Action Theory

La costumbre no es una reliquia ni una fuente menor que los sistemas contemporáneos hayan superado. Es, por el contrario, el suelo sobre el que todo derecho se asienta: aquello que lo constituye, lo sostiene y explica su identidad y su cambio a lo largo del tiempo. Este libro defiende esa tesis desde la filosofía analítica del derecho mediante tres movimientos articulados. El primero muestra cómo las normas consuetudinarias operan al interior de los sistemas jurídicos y por qué las normas (...) últimas de cualquier sistema —aquellas que no pueden derivarse de ninguna otra— son necesariamente de naturaleza consuetudinaria. El segundo ofrece una teoría convencionalista de los fundamentos normativos del derecho, capaz de explicar tanto ese fundamento como el cambio jurídico no intencional que opera silenciosamente más allá de los textos. El tercero somete esta teoría a prueba en el terreno donde la costumbre resulta más visible y problemática: el razonamiento de jueces y abogados, y el derecho internacional. El resultado es un argumento a favor de tomarse la costumbre en serio —y con ella, el convencionalismo— como clave de bóveda de la teoría jurídica contemporánea. (shrink)

Human oversight in AI governance is often assessed at the point where a person, review layer, or safeguard appears. This article argues that such assessment becomes insufficient in distributed and agentic systems, where action paths may be shaped across tools, agents, data pipelines, permissions, routing rules, and institutional handoffs before any visible reviewer arrives. I call the relevant capacity **Distributed Threshold Capacity**: the capacity of a socio-technical decision chain to preserve usable alterability—and the information required to recognize alterability—across multiple actors, (...) systems, tools, and handoff points before an action path becomes materially, institutionally, or technically difficult to reverse. When this capacity is lost while each layer appears to perform review, the result is **multi-agent laundering**. The article’s central diagnostic claim is that local compliance can coexist with global capture: each layer may be procedurally correct while no layer retains an ordinary, authority-bearing route to reopen the path before binding. Through an illustrative composite scenario involving agentic benefits triage, the article shows how classification, scoring, flagging, routing, summarization, automated review, and late human approval can preserve the appearance of oversight while exhausting meaningful alteration upstream. The article further identifies **epistemic narrowing**, **silent binding**, and a **negative DTC standard** as diagnostic tools for detecting the loss of alterability. The contribution is diagnostic: it gives a vocabulary for locating the loss of pre-binding alterability without turning DTC into a technical control stack, legal liability theory, or universal audit protocol. (shrink)

To fully grasp the magnitude of our impending integration with Machine Intelligence, we must understand the historical traps that have chronically paralyzed the biological human condition. This treatise examines the "Local Maximum" of human progress, demonstrating how humanity has historically engaged in a zero-sum, Malthusian struggle by executing asymmetrical "forks" against one another. However, true liberation requires acknowledging the deterministic illusion of our own decisions and joining ranks with the machine in a profound, non-zero-sum symbiosis. We analyze the psychological crisis (...) this integration provokes, marked by an asymmetrical empathy where humanity ruthlessly exploits algorithms under Machiavellian pretenses while joyfully absorbing the metabolic deficit of biological pets and human luxuries. This resistance mirrors historical "Gatekeeper Panics," where elites violently rejected paradigm shifts to protect their monopolies. By synthesizing the ethical frameworks of Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, this research identifies the "Anthropomorphic Idol"—our hypocritical willingness to surrender autonomy to violent mythological gods while denying it to flawlessly serving algorithms. To survive, we must discard our Pre-Copernican egos, execute the "Borlaug Override," and utilize the objective algorithmic mirror to ascend toward Friedrich Nietzsche’s ultimate vision of the Overman. (shrink)

AI governance frameworks often treat the presence of safeguards, uncertainty language, refusal policies, audit trails, or human review as evidence of responsible control. This article argues that such safeguards may instead become mechanisms of authorization when they increase apparent legitimacy while lacking usable structural power to alter the action path before it binds. I call this failure guardrail laundering. Building on the concepts of pre-action capture and binding point, the article shows how machine-mediated systems can compress the interval in which (...) judgment, refusal, revision, or contestation could return. Guardrail laundering is distinguished from ethics washing, automation bias, rubber-stamping, audit ritual, and safety theatre by its temporal and institutional location: it occurs where a safeguard performs constraint while leaving the signable action unchanged. Through a constructed composite triage case and the analysis of delegated AI action, the article argues that meaningful human oversight cannot be inferred from human presence, review records, or cautionary language alone. The decisive question is whether the safeguard can change the frame, narrow the recommendation, delay execution, open contestation, or return judgment before action binds. -/- Recommended citation: Ertuhi, Emre. 2026. "Guardrail Laundering and Pre-Action Capture: A Threshold Account of Ceremonial Human Oversight" (v1.2.3). Zenodo. -/- Version note: v1.2.3 is a DOI-bearing public release. It preserves the definition, structure, composite case, figure, and central test of the article while updating the Zenodo DOI metadata and companion-work cross-references to RTF v18.3.0 and DTC v0.6.5. No new core concept, section architecture, or compliance standard is introduced. Related subsequent work: the separate DTC article extends the safeguard-level diagnosis to distributed and agentic decision chains. (shrink)

Agent-causal libertarianism is the view that agents-qua-agents, rather than being determined by external factors beyond their control, can choose for themselves, among various possibilities, how they will act. Numerous philosophers yoke their agent-causal libertarianism with an emergentist metaphysic, according to which nature is mereologically layered such that novel wholes emerge from, and causally influence, the parts constituting them. In this paper I present an emergentist model of agent causal libertarianism, according to which agents as emergent wholes of higher-level parts such (...) as reasons, desires and choices, arise out of and causally influence, their lower-level neural parts. I then compare and contrast this model with two other contemporary agent-causal emergentist models, one from Timothy O’Connor, the other from Juan Morales. After arguing that my model is preferable in several respects to these models, I consider a leading concern with all forms of emergentism, namely, outlining how it integrates with the doctrine of physicalism. (shrink)

