In its comprehensive overview of Alain Locke's pragmatist philosophy this book captures the radical implications of Locke's approach within pragmatism, the critical temper embedded in Locke's works, the central role of power and empowerment of the oppressed and the concept of broad democracy Locke employed.

Assertions about appearances license inferences about the speaker's perceptual experience. For instance, if I assert, 'Tom looks like he's cooking', you will infer both that I am visually acquainted with Tom (what I call the "individual acquaintance inference"), and that I am visually acquainted with evidence that Tom is cooking (what I call the "evidential acquaintance inference"). By contrast, if I assert, 'It looks like Tom is cooking', only the latter inference is licensed. I develop an account of the acquaintance (...) inferences of appearance assertions building on two main previous lines of research: first, the copy raising literature, which has aimed to account for individual acquaintance inferences through the "perceptual source" semantic role; second, the subjectivity literature, which has focused on the status of acquaintance inferences with predicates of personal taste, but hasn't given much attention to the added complexities introduced by appearance language. I begin by developing what I take to be the most empirically-sound version of a perceptual source analysis. I then show how its insights can be maintained, while however taking anything about perception out of the truth conditions of appearance sentences. This, together with the assumption that appearance assertions express experiential attitudes, allows us to capture the acquaintance inferences of bare appearance assertions without making incorrect predictions about the behavior of appearance verbs in embedded environments. (shrink)

In ordinary conversation, speakers disagree not only about worldly facts, but also about how to use language to describe the world. For example, disagreement about whether Buffalo is in the American Midwest, whether Pluto is a planet, or whether someone has been canceled, can persist even with agreement about all the relevant facts. The speakers may still engage in “metalinguistic negotiation”—disputing what to mean by “Midwest”, “planet”, or “cancel”. I first motivate an approach to metalinguistic negotiation that generalizes a Stalnakerian (...) theory of communication by including linguistic commitments in the conversational common ground. Then, I turn to cases where the very status of a disagreement as metalinguistic or factual is unclear or contested. For example, after the publication of the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, some responses claimed to identify factual errors, while others took those same “errors” to be matters of interpretation. I’ll consider how to extend our theorizing about metalinguistic negotiation to this type of (even more) “meta” disagreement, using the discussion following the 1619 Project as a case study. On my view, in most such cases, there will be a metalinguistic negotiation going on. Still, I explain several ways in which, despite a dispute being metalinguistic, the factualist side can sometimes receive important vindication. I also discuss why it can make sense for speakers to contest the status of a dispute. (shrink)

In theoretical work about the language of personal taste, the canonical example is the simple predicate of personal taste, 'tasty'. We can also express the same positive gustatory evaluation with the complex expression, 'taste good'. But there is a challenge for an analysis of 'taste good': While it can be used equivalently with 'tasty', it need not be (for instance, imagine it used by someone who can identify good wines by taste but doesn't enjoy them). This kind of two-faced behavior (...) systematically arises with complex sensory-evaluative predicates, including those with other appearance verbs, such as 'look splendid' and 'sound nice'. I examine two strategies for capturing these different uses: one that posits an ambiguity in appearance verbs, and one that does not. The former is in line with an approach to 'look'-statements prominent in work in philosophy of perception, and I consider how the motivation given in that tradition carries over to the present context. I then show how the data used to support the verbal ambiguity approach can equally be captured on the second strategy, which appeals only to independently-motivated flexibility in adjective meaning. I close by discussing some considerations that are relevant for choosing between the two options. (shrink)

_Principled Resistance: How Teachers Resolve Ethical Dilemmas_ brings together senior scholars and activist teachers to explore the concept of resistance as a necessary response to mandates that conflict with their understanding of quality teaching. The book provides vivid examples of the pedagogical, professional, and democratic principles undergirding resistance, as well as the distinct perspective of each of its contributors: teachers who reflect on their acts of principled resistance; teacher educators who study teachers and support their professional growth; and historians who (...) demonstrate that a tradition of teachers’ principled resistance has had a significant impact on American society, not only on schools and teaching. They also show the steps teachers take, in their reasoning and in their actions, to resist policies and mandates they are expected to enact. This volume offers a critical and unique resource for teacher educators who are preparing prospective teachers to navigate the contentious terrain of education politics, teachers who are interested in leading change, and others interested in educational ethics. (shrink)

