This paper (VII_002) resolves the long-standing Quantum Measurement Problem by proposing a deterministic, non-linear physical mechanism: Microscopic Phase-Locking and Wavefunction Condensation. Utilizing the Kuramoto Synchronization Model adapted for non-Hermitian open quantum systems, we demonstrate that wavefunction collapse is not a random projection, but a spontaneous topological phase transition driven by Universal Field of Intelligence (UFI) negentropic de-noising (Paper I_015). Operating within a background-independent framework that refutes the Internal Observer Fallacy (Paper I_001), superpositions condense into definite classical states when interaction strength (...) exceeds critical coupling thresholds. (shrink)

We tested whether the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) model could predict both students’ intentions and the frequency with which they had previously misused generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for producing assessment content (behaviour). We also tested the extent to which the additional constructs of moral norm and anticipated regret improved the predictive validity of the RAA in respect of this behaviour. The participants (N = 369 psychology undergraduates) completed an online questionnaire measuring the RAA and additional constructs. Hierarchical linear regressions showed (...) that the RAA accounted for 74% of the variance in students’ intentions and 65% of the variance in behaviour. Moral norm and anticipated regret led to a significant (1% point) increment to explained variance in the prediction of intentions but not behaviour. The independent predictors of intentions were instrumental attitude, injunctive norm and anticipated regret. Intention was the sole predictor of behaviour. The results demonstrate, for the first time, that the RAA is a useful model for predicting university students’ misuse of GenAI in the production of assessment content, and that anticipated regret constitutes a useful addition to the model in this context. Practical implications for decreasing GenAI misuse are discussed. (shrink)

The year 2026 marked the 30th anniversary of the founding of the first overseas branch of a British private school, when London’s Dulwich College in 1996 had opened an offshoot on Phuket Island. Since then, the exportation and quasi-replication of Britain’s private schools have involved 50 institutions establishing about 150 branches. We offer a comprehensive overview of the growth and development of this largely under-reported phenomenon, exploring how the expansion has involved four distinct ‘waves’. The current ‘fourth wave’, beginning in (...) 2021 has been characterised by a post-China expansion with branches emerging in unexpected areas such as Europe, Japan, the United States and West Africa. At the same time, new providers have appeared, some ambitiously intent on creating systems of branches across several nations. We report on the current level of market concentration, with the biggest 10 players led by London’s Harrow Schoolhaving over half the market, and the level of market saturation, particularly in Bangkok and Shanghai. We discuss the possible implications of the current scene and speculate from the growth patterns that a new wave might appear, in 2027, based on expansion into areas beyond Asia and China, and involving new markets and players. (shrink)

This essay develops a disability-based epistemic challenge to nature-first constitutivism, a family of views on which standards of excellence and defect for (human) agents are grounded in the nature of (human) agency. The core idea of the challenge is that various culturally prevalent negative assumptions about disability, along with related phenomena such as disability invisibility, introduce ideological distortions into our assessment of what (human) capacities for agency and the associated excellences and “defects” are like, occluding from view the worthwhile hypothesis (...) that some disabled modes of agency might be compatible with agential excellence. Such distortions may be avoidable, but only by seriously interrogating the assumptions about disability that underpin them, as well as specific disabled modes of agency. I develop this challenge in detail by focusing on one disability affecting agency: ADHD. I conclude by outlining related metaphysical questions regarding plural forms of agency, situating these questions within the emerging literature on pluralist constitutivism. (shrink)