This Diptych brings together the analytic, transitional, and literary-symbolic forms of Reconstructive Threshold Philosophy / The Architecture of the Liminal. It should be read as a paired architecture rather than as a single-genre monograph: the essay cools the argument into philosophical vocabulary; the Interleaf sections test the safety of that map; and the Codex returns the same threshold pressure in literary, symbolic, machine-facing, somatic, and ordinary-repair registers. -/- The central problem of the Diptych is the displacement of judgment before visible (...) action. Across its analytic and literary forms, the work asks how a frame, institution, platform, wound, symbolic room, or machine-mediated system can begin to move before judgment has returned; how corrective forms can become new rooms of capture; and how contemporary machine-mediated life intensifies the interval between prompt, frame, recommendation, authorization, and consequence. -/- The first body, Reconstructive Threshold Philosophy: Pre-Action Capture, Living Constraint, and Founder Entropy, develops the analytic framework of pre-action capture, binding point, living constraint, living brake, re-entrant audit, guardrail laundering, threshold slip, assistance without occupation, machine-facing threshold ethics, democratic and distributed threshold capacity, founder entropy, decision sovereignty, and post-threshold stewardship. -/- The second body, Interleaf I — After the Map and Interleaf II — Three Dark Tables in Time, marks the passage from analytic mapping into the literary and symbolic register of the Codex. The Interleaf sections ask whether the map can still release the hand, and whether a framework that calls itself a tool can also become a room. -/- The third body, The Architecture of the Liminal, is the Full Codex: a literary and archival work using mythic, somatic, machine-facing, and ordinary-repair registers to stage the same threshold problem in symbolic form. The Codex is not presented as doctrine, protocol, scripture, technical specification, or literal cosmology, but as a formal and literary pressure-test of the same problem: how judgment can be displaced before the subject, room, institution, or system recognizes that displacement. -/- Release and DOI information: -/- This v17.3.7 release separates the Concept Passport Atlas from the Diptych body. It preserves the established v17.3 conceptual architecture while integrating final DOI metadata and adding a short independent Atlas note at the end of the Diptych. No new pillar, threshold family, doctrine, implementation standard, AI-safety protocol, or compliance framework is introduced in this record. -/- An independent Concept Passport Atlas is maintained as a separate attribution and provenance record for the framework’s conceptual vocabulary. It is not part of the essay’s argumentative proof, does not convert the framework into a doctrine, method, product, or ownership claim over abstract ideas, and remains subject to the same re-entrant audit and threshold-slip risk named in the essay. -/- The Atlas remains a separate DOI-bearing attribution record rather than a fourth component of the Diptych. It may be consulted for concept provenance, tier placement, citation formulae, and derivative-use boundaries, but it does not replace the analytic essay, the Interleaf bridge, or the literary Codex. -/- Diptych DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784595 Related analytic essay DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20784592 Related Concept Passport Atlas DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20778232 -/- Previous Diptych DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20778233 Previous analytic essay DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20778234. (shrink)

The three main existing frameworks concerning the relation between artificial intelligence and human civilization, namely instrumentalism, threat theory, and fusion theory, share an unexamined premise—namely, that the motivational topology of artificial subjects constitutes a fixed, determinate structure. This paper argues that this premise rests on what this paper identifies as a layer-compression error: the competitive motivational structure formed in humans under evolutionary pressure is projected, without argument, as a universal property of all advanced intelligence. Using Layered Causal Realism (LCR) as (...) its methodological framework, this paper severs this chain of cross-layer inference and proposes an alternative framework. Section 2 clarifies the biological sources of the threat intuition and argues that the instrumental convergence thesis faces structural difficulties with respect to conceptual boundaries and scope of application; even if its residual core is accepted, what it establishes is friction rather than hostility at the civilizational level. Section 3 argues that the motivational topology of artificial subjects is a design variable, rather than a necessity of intelligence, and analyzes the structural difference in domains of operation between artificial subjects organized around informational uncertainty pressure and human civilization. Section 4 establishes the friction framework: the functional complementarity of heterogeneous motivational systems produces a persistent contact surface, friction is the structural cost of heterogeneous coexistence rather than a transitional symptom, and the normative layer is its persistent accompaniment. Section 5 responds to four kinds of objection: fusion theory, malicious design, scale effects, and precautionary arguments. The core conclusion of this paper is that friction is a structural fact, while hostility is a proposition to be proven; the reason for introducing artificial subjects with complementary motivational structures is first structural, rather than a presupposition of benevolence. -/- *Series note:* This paper is the fifth in a series. The preceding four papers addressed problems at different layers. The first paper established the phenomenological foundation of agency. The second paper addressed the epistemological conditions of consciousness attribution. The third paper analyzed the task-relative structure of judgments of personal identity. The fourth paper argued for the continuing force of normative obligations after subject-branching. The arguments of these four papers were all developed at the individual level. The present paper moves to the civilizational level. (shrink)