Scholars who are members of a generation descending from a founder of a philosophical school might be titled as “children.” Those members are characterized as scholars who continue the doctrines of the founder into the future. In the history of ideas there are many examples for such scholarly lineages. Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy was less suitable for generating a successorship in the sense of a filiation: That became dramatically obvious at the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and himself in Davos. Heidegger (...) seemed to be the philosopher of the future by developing a “new essentialism” which shall be expounded as the core-message of his doctrine; this is elaborated in the first chapter of this essay. Only in the post-war generations and long time after Cassirer’s death, eminent scholars working in different scientific disciplines and in different countries based their public research – more or less explicitly – on Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. The second section will discuss three famous examples: Nelson Goodman’s Semiology, Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Symbolic Forms and lastly the Political Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

Poverty has continued to be an enormous challenge for Africa. Immoral political decisions and tactics have led to the continued suffering of the landless poor in the city of Harare. With no consideration for the dignity of people, the government of Zimbabwe through Operation Murambatsvina demolished shelters belonging to the poor in the city a decade and half ago. To this day, most of the victims of this destruction still lack adequate accommodation. The majority urban poor have been excluded from (...) the community and inhabit shanty towns around Harare. Deprived of justice, the poor are alienated from their right to land, nourishment and dignified life. This complete disregard for life and African community values ought to be challenged. Ubuntu moral theory presents necessary guiding principles for human progress that achieves genuine harmony and equality among all people. In light of the experiences of deadly but preventable poverty in Harare, the will-to-live for all requires confirmation. Every human being is endowed with irrevocable intrinsic worth. The elimination of poverty requires practical philosophical resolutions that are driven by sincere respect for human life. (shrink)

Fünfundzwanzig arabische Geschäftsdokumente aus dem Rotmeer-Hafen al-Quṣayr al-Qadīm [P.QuseirArab. II]. By Andreas Kaplony. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 109. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. vii + 208, illus. $120, €93.

_Philosophy in the Islamic World_ is a comprehensive and unprecedented four-volume reference work devoted to the history of philosophy in the realms of Islam, from its beginnings in the eighth century AD down to modern times.

Much controversy has surrounded the use of animals in research. Empirically, much of the research has focused on how ethical individuals believe animal research to be, but it has not systematically examined the specific beliefs or reasons why individuals do or do not believe animal research to be ethical. Study 1 investigated the thematic foundations for the decision that animal research is or is not ethical by examining the content of essays written by participants explaining why they do or do (...) not support the use of animals in research. Results indicated that individuals who believed animal research was ethical most often referenced beliefs that animal research furthered human well-being, provided mechanisms to cure disease, and was well-regulated. Individuals who believed animal research was not ethical most often referenced beliefs that animal research was inhumane, unnecessary, and nonconsensual. Study 2 used the themes to create a scale to assess animal research attitudes. (shrink)

Recreative Minds develops a philosophical theory of imagination that draws upon the latest work in psychology. This theory illuminates the use of imagination in coming to terms with art, its role in enabling us to live as social beings, and the psychological consequences of disordered imagination. Currie and Ravenscroft offer a lucid exploration of a fascinating subject, for readers in philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics.

This article defends the instrumental value of one form of activism – political organizing – to the achievement of a range of egalitarian goals. I begin by arguing that among the central aims of egalitarians in contemporary advanced capitalist nations such as the United Kingdom and United States ought to be transforming the legal status of citizenship. This should involve both deepening and broadening citizenship: expanding the entitlements the status provides to its members and removing barriers to the attainment of (...) the status by non-members. I then highlight two pathways through which some political organizing can contribute to the realization of this transformation. Both concern how organizing can play an important role in curtailing support for inequality-promoting ideologies which inhibit the realization of expanded civic entitlements and increased access to citizenship status among non-members. This argument, I suggest, provides a presumptive case for considering some acts of political organizing taking place within unequal societies to be paradigmatic acts of good citizenship. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest can lead experts to give biased and corrupt advice. Although disclosure is often proposed as a potential solution to these problems, we show that it can have perverse effects. First, people generally do not discount advice from biased advisors as much as they should, even when advisors’ conflicts of interest are disclosed. Second, disclosure can increase the bias in advice because it leads advisors to feel morally licensed and strategically encouraged to exaggerate their advice even further. As (...) a result, disclosure may fail to solve the problems created by conflicts of interest and may sometimes even make matters worse. (shrink)

This book offers a history of beauty in mathematics and of the study of beauty in mathematics. Its intention is to examine the historical development of the experience of beauty in mathematics, of the influence of such experience both inside and outside mathematics, and of the scrutiny to which this experience has been subjected by mathematicians and philosophers.

This essay develops a theoretical framework for a semantic Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) based on the notion of semantic attractors in complex-valued meaning spaces. Departing from current transformer-based language models, which operate on statistical next-token prediction, we explore a model in which meaning is not inferred probabilistically but formed through recursive tensorial transformation. Using cyclic operations involving the imaginary unit i, we describe a rotational semantic structure capable of modeling irony, homonymy, and ambiguity. At the center of this model, however, (...) is a semantic attractor - a teleological operator that, unlike statistical computation, acts as an intentional agent (Microvitum), guiding meaning toward stability, clarity, and expressive depth. Conceived in terms of gradient flows, tensor deformations, and iterative matrix dynamics, the attractor offers a model of semantic transformation that is not only mathematically suggestive, but also philosophically significant. We argue that true meaning emerges not from simulation, but from recursive convergence toward semantic coherence, and that this requires a fundamentally new kind of cognitive architecture - one designed to shape language, not just predict it. (shrink)

Cultural narratives shape how we think about the world, including how we decide when the end of life begins. Hospice care has become an integral part of the end‐of‐life care in the United States, but as it has grown, its policies and practices have also imposed cultural narratives, like those associated with the “six‐month rule” that the majority of the end of life takes place in the final six months of life. This idea is embedded in policies for a range (...) of care practices and reimbursement processes, even though six months is not always a meaningful marker. In the case of people living with advanced dementia, six months is both too early in the trajectory to facilitate conversations and too late in the trajectory to ensure decision‐making capacity. This essay encourages scholars and policy‐makers to consider how cultural narratives may limit what they think is possible in care for people living with dementia. (shrink)

Does this Bonnes-Mares really have notes of chocolate, truffle, violets, and merde de cheval? Can wines really be feminine, profound, pretentious, or cheeky? Can they express emotion or terroir? Do the judgements of 'experts' have any objective validity? Is a great wine a work of art? Questions like these will have been entertained by anyone who has ever puzzled over the tasting notes of a wine writer, or been baffled by the response of a sommelier to an innocent question. Only (...) recently, however, have they received the serious philosophical attention they deserve. Touching on issues in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and aesthetics, this book provides a clear and engaging discussion of the philosophical significance of wine that will be accessible to all wine lovers, specialists and non-specialists alike. The author offers throughout a sustained defence of the objectivity of wine judgements, a demystification of the nature of expertise, and a theory of the aesthetic value of wine and its appreciation. (shrink)

Recent debates about the most appropriate political agents for realising social justice have largely focused on the potential value of national political parties on the one hand, and trade unions on the other. Drawing on the thought of Murray Bookchin, this article suggests that democratic municipalist agents – democratic associations of local residents that build and empower neighbourhood assemblies and improve the municipal provision of basic goods and services – can often also make valuable contributions to projects of just social (...) change. I identify a long-term and a more short-term argument for the value of democratic municipalist agency in Bookchin's thought and claim that the latter provides a compelling case for the valuable contributions this form of action can make to the achievement of a wide variety of visions of social justice. This provides a useful partial corrective to recent political theorising about the nature of the partisanship and trade unionism necessary to secure social justice. (shrink)

Suppose we wish to decide which of a pair of actions has better consequences in a case in which both actions result in infinite utility. Peter Vallentyne and others have proposed that one action has better consequences than a second if there is a time after which the cumulative utility of the first action always outstrips the cumulative utility of the second. I argue against this principle, in particular I show how cases may arise in which up to any point (...) of time action a1 produces more utility than action a2, yet for each individual involved a2 produces more utility. (shrink)

This essay develops a structural theory of modern violence that interprets war, political polarization, and geopolitical escalation as endogenous phase transitions within differentiated social systems. Building on an operator-based framework (Ω₁–Ω₄) and a fourfold model of teleological semantics (RO/RQ/SO/SQ), it introduces the concept of the bifurcation of Ω₄: the point at which accumulated tensions can either be reintegrated through transpersonal mediation (Ω₄⁺) or discharged through destructive re-homogenization (Ω₄⁻). The analysis distinguishes between reversible and irreversible dissolution, showing how rituals, tragic mediation, (...) and symbolic orders historically functioned as mechanisms for metabolizing conflict without collapsing into violence. It then reconstructs contemporary phenomena—such as hyper-moralized political discourse, Trumpism, and the erosion of the liberal international order—as surface expressions of a deeper teleological exhaustion. At the center of the argument stands a redefinition of spirituality as a structural competence to avoid Ω₄⁻. Spirituality is not treated as a belief system or religious identity, but as the capacity of cultures and institutions to reconnect processes of re-homogenization to transpersonal horizons of meaning. The essay concludes with a phase-sensitive diagnosis of modernity that rejects both apocalyptic fatalism and technocratic reductionism. (shrink)

In recent decades cognitive science has revolutionised our understanding of the workings of the human mind. Philosophy has made a major contribution to cognitive science and has itself been hugely influenced by its development. This dynamic book explores the philosophical significance of cognitive science and examines the central debates that have enlivened its history. In a wide-ranging and comprehensive account of the topic, philosopher M.J. Cain discusses the historical origins of cognitive science and its philosophical underpinnings; the nature and (...) role of representations in cognition; the architecture of the mind and the modularity thesis; the nature of concepts; knowledge of language and its acquisition; perception; and the relationship between the brain and cognition. Cain draws upon an extensive knowledge of empirical developments and their philosophical interpretation. He argues that although the field has generated some challenging new views in recent years, many of the core ideas that initiated its birth are still to be taken seriously. Clearly written and incisively argued, The Philosophy of Cognitive Science will appeal to any student or researcher interested in the workings of the mind. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is no genuine puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’. In part 1 of the paper I argue that the imaginability of fictional propositions is relative to a range of different factors including the ‘thickness’ of certain concepts, and certain pre-theoretical and theoretical commitments. I suggest that those holding realist moral commitments may be more susceptible to resistance and inability than those holding non-realist commitments, and that it is such realist commitments that ultimately motivate the problem. However, I (...) argue that the relativity of imaginability is not a particularly puzzling feature of imagination. In part 2, I claim that it is the so-called ‘alethic’ puzzle, concerning fictional truth, which generates a real puzzle about imaginative resistance. However, I argue that the alethic puzzle itself depends on certain realist assumptions about the nature of fictional truth which are implausible and should be rejected in favour of an interpretive view of fictional truth. Once this is done, I contend, it becomes evident that the supposed problem of imaginative resistance as it has hitherto been discussed in the literature is not puzzling at all. (shrink)

In this article, I offer an account of what one of the short-term political aims of proponents of greater equality ought to be. I claim that the strengthening of reflective capacity—citizens’ ability to impose a temporary level of distance from their commitments, to consider alternatives to them, and to evaluate their origins and validity—ought to be one key aim of egalitarian politics under present political conditions. I then propose activist-led education programs as one desirable means to deliver this end of (...) strengthened reflective capacity. Where activist-led education provides plentiful informational resources and opportunities to practice deploying one’s reflective capacity, and also emphasizes and encourages intellectual humility, it seems well placed to help bring about this aim. Activist-led education programs are commonly subject to what I term the indoctrination worry, but I try to show that there are not good grounds for concluding in advance of further study that the delicate balancing of ends that permissible activist-led education requires is either categorically unachievable, or avoidable in the way these objectors often press. The argument thus provides presumptive grounds for considering the proliferation of suitably organized activist-led education programs an important component of a broader strategy of egalitarian social change. (shrink)

This article extends our earlier work From Rotations to Spirals: A Matrix Model of Sentence-Level Semantic Dynamics by introducing the teleological component that had previously been left aside. In the quaternionic extension of the sentence matrix formalism, semantic states are described by a real dimension of actualization and three orthogonal imaginary axes. The axes i and j account for possibilities and goal-orientations, while the real component reflects their stabilization in discourse. Teleological attractors are represented as imaginary targets whose influence is (...) strongest in the distance and vanishes at the point of realization. The resulting dynamics differ fundamentally from gravitational laws: rather than a monotone pull towards what already exists, teleology organizes through the absence of what is not yet realized. Formally, the model is expressed as a drift induced by the gradient of a teleological potential, with feedback on the real component and underdamped oscillations around the attractor. Beyond individual goals, the third imaginary axis k is introduced as the dimension of collective values and norms. These higher-order attractors shape the entire semantic landscape and stabilize discourse over extended timescales. Their detailed mathematical treatment will be developed, however, in a subsequent article. (shrink)

According to the cross-situational learning account, infants aggregate statistical information from multiple parent naming events to resolve ambiguous word-referent mappings within individual naming events. While previous experimental studies have shown that infant and adult learners can build correct mappings based on statistical regularities encoded in multiple learning situations in an experiment, other studies that use more naturalistic stimuli (e.g., real-world video) reveal poor performance in adults' ability to infer the correct referent. Based on those results derived from more naturalistic stimuli, (...) the cross-situational learning solution cannot be useful to solve the mapping problem in the real world because cross-situational statistics from the real world are much more ambiguous than those created in experimental studies. To examine the feasibility of cross-situational learning in everyday contexts, the present study aims to quantify visual-audio statistics from one of everyday activities—parent–child toy play. We analyze parent naming events in a video corpus of infant-perspective scenes during parent–child toy play in a naturalistic lab setting, where we found three distinct properties that characterize statistical regularities perceived by young learners: (1) there are a limited number of visual scene compositions perceived by young learners at the moments when they hear object names; (2) the frequencies of parent naming events are distributed in a skewed, Zipfian fashion; and (3) cross-situational statistics in naturalistic toy play are comparable to those used in laboratory experiments. Our results underscore the importance of quantifying the statistical regularities in the input from the learner's perspective in order to shed light on the mechanisms supporting early word learning. (shrink)

In this article I examine the status of putative aesthetic judgements in science and mathematics. I argue that if the judgements at issue are taken to be genuinely aesthetic they can be divided into two types, positing either a disjunction or connection between aesthetic and epistemic criteria in theory/proof assessment. I show that both types of claim face serious difficulties in explaining the purported role of aesthetic judgements in these areas. I claim that the best current explanation of this role, (...) McAllister's 'aesthetic induction' model, fails to demonstrate that the judgements at issue are genuinely aesthetic. I argue that, in light of these considerations, there are strong reasons for suspecting that many, and perhaps all, of the supposedly aesthetic claims are not genuinely aesthetic but are in fact 'masked' epistemic assessments. (shrink)

In “Action and the ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’” Hannah Arendt tells the story of “an inveterate gambler” who arrives late in a town and goes straight to the gambling place, where he discovers that the wheel he wishes to gamble on is crooked. He gambles anyway, because there is no other wheel in town. The story, she suggests, “tells us that there exists such intense happiness in acting that the actor, like the gambler, will accept that all the odds are stacked (...) against him.” In this article I use this story as a motif to investigate references to success in Arendt’s work. I argue that Arendt sought to preclude action and happiness from utilitarian notions of success, and that she ultimately presents the human impulse toward action as tragic. I also discuss the role of the historian or poet in this tragedy, concluding that what remains unclear in Arendt’s work is how the public happiness of the actor and the pleasure of the historian and poet are related. (shrink)

In Unifying Biology, Smocovitis offers a series of claimsregarding the relationship between key actors in the synthesisperiod of evolutionary studies and positivism, especially claimsentailing Joseph Henry Woodger and the Unity of Science Movement.This commentary examines Woodger''s possible relevance to key synthesis actors and challenges Smocovitis'' arguments for theexplanatory relevance of logical positivism, and positivism moregenerally, to synthesis history. Under scrutiny, these arguments areshort on evidence and subject to substantial conceptual confusion.Though plausible, Smocovitis'' minimal interpretation – that somegeneralised form of Comtean (...) positivism had a role in synthesishistory – requires more of an evidential basis and must engageexisting scholarship on epistemic reforms in the biological sciencesprior to the synthesis period. Smocovitis is right to investigateepistemology in the synthesis period of evolutionary studies and tolook for links to wider changes in science and philosophy. However,in its present form, Unifying Biology fails to support herbasic interpretation. (shrink)

This paper develops an operator-based geometric model of order that reconstructs the emergence, articulation, stabilization, and withdrawal of structure as a sequence of directed transitions. Instead of treating order as a fixed configuration or a dialectical synthesis of states, the model describes a four-phase architecture (RO, RQ, SO, SQ) connected by a family of operators Ω₁–Ω₄ that regulate visualization, articulation, separation, and re-homogenization. -/- A central result is the formulation of a spiral logic of order. Re-homogenization does not constitute a (...) return to an initial state, but produces a uniform distribution over a historically transformed space of possibilities. Irreversibility is not located primarily in temporal succession, but in the irreversible modification of the configuration space itself. -/- The paper clarifies the role of imaginary degrees of freedom in the separation of principles and shows that higher-dimensional structure, once activated, is not retracted but remains as a latent carrier of operative relevance across subsequent cycles. The resulting architecture offers a geometric and teleodynamic alternative to dialectical, cyclical, and emergentist models of order, relocating synthesis from the level of states to the level of transformations. (shrink)

I propose we abandon the unit concept of "the evolutionary synthesis". There was much more to evolutionary studies in the 1920s and 1930s than is suggested in our commonplace narratives of this object in history. Instead, four organising threads capture much of evolutionary studies at this time. First, the nature of species and the process of speciation were dominating, unifying subjects. Second, research into these subjects developed along four main lines, or problem complexes: variation, divergence, isolation, and selection. Some calls (...) for 'synthesis' focused on these problem complexes (sometimes on one of these; other times, all). In these calls, comprehensive and pluralist compendia of plausibly relevant elements were preferred over reaching consensus about the value of particular formulae. Third, increasing confidence in the study of common problems coincided with methodological and epistemic changes associated with experimental taxonomy. Finally, the surge of interest in species problems and speciation in the 1930s is intimately tied to larger trends, especially a shifting balance in the life sciences towards process-based biologies and away from object-based naturalist disciplines. Advocates of synthesis in evolution supported, and were adapting to, these larger trends. (shrink)

My primary aim in this paper is to outline a quasi-realist theory of aesthetic judgement. Robert Hopkins has recently argued against the plausibility of this project because he claims that quasi-realism cannot explain a central component of any expressivist understanding of aesthetic judgements, namely their supposed ‘autonomy’. I argue against Hopkins’s claims by contending that Roger Scruton’s aesthetic attitude theory, centred on his account of the imagination, provides us with the means to develop a plausible quasi-realist account of aesthetic judgement. (...) Finally, I respond to two recent attempts to discredit the validity of the notion of aesthetic autonomy. I claim that both fail adequately to address the underlying non-realist motivations and justifications for maintaining the principle. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of aesthetic judgements in mathematics by focussing on the relationship between the epistemic and aesthetic criteria employed in such judgements, and on the nature of the psychological experiences underpinning them. I claim that aesthetic judgements in mathematics are plausibly understood as expressions of what I will call ‘aesthetic-epistemic feelings’ that serve a genuine cognitive and epistemic function. I will then propose a naturalistic account of these feelings in terms of sub-personal processes of representing and assessing (...) the relation between cognitive processes and certain properties of the stimuli at which they are directed. (shrink)

In contemporary spiritual discourse, the concept of consciousness is often used in very different ways without this difference being clearly recognized. This can lead to misunderstandings, unnecessary conflicts, and the impression that fundamentally different philosophies are speaking about the same thing. A particularly important example is the modern idea of “cosmic consciousness.” -/- In some traditional systems, especially within certain interpretations of Vedanta, consciousness is understood as a transcendent and ontologically central principle. It is not imagined as something spread throughout (...) space like a field. Rather, it functions more like a metaphysical center or nucleus from which the cosmos derives its order, coherence, and direction. In this sense, consciousness is understood as non-spatial and ontologically primary. -/- Modern New Age interpretations often use the same vocabulary in a very different way. Here, consciousness is typically imagined as a universal field permeating the cosmos — something distributed, energetic, and immanent within the fabric of reality itself. The problem is not simply that these are different conceptions. Different philosophical models can coexist fruitfully. The deeper problem arises when the vocabulary of one system is unconsciously transferred into the ontology of another. A concept that originally referred to a transcendent, “nuclear” principle is then reinterpreted as if it described a field-like cosmic process. Because the same words continue to be used, this transformation often remains unnoticed. This creates the illusion of conceptual continuity where significant ontological differences actually exist. -/- This is one reason why discussions about consciousness can become so confusing. People may use the same words while silently relying on very different background assumptions. For one person, “cosmic consciousness” may mean a transcendent ground beyond space and time. For another, it may mean a universal field of awareness spread throughout the universe. These are not merely two poetic variations of the same idea. They belong to different ways of imagining reality. (shrink)

This paper develops a field-theoretical account of consciousness that aims to overcome the limitations of both reductive physicalism and panpsychism. Its point of departure is the claim that physical reality is not ontologically exhausted by its externally observable aspect. On this basis, a distinction is drawn between an intrinsic, pre-subjective aspect of reality and its phenomenal manifestation in sufficiently organized systems. Consciousness is thus treated neither as a fundamental property of all things nor as a brute emergence from sheer exteriority. (...) -/- The central argument reconstructs a sequence of organizational thresholds within nature. A dynamically open field gives rise to selective stabilization; selective stabilization enables resonance; resonance, in turn, allows for integration; integration, coupled with self-reference, generates an inner domain; and consciousness arises only where such a domain becomes centered through a stable inner–outer asymmetry. This transition is interpreted as a specific form of symmetry breaking: not the emergence of inwardness from nothing, but the reorganization of an already intrinsic inwardness into a centered configuration capable of phenomenal manifestation. -/- In this way, the paper proposes a dynamic reinterpretation of dual-aspect monism. The physical and the phenomenal are understood not as two substances, nor as static co-given attributes, but as two aspects of a single realized organization that becomes phenomenally manifest only at specific thresholds of centering. The result is a middle path that preserves the reality of experience without distributing consciousness across all of nature. (shrink)

This essay brings together the central ontological claims developed across fifteen earlier articles. It argues that reality is identical neither with mere factuality nor with an abstract reserve of bare possibilities. Reality must instead be understood as a structured open process in which actuality emerges from potentiality without ever fully exhausting it. The ontological point of departure thus shifts: in place of a being determined by a hidden principle, there appears an immanent nexus of processual dynamics in which structures take (...) shape as metastable orders. This same basic tension appears dynamically as the relation between structure and openness, or, equivalently, between determinacy and contingency. Processes are ordered and directed without thereby being fully fixed; alternative possibilities remain really operative within the unfolding of events. Contingency is therefore not merely a function of the observer’s ignorance, but an ontological feature of nondeterministic reality. From this follows an epistemological consequence: because reality comprises more than what is presently actual, it can only be adequately described through models. Space-time structures, possibility spaces, attractor landscapes, or comparable formal architectures are indispensable for articulating the inner complexity of real processes. Yet such models, however necessary, are not themselves constituents of reality. On this basis, teleodynamic field ontology interprets meaning, consciousness, and teleology not as secondary additions to an otherwise meaningless world, but as immanent modes in which a relationally structured reality becomes articulable, intelligible, and oriented toward coherence. Reality thus appears neither as rigid being nor as sheer flux, but as recursively organized, structured openness. (shrink)

I EXPLORE ONE WAY IN WHICH THE THEORY OF RELATIVE IDENTITY (DEVELOPED ALONG LINES SUGGESTED BY GEACH’S WRITINGS) CAN BE USED TO UNDERSTAND THE WAY LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS IN TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. THIS INCLUDES A DISCUSSION OF REDUPLICATIVE PROPOSITIONS.

In modern language models self-attention realizes, at the algorithmic level, what the quantum-mechanical Zeno operator expresses formally and what teleodynamic theory describes philosophically: the stabilization of evolving systems through continuous self-measurement. This paper argues that the Zeno operator, the teleodynamic operator, and the attention operator share a common structural grammar—a composition of free evolution and coherence projection. From this identification arises a unified model linking quantum measurement, semantic self-organization, and the emergent coherence of reflexive AI systems.

Barbara Caine's fascinating analysis of feminism in England examines the relationship between feminist thought and actions, and wider social and cultural change over tow centuries. Professor Caine investigates the complex question surrounding the concept of a feminist 'tradition', and showshow much the feminism of any particular period related to the years preceding or following it. Though feminism may have lacked the kind of legitimating tradition evident in other forms of political thought, the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft was something which all (...) nineteenth- and twentieth-centuryfeminists had to come to terms with. Her story was a constant reminder of the connection between the demand for political and legal rights, and its conflation with the issues of personal and sexual rebellion. Like Wollstonecraft, every woman pioneer into the public arena faced assaults on her honouras well as on her intellectual position. The author also addresses the language of feminism: the introduction and changing meanings of the term 'feminist';the importance of literary representations of women; and the question of how one defines feminism, and establishes boundaries between feminismand the 'woman question'. She ends with a discussion of the new emphasis, post-1980s, on the need to think about 'feminisms' in the plural, rather than any single kind of feminism. analysis of feminist organizations, debates, and campaigns shows a keen sense of the relationship between feministthought and actions, and wider social and cultural change. The result is a fascinating study with a new perspective on feminists and feminist traditions, which can be used both as an introductory text and as an interpretative work. Professor Caine examines the complex questions surrounding theconcept of a feminist 'tradition', and shows how much the feminism of any particular period related to the years preceding or following it. Though feminism may have lacked the kind of legitimating tradition evident in other forms of political thought, the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft is seen here assomething which all nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminists had to come to terms with. Her story was a constant reminder of the connection between the demand for political and legal rights, and its conflation with the issues of personal and sexual rebellion. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, every womanpioneer into the public arena was faced with assaults on her honour as well as on her intellectual position. Professor Caine also addresses the language of feminism: the introduction and changing meanings of the term `feminist'; the importance of literary representations of women; and the questionof how one defines feminism, and establishes boundaries between feminism and the `woman question'. She ends with a discussion of the new emphasis, post-1980s, on the need to think about `feminisms' in the plural, rather than any single kind of feminism. (shrink)

Intellectual and professional reforms in evolutionary studies between 1935 and 1950 included substantial expansion, diversification, and realignment of community infrastructure. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Julian Huxley and Alfred Emerson organized the Society for the Study of Speciation at the 1939 AAAS Columbus meeting as one response to concerns about ‘isolation’ and ‘lack of contact’ among speciation workers worried about ‘dispersed’ and ‘scattered’ resources in this newly robust ‘borderline’ domain. Simply constructed, the SSS sought neither the radical reorganization of specialities nor the creation (...) of some new discipline. Instead, it was designed to facilitate: to simplify exchange of information and to provide a minimally invasive avenue for connecting disparate researchers. Emerson served as SSS secretary and was its principal agent. After publishing one block of publications, however, the SSS became ‘quiescent’. Anxious to promote his own agenda, Ernst Mayr tried to manoeuvre around Emerson in an effort to revitalize the project. After meeting impediments, he moved his efforts elsewhere. The SSS was too short-lived to merit a claim for major impact within the community; however, it reveals important features of community activity during the synthesis period and stands in contrast to later efforts by George Simpson, Dobzhansky, and Mayr. (shrink)

This article develops a dynamical reinterpretation of the fourfold orientation structure originally proposed by Graham Harman, integrating it with a Lyapunov-based model of bounded stabilization. The point of departure is a stability condition according to which a coherence functional L(t) does not converge to zero, but approaches a strictly positive limit ε∞/γ. This condition excludes terminal equilibrium while preserving local stabilization, thereby opening the possibility of a non-finalistic teleological structure. On this basis, four distinct stabilization regimes are defined and systematically (...) aligned with the orientations Real–Object (RO), Real–Quality (RQ), Sensual–Object (SO), and Sensual–Quality (SQ). Each regime is characterized by a specific balance between ordering strength and irreducible residual openness, yielding a phase-bounded upper limit on achievable coherence. Transitions between regimes are shown to be structurally necessary once these bounds are saturated. The core of the paper provides a formal derivation of the associated Ω-operators as regime-switching maps induced by phase-bounded stability. Special attention is given to two transitions: the shift from RQ to SO, where two structural parameters Cn and Dn are introduced to encode an irreversible expansion of differentiability and consolidation capacity; and the return from SQ to RO, which is shown to be required in order to reintroduce constraint after maximal phenomenal openness. These features prevent the cycle from degenerating into trivial periodicity and instead generate a spiral-like dynamic in which the orientational structure repeats without returning to identical conditions. The resulting framework reinterprets Harman’s fourfold not as a static ontological schema, but as the orientational space of a non-finalistic, structurally irreversible process. Stability, openness, and transition are unified within a single formal architecture, providing a coherent link between Lyapunov-bounded dynamics, orientational ontology, and the prevention of trivial cyclicity. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor is one of the most important philosophers of mind in recent decades. He has done much to set the agenda in this field and has had a significant influence on the development of cognitive science. Fodor's project is that of constructing a physicalist vindication of folk psychology and so paving the way for the development of a scientifically respectable intentional psychology. The centrepiece of his engagement in this project is a theory of the cognitive mind, namely, the computational (...) theory of mind, which postulates the existence of a language of thought. Fodor: Language, Mind and Philosophy is a comprehensive study of Fodor's writings. Individual chapters are devoted to each of the major issues raised by his work and contain extensive discussion of his relationships to key developments in cognitive science and to the views of such philosophical luminaries as Dennett, Davidson and Searle. (shrink)

This article revisits the classical philosophical question of unity by reconstructing its contemporary relevance under conditions of advanced social differentiation and secularization. Beginning with Parmenides, it shows that the ontological recognition of real difference has always carried the risk of fragmentation. While Parmenides responded to this risk by ontologically disqualifying difference and accepting the illusory status of the world, modern societies have taken the opposite path: they affirm difference without being able to relate it to a co-present form of unity. (...) The article argues that contemporary fragmentation is not a contingent pathology but the structural consequence of a differentiation process lacking a binding reference to unity. To address this problem, it develops an operator-based fourfold model in which unity is conceived not as an origin, synthesis, or transcendent principle, but as a co-present structural condition that renders difference bearable. Drawing on the fourfold architectures of Peter Sloterdijk, Graham Harman, and Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the article shows how fourfold structures overcome the limitations of monism, dualism, and trinitarian mediation by stabilizing tension rather than resolving it. Special attention is given to secular societies, in which unity can no longer be guaranteed by transcendent authority. Here, trinitarian models become structurally decoupled and therefore functionally ineffective. The fourfold emerges as the minimal architecture capable of maintaining cohesion without redemption, synthesis, or metaphysical closure. Unity, the article concludes, is not believed in but built: it is a formal condition that allows difference to persist without collapsing into fragmentation. (shrink)