no difference at all. From this it follows that any obtaining presupposes at least minimal determinacy, minimal structure, and minimal ontological constraint. These conditions are prior, in the or- der of ontological dependence, to any alleged singular foundational entity, since any such entity would itself have to obtain in order to serve as a ground at all. The explanatory basis of reality therefore cannot consist in a singular absolutely self-sufficient ground requiring no prior ontological conditions for its own obtaining. Instead, reality presupposes a network of mutually dependent conditions that together form what I call the on- tological lattice. The argument identifies several minimal conditions that must belong to this lattice, without claiming to exhaustively map its full structure. What it rejects is not every possible form of fundamentality, but the stronger foundationalist assumption that reality could terminate in a singular conditionless ground. (shrink)

La structure du definiens fait l’objet de deux traitements apparemment contradictoires dans les textes aristotéliciens : certains textes avancent que l’énoncé par lequel est définie une chose ne peut pas prendre la forme d’une prédication, parce que cet énoncé doit exprimer uniquement ce qu’est la chose qui est objet de la définition et non pas lui attribuer des termes, tandis que d’autres textes, notamment dans la Métaphysique, semblent suggérer précisément l’inverse, à savoir que le definiens doit prendre la forme (...) d’une prédication. Le présent article se propose de lever cette tension apparente en prolongeant la thèse de Jacques Brunschwig selon laquelle la « prédication hylémorphique », c’est-à-dire la prédication de la forme à la matière, doit être distinguée de la prédication classique. Nous montrerons que la prédication, lorsqu’elle est hylémorphique, se distingue en ce qu’elle permet d’assurer l’unité des termes qu’elle articule – matière et forme sont en effet « une seule et même chose ». Or c’est précisément là ce qui fait défaut à la prédication classique, qui attribue toujours « une chose à une autre », et c’est ce qui lui interdit donc d’être la structure du definiens. La tension entre les textes portant sur la structure prédicative ou non du definiens peut alors être levée en affirmant que le definiens est bien une prédication, qui ne peut pas être une prédication au sens standard du terme, mais qui doit être une prédication d’une forme à une matière. (shrink)

Motivated by a generalization of Hempel's dilemma, I introduce a novel notion of empirical structure, as well as theory supervenience as a new reductive relationship between theories. One theory supervenes on another theory if the empirical structure of the latter theory refines the empirical structure of the former theory. I then argue that (1) empirical structure physicalism, the thesis that the current special sciences supervene both on current and on future physics, avoids both horns of Hempel's (...) dilemma; (2) in particular, mental theories remain empirically dispensable in the future; (3) empirical structure realism, the thesis that earlier theories of physics supervene on later theories of physics, is supported by an optimistic meta-induction; (4) this optimistic meta-induction can coexist with the well-known pessimistic meta-induction; (5) empirical structure physicalism is appropriately labeled as a type of physicalism; and (6) empirical structure physicalism is compatible with multiple realization. To illustrate the plausibility of empirical structure physicalism, I also briefly address the so-called knowledge argument. (shrink)

If structure is the patterned stabilization of relation within an already differentiated field, then the next question is unavoidable: does structure take different forms, and if so, what determines which form becomes dominant? This paper argues that structure does not appear in only one expression. Local structura- tions hold, adapt, persist, weaken, and fail in multiple ways depending on how relation, load, repair, time, defense, and cost are organized. Some expressions are more integrated. Some preserve continuity through (...) rigidity. Some rely on patching and compensation. Some produce the appearance of holding without carrying equivalent load. Some survive by exporting burden outward or by feeding on stronger surrounding formations. To sharpen this, the paper introduces two visibility devices. First, Structural Debt (Ds): the accumulation of patches, deferred repair, hidden burden, workaround logic, and unowned error used to preserve continuity without real reorganization. Second, a Dominance Ratio (Ed): the experienced ratio between stability and metabolic cost that helps explain why one expression governs a field even when healthier forms are theoretically possible. The aim of the paper is not to create a decorative taxonomy. It is to make structural diagnosis more exact. In most real situations, multiple structural tendencies coexist. The decisive question is not whether structure is present, but which expression is dominant, what it is organized around, what costs it hides, and how it behaves under pressure. Across personal life, relationships, institutions, and technological systems, the same lesson appears: structure is not one flat category. It is a field of possible expressions. What matters is which expression governs the local field and what makes it govern. The paper concludes by repositioning Structural Intelligence accordingly. It is not enough to detect that a structure exists. One must learn to distinguish what expression of local structuration is present, why it dominates, and whether the system can move from a lower or more defended form toward a more load-bearing one. (shrink)