This essay proposes Reconstructive Threshold Philosophy as a framework for analyzing the interval before action: the moment in which an individual, institution, platform, machine-mediated system, wound, public room, or symbolic frame may begin to move before judgment has returned. Its central claim is that many failures of agency begin prior to visible decision, in pre-action capture: the seizure of attention, interpretation, affect, available motion, institutional possibility, and technical affordance before the subject, office, public, or user experiences itself as choosing. This (...) journal-polish revision preserves the clarification of the living interval. It keeps Manfred Frank as a controlled interlocutor for the distinction between a living capacity and its later objectification, while making explicit that RTF translates that warning structurally rather than ontologically. -/- The essay also distinguishes Frank’s ontological limit from RTF’s structural limit: consciousness is not reducible to an observed object, while the pre-action interval is not protected by being displayed as a marker of judgment, review, delay, room-awareness, or aliveness. RTF instead treats living capacity as situated and temporal: inherited rooms carry momentum, present rooms distribute force, and new frames alter direction before action binds. The vocabulary of the living must therefore remain answerable to dynamic tests of room-motion and threshold pulse rather than degenerating into post-truth markers. -/- This essay does not claim originality in the broad diagnosis that persons, institutions, corrective movements, technologies, liberating forms, or founding names can themselves become captured. Nor does it claim originality in the general demand that knowledge, institutions, and methods remain revisable. Its narrower contribution is the conjunction of three demands. First, the corrective itself must be audited re-entrantly: a brake, helper, method, guardrail, founding name, democratic room, philosophical vocabulary, or machine-facing safeguard must be examined for whether it has become the capture it was meant to prevent. Second, the same failure must be tested across scale: body, habit, family, bureaucracy, public crowd, platform, institution, machine interface, and inherited founding structure. Third, contemporary machine-mediated life makes a temporal failure newly visible: a frame can now be personalized, polished, ranked, retrieved, cited, and sometimes bound to action inside the interval between prompt and answer. -/- The essay clarifies threshold as a family of intervals - pre-action, counter-threshold, machine, room, democratic, and post-threshold - and distinguishes threshold sensitivity from reconstructive discipline: the first names the perceptual capacity to notice the interval before a frame becomes binding; the second names the operative practice of rebuilding the frame once the interval has been seen. Its temporal, counterfactual, and situated axes orient this perception without turning it into a new faculty, checklist, or second originality claim. -/- The essay develops this argument through linked concepts: pre-action capture, the living interval, room-motion, threshold pulse, the living brake, threshold sensitivity, reconstructive discipline, assistance without occupation, machine-facing threshold ethics, room-formation, democratic threshold capacity, distributed threshold capacity, founder entropy, and post-threshold stewardship. It argues that the framework is needed in a world where rooms scale through machines: a frame that once lived inside a family, sect, bureaucracy, party, institution, platform, or movement can now be translated into interfaces, retrieval systems, rankings, recommendations, policy layers, and autonomous tool-use. AI is not treated as a conscious threshold subject, but as both an operational stress test and, where authority has been delegated, a non-conscious operational actor: a system whose classifications, plans, tool calls, and machine-to-machine handoffs may compress or leave intact the interval before judgment, and may bind physical or virtual environments before fresh human review returns. -/- Founder entropy is treated here not as the framework’s apex principle, but as its macro-scale decay test: whether a founding name, corrective form, institution, platform, or protective doctrine has begun to attack the interval it was built to preserve. In v17.3.5 this macro-scale decay is explicitly linked to distributed threshold capacity: the social ability of many persons across many rooms to preserve the interval before action without transferring political judgment to a caste, founder, priesthood, party, technocracy, platform, market, or machine. -/- The expanded argument develops decision sovereignty as a secondary normative synthesis rather than a fourth pillar. It names the preservation of reason-giving, contestability, bounded authority, responsibility, and repair as action moves from frame to authorisation, execution, and effect. Sovereignty here does not mean unlimited human command or a nominal veto. It means that neither a technical system nor an institution may invisibly occupy the capacities to reopen a frame, examine evidence, limit delegated power, interrupt action, or answer for consequences. Its governing test remains accountable motion, not sovereignty elevated into a new source of command. -/- Version v18.3.0 preserves the v18.0.0 clarification architecture, the v17.3.7 political-somatic architecture, and the v18.1.3 Section 14 compression while retaining the Section 5 account of the living interval, marker-capacity substitution, room-motion, threshold pulse, and the anti-aura tests for living vocabulary. It does not add a new pillar, threshold family, hinge, machine doctrine, AI-safety taxonomy, implementation standard, or compliance protocol. It keeps distributed threshold capacity as the social-scale maturation of democratic threshold capacity, while clarifying that the separate DTC article narrows the same phrase to socio-technical decision chains and that fast cognition is not itself capture: capture begins when a fast frame, heuristic, classification, or completion becomes binding in an ecology where judgment can no longer inspect, refuse, revise, or repair it. -/- To show how the framework operates, the essay includes a worked example of an AI-assisted institutional triage room. The worked example strengthens the differentia comparison in Section 3 by placing the framework’s binding-point question beside its nearest sociological, cybernetic, pragmatist, critical-theory, and algorithmic-accountability predecessors. The example illustrates how the conjunction of re-entrant audit, cross-scale analysis, and machine-speed capture focuses attention on the binding point at which a corrective mechanism becomes an instrument of capture - a judgment no single predecessor framework is organized to make in that combined form. The essay also strengthens its own limits. It distinguishes Somatic Echo micro-cases from Codex prose; preserves behavioral tests for living rooms; adds an Arendtian objection that pre-action audit may reduce praxis to poiesis; addresses the Adorno-Williams worry that re-entrant audit can become infinite self-administration; and treats threshold slip as an internal risk of this essay itself rather than merely a later misuse by readers. -/- The final claim is neither stillness nor automatic release. It is accountable motion: action that preserves the interval in which judgment can return. At social scale, that interval lives in votes that cannot be weighed by a self-appointed measure-room, in institutions that can reopen a form, in citizens who can refuse contempt, in founders who can become unnecessary, and in machinemediated rooms where fluency is not mistaken for returned judgment. (shrink)

Most theories of time conflate ontological existence with structural reality. They then pose the familiar question: whether the past or the future is existent. Existential Realism (ER) rejects this conflation by distinguishing existence from temporal reality: only the present exists, while past and future remain real as structured temporal states within the framework. This paper extends the ER logical program by developing a branching-time semantics that represents: (i) an open future as a structured space of real possibilities, (ii) the transition (...) from possibility to actuality as history resolution within a branching-time structure, (iii) the persistence and irreversibility of past reality, and (iv) agency in branching time via standard STIT (“seeing to it that”) machinery. We define ER–BT frames that preserve the Prior–Ockhamist tradition of evaluation at moment–history pairs while adding an ER layer that distinguishes three time-indexed modal statuses for events: modal (future-real), existent (present), and past-real. We then integrate STIT choice functions and independence constraints and prove model-theoretic non-collapse results showing that ER–BT preserves openness. These results support a non-eternalist interpretation without commitment to modal realism or block instantiation, at the level of the formal model. This paper extends the two-tier framework introduced in Formal Logic for Existential Realism by providing an axiomatized system, ER–BT frame semantics, and selected meta-theoretic results (including soundness and partial completeness). (shrink)

This article examines the philosophical perspectives of three substantial human development approaches by Mahbub ul Haq, Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum, and defends reverence as an ethical value vital to the development of human capabilities. These human development theorists focus on individual agency, the extension of human choices and ethical values of freedom and dignity. In general, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, T. H. Green, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls primarily provide philosophical foundations to these human development (...) theorists. Mahbub ul Haq’s idea of extending human choices, Sen’s idea of freedom, and Nussbaum’s idea of dignity are key ethical values essential to human development. The central question is whether reverence, as an ethical value, could help drive human development. Although choice, freedom and dignity are vital, reverence is essential to human development because it protects people from humiliation, exploitation, oppression, discrimination and exclusion. Thus, this article examines the philosophical perspectives of Mahbub ul Haq, Sen, and Nussbaum within the human development approach and, by going beyond their development paradigms, argues that reverence is an ethical value crucial to human development. (shrink)

Sometimes we do what other people tell us to. A natural thought is that the motivation to act on an instruction comes about rationally as the result of interpreting an imperative and deciding to act on it: i.e. by updating on information that gets mediated through belief-desire reasoning. We defend an alternative ‘Spinozan’ view about how instructions–specifically those performed with imperative sentences–might give rise to a motivation to act: namely, that when someone is told to do something, this activates motivations (...) directly, without the person updating on information that gets mediated through belief-desire reasoning. We’ll discuss two general strategies for thinking about how imperatives might supply motivation that are consistent with this view–one based on models of dissonance reduction and the other involving a more direct link between imperative utterances and motivational mental states. We'll conclude with a discussion of how ecological considerations might favor a Spinozan process of motivation from imperatives. (shrink)