Digital extension and farmer-centric design are increasingly presented as complementary strategies for transforming agricultural innovation systems: digital extension promises scale and efficiency, while farmer-centric design is expected to ensure relevance, inclusivity, and legitimacy. This paper challenges the assumption that these approaches are naturally aligned. Through Critical Discourse Analysis, we examine how farmer-centricity is enacted within digital extension initiatives and how its normative commitments are reshaped as digital platforms evolve. Empirically, we analyse two digital extension platforms developed between 2014 and 2024, (...) one in the Global North and one in the Global South. Drawing on public-facing media, organisational records, design documents, and technical walkthroughs of each platform, we trace how normative, technical, and interpretive frames interact across different phases of platform development. Our findings show that, in early phases, digital extension is framed as enabling farmer-centric design, supporting decentralised design practices, epistemic pluralism, and farmer sovereignty. Over time, however, farmer-centricity becomes instrumentalised to support the scaling of digital extension through data generation, peer diffusion, and environmental accountability, placing new forms of labour and responsibility onto farmers without a commensurate redistribution of authority. These tensions are not resolved but reconfigured through design practices, often obscured by the rhetoric of empowerment and responsiveness. We conceptualise this dynamic as algorithmic participation: a form of participation mediated through digital infrastructures that anticipate and steer farmer engagement in ways that stabilise existing innovation logics. The paper contributes to debates on farmer-centric design and digital extension by showing how even well-intentioned practices can reproduce structural inequalities. (shrink)

Middle-range theory, as conceptualised by Merton, is distinguished by its empirical testability and its capacity to bridge abstract theory and empirical social inquiry. In this paper, we ask whether large language models (LLMs) can be used as surrogate human actors in the testing and reformulation of middle-range theories. Focusing on agenda-setting theory, we investigate how agenda priority, issue detailedness and geographical proximity shape public attention and policy attitudes in the context of climate change. Drawing on climate change public discourses on (...) BiliBili, a major Chinese video-sharing social media platform, we design parallel experiments with human participants, LLM-based virtual agents and LLM-based virtual agents embedded with human personas. By comparing the results across three experiments, we explore how LLMs reproduce or diverge from the dynamics anticipated by agenda-setting theory. The study engages with current theoretical debates on the boundaries of LLMs for social theory construction, addressing their potential and limitations not only as tools for simulation but also as platforms of theoretical innovation. Our findings reveal that while LLMs demonstrate high directional fidelity, they struggle with simulating the magnitude and structural complexity of human behaviours. We thus provide a methodological framework for the use of LLMs as heuristic simulators rather than empirical substitutes of human experiments. We argue that the combination of middle-range theory and generative models yields new possibilities for computational social science while also raising fundamental questions about the nature of empirical validation in the age of generative AI. (shrink)

This editorial introduces a special issue collecting seven papers from the seventh Philosophy of Language and Mind (PLM) conference, held at Charles University, Prague, in August 2024. The papers span topics from singular reference and presupposition to speech-act theory, response-dependent theories of meaning, autistic masking and self-understanding, and Lewisian self-ascription, converging on a shared theme: how meaning and understanding are shaped and renegotiated across individuals, contexts, and social norms.

This article reviews Matthew Liao’s edited volume Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. The book’s insights into the theoretical foundations of AI ethics, the potential impact of superintelligence, and the moral status of AI, continue to be valuable contributions. What is missing from this volume and what we have seen explored in detail in the intervening years is engagement with questions around the broader social impacts of AI. In this review, I focus on some of the most interesting arguments from the volume (...) and I make some suggestions about the ways that the field has changed in the years following its publication. (shrink)

Many, perhaps even most, philosophers hold that, in order to promise someone something, the promisor must intend to communicate what they are promising. I argue against this claim, explain why it matters to the nature of promising, and sketch an alternative picture of normatively powerful speech acts.