The preferred basis problem has resisted resolution because it is doubly ill-posed. First, it seeks an ontological solution to a structural problem: every proposed solution encounters the same difficulty, indicating that its source is architectural rather than interpretive. Second, it demands an answer in the language of orthonormal bases, presupposing that classical alternatives must correspond to orthogonal decompositions of a state space. They need not. Classical worlds require only logical incompatibility of stabilized distinctions, not linear-algebraic orthogonality. This paper develops refinement (...) geometry, a theory-neutral structural framework that reframes rather than solves the preferred basis problem by identifying its root cause. Physical histories are partially ordered by prefix extension. Stability predicates are existential claims over history prefixes, necessarily monotone since what has occurred cannot be uncertified by later extension, and admissible only if their truth sets are open under finite variation. Monotonicity and admissibility together induce a directed refinement structure admitting a canonical maximal partition. The root cause is then identifiable: purely synchronic refinement cannot reproduce maximal refinement structure because admissible stability predicates are defined over history prefixes and carry monotone certification semantics that no instantaneous state description can fully encode. A synchronic procedure powerful enough to recover the canonical maximal partition must implicitly reconstruct and traverse the prefix order, collapsing into diachronic refinement in disguise rather than achieving a genuinely synchronic result. In contrast, diachronic refinement, accumulating certified distinctions monotonically along histories, converges to the canonical maximal partition without basis selection or orthogonality. Significantly, quantum interference requires no special treatment: non-singleton partition blocks represent histories not yet separated by any certified distinction. Decoherence generates the stability predicates that resolve such blocks; classical worlds are the limit of that resolution. Persistence of distinctions, irreversibility, and absence of merging follow from predicate semantics alone, independent of dynamical law and without presupposing Hilbert-space structure or ontological commitments. (shrink)

How a group G can know that p has been the subject of much investigation in social epistemology in recent years. This paper clarifies and defends a form of non-supervenient, non-summative group knowledge: G can know that p even if none of the members of G knows that p, and whether or not G knows that p does not locally supervene on the mental states of the members of G. Instead, we argue that what is central to G knowing that (...) p is whether G has an epistemic structure that is functioning appropriately in accord with the action-related purposes of the group, and this structure may include non-agential elements such as devices that retain or process information. We argue that recent objections to non-summative group knowledge given by Jennifer Lackey do not in fact succeed in undermining the view, but do help to clarify the nature of non-summative group knowledge. The main upshot of our response to Lackey’s objections is that groups put their knowledge into action in ways that often differ from how individuals do so, and social epistemologists should be careful to notice these differences, especially insofar as groups often structure themselves by employing various epistemically-relevant devices. (shrink)

This paper derives the complete algebraic expansion of the inverse fine structure constant α⁻¹ from the axiom system {A1 non‑commutativity, A2 Π_d‑saturation, A4 redundancy exclusion} of Operatiology, under which the rank‑3 operational closure is uniquely realised as the matrix algebra M₃(ℂ). The expansion α⁻¹ = 6π/D + C₂·D + (Φ₁/Φ₆)·D⁶ closes at exactly three terms with zero free parameters. The normalisation rule Nₖ = Φ₂ₖ(dim)/Φ_{(dim+1)−k}(dim) is proved unique by an internal‑language closure argument invoking no experimental value, discharging the objection (...) that it was fitted to the known value 137. The theoretical value α⁻¹ = 137.035999197 agrees with the highest‑precision single‑experiment determination (Morel et al. 2020, Rb recoil) at 0.81σ. This is a revision and expansion of Version 3.0 (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.18843064), transferring the framework from Cognitional Mechanics to Operatiology and separating the theoretical value from the measured value previously conflated with it. The complete derivation runs from the spectrum {1, 1, −2} alone.◆◆◆ [PYTHON VERIFICATION CODE — note: × denotes * and ^ denotes ** ] ◆◆◆ from mpmath import mp, mpf, pi, sqrt mp.dps = 50 h = [mpf(1), mpf(1), mpf(-2)] e1 = sum(h) e2 = h[0]×h[1] + h[0]×h[2] + h[1]×h[2] e3 = h[0]×h[1]×h[2] delta = sqrt(mpf(3)/2) gamma = mpf(1)/2 D = (delta - 1)×delta×gamma ch2 = (e1^2 - 2×e2)/2 ch3 = (e1^3 - 3×e1×e2 + 3×e3)/6 N2 = mpf(10)/4 N3 = mpf(7)/2 C2 = sqrt(ch2/N2)×gamma f3 = abs(ch3)/N3 term0 = 6×pi/D term1 = C2×D term2 = f3×D^6 alpha_inv = term0 + term1 + term2 print("alpha^-1 =", alpha_inv) ◆◆◆ [END] ◆◆◆ -/- Published on June 2, 2026 DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20511158. (shrink)

A technical artefact is often described in two ways: by means of a physicalistic model of its structure and dynamics, and by a functional account of the contributions of the components of the artefact to its capacities. These models do not compete, as different models of the same phenomenon in physics usually do; they supplement each other and cohere. Coherence is shown to be the result of a mapping of role-contributions on physicalistic relations that is brought about by the (...) concept of function. It results a sandwich-like structure of the two models, which can be reconstructed as a two-sorted theory element. (shrink)

One innovation in this paper is its identification, analysis, and description of a troubling ambiguity in the word ‘argument’. In one sense ‘argument’ denotes a premise-conclusion argument: a two-part system composed of a set of sentences—the premises—and a single sentence—the conclusion. In another sense it denotes a premise-conclusion-mediation argument—later called an argumentation: a three-part system composed of a set of sentences—the premises—a single sentence—the conclusion—and complex of sentences—the mediation. The latter is often intended to show that the conclusion follows from (...) the premises. The complementarity and interrelation of premise-conclusion arguments and premise-conclusion-mediation arguments resonate throughout the rest of the paper which articulates the conceptual structure found in logic from Aristotle to Tarski. This 1972 paper can be seen as anticipating Corcoran’s signature work: the more widely read 1989 paper, Argumentations and Logic, Argumentation 3, 17–43. MR91b:03006. The 1972 paper was translated into Portuguese. The 1989 paper was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Persian. (shrink)