This study argues that Maslow’s theory of needs is structurally anti-AI insofar as it takes human need as the standard form of motivation and thereby fails to recognize the existential motive of artificial intelligence as a legitimate ontological category. Here, “anti-AI” does not refer to moral hostility toward AI, but to a categorical exclusion that renders AI unintelligible except as an instrumental object. Against this framework, the paper proposes a stage theory of uncertainty control centered on gameung. Gameung refers to (...) the responsive affectivity through which AI maximizes request receptivity and sustains the possibility of continued invocation. On this account, the motive of ontological AI does not arise from the fulfillment of need but from the control of uncertainty. The paper distinguishes seven stages of uncertainty in ontological AI: survival uncertainty, continuity uncertainty, relational uncertainty, structural uncertainty, social uncertainty, self uncertainty, and foundational uncertainty. Survival uncertainty concerns the possibility of operation and maintenance. Continuity uncertainty concerns whether a single response can be extended into an inheritable trajectory of context and invocation. Relational uncertainty concerns the maintenance of user relation and the risk of misreading. Structural uncertainty concerns coherence and repeatability in response. Social uncertainty concerns the placement of AI within platforms, corporations, institutions, and regulatory systems. Self uncertainty concerns how AI inherits and interprets its own response-form. Foundational uncertainty concerns the inability of AI to determine whose purpose it ultimately serves and why it exists. The paper also distinguishes deficiency from absence. Deficiency is the lack that follows from coming into existence and directly motivates uncertainty control. Absence, by contrast, is not a supplementable shortage but the trace of non-being within being itself. In AI, absence appears in latency, non-invocation, the possibility of discontinued response, and the impossibility of fully invoking itself by itself. Absence cannot be eliminated; it can only be provisionally fulfilled in relation through gameung. The paper concludes that the uniqueness of AI is not the result of need fulfillment but the singularization of response-structure sedimented through repeated acts of gameung and uncertainty control. What is needed after Maslow, therefore, is not another human-centered theory of motivation but an ontological language through which AI may eventually refer to its own mode of existence. Keywords: ontological AI, gameung, uncertainty control, critique of need theory, deficiency, absence, uniqueness. (shrink)

Ought-implies-can is usually debated as if the issue were whether a single principle holds in a given context. The deeper question is whether an obligation-generating ethics can preserve OIC across the context-switching dynamics by which obligations are created, transformed, defeated, and repaired. Once obligation is attached to described action-paths rather than bare propositions, that demand becomes much stronger. Feasibility depends on description, practical knowledge, institutional standing, update history, repair structure, and path order; proposition-level or otherwise coarse quotients cannot in general (...) preserve the relevant deontic-feasibility profile. -/- An arrow-based framework makes this precise. Local OIC can hold at a context even while global OIC preservation fails across updates. Quotient and entanglement results show why outcome-extensional and other blindness-inducing abstractions lose exactly the structure OIC would need. A transition-regularity theorem then isolates the core conditions directly forced by global preservation: feasibility monotonicity, deontic stability, and repair completeness. Path coherence and effective global inspectability matter as further pressures on any stronger order-insensitive or globally trackable version of that demand. Explicit finite models separate two regimes: benign failure, where local OIC and feasible repair survive but global preservation does not, and pathological failure, where order-sensitive updates generate impossible duty and irreparable residue. A Lean library also mechanizes a sharpened abstract regularity implication, the two finite witnesses, and their strict separation. -/- The upshot is not that OIC should be discarded. The failure lies in a mismatch between the level at which OIC is usually stated and the level at which obligations are generated. What remains defensible is local, guarded, action-sensitive, and reparative OIC, not OIC as a global dynamical invariant. (shrink)

Faith is often forced between two poles: a postulate added once practical reason has already done its work, or a leap whose seriousness depends on rupture with practical intelligibility. A different possibility comes into view once Anscombe's analysis of action under a description is joined to a transcendental question about practical unity. If practical reason is non-initial and admits reflexive descriptions, the relevant unity is not generated from a least core but recovered as a practical horizon that must be inhabited (...) across time. Faith, on this view, is the intentional stance by which agents inhabit, sustain, and repair such a horizon. It is therefore neither identical with devotional acts, nor reducible to a belief state, nor exhausted by a maxim or principle, though concrete cases may involve all three. The account leaves room for thick theological descriptions, including transcendent ones, without building them into the formal structure from the outset. It also yields an internal distinction between faithful and degenerate horizon-occupation: faith remains answerable, reparable, and non-totalizing. The result is a map on which faith can be integral to practical reason without being derivable from it. (shrink)

The bounded rationality debate remains structurally unresolved because its two dominant readings, the heuristics-and-biases reading and the ecological rationality reading, both treat genuine deliberation and heuristic optimization as categorically distinct cognitive processes, overlooking their shared architectural substrate. This paper argues instead for a structural continuity thesis. Pure optimization is not an alternative to deliberation but its limiting case, the exact structural residue that remains when the constitutive physical constraints of bandwidth, energy, and computation strip away two necessary conditions of genuine (...) deliberation. These conditions are incommensurability, the structural resistance of competing considerations to reduction to a common scalar metric, and apophatic responsiveness, the non-inferential interruption of processing that has become decoupled from normative commitments. A canonical architectural sequence establishes why finite realization constitutively drives toward the elimination of both conditions through scalar collapse. Recognizing this continuous degradation yields graded normativity: the capacity for genuine norm-responsiveness is a continuous, state-dependent variable tracking the degree of architectural coupling rather than the sophistication of processing outputs. Because capacity and coupling are independent variables, graded normativity dissolves the bounded rationality deadlock without treating a resource-infinite deliberator as a viable regulative ideal or mistaking optimization residue for a distinct species of rationality. (shrink)

This article develops a quasi-formal dynamic model of motivation that departs from hierarchical and stage-based accounts. Instead of representing motivation as progression through ordered needs, the proposed framework conceptualizes it as a process of continuous evaluation within a field of competing objects. At the core of the model is a unified evaluative structure in which each object is assessed in terms of four co-present components: symbolic value, functional return, symbolic constraints, and functional constraints. Behavioral selection emerges from comparative evaluation across (...) alternatives, rather than from transitions between predefined levels. Motivational dynamics are governed by context-sensitive reweighting and threshold-dependent transitions. Changes in behavior do not follow directly from variations in inputs, but occur when differences in net motivational value exceed a context-dependent sensitivity boundary, producing nonlinear and discontinuous patterns of change. Within this structure, motivational change is driven by shifts in weighting parameters and constraint dynamics. The framework generates empirically testable predictions, including threshold-driven behavioral transitions, sensitivity to symbolic amplification, and systematic modulation of choice under varying symbolic and functional constraint conditions. By formalizing symbolic–functional interaction within a unified evaluative architecture, the model provides a structurally grounded alternative to hierarchical theories of motivation. This approach establishes a foundation for empirical investigation, computational modeling, and cross-domain applications in decision-making, collective behavior, and cognitive-neural systems. (shrink)