One of the major programs of UNICEF is called “Adjustment with a Human Face”. It argues that any ‘model’ for the economic, industrial, and military development of third world countries is justified only if it is applied with a human face, with a profound moral sensitivity to the needs and rights of all persons, as expressed in the face of the child. But the problem which UNICEF confronts theoretically and practically in this project would seeem to the be absence of, (...) and the consequent need for, a theory of the person as OTHER on which to ground any claim for the irreducible moral worth of children. If UNICEF were to consult certain philosophies, such as British empiricism or transcendental phenomenology, it may find only various and subtle forms of the forgetfulness of the face of the child. The purpose of the present essay is to focus on the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to see if we can find there a theory of intersubjectivity and the foundation of human rights commensurate with UNICEF’s program for justice in our world. Merleau-Ponty offers two arguments for the person as other. The first is a genetic argument, showing that otherness is a constitutive dimension of personhood. The second is a phenomenologicl argument centered on the reversibility of the touching and the touched, of subject and object, wherein the person as other is given in an originary way. These arguments will be examined in the light of two texts, written in the 1980’s and signed by Emmanuel Levinas, which would question whether the social relation and/or the ethical relation could be established through intercorporeity. In these essays, Levinas argues, contrary to Merleau-Ponty, that the ethical relation is beyond knowledge and within the modality of the gift. Is it to Levinas, then, rather than to Merleau-Ponty that UNICEF should turn to find the philosophical framework adequate to its commitment to the moral power of the face of the child? Contrary to Levinas, this essay purports to demonstrate that a) Merleau-Ponty’s reversibility schema does not preclude affirmation of what is irreducibly other in the Other but provides the common ground, lacking in Levinas, for ethical communication, and that b)if ‘the gift’ is ever to be received, the ethical relation will have to be conceived in terms of what Merleau-Ponty understands by a ‘humanism in extension’ and ‘Virtu’. Thus, as part of its heritage, Merleau-Ponty’s thought can form the theoretical and practical foundation for UNICEF’s commitment to the moral power of the face of the child. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between lived space and revolutionary consciousness in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Understood as the site of the subject’s gearing into the world, oriented by the pre-objective experience of depth, lived space lies at the heart of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological project but also, I argue, its commitment to Marxist dialectics. Historically polarized by the labor-capital relation, space in Merleau-Ponty’s analysis harbors the motivation for revolutionary movement. For this reason, it is integral to his efforts to rework Georg (...) Lukács’s concept of class consciousness along phenomenological lines. Rather than imputing the consciousness of the proletariat on the basis of its objective position within the capitalist production process, Merleau-Ponty’s Marxist phenomenology aims to discover class consciousness within the historical obstruction of lived space. After laying out this argument, the second section of the essay then articulates the crisis character of lived space in terms of a dialectic between freedom and pathology. In Merleau-Ponty’s account, while lived space underpins freedom, it is also possible for the interval of freedom to collapse, giving way to a morbid proximity and sense of compulsion. In the essay’s final section, I return to the problem of class consciousness, considering the intellectual affinities between Merleau-Ponty and Lukács, while drawing attention to their diverging views on space and the aesthetic form of landscape. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show that there are resources in the work of Merleau-Ponty to both show how the extension of the teleological structure of perception to history issues in a profound misunderstanding of history, as being structured teleologically, as having an ultimate goal. In addition, it elaborates an alternative conception of history, which rejects the nihilistic conception of history as meaningless, as one damn thing after another. It elaborates a conception of history as having neither arch nor telos but (...) rather “beginning in the middle of things” as finding finite centers of meaning. It continues by evoking Charles Taylor’s remark that “man is an interpreting animal”, and then proceeds to show how in Western history, various philosophers have explained how it is that, by and large, man is a misinterpreting animal. Each philosopher is viewed as offering an explanation of how we misinterpret our selves, the world and history, and suggests at least implicitly, a corrective to this misinterpretation, motivated either by the structure of our minds or our history. It proceeds to a reflection on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Advent of and Claude Lefort’s conception of the regime, and ends by evoking the pernicious political effects of a belief in a teleology of history, as motivating the notion of Manifest Destiny and the contemporary movement of white Christian nationalism, for whom Trump represents the providential direction of history. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s hyperdialectic presents a problem that intersects the practice and theory of philosophy. As the hyperdialectic is simultaneously a theory and practice of the dialectic, its clarification must detour through a consideration of philosophical practice. In this paper, I develop a phenomenology to achieve this detour and clarify the hyperdialectic. My strategy involves opening a way into the dialectic, allowing me to provide a theory of the dialectic. Once this way is achieved, retracing its steps incorporates the dialectic into phenomenological (...) practice, transforming phenomenology into a dialectical philosophy and deepening the theory of the dialectic into a hyperdialectic. Specifically, I develop this phenomenology by discussing Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Husserl and Hegel. From Hegel, he redevelops the dialectic; from Husserl, he redevelops the epoche and the reduction. The first section discusses the relationship between the dialectic, philosophy, and the epoche. The second section discusses the relationship between the dialectic, phenomenology, and the reduction. The third section transforms phenomenology into a dialectical practice and clarifies the hyperdialectic. I conclude that the hyperdialectic is the self-manifestation of the World. (shrink)