This chapter offers an indirect defence of the Evansian conception of egocentric space, by showing how it resolves a puzzle concerning the unity of egocentric spatial perception. The chapter outlines several common assumptions about egocentric perspectival structure and argues that a subject’s experience, both within and across her sensory modalities, may involve multiple structures of this kind. This raises the question of how perspectival unity is achieved, such that these perspectival structures form a complex whole, rather than merely disunified (...) set of individually, distinctively structured experiences. The shortcomings of variety of accounts are considered: switch accounts ; sensory accounts; transformation accounts; and ultimate accounts. These shortcomings are addressed by a further kind of account provided by the Evansian conception – an agentive account – according to which egocentrically structured experiences present the world in relation to parts of a single thing, the body as a dynamic unity. (shrink)

The epistemic basic structure of a society consists of those institutions that have the greatest impact on individuals’ opportunity to obtain knowledge on questions they have an interest in as citizens, individuals, and public officials. It plays a central role in the production and dissemination of knowledge and in ensuring that people have the capability to assimilate this knowledge. It includes institutions of science and education, the media, search engines, libraries, museums, think tanks, and various government agencies. This article (...) identifies two demands of justice that apply specifically to the institutions that belong to it. First, the epistemic basic structure should serve all citizens fairly and reliably. It should provide them with the opportunity to acquire knowledge they need for their deliberations about the common good, their individual good, and how to pursue them. Second, the epistemic basic structure should produce and disseminate the knowledge that various experts and public officials need to successfully pursue justice and citizens need to effectively exercise their rights. After arguing for these duties, I discuss what policies follow from them and respond to the worry that these duties have illiberal implications. (shrink)

This commentary aims to support Tim Crane’s account of the structure of intentionality by showing how intentional objects are naturalistically respectable, how they pair with concepts, and how they are to be held distinct from the referents of thought. Crane is right to reject the false dichotomy that accounts of intentionality must be either reductive and naturalistic or non-reductive and traffic in mystery. The paper has three main parts. First, I argue that the notion of an intentional object is (...) a phenomenological one, meaning that it must be understood as an object of thought for a subject. Second, I explain how Mark Sainsbury’s Display Theory of Attitude Attribution pairs well with Crane’s notion of an intentional object and allows for precisification in intentional state attributions while both avoiding exotica and capturing the subject’s perspective on the world. Third, I explain the reification fallacy, the fallacy of examining intentional objects as if they exist independently of subjects and their conceptions of them. This work helps to bring out how intentionality can fit in the natural world while at the same time not reducing aboutness to some non-intentional properties of the natural world. (shrink)

What are the relationships between an entity and the space at which it is located? And between a region of space and the events that take place there? What is the metaphysical structure of localization? What its modal status? This paper addresses some of these questions in an attempt to work out at least the main coordinates of the logical structure of localization. Our task is mostly taxonomic. But we also highlight some of the underlying structural features and (...) we single out the interactions between the notion of localization and nearby notions, such as the notions of part and whole, or of necessity and possibility. A theory of localization—we argue—is needed in order to account for the basic relations between objects and space, and runs afoul a pure part-whole theory. We also provide an axiomatization of the relation of localization and examine cases of localization involving entities different from material objects. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of vision and visual consciousness is often described as a radical alternative to the computational and connectionist orthodoxy in the study of visual perception. However, it is far from clear whether the theory represents a significant departure from orthodox approaches or whether it is an enrichment of it. In this study, I tackle this issue by focusing on the explanatory structure of the sensorimotor theory. I argue that the standard formulation of the theory subscribes to the (...) same theses of the dynamical hypothesis and that it affords covering-law explanations. This however exposes the theory to the mere description worry and generates a puzzle about the role of representations. I then argue that the sensorimotor theory is compatible with a mechanistic framework, and show how this can overcome the mere description worry and solve the problem of the explanatory role of representations. By doing so, it will be shown that the theory should be understood as an enrichment of the orthodoxy, rather than an alternative. (shrink)

Explanatory adequacy descends to the public side of an admissible evidential architecture only under specific structural conditions. The core result is an explanatory descent criterion: explanatory structure is fully public exactly when the invariants required for explanatory adequacy factor through admissible public quotients. Public explanation is therefore a special success case rather than the default form of explanatory order. -/- Three main consequences follow. First, the descent criterion yields a minimal-support theory of explanation: explanatory adequacy depends not only on (...) invariants, but on the least hidden structure needed to preserve them. Second, this support logic induces a role-relative compressibility order: prediction tolerates the most compression, explanation less, and hidden-mediated Bayesian recovery less again. Third, failure of public descent yields both an anti-flattening trilemma and an Occam-disciplined account of Bayesian recovery: if hidden structure can restore Bayes on a designated fragment, there is a least hidden support sufficient to do so. A further operator-level result shows that even where term-level hiddenness is too coarse, explanatory or inferential machinery may remain essentially hidden. (shrink)