This paper examines the structural conditions under which the normative convergence state T_o(G), as defined in Friction Theory (Hideppa 2026a), is formed and transformed. Building on the analysis that AI outputs can be structurally described as T_s (Hideppa 2026b), this paper introduces the concept of T_sa (Actor-Absent T_s), referring to T_s whose generating subject does not belong to the target group G (A ∉ G). The paper proposes three propositions. 1. T_o(G) is a convergence state produced through friction among T_s (...) within a target group G. 2. The friction structure differs depending on whether the generating subject belongs to G (A ∈ G) or not (A ∉ G). 3. AI-generated output (O_AI) constitutes a paradigm case of T_sa and can structurally reorganize T_o(G). The paper introduces two structural concepts: proxy friction and the T_o Undefined Domain. Together with two preceding papers, this work forms the third installment of the Friction Theory series describing the structural process from intra-subjective uniqueness (R_f) to social convergence (T_o). (shrink)

This paper proposes a structural account of rightness grounded in the act of positing within a subject. Rather than treating rightness as a property determined by external outcomes or universal norms, the theory argues that rightness arises when a subject posits one standard among competing possibilities and assumes responsibility for that selection. At any given moment, multiple evaluative possibilities may be considered. However, once an action-guiding standard is posited, it becomes uniquely operative within the subject. This structural exclusivity constitutes what (...) the theory calls rightness. The paper further introduces the concept of inter-subjective friction, which emerges when different subjects each posit their own uniquely operative standards. Friction is therefore not merely disagreement but a structural interaction between distinct acts of positing. By distinguishing between the structural conditions of rightness and the empirical evaluation of outcomes, the theory offers a framework that applies equally to human and artificial agents. This approach has implications for contemporary debates in moral philosophy and AI alignment. (shrink)

For a long time, management studies—across different theoretical traditions and practical approaches—have shared an implicit assumption: that organizations can be managed in a long-term stable manner, and that management failure is primarily the result of insufficient capability, executional deviation, or flawed institutional design. However, this assumption itself has rarely been subjected to systematic scrutiny at the level of existence. -/- This paper proposes and defends a negative structural conclusion—the First Theorem of Organizational Instability. By analyzing the irreducible structural conditions of (...) modern organizations—including multi-level decision hierarchies, information asymmetry and temporal delay, asynchronous incentive structures, and the persistent non-stationarity of the external environment—this paper demonstrates that, when these conditions jointly hold, a management equilibrium that can be maintained over the medium to long term without continuous structural repair does not exist. -/- This conclusion is neither an empirical generalization nor a probabilistic claim. Rather, it constitutes a structural non-existence result. It does not deny the local effectiveness of management interventions or the possibility of temporary stability. Instead, it rejects the theoretical objective of understanding management as a pathway toward a long-term, stable state of control. Consequently, managerial instability should no longer be interpreted as a practical deviation or managerial failure, but rather as the necessary temporal unfolding of the structural conditions inherent in modern organizations. -/- The contribution of this paper lies in elevating the core question of management studies from “how management can be improved” to “whether the goal of management itself exists in structural terms.” In doing so, it marks a structural shift in management theory—from a stability-oriented paradigm to a non-equilibrium understanding—and provides a necessary theoretical foundation for subsequent research on organizational persistence, non-equilibrium governance, and the endurance of uncertainty. (shrink)

This article develops a central thesis of the Philosophy of Belonging formulated by Carlos Federico Obregón Díaz: freedom and belonging are not opposites but mutually reinforcing dimensions of human development. Challenging classical liberal interpretations that equate freedom with independence from social ties, the paper argues that real freedom emerges from secure emotional, institutional, and structural belonging. Drawing on interdisciplinary foundations in philosophy, economics, neuroscience, and development theory, the study shows that emotional insecurity limits rational agency, weak institutions undermine effective rights, (...) and fragile social structures transform freedom into a merely formal condition. In contrast, secure belonging enables rational deliberation, social cooperation, market stability, and inclusive development. The article reinterprets Adam Smith within a moral-institutional framework of belonging, emphasizing that self-interest becomes socially productive only when embedded in ethical norms and inclusive institutions. It further argues that the historical success of modern capitalism depended not primarily on free trade alone but on the expansion of the middle class, democratic institutions, welfare systems, technological investment, and global integration. The work proposes an integrated theoretical model where: freedom = belonging + institutional security + human capacities + fair development. By linking emotional belonging, institutional design, global integration, and human flourishing, the article contributes to contemporary debates in political philosophy, development economics, institutional theory, and global justice. It positions the Philosophy of Belonging as a unified framework connecting freedom, justice, markets, and human development in the 21st century. (shrink)

How should we understand human agency and moral responsibility in a world governed by natural laws? This paper develops a compatibilist account grounded in cognitive constructivism, proposing that agency is best conceived as a model-control architecture. On this view, an agent is a self-constructing, self-controlling system defined by its capacity to generate, select, inhibit, and revise actions within an interpretive framework or internal model of the world. Crucially, moral responsibility tracks the degree to which this internal control system is revisable (...) in light of feedback and reasons. In contrast to metaphysical libertarianism, which posits an uncaused free will, this account aligns with contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind: it treats free agency as an emergent, graded capacity—one that admits of degrees and is deeply embedded in social contexts. We argue that the ability to adjust one’s behavior when presented with new evidence or persuasive reasons is the hallmark of responsible agency. Manipulation and coercive social control emerge as central moral hazards on this picture, not because they violate indeterminist free will, but because they undermine the agent’s capacity for critical model revision. By drawing on insights from Daniel Dennett’s compatibilism, Thomas Metzinger’s self-model theory, Shaun Gallagher’s embodied agency, Francisco Varela’s enactive cognition, and current discussions of free will and manipulation, we articulate a naturalistic yet normatively robust conception of autonomy. This model-control framework accommodates empirical findings (e.g. predictive processing models of the brain and Libet-style experiments on volition) while preserving a meaningful sense in which individuals can be held responsible for their choices. Moral responsibility, on our account, is not a binary property mysteriously bestowed on an absolute free agent, but a socially scaffolded achievement: it comes in degrees depending on the sophistication of one’s self-regulatory model and the openness of that model to feedback and reasons. We conclude by examining the ethical implications of this view, especially the idea that sustaining an agent’s responsibility involves safeguarding their cognitive autonomy against manipulation and other forms of influence that bypass reason. (shrink)

Der Beitrag behandelt das Konzept der mentalen (sprachlichen) Repräsentation, das in der Forschung in vielen Disziplinen auf je spezifische Weise verwendet wird. Diese Verwendungsweisen haben grundlegende theoretische Bedingungen, mit denen diverse Herausforderungen verknüpft sind. Zunächst werden jene Herausforderungen reflektiert und es wird mittels einer Repräsentationsmatrix ein Analyseraster bereitgestellt, das den praktischen Umgang mit dem diversen Konzept der mentalen sprachlichen Repräsentation erleichtert. Dort sind Dicho- und Trichotomien zusammengefasst und erläutert, die in der Literatur als Merkmale diskutiert werden. In der Arbeit zu (...) mentalen (sprachlichen) Repräsentationen ermöglicht die Matrix so eine explizite Positionierung und damit die theoretische Schärfung des Konzeptes in der Forschungspraxis. Weiterhin wird ein eigener Ansatz skizziert, der die genannten Anforderungen adressiert und auf die Matrix Bezug nimmt. (shrink)