According to Merleau-Ponty, the problem with dialectical materialism from Marx to Trotsky was that it was insufficiently attentive to the inertia of institutions and the real weight of history: it ‘lacked a means of expressing the inertia of the infrastructures, the resistance of economic and even natural conditions, and the swallowing-up of “personal relationships” in “things.”’ In response, Sartre tried to show in his Critique of Dialectical Reason how the world that we create starts to exercise power over us in (...) the form of ‘practico-inert’ structures and institutions. However, these inert institutions do not confront us as passive blocks of objective reality that are simply too difficult to change, as the classic Hegelian notion of social reality as ‘second nature’ would suggest. Instead, they suck us in and suck us dry, absorbing our energies with a kind of vampiric force. Already in Being and Nothingness, Sartre described the way we get enmeshed in material reality like dealing with slime: the more you struggle to free yourself, the more stuck you become. In general, inertia for Sartre is not passive objectivity; rather, we are constantly ‘falling into inertia’. But what is the nature of this inertia, what is the vampiric or ‘slimy’ force of institutions, and how can we resist it? This paper will examine Merleau-Ponty’s claim that Sartre is unable to think inertia, consider whether the theory of the ‘practico-inert’ in the Critique of Dialectical Reason is an adequate response to this concern, and develop the notion of slime (‘le visqueux’) as a ‘middle ground’ between subjectivity and objectivity. (shrink)

The present article revisits Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought from a contemporary philosophical perspective, outlining new ways to inheret his thought. In particular, the article proposes a comparison between Merleau-Ponty’s thought and Isabelle Stengers’, based on their shared reading of A. N. Whitehead’s philosophy. In this context, Whitehead represents a point of theoretical mediation that allows us to highlight the resonances between Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh and Stengers’ cosmopolitics, showing how both are rooted in a relational and processual vision of reality, (...) which leads them towards what we might call a “sensible materialism”. Finally, the article’s conclusion highlights how this philosophical perspective implies a particular ethical stance: philosophy becomes an exercise in attention and responsibility towards a living and heterogeneous cosmos. We can thus understand how, within our own time marked by ecological crisis, the thought of Merleau-Ponty and Stengers offers conceptual instruments capable of rethinking our place in the world, by opening up reflection to new ways of inhabiting the Earth. (shrink)

This article offers a reexamination of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh, with emphasis on its epistemological import. The thread is the notion of negativity, which throughout his thought evolves from an anthropological structure to a differential structure of Being. The negative functions as a background on which to interrogate the relations between sense and non-sense now considered in the light of the ontological rehabilitation of the sensible as instantiated in the very last phases of his philosophy. The notion of flesh (...) is thereby presented as an epistemological model more radical than the notion of Lebenswelt. Via a comparison between Husserl and Ricoeur, I bring out the impossibility to separate ontology from epistemology. The redefinition of the transcendental and of the subject is central: the dynamic between Einströmen and reflexion produces “surreflexion” which grasps the historico-terrestrial of consciousness within being. The result is a conception of the flesh as supporting the balance between doxastics and epistemics, between poetic language and the language of the human and natural sciences. Knowledge therefore appears as probabilistic and processual, something exposed to the contingency of being. On this basis, I introduce the notion of archi-tectonic to bring out the geographical and geological metaphors in Merleau-Ponty’s work. In dialogue with Bachelard, our conclusion generalizes the categories of the “as if” and “why not.” This allows us therefore to overcome representationalist approaches. We advocate a reevaluation of sensible intuition and imagination by sketching out a “speculative,” expressivist and dialectical model. (shrink)