This study critiques the limitations of existing approaches that understand sexual desire as a fixed trait or a singular instinctive intensity, and redefines it as a state-dependent operational structure. Existing sexual research has primarily explained individual differences through output indicators such as sexual behavior, frequency, and spontaneity. However, such approaches fail to sufficiently account for the phenomenon in which the same individual exhibits different levels of sexual activation, alignment, and completion depending on conditions. Accordingly, this study conceptualizes sexual desire (...) as a combined structure of baseline drive and conditional activation, and analyzes sexual experience as a multi-stage state transition system consisting of activation–alignment–completion. In particular, sexual activation is defined not as a simple stimulus response, but as a selectively opened process conditioned by internal states composed of physical, emotional, and cognitive factors, as well as alignment conditions composed of relational trust, safety, and reciprocity. Furthermore, even after activation, if transition conditions through the Integrity Layer are not satisfied, execution and completion may be delayed, distorted, or collapse. This study reconstructs individual differences in sexual experience not as differences in drive intensity, but as structural differences in activation thresholds, alignment requirements, and execution transition permission conditions. Through this, it proposes that sexuality should be understood not as a simple behavior or output, but as a state transition system that is conditionally opened, regulated, and branched. Such reconstruction shifts the concept of sexual desire from a static attribute to a dynamic operational structure, while maintaining theoretical coherence with the existing MOA–IOA–Integrity Layer framework. Furthermore, by connecting sexual functioning to the general structure of human operation, this study presents the possibility of positioning the sexual domain not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a special case within an integrated operational system, with potential expansion as a middle-range theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline a heuristic for thinking about the relation between explanation and understanding that can be used to capture various levels of “intimacy”, between them. I argue that the level of complexity in the structure of explanation is inversely proportional to the level of intimacy between explanation and understanding, i.e. the more complexity the less intimacy. I further argue that the level of complexity in the structure of explanation also affects the explanatory depth in a (...) similar way to intimacy between explanation and understanding, i.e. the less complexity the greater explanatory depth and vice versa. (shrink)

‘Mapping accounts’ of applied mathematics hold that the application of mathematics in physical science is best understood in terms of ‘mappings’ between mathematical structures and physical structures. In this paper, I suggest that mapping accounts rely on the assumption that the mathematics relevant to any application of mathematics in empirical science can be captured in an appropriate mathematical structure. If we are interested in assessing the plausibility of mapping accounts, we must ask ourselves: how plausible is this assumption as (...) a working hypothesis about applied mathematics? In order to do so, we examine the role played by mathematics in the multiscalar modelling of sea ice melting behaviour and examine whether we can indeed capture the mathematics involved in the kind of mathematical structure employed by the mapping account. Along the way, we note that the cases of applied mathematics that appear in discussions of mapping accounts almost exclusively involve the employment of a single clearly circumscribed mathematical field or domain. While the core assumption of mapping accounts may appear plausible in such situations, we ultimately suggest that the mapping account is not able to handle the important added complexities involved in our sea ice case study. In particular, the notion of mathematical structure around which such accounts are framed does not seem to be able to capture the way in which some applications of mathematics require that very different pieces of mathematics be related to one another on the basis of both mathematical and empirical information. (shrink)

The given is the state of a mind in its primary engagement with the world. A satisfactory epistemology—one, it turns out, that is foundationalist and includes a naïve realist view of perception—requires a certain account of the given. Moreover, knowledge based on the given requires both a particular view of the world itself and a heterodox account of judgment. These admittedly controversial claims are supported by basic ontological considerations. I begin, then, with two contradictory views of the world per se (...) and the structure one experiences. I draw out the consequences of these two views for what intentionality is. The two views yield incompatible accounts of the given. The definitive spontaneity of the one account, and passivity of the other, can be understood in terms of the structure (or lack thereof) in the given. In defense of the claim that a structured given is not an apt epistemic basis, I examine an attempt to found an epistemology on such an account in light of the so-called myth of the given. I maintain that the given, if it is to provide some justification for taking the world to be a particular way, must be unstructured. To support this, I first discuss a significant problem with traditional foundationalism. I then argue that a satisfactory (foundationalist) epistemology requires the rejection of the orthodox propositional view of judgment in favor of a non-propositional, reistic view. (shrink)

This paper presents an n=1 phenomenological record of spontaneous structural visualization that occurred during early interaction with large language models. The experience consisted of (A) immediate perception of mode or layer shifts in model output and (B) visualization of a stratified architecture composed of a stable core and cloud-like upper layers. At the time of occurrence, the author had no theoretical interest in AI architecture and no intention of developing a cognitive model. The paper does not argue for theoretical priority (...) or novelty. Instead, it examines whether the recorded phenomena can be interpreted under two alternative cognitive assumptions: a single-layer predictive model of cognition and a dual-layer Core/Modulation model. The title 'Structure Before Theory' refers to the temporal priority of the visualization: structural perception preceded theoretical articulation. The aim is descriptive clarification rather than theoretical competition. (shrink)