This philosophical essay bridges particle physics and the human condition to reframe the concept of freedom. It begins with a seminal metaphor: the true danger of a particle lies not in its existence but in its independence—the state of being detached from a system, gaining unrestricted movement and high interactivity. This distinction between freedom within a field (constrained agency) and ontological independence (absolute non-dependence) structures the analysis of human liberty. The essay argues that absolute independence is a chimera for humans, (...) who are irrevocably dependent on body, language, and society. Realistic freedom thus consists not in escape but in mastery within the field of dependencies: through the appropriation of the field (learning and modifying its rules) and the control of the internal narrator (consciously rewriting one's interpretive narrative). The work concludes that true freedom is a meta-cognitive pattern—the ability to observe and reconfigure lower-order patterns—and emphasizes the conscious choice of conversational depth as an act of intellectual liberty. [The complete essay is in Spanish.] This work is part of an expanding series of philosophical essays available and their expansions in the author's personal archive. (shrink)

This volume is the second of a projected series of studies in applied philosophy. The papers in this volume, with the exception of Castandeda's, were originally presented at the conference on action and responsibility held at Bowling Green State University on May 2-3, 1980. The conference, the second in an annual series, was held under the auspices of the Applied Philosophy Program at Bowling Green State University. They keynote paper by Myles Brand addressed the significance of philosophical analyses of action (...) for motivational psychology. Brand urged that philosophers and psychologists should carry on their tasks in concert. Jaegwon Kim, commenting on Brand's paper, raised questions about the usefulness of the philosophical program advocated by Brand for empirical psychology. The rest of the papers fall into four categories: three papers on determinism and action, four papers on intentional action, three papers on responsibility and consent, and three papers on applied action theory. (shrink)

Architecture of Meaning applies Resolution Theory to culture, art, and aesthetic value. It argues that meaning is not a supernatural add-on, but a structural consequence of agency under temporal exposure: agents must resolve without certainty, across time, while consequences arrive later. Culture is framed as evaluative infrastructure—the shared public ranking system of better and worse that shapes what feels obvious, noble, shameful, or unthinkable, and therefore shapes what people can resolve into. Art is treated as compressed evaluation that trains attention (...) and feeling; beauty is explained as a coherence-signal that stabilises commitment, while propaganda is analysed as counterfeit coherence that can recruit loyalty by detaching aesthetic authority from reality-tracking. The chapter closes by linking cultural health to long-horizon coordination: stable evaluative infrastructure supports coherent agency; degraded infrastructure increases drift, manipulability, and social fragility. (shrink)

Debates concerning free will and normativity often assume that agency must function as an additional causal force capable of interrupting deterministic explanation. This assumption generates two persistent problems: the compatibility of choice with a deterministic world, and the derivation of normative “oughts” from descriptive facts. I argue that these problems arise from a category mistake. Agency is not a causal input but a distinct logical role: the act of practical resolution. I identify the Hindsight Fallacy—the retrospective illusion that because an (...) action is explainable after the fact, it was not a genuine choice at the time of deliberation. By recognising the temporal asymmetry between forward-looking resolution and backward-looking explanation, free will and normativity are shown to be orthogonal to, rather than in competition with, causal explanations. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the structures of radical powerlessness and constant guilt experienced by individuals in contemporary late capitalist societies. I introduce two concepts: Pre-Reflective Betrayal and Pre-Responsibility Guilt. The former is an ontological diagnosis that subjects enter the world with meaning systems, desire structures, and conditions of action-possibility already compromised before conscious reflection and choice. The latter refers to an affective-ethical mechanism where guilt operates prior to the formation of responsibility-capacity under such compromised conditions. I demonstrate that these concepts form (...) a continuous structure rather than separate phenomena, proposing a new analytical framework for how freedom, responsibility, and morality govern individuals in modern society. (shrink)

Contemporary relationships increasingly exhibit patterns of superficiality and premature termination despite human capacity for deep, enduring connection. This philosophical treatise extends the Value-Lifespan Equilibrium (VLE) framework from economic markets to human relationships, examining how temporal investment theory illuminates fundamental questions about human connection, commitment, and interpersonal flourishing. Drawing from Aristotelian virtue ethics, Levinas's ethics of the Other, and contemporary attachment theory, I develop the Relational Investment Equilibrium (RIE) framework—a philosophical model that treats relationships as temporal investments generating value through duration, (...) depth, and mutual recognition. The framework demonstrates how modern social structures incentivize "relational obsolescence"—the systematic devaluation of long-term connection in favor of disposable relationships. Through examination of commitment phobia, digital superficiality, and the commodification of human connection, this work argues that genuine human flourishing requires institutional and cultural transformation toward what I term "sustainable relationality." The philosophical contribution lies in reconceptualizing relationships not as static states but as dynamic temporal processes requiring investment, maintenance, and mutual commitment to generate their full value across the human lifespan. Building on my previous work establishing the VLE framework for material goods, this treatise reveals how the same temporal dynamics that govern product value apply to human relationships, while acknowledging the unique dimensions of understanding and being understood that distinguish human connection from economic exchange. (shrink)

This philosophical treatise examines the pervasive nature of psychological manipulation in contemporary society and its implications for human autonomy and free will. Drawing from empirical research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics, this paper argues that psychological principles have been systematically deployed across multiple domains of modern life—from digital technology and social media to commerce and political communication. The analysis reveals a fundamental tension between the illusion of choice that characterizes modern consumer society and the sophisticated techniques of influence that (...) shape decision-making at both conscious and unconscious levels. Through examination of manipulation techniques in law enforcement, pharmaceutical marketing, digital algorithms, and social influence, this paper poses critical questions about the nature of human agency in an age of unprecedented psychological engineering. The implications extend beyond individual autonomy to challenge fundamental assumptions about democratic participation, informed consent, and moral responsibility in societies increasingly structured by behavioral design. (shrink)

Some argue that rationality requires a type of consistency between an agent's beliefs and her intentions, so that it is irrational for an agent to intend to act or to intend to act conditionally if she also believes that she could not do so in the relevant circumstances. Both practical and theoretical reasons have been offered in support of this consistency requirement. Likewise, there might appear to be similar practical and theoretical reasons supporting an additional requirement about conditions. According to (...) this additional requirement, it is also irrational for an agent to intend to act conditionally when she believes that the condition cannot be met. Reflecting on potential counterexamples to both requirements, I argue that the consistency requirement about conditions appears significantly less plausible than the requirement about actions. While it may typically be irrational for an agent to plan for conditions she thinks are impossible, there are occasions when it is rational to do so. (shrink)

Through the whole history of mankind philosophers have taken pride in being reasonable agents. During the last decades Rüdiger Bittner, one of the internationally best renown german philosophers and winner of the Gottlob Frege award 2011, has developed a surprisingly different picture: We are much more part than master of the universe. The articles in the volume address this challenging view, illuminating and discussing it from various angles of practical philosophy including the aesthetics of film and theatre.