When it comes to thinkers of violence, Merleau-Ponty seems like an unlikely candidate compared to many of his contemporaries. His thought is populated with images of co-belonging, mutual implication and shared being. Similarly, though this has changed significantly in the past ten or twenty years, Merleau-Ponty has not been closely associated with thinking the event (compared to Heidegger or Badiou). Given the pairing of violence and event – where the event as event is characterized by violence – it may not (...) be surprising, then, that Merleau-Ponty is not at the top of the list of thinkers of violence and the event. As more recent scholarship has increasingly indicated, however, there is an evident thread within his thought where violence and the event come into consideration. I would like to pick up this thread and consider how Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy stands with respect to a theory of theory of transcendental violence and the event: what is the event, what is transcendental violence, and what about their mutual implication? First, I think we can find something like a concept of transcendental violence in Merleau-Ponty. Here, transcendental violence means that the sense produced is incomplete and imperfect due to the dynamic nature of transcendentality itself. There is violence at the level of transcendentality insofar as there can be no fully integrated being that is subjected to violence only later. Rather beings only become articulate insofar as they are torn away from themselves, “constituted” through a generative violation. Second, in tandem with the transcendentality of violence, there is the event. The transcendental is not a point, a subject, history, or even temporality per se: the transcendental is the event – what was not anticipated or prefigured, rupture rather than synthesis, a break or crack in what is that makes all that comes to pass possible. I think we can organize a number of themes in Merleau-Ponty’s thought under this rubric: the flesh, écart, dehiscence, and we can do this in concert with his overt political concerns: the violence of the mundane and the violence of quiet liberalism. (shrink)

Presentiamo in questa sede un inventario dei nuovi manoscritti inediti di Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). Ringraziamo di cuore Guillaume Butel, nipote e titolare dei diritti del filosofo, per il suo impegno generoso nel mettere a disposizione questi documenti, e per l’autorizzazione a consultarli e a redigerne l’inventario, e Mauro Carbone, Philippe Chevalier e Shôichi Matsuba, per la loro opera di revisione. Abbiamo voluto chiamare questi documenti “nuovi inediti” per distinguerli dagli inediti del dopoguerra, recentemente pubblicati a nostra cura presso le Edizioni (...) Mimesis, inediti di cui gli originali restano ancora oggi introvabili, così come la tesi di laurea di Maurice Merleau-Ponty su Plotino. Forniremo innanzitutto un breve excursus per ripercorrere la storia di questi “Nuovi inediti” e ci soffermeremo poi su alcune indicazioni e dettagli materiali riguardo alla redazione di questo inventario. (shrink)

Here we present an inventory of new unpublished manuscripts by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). We would like to warmly thank Guillaume Butel, the philosopher’s grandson and heir, for his generous commitment to making these documents available, and for allowing us to consult and inventory them. We have chosen to call them the “New Unpublished Manuscripts”, in contrast to the post-war works, recently published by us at Mimesis, the origins of which remain untraceable to this day, as does Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Diplôme d’Études (...) Supérieures on Plotinus. We will begin briefly tracing the history of the “New Unpublished Manuscripts”, before providing some material information about the establishment of this inventory. (shrink)

Nous présentons ici un inventaire des nouveaux manuscrits inédits de Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). Nous tenons à remercier chaleureusement Guillaume Butel, petit-fils et ayant-droit du philosophe, pour son engagement généreux concernant la mise à disposition de ces documents, et pour nous avoir autorisé à consulter et inventorier ces documents, ainsi que Mauro Carbone, Philippe Chevalier et Shôichi Matsuba, pour leurs relectures de cet inventaire. Nous faisons le choix de nommer ces documents les « Nouveaux inédits », par contraste avec ceux d’après-guerre, (...) récemment édités par nos soins aux éditions Mimésis, inédits d’après-guerre dont les originaux demeurent encore à ce jour introuvables, au même titre que le Diplôme d’Études Supérieures de Maurice Merleau-Ponty sur Plotin. Nous commencerons par un bref historique retraçant l’histoire des « Nouveaux inédits », avant de donner quelques indications matérielles à propos de l’établissement de cet inventaire. (shrink)