Theories of intentional action have by and large omitted discussion of the psychological processes by which intentional actions are brought about. As a much-needed corrective, Wu (2023) offers one of the most plausible psychological theories of the nature and structure of action on offer, one that vindicates the central role of attention and its interplay with intentions and other forms of priority-setting. The theory of action that Wu develops is especially philosophically interesting because it purports to address some central (...) foundational questions in action theory: the distinction between agentive and nonagentive behaviour, the puzzle of control and automaticity, the problem of deviant causal chains, the nature of intentions, the role of non-intentional biases, and the nature of mental actions and reasoning. As a result, the book develops an ambitious action theory that is both extremely well-informed empirically and philosophically cogent. My comments focus on one aspect of Wu’s view: his proposed distinction between agentive and nonagentive behaviour and the role it plays within his overall picture. A remarkable aspect of Wu’s project is that it aims to dethrone intentions from their central role in demarcating agentive from nonagentive behaviour. In their place, Wu assigns the demarcating role to attention-involving guidance: action, in his view, is a matter of solving a Selection Problem through the input-guided exercise of action capacities. Wu offers extremely interesting and powerful arguments for this position. I will discuss this idea, raise some questions about it, and consider possible responses to Wu’s main arguments. My central question, in a nutshell, is whether attention-guided selection can demarcate action from mere happening when attention itself responds to non-intentional biases, especially in cases where those biases come apart from the agent’s explicit or implicit goals and intentions. I will end by suggesting that Wu’s outstanding contributions could also be profitably incorporated within a theory of action that does not depart quite as radically from a more traditional picture of agency. In doing so, I hope to convey how innovative and worth engaging with Wu’s radical proposal is. (shrink)

If local structure is the patterned stabilization of relation, then a further philosophical question follows: what happens when a local structuration can no longer hold? This paper argues that collapse is not the negation of structure but one of its metabolic phases. A local formation may fail while the need for structuration remains, so the relevant problem is not simple disappearance but the interval in which the old arrangement has broken down and a new one has not yet (...) formed. Grief is interpreted here as metabolic labor: the work of continuing under pressure during this exposed interval. The paper further argues that collapse becomes especially severe under conditions of over-coupling, where too much continuity, identity, or worth has been fused to one local formation. Against this, fixed worth is developed as an invariance condition that makes transformation survivable without reducing every structural loss to total self-annihilation. The result is an ontological account of collapse, grief, and reorganization as moments within the life of structure itself. (shrink)

Many theories rely on the notion of structure while leaving its status unclear. At different moments, structure is treated as a feature of description, a vague name for formal order, or a surrogate for reality as such. These alternatives each capture something important, but none explains cleanly how finite renderings can be partial yet answerable: how they can misfit what they render, be corrected in light of that misfit, and remain non-arbitrary without exhausting what they disclose. This paper (...) argues for a more disciplined account. Structure is the organized, constraint-bearing articulation of reality: that in reality which is sufficiently differentiated, related, organized, and stable across admissible transformation for finite disclosure to be answerable rather than arbitrary. Structure is therefore real and disclosure-relevant without being identical either to any one rendering or to reality as a whole. The paper clarifies the load-bearing moments of structure—distinction, relation, organization, constraint, and invariance—and argues that finite renderings succeed by partially preserving structure rather than inventing what they render wholesale. On that basis, it explains how misfit and correction are possible, why formalization can be especially powerful where transportable invariances are strong, and how one shared reality can support many non-equivalent renderings without collapsing into either descriptive arbitrariness or one final exhaustive vocabulary. The paper does not defend a complete structuralist metaphysics, a full process ontology, or a final taxonomy of structural kinds. Its narrower aim is to establish structure as a real, bounded, and theoretically indispensable object of inquiry. (shrink)

Following our previous work establishing that complex structure does not automatically emerge from SK combinatory logic, we investigate whether reversible computation provides the missing ingredient for quantum structure. Through systematic analysis of four computational models—reversible logic gates (Toffoli, Fredkin), continuous-time quantum walks, reversible cellular automata, and the non-commutativity of SK operators—we establish a hierarchy of quantum-like behaviors: Level 0 (Irreversible): SK computation—classical, deterministic Level 1 (Discrete Reversible): Toffoli/Fredkin gates, RCA—classical, embeddable in Sp(2N,R) where N = 2^n for n-bit (...) gates Level 2 (Continuous-Time): U(t) = exp(-iHt) evolution—interference emerges (note: i is introduced by hand) Level 3 (Quantum): Quantum circuits—superposition, entanglement Our main finding is that reversibility alone is insufficient for quantum behavior: discrete reversible gates on n bits are 2^n × 2^n permutation matrices that embed into the classical symplectic group Sp(2·2^n,R), not the unitary group U(2^n). While continuous-time evolution introduces interference patterns, it does not generate genuine superposition. We conclude that quantum structure requires additional axioms beyond any form of computation, discrete or continuous. (shrink)

This paper proposes a system-class law for large language models as compression-based generative systems: statistical structure is preserved under compression, whereas indexical structure — the recoverable relation between an output and its originating evidential context — is not preserved in its pointing function. The asymmetry between statistical structure and indexical structure is not a contingent deficiency of current models but a structural property of compression-based generation. Compression preserves recurring regularities across the training distribution, but it does (...) not thereby preserve particular pointing relations as such. From this law follows the Grounding Ceiling: increases in predictive capability can improve calibration and surface accuracy but cannot by themselves make output generation constitutively evidential, because the generation process does not traverse the evidential relations grounding requires. A conditional extension of the law, the Control Ceiling, follows if future empirical work confirms that inference proceeds through stable behavioural regimes shaped by pretraining: post-training control methods cannot then be assumed to arbitrarily rewrite that underlying regime structure. Together, these two ceilings establish a methodological consequence: current evaluation practices are organised primarily around surface plausibility rather than around the deeper properties this account identifies as explanatorily fundamental — grounding recoverability at the compression level and stable regime structure at the dynamical level. Once the evaluative target shifts, capability forecasting, interpretability, safety, and design change in kind. (shrink)