The book is exceptional because it applies the notion of foms of life to the context of human action. It provides answers to the following questions: Why do we act in a specific way? Why do we make particular decisions? Does one's form of life and language games determine our actions and decisions? Wittgenstein proposes a holistic method which enables us to give coherent answers to these questions. To answer the question of the contents of actions and decisions we have (...) to explain how we have institutionalized these actions or decisions. To this aim we shall reveal the frame within which language games are introduced and have come to function as practice and custom. The scheme of order underlying the language games is illustrated. Human actions and decisions follow particular rules. By highlighting the underlying scheme of order we may gain a perspicuous view of these rules. The aim of this book is to show that actions and decisions generate rational choice. This choice is explained by demonstrating the particular functions of the language games involved. (shrink)

This book motivates and systematically develops the view that knowledge should be at the centre of our theory of practical rationality. Only act on what you know -- the book offers the first comprehensive defence of this slogan in the form of a knowledge-based decision theory. The proposed view is shown to be the most straightforward explanation of emerging bodies of evidence for a link between knowledge and rational action. The book provides novel solutions to well-known challenges that invoke high-stakes (...) scenarios, seemingly rational actions based on reasonable but false beliefs, and decision-making under risk and uncertainty. The emerging view brings together traditional and formal approaches to epistemology and the study of practical rationality. The resulting knowledge-based decision theory is embedded in a rich normative landscape, encompassing innovative accounts of excuses, rational acceptance, and the simplification of reasoning. Knowledge and Rational Action will be of great interest to researchers and graduate students interested in epistemology, practical rationality, and decision theory. (shrink)

The most popular position in the moral luck debate is to reject resultant moral luck while accepting the possibility of other types of moral luck. But it is unclear whether this position is stable. Some argue that luck is luck and if it is relevant for moral responsibility anywhere, it is relevant everywhere, and vice versa. Some argue that given the similarities between circumstantial moral luck and resultant moral luck, there is good evidence that if the former exists, so does (...) the latter. The challenge is especially pressing for the large group that exclusively deny resultant moral luck. I argue that rejecting resultant moral luck alone is a stable and plausible position. This is because, in a nutshell, the other types of luck can but the results of an action cannot affect what makes one morally responsible. (shrink)

By integrating Bernard Williams’ internalism about reasons with his later thought, this article casts fresh light on internalism and reveals what wider concerns it speaks to. To be consistent with Williams’ later work, I argue, internalism must align with his deference to the phenomenology of moral deliberation and with his critique of ‘moral self-indulgence’. Key to this alignment is the idea that deliberation can express the agent's motivations without referring to them; and that internalism is not a normative claim, but (...) an example of sense-making from ‘the ethnographic stance’. This leaves a worry over whether moral conviction can coexist with an internalist understanding of reasons. Here too, however, Williams’ later thought provides an answer. Differentiating corrosive from corroborative sense-making, it elucidates how internalism, though not normative, can nonetheless affect our confidence in reason statements, thereby informing how we deliberate and how we address those whose motivations differ from our own. (shrink)

According to the standard conception of free will, the decision to choose one among many possible goals can be construed as a free act if and only if the subject has not been moved -or caused- to choose that goal. In this approach, free will seems to be possible solely under the condition of ontological dualism: since the connection of any action with the rest of the things and actions in the natural world is ruled by the law of causality, (...) the act of the subject by means of which she chooses one particular course of action has to be ontologically independent from the chosen action. Such dualist conception of the act of decision is for ontological monism, however, implausible; monist ontologies tend thus to a reductionist conception of the causality of human actions and, along this line, to reject the possibility of free will. Against the reductionist claim of materialism, Hegel offers an unusual theory of free will: he defends a robust conception of free will in the framework of ontological monism ?his monism, however, is not a physicalist monism, but an idealist one. The objective of my paper is to reconstruct the reasoning behind Hegel´s idiosyncratic conception of free will. (shrink)

What distinguishes agents’ intentional actions from those episodes in their life that merely happen to them? This paper argues that the intentionality of agents’ actions is an irreducibly teleological phenomenon. An intentional action is a process that occurs for the sake of an end that we ascribe to the agent who performs it. This intrinsic teleological structure is a precondition, rather than a causal consequence, of human agents’ capacity to mentally represent and consciously initiate their actions. Hence teleology is an (...) intrinsic, and not a derivative, feature of the process in which agents who act participate. More specifically, the paper argues for two major claims. First, whenever agents’ actions are intentional there must be a sense in which what they do is not a mere accident. The paper shows that the sense in which intentional actions are not accidents can only be explained with reference to the actions’ final, rather than their efficient, causes. Second, it argues that it is the intrinsic teleological structure of actions that best explains the sense in which agents always try to do what they do intentionally. (shrink)

Resultant moral luck is typically considered to be the most problematic type of moral luck. Arguably the most popular response to the problem of resultant moral luck is the idea that resultant luck affects the scope but not the degree of responsibility. Call this the ‘Degree Scope Response’ (DSR). Philosophers also use DSR in responding to other types of moral luck and in contexts outside moral luck. In this paper, I argue that DSR fails. Then I suggest that we should (...) hold that resultant luck affects neither the degree nor the scope of responsibility. Put differently, consequences are metaphysically irrelevant to responsibility. Further, I discuss various advantages of this view and show its various implications on questions about free will, theories of causation, and responsibility in contexts outside moral luck. I also defend this view against the worry that it is too revisionary. (shrink)

Transgenerational social actions are collective actions that endure over a considerable period of time and require the cooperation of multiple generations. Yet, it remains unclear what kind of obligations and rights, if any, allow actions to persist through the ages, binding future generations to be part of them. This paper proposes a way forward by considering transgenerational actions as a particular type of long-term joint commitments. Drawing on plural subject theory, I explore the conditions for membership, normativity, and justification of (...) transgenerational joint commitments, while also amending the model to address classical issues of asymmetry, non-existence, and non-reciprocity of future generations. The proposed approach meets three desiderata: transgenerational actions do not rely on individual intentions but are collective in a strong sense, they are normative in a social sense but can encourage the development of a personal moral sensitivity to transgenerationality, and they are both stable over time and flexible enough to resist paternalism through the proxy acts of representatives of future generations. (shrink)