A significant issue in current discussions of Confucian exemplarism is the insufficient scholarly focus on the moments of collapse that learners encounter when confronted with the gap between their current selves and the moral ideals embodied by exemplars during the emulative process. This study therefore examines, in turn, the phenomena of collapse (fei 廢), overstepping or falling short (guo bu ji 過不及), and confusion (huo 惑) as they emerge in the course of learning. It argues that following a moral exemplar (...) requires the mutually dependent practices of rectification (gai 改) and choosing the good (ze shan 擇善), through which breakdown, excess and deficiency, and confusion can be overcome. Even when the pursuit of virtue through context-sensitive exemplars leads to frequent collapse, the committed learner does not surrender but instead transforms such moments into opportunities for disciplined reflection. Reflective imitation thus enables learners to correct not only overstepping or falling short but confusion itself, rendering moral progress more lucid, concrete, and sustainable. Focusing on the correction of error through the emulation of exemplary excellence, this study highlights Yan Hui’s response to Confucius’s teaching of bo wen yue li (博文約禮)—his inquiry into ren (問仁), his request to devote himself to these teachings (請事斯語), and his love of learning (好學). This proposal advances a framework for Confucian learning that demystifies excellence cultivation and offers pragmatic prospects for situationally robust education. (shrink)

This piece examines the performances enacted within contemporary educational politics—both K-12 and colleges and universities. To do this, we engage with theory from performance studies, higher education policy, and a punk ethos to suggest how contemporary politics treat higher education as a prop. Further, we illustrate how the current moment is a historical pattern familiar from the past and how a punk sensibility can provide alternative forms of hope. Ultimately, we wonder how punk’s insistence on authenticity, its delighting in refusal, (...) its joy in resistance, and its theoretical staying power may undermine attempts to destroy public education through the mechanism of unfettered state control. (shrink)

Over the past three decades, decolonial scholarship1 has fundamentally renegotiated what counts as knowledge in education. The epistemological terrain has shifted: Santos(2014) exposed the systemat...

Most philosophers agree that lies are assertions. Most also agree that to presuppose information is different from asserting it. In a series of papers, Viebahn [2020. “Lying with Presuppositions.” Noûs 54 (4): 731–751; “The Lying-Misleading Distinction: A Commitment-Based Approach.” Journal of Philosophy 118 (6): 298–319], along with an empirical study in Viebahn et al. [2021. “Can a Question be a lie? An Empirical Investigation.” Ergo 8 (7): 175–217], has recently argued that one can lie with presuppositions, and therefore one can (...) assert that p by presupposing that p. The latter conclusion is a rejection of a cornerstone of modern philosophy of language and linguistics, and as such we should require strong reasons for accepting it. I argue here that the reasons for thinking that presuppositions can be lies are too weak to motivate giving up either the view that lies are assertions or the traditional distinction between presuppositions and assertions. (shrink)

Lies come in different sizes. There are little white lies, slight stretches, exaggerations, fibs, and whoppers. Such terms can reflect different aspects of lies, but one of these is how far a lie is from what the liar really thinks. This paper proposes that this dimension of lie-size reflects a scalar aspect of sincerity. Drawing inspiration from the study of truthlikeness, the paper elucidates this aspect of sincerity, which I call “truthful-likeness”. Truthful-likeness reflects how sincere a reply to a question (...) is, based on how close the speaker takes the reply to be to their best available one. A related measure, expected subjective truth factor, reflects how sincere a constative act that is not a reply to a question is, based on how close to being true the speaker thinks it is. (shrink)

Catholics condemn Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) as a fanatic; he fails to cushion ‘Never lie' with a distinction between venial and mortal sin. But Kant has secular substitutes: lie/mislead, candor/honesty, commission/omission, deception/illusion, discursive/pictorial. Kant weaves these distinctions into a safety net for polite society, business, politics, and religion. Kant's break-away disciple, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) removes this safety net. Any intentional propagation of error suffices for lying. Ditto for refraining to correct a remedial error. Why? Because we all have a duty (...) to perfect each other. This moral development requires rational informed choice. Being misinformed subverts freedom. The medium of misinformation is irrelevant: utterances, silences, pictures, music, dance, private thoughts, telepathy. To Fichte's relief, Kant overcame the temptation to save an innocent man from murder by lying. But Fichte still thought Kant manifested a corrupt mind by merely considering lying! (shrink)

Sometimes speakers try to lie and inadvertently assert something true. Subjectivists about lying hold that such speakers are lying despite telling the truth. Objectivists hold that such speakers are not lying: they try to lie but fail. The first aim of this paper is to point to novel cases supporting subjectivism that do not involve speakers inadvertently asserting something true. Its second aim is to use these and other cases to explore the distinction between lying and trying to lie. Which (...) factors can thwart an attempt at lying? In which situations do we judge that a speaker has tried to lie but failed? Attending to these questions not only offers insights into the act of lying, but also helps to scrutinise the objectivist strategy of explaining away intuitions about apparent cases of lying while telling the truth. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that predominant gendering practices support a proof ideal similar to the one operative in mathematics, contributing to the erasure and assimilation of countercultural practices. After fleshing out the analogy, I argue it can be productive: in gender as in mathematics, there is room for rethinking what we mean by—and want from—proof. The proposal is to think of gender in terms of an agent’s gender grounds, i.e., the set of first-person gender proofs accepted or rejected by (...) said agent. This framework avoids common worries about deflationary and essentialized notions of gender identity, provides many of the usual epistemic benefits of proof, is compatible with first-person authority over one’s gender, and fruitfully complements an ameliorative semantic pluralism for gender terms. (shrink)

This research note aims to motivate philosophical examination of the ethical tensions surrounding ‘dark tourism’ and monuments to injustice. While such monuments function to acknowledge past wrongs, educate the public, and serve reparative functions, their presentation as tourist destinations can undermine these purposes. I identify four common concerns: voyeurism, violations of privacy and re‐traumatization, the commercialization of suffering, and inappropriate or exploitative visitor conduct. These challenges of dark tourism complicate the standard justifications for commemorating injustices in the form of physical (...) memorials. I suggest that philosophical attention to dark tourism will both refine our understanding of monumental ethics and provide guidelines for the ethical design of monuments. (shrink)

Adam Smith is commonly portrayed as a champion of market freedom, yet this reading obscures the broader political framework underlying his conception of a free society. This paper argues that Smith's social thought is structured by two complementary principles—subsidiarity and solidarity—which together constitute the normative architecture of modern liberty. Reconstructing Smith’s neglected theory of political society, it shows that the public good cannot be reduced to market prosperity or the aggregation of private interests, but encompasses freedom, opulence, and collective happiness. (...) Subsidiarity is reflected in Smith's account of limited yet active government, while solidarity emerges from his moral psychology of sympathy and his account of human interdependence. Their integration explains why Smith rejects both laissez-faire and paternalism, instead defending a commercial society in which markets, political institutions, and intermediary communities jointly sustain independent agency and human flourishing. (shrink)

Taking Krishna Kumar’s book Thank you, Gandhi as its point of engagement, this review essay critically examines the conflict of political values in post-Independence India. It presents a synoptic review of the defence of the Nehruvian India amidst the growing rise of Hindu nationalism. While highlighting the role of democratization in the political negotiation of competing ideological frameworks, it assesses the role of intelligentsia in furthering sectional interests in the name of high nationalism. After all, nation-building is an endless contestation (...) and everyday plebiscite over the hegemonic values of our times. And, democracy remains one of the most potent mechanisms to help us choose one set of values over others. (shrink)

It is now increasingly acknowledged that modern lifestyle can no longer be sustained on the planet. The success of modernity has landed humanity in the ‘development paradox’, where human progress threatens human survival. However, the predominant discussion on sustainability primarily centres around elongating the modern lifestyle, based on Western values of materialism, individualism and consumerism. It is also evident that the lingering problems of our times cannot be resolved within the prevalent worldview heavily loaded with materialism. Therefore, there is a (...) need for a paradigm shift. In this regard, India can provide answers to develop an alternative framework of sustainability. This study attempts to situate two important philosophical concepts, namely yajña and saha-astitva, amidst the contemporary discussions on sustainability. This study also draws upon important learnings from traditional Indian villages. To study the functioning of traditional villages (or jajmāni system) from the perspective of sustainability is a novel attempt. (shrink)