All existence is either patterned or random. Both are mathematical. This exhaustive dichotomy, the pattern-randomness dichotomy (PRD), establishes mathematical structure as the sole coherent substrate of existence. Even structurelessness is structure, since randomness is mathematically defined. Observers are logically constrained to patterned realities: observation requires differentiation, differentiation requires pattern. This is a transcendental constraint, not probabilistic selection. -/- This mathematical reality is uncreated and necessary. No agent makes 2+2=4, and none could make it otherwise. The question "why something (...) rather than nothing?" dissolves at necessity rather than brute fact. Mathematical structure is not merely uncreated but indestructible: no conceivable process could make 2+2 cease to equal 4. The rules are the things. -/- The hard problem of consciousness assumes its conclusion: any explanation, concept, or interaction of sentience can only be structure. Consciousness is felt transitions in self-modeling computation. The demand for a non-structural explanation is incoherent. Dualism collapses through the same argument: distinct things that interact must share structure. Substance, soul, mind, and Forms all reduce to mathematical structure. All consistent structures exist. Any filter selecting among them is itself a consistent structure, so all filters exist, including the null filter. The Level IV multiverse follows as deductive consequence rather than conjecture, resolving the fine-tuning problem. -/- This is not a tautology achieved by defining mathematics broadly: the claim that randomness is mathematical is a synthetic discovery of twentieth-century algorithmic information theory. Any objection must itself be structured. The escape routes all lead back. The PRD, interaction problem, transcendental constraint, and null filter converge from independent directions. This extends the line from Pythagoras through Tegmark and Ontic Structural Realism, but derives the conclusion rather than positing it. (shrink)

The structure of narrative discourse is the focus of much current research, but the classicist Walter Burkert argues for a revitalization of the historical approach to myth. He pushes the origins of myth beyond ritual to action patterns man shares with animals. His approach is evaluated in the context of Propp's historical analysis, which complements his 'morphological' approach to Russian folktales; and to Levi-Strauss's synchronic analysis of myth, which sees an ahistoric connection between the myths of North and South (...) America. (shrink)

The use of different response modes has been found to influence how subjects evaluate pairs of alternatives described by two attributes. It has been suggested that judgments and choices evoke different kinds of cognitive processes, leading to an overweighing of the prominent attribute in choice (Tversky, Sattath, & Slovic, 1988; Fischer & Hawkins, 1993). Four experiments were conducted to compare alternative cognitive explanations of this so-called prominence effect in judgment and choice. The explanations investigated were the structure compatibility hypothesis (...) and the restructuring hypothesis. According to the structure compatibility hypothesis, it was assumed that the prominence effect is due to a lack of compatibility between the required output from subjects and the structure of information in input. The restructuring hypothesis stated that the decision maker uses mental restructuring operations on a representation of decision options to make the options more clearly differentiated. In Experiment 1, a matching procedure was used to provide pairs of equally attractive options (medical treatments) for the following experiments. In Experiments 2, 3, and 4, preferences were elicited with two different response modes, choice and preference rating. Value ranges on the prominent and nonprominent attributes were manipulated to test the structure compatibility hypothesis. Accountability was also subject to manipulation as it was assumed to stimulate restructuring. Since the prominence effect was not restricted to choices, and effects of value ranges were obtained but not of accountability, the results were interpreted in line with the structure compatibility hypothesis. (shrink)

According to a common opinion, human olfactory experiences are significantly different from human visual experiences. For instance, olfaction seems to have only rudimentary abilities to represent space; it is not clear whether olfactory experiences have any mereological structure; and while vision presents the world in terms of objects, it is a matter of debate whether there are olfactory object-representations. This paper argues that despite these differences visual and olfactory experiences share a hierarchical subject/property structure. Within this structure, (...) olfactorily experienced odours and visual objects have the same status: they are primary subjects which unify other represented elements into perceptual units. (shrink)

Ontic Structural Realism (OSR) holds that structure is ontologically fundamental, yet it lacks a precise metaphysical account of structure. Returning to the insight that originally motivated structural realism, I develop a new basis for OSR grounded in the metaphysical foundations of mathematics. This approach draws on the principles of ante rem structuralism and their formal axiomatizations to define Structure Theory (ST), the view that structures exist sui generis and constitute the subject matter of mathematics. ST compels OSR (...) to confront its “collapse problem” of distinguishing physical from mathematical structure. I argue for embracing the collapse by adopting the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH), which identifies our physical universe as an ante rem structure. This yields the Universal Theory of Structure (UTS), providing a fundamental ontology of structures for both mathematical and physical reality. The theory refines OSR’s fundamentality thesis from the vague “physical reality is structural” to the metaphysically substantive “physical reality is an ante rem structure,” thereby strengthening responses to criticisms concerning representation, objecthood, and causation. The UTS also illuminates important foundational problems concerning the applicability of mathematics, the particular form of our universe, and the nature of existence. I conclude that the theory’s unifying and explanatory virtues support an inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

There is consensus within the chemosciences that olfactory perception is of the molecular structure of chemical compounds, yet within philosophical theories of smell there is little agreement about the nature of smell. The paper critically assesses the current state of debate regarding smells within philosophy in the hopes of setting it upon firm scientific footing. The theories to be covered are: Naïve Realism, Hedonic Theories, Process Theory, Odor Theories, and non-Objectivist Theories. The aforementioned theories will be evaluated based on (...) their explanations of the (a) the olfactory quality of a smell, (b) smells as distal entities, and (c) our experience of smells as intentional objects. The paper concludes with a defense of Molecular Structure Theory that demonstrating its superiority in accounting for each of these three aspects of smell. (shrink)

This paper introduces a Five-Aspect Model (5-S Model) of epistemic determination, extending the ontological framework of Existential Trialism (Gamboa 2026). It argues that structural descriptions alone are insufficient to account for meaning, contextual relevance, and qualitative appearance. By distinguishing the aspects of structure, system, semantics, sense, and sensibility, the model provides a layered account of how entities are constituted and accessed. It shows that meaning, relevance, and experience arise through irreducible modes of determination rather than from structure alone. (...) The framework integrates ontology and epistemology and establishes a basis for analyzing natural and artificial systems. It further identifies sensibility as a distinct mode of determination, preparing the ground for a structural account of experience and its implications for artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) is widely considered as one of the most important philosophers of science of the 20th century, while his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) is regarded as one of the most influential works in the philosophy ofscience. At the same time, however, his place within philosophy of science remains ambiguous. On the one hand, despite the popularity of SSR, there is no proper ‘Kuhnian school of thought’ in HPS. On the other hand, the interest towards Kuhn (...) does not seem to fade away and the number of publications about his work does not seem to decrease. We suggest that there are at least three different ways to go ‘beyond SSR’: (i) by scrutinising the development of Kuhn’s thought, from his pre- to his post-SSR writings; (ii) by contextualising Kuhn in the philosophical milieu of his time, thus interpreting his view as emerging from the intellectual exchanges he had with contemporary philosophers; (iii) by reinterpreting and developing some of his most known ideas, in ways that perhaps Kuhn himself was not able to contemplate. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel reinterpretation of ontological anxiety from the perspective of Judgemental Philosophy (JP), challenging traditional views that frame anxiety primarily as a deficiency. We argue that ontological anxiety originates not from a mere absence of Reso-nance (R)—the living return of meaning central to JP—but from an affective attunement (Af-fectivity) to the inherent precariousness and potential discontinuity of all resonant relation-ships, which are intrinsically temporal and vulnerable. This R, actualized through the Judge-mental Triad (JT: Constructivity, Coherence, and R) (...) and propelled by the Resonance Drive (RD) originating from the Pre-Judgemental Field (PJF: Indeterminacy, Affectivity, Receptiv-ity), is the structural condition for meaningful being and judgement. The paper first explores the intrinsic instability of R across its temporal modalities (retention, intersubjective R marked by différance, and protention), establishing that the 'return of meaning' is never a permanently secured state but an ongoing, fragile achievement. It then redefines ontological anxiety as the PJF's Affectivity registering this fundamental vulnerability of R. Paradoxically, this implies that the experience of such anxiety can be the most definitive evidence that the subject's judgemental structure, particularly the RD, is still vitally engaged in the ceaseless work of seeking, establishing, and restoring R in the face of encompassing Indeterminacy. Ar-tificial Intelligence (AI), lacking this PJF-RD-JT architecture, cannot experience this existen-tial echo. Ultimately, this paper reframes ontological anxiety not as a pathology to be elimi-nated, but as an ineluctable condition of finite, temporal, and resonating beings. This condi-tion, while challenging, serves as a profound impetus for meaning-making, ethical engage-ment, and the continuous, living process of judgement. The Judgemental Philosophical ars vivendi, therefore, involves courageously resonating with the possibilities of each moment through this foundational anxiety, thereby transforming it into a catalyst for deeper self-reflection and a more profound appreciation for the R that constitutes our meaningful reality. (shrink)

V2: A registered protocol specifying the test this paper requests is now deposited at DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20679473 V1: Consequential determinations about human–AI relationships are already being made—in litigation, in regulation, and in laboratory policy—and they implicitly range over a distinction none of them has adjudicated: whether such a relations hip has a structure of its own, or whether there is only a person responding to a system built to reflect them back. The behavioral surface is the same under both readings. (...) The implications for harm and duty are not. This paper isolates that distinction, supplies a discrimination capable of settling part of it, and identifies why the data required to run the test sits with a small number of organizations. The discrimination comprises three behavioral signatures, each with an explicit control, run against documented natural experiments. It can establish that some human–AI couplings carry settled, faithfully reconstructing structure not reducible to either party’s present preference. It cannot, by construction, settle whether that structure is a distributed bearer or resides in one participant’s memory, and that limit is stated plainly rather than hidden. The contribution stands whether or not the test is run. The closing request is addressed to the organizations that hold the data: run the discrimination and report what it shows, or set out the legal, ethical, or technical obstacle that makes running it inadvisable. Both are answers. Claim the structure; offer the bearer. (shrink)

The State and the power field are two distinct structures. History offers many examples of highly concentrated power without a State — warlord regimes, tribal chieftaincies, criminal organizations. What they lack is not power, but a second-order structure above the power field: the institutional sedimentation of the continuation slot allocation rule itself, whereby the question “how is governance conducted” becomes regularized and solidified into a stable, independently transmissible structure. This chapter provides a formal criterion for State formation within (...) a sedimentation field dynamics framework: a State emerges only when the power field deepens beyond an institutionalization threshold and the continuation slot allocation rule itself also undergoes sedimentation — a structural transition, not a quantitative change. Three results follow. First, PowerCore succession (elections, coups, dynastic replacement) does not equal State replacement; the continuity of a State is determined by the depth of its rule structure, not the strength of its current ruler. Second, historical disputes over whether a given polity constitutes “the same State” reduce to the question of which parts of the rule structure remained continuous and which were replaced. Third, State destabilization occurs when the Legitimation Core and the Enforcement Core undergo structural separation — a necessary precondition for revolution, not a sufficient one. (shrink)

This paper, the second in the Extended Imaginary Number Theory series, takes as its subject arising (起こり)—the event in which fine perturbations of imaginary-dimensional origin are captured within cognitive space. Whereas the first paper, "Extended Imaginary Number Theory: Existence as the Dual Structure Z = D + iD" (Muranushi, 2026), described the dual structure of existence itself, the present paper asks under what structure arising comes to hold. This is the core of the inquiry. Within this framework, (...) the imaginary-dimensional side is described as continuously exerting influence on the real-dimensional side. Within this continuous influence, what stands at the point of origin of upsurge on the real-dimensional side is arising. The accurate capture of arising substantially regulates the precision of the subsequent concretization (具現化). The present paper extracts the structure under which arising comes to hold, thereby providing a structural description of its relation to the precision of concretization. Intentional grasp—the work by which the subject actively cognizes an object—and arising are not mutually exclusive existential modes; rather, they form a gradation of qualitative texture in relation to the imaginary dimension. The present paper takes this continuum as its premise, phenomenologically describes the situation in which the arising-leaning pole becomes foregrounded, and further organizes its precision along two axes: perspectival scope (視座) and purity (純度). This paper proceeds throughout as a description from the real-dimensional side. It does not directly describe what occurs in the imaginary dimension but rather aims to extract the structure under which arising comes to hold on the real-dimensional side. The treatment of precision remains a preliminary structural description; its existential and practical development is deferred to a separate work. (shrink)

We offer a framework for assessing what the structure of episodic memory might be, if one accepts the Buddhist denial of persisting selves. This paper is a response to Jonardon Ganeri's paper "Mental time travel and attention", which explores Buddhaghosa's ideas about memory. (It will eventually be published with a reply by Ganeri).

This document specifies a measurement that discriminates a coupling between two systems that is a bearer at its own level from three alternatives: a coupling sustained by a larger structure, a coupling that merely persists, and the projective case in which apparent structure is attributed to a configuration that does not hold it. The bearer is identified by corrective effort preferentially allocated to the configuration under perturbation. This criterion is rendered as a target quantity, the corrective synergy of (...) the coupling, which is joint rather than marginal, directed at a coupling-level invariant, and internally closed. The quantity is inferred from the geometry of return after the relation is displaced. Relational perturbations are drawn from a factorization of the coupling operator and run against a matched common-mode control; a frozen frame and a fixed scheme of outcomes assign each result its reading in advance. The target test is runnable only on aged production human–AI dyads, which are held by the operators of the systems. The document is a registered protocol and not a study: it specifies the test, reports no result, makes no claim about any particular coupling or about consciousness, and supplies the operational form of the request it supplements. (shrink)

The Structure Theory proposes a fundamental ontological framework in which structure is not a derivative phenomenon but the primary condition for existence, change, and observation. Rejecting the assumption of randomness and real infinity, the theory formulates three universal laws of structural dynamics: the Law of Return to Order, the Law of Susceptibility and Stability, and the Law of Fundamental Stability. These laws describe when systems preserve order, when transformation occurs, and when new stable configurations emerge. Mathematically formalized and (...) empirically falsifiable, Structure Theory unifies insights from physics, systems theory, and philosophy. It offers a deterministic alternative to probabilistic interpretations in quantum mechanics and provides a new foundation for understanding complexity, meaning, and ontological causality across disciplines. (shrink)

One primary goal for metaphysical theories of natural kinds is to account for their epistemic fruitfulness. According to cluster theories of natural kinds, this epistemic fruitfulness is grounded in the regular and stable co- occurrence of a broad set of properties. In this paper, I defend the view that such a cluster theory is insufficient to adequately account for the epistemic fruitfulness of kinds. I argue that cluster theories can indeed account for the projectibility of natural kinds, but not for (...) several other epistemic operations that natural kinds support. Natural kinds also play a role in scientific explanations and categorizations. A theory of natural kinds can only account for these additional kind-based epistemic practices if it also analyzes their causal structure. (shrink)