This essay explores the ways in which specific attention (or lack thereof) to creation can affect the manner in which we execute metaphysics or ethics. It argues that failing to attend to an adequate expression of “the distinction” of creator from creatures can unwittingly lead to a misrepresentation of divinity in philosophical argument. It also offers a suggestion for understanding “post-modern” from the more ample perspective of Creek and medieval forms of thought.

Joseph Owens presents an introduction to metaphysics designed to develop in the reader a habitus of thinking. Using original Thomistic texts and Etienne Gilson's interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas, Owens examines the application of metaphysical principles to the issues that arise in a specifically Christian environment. An Elementary Christian Metaphysics focuses on questions of existence and the nature of revealed truths. Following his historical introduction to metaphysics, Owens provides a general investigation of the first principles and causes (...) of being and also a study of knowledge and of the divine nature and attributes in light of natural reason. "Irrespective of one's intellectual genotype, an exposure to the sustained, developmental elucidation of Aquinas' insights executed by an author such as Owens can only enhance any metaphysical approach to reality." --The New Scholastic "An Elementary Christian Metaphysics is intended primarily for undergraduate students as an introduction to metaphysics. . . . The scope of the metaphysical study pursued by Owens includes not only a general investigation of beings but also an analysis of knowledge (epistemology) and of the divine nature, all in light of natural reason." --Studies in Religion Joseph Owens (1908-2005) taught philosophy at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the University of Toronto for forty years. He is the author of a number of books, including An Interpretation of Existence, also published by the University of Notre Dame Press. (shrink)

This paper proposes a minimal, substrate-neutral ontology grounded in three irreducible modal operations: execution, interaction, and memory. These operations—corresponding to existence, possibility, and non-existence respectively—together form a triadic algebra capable of generating all known ontological, epistemological, and phenomenological structures. I argue that most classical and modern metaphysical puzzles arise from conflating these modal categories. When kept distinct, the triad explains the emergence of time, causation, identity, consciousness, information flow, and physical law. The model incorporates insights from pre-Socratic philosophy, Aristotelian energeia, (...) Kantian synthesis, phenomenological intentionality, and contemporary process metaphysics, while remaining simpler and more general than any of them. This ontology further provides interpretive clarity to quantum mechanics, relational physics, cognitive science, and formal epistemology. Notably, the tradeoff between precision and accuracy that the Minimal Ontology predicts for finite systems mirrors, and helps to interpret, the Heisenberg uncertainty relations in quantum mechanics. I conclude that the E/I/M triad constitutes both a minimal ontology and a minimal epistemology: the world knows itself through the same processes by which it exists. (shrink)

This is a virtual reality simulation that imagines its subject as emerging from a long stint in Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine." The simulation is an interview (with many branching paths) meant to gauge the subject's views on the metaphysics of virtual objects and the ethics of virtual actions. It draws heavily from the published work of David Chalmers, Mark Silcox, Jon Cogburn, Morgan Luck, and Nick Bostrom. *Requires an Oculus Rift (or Rift-S) or HTC Vive and a VR capable (...) computer. To open the files, uncompress the downloaded .zip folder and run the executable (.exe) file. **This module is made possible due to an APA Small Grant and a grant from