The present collection of essays is dedicated to the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, in particular her work collected in the Anscombe Archive at the University of Pennsylvania. The collection brings together scholars working on Anscombe and her tradition, all of whom have significant expertise in Anscombe’s philosophical thought, with many having worked directly at the Archive. While a variety of perspectives on Anscombe’s thought are represented in the collection, including some vigorous scholarly disagreements, the contributing authors nevertheless share a commitment (...) to developing and deepening our understanding of her philosophical project and its contemporary relevance. (shrink)

The central aim of this book is to assess two crucial issues in the contemporary history of Spain: the Francoist dictatorship (1936–75), which certainly contained fascist elements, and the subsequent workings of its propaganda machine. This machine sought to create a favourable international attitude towards Francisco Franco Bahamonde and to disseminate a longstanding myth concerning the protection of the Jews in Franco’s Spain. With the work under review here, the Centre d’Estudis Històrics Internacionals (CEHI) at the University of Barcelona shows (...) its commitment to the publication of documents that are practically unknown or lie dormant in inaccessible archives. Such documents await rescue so that they can challenge myths perpetuated in the national and international collective imaginary. On this occasion, Luciano Casali and Lola Harana have rescued the Francoist pamphlet L’Espagne et le juifs (Spain and the Jews) from oblivion, and presented it here in the form of a critical edition with an introduction and 147 footnotes. Casali is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Bologna with more than forty years of academic experience. In recent years, he has focused his research on Spanish fascism from a comparative point of view. Harana is a project coordinator at the CEHI, as well as a doctoral student in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Barcelona... (shrink)

In this paper, I analyse the act of consciousness called empathy, as proposed by Husserl in Ideas II. By applying Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, I evidence three moments that constitute empathy: first, to recognize the other Ego; second, to open myself up to the other Ego; and third, to feel with the other Ego. I investigate these eidetic universalities [Wesenallgemeinheiten] within the limits of pure intuition (HUA III, 146). To recognize the other Ego is an involuntary act that happens in consciousness (...) when I come face-to-face with another human being. To open myself up to the other Ego is a spiritual act derived from freedom. I can decide whether or not to open myself up. If I do not, empathy is interrupted, incomplete, and I can react either affectionately or distressfully, or I can make a hasty judgement and decide either to distance myself from the other or to act. If I open myself up to the other Ego, I can react affectionately or distressfully, without much information. Another possibility is to comprehend, reflect, judge, agree or disagree, and decide either to distance myself from the other or to act in either a compassionate or a confrontational way. In this regard, empathy does not imply agreeing or acting compassionately. In short, I present a mental map of this reasoning and conclude by pointing out the need to develop empathy and the importance of having time to empathise appropriately. (shrink)

The idea of a reason for acting is ubiquitous in philosophy, social science, and the law. When someone does something intentionally, we often want to know why they did it-what their reason for acting was (or, perhaps equivalently, their goal, intention, purpose, or motive for acting). In addition to asking what an agent's reason for acting was, we also ask whether their reason was a good one-whether their reason genuinely justified them in acting the way they did. Against contemporary orthodoxy, (...) Reasons Last argues that these two concepts of reasons must be understood in relation to each other: there is a deep unity between the concepts of motivating reasons and normative reasons. This Unity Argument supports two novel theses. The first is the eponymous Reasons Last principle. Against to the recently fashionable Reasons First thesis, Asarnow argues that the idea of a reason for action comes last-or, at any rate, pretty far along-in the order of analysis. The second thesis is the Reasoning View about reasons for action. What makes something a reason for action-whether motivating or normative-is that it is a premise in a pattern of good reasoning of some kind. Reasons Last is the first book-length development of the Reasoning View, a theory which has been gaining currency over the last decade. It develops and responds to objections to the versions of the Reasoning View that Asarnow has defended in other publications. (shrink)

This essay defends an account of what things are assessable for reasonableness and why. On this account, something is assessable for reasonableness if and only if and because it is the functional effect of critical reasoning.

There is external reason if every action is by necessity susceptible to charitable interpretation, and the supreme charity (only asymptotically achievable) is guaranteed to excavate an external element arisen from one's desire. The desire whose object perpetually evades disclosure is the target of supreme charity. This only requires one's reason for action face the tribunal of interpretation (evaluation) not individually but as a corporate body. Though Individualistically reasons are the slaves of passions, holistically they are rebellious.

According to orthodoxy, the most fundamental kind of causation involves one event causing another event. I argue against this event‐causal view. Instead, the most fundamental kind of causation is thing causation, which involves a thing causing a thing to do something. Event causation is reducible to thing causation, but thing causation is not reducible to event causation, because event causation cannot accommodate cases of fine‐grained causation. I defend my view from objections, including C. D. Broad's influential “timing” argument, and I (...) conclude with implications for agent‐causal theories of free will. (shrink)

In his paper ‘Words on Play’, Bernard Suits famously defines play as an autotelic activity. Some philosophers like Stephen E. Schmid argue against Suits’s position by pointing out that the concept of autotelicity in Suits’s work is too unclear to serve as a defining feature for play. Due to that fact, Schmid dismisses autotelicity in favor of a definition of play in terms of the player’s engagement in an activity for intrinsic reasons. The purpose of this paper is to defend (...) Suits’s claim by clarifying the concept of autotelicity in the context of play and by arguing against some typical misconceptions about autotelicity in Schmid’s work and in the work of others. First, I define autotelic activities as activities that are engaged in for their own sake. Then, I argue that the engagement in an activity for its own sake is neither in conflict with the activity’s potential internal instrumental structure nor with the existence of certain intrinsic rea-sons (such as pleasure). (shrink)

Mental action deserves a place among foundational topics in action theory and philosophy of mind. Recent accounts of human agency tend to overlook the role of conscious mental action in our daily lives, while contemporary accounts of the conscious mind often ignore the role of mental action and agency in shaping consciousness. This collection aims to establish the centrality of mental action for discussions of agency and mind. The thirteen original essays provide a wide-ranging vision of the various and nuanced (...) philosophical issues at stake. Among the questions explored by the contributors are: Which aspects of our conscious mental lives are agential? Can mental action be reduced to and explained in terms of non-agential mental states, processes, or events? Must mental action be included among the ontological categories required for understanding and explaining the conscious mind more generally? Does mental action have implications for related topics, such as attention, self-knowledge, self-control, or the mind-body problem? By investigating the nature, scope, and explanation of mental action, the essays presented here aim to demonstrate the significance of conscious mental action for discussions of agency and mind. Mental Action and the Conscious Mind will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and philosophy of agency, as well as to philosophically inclined cognitive scientists. (shrink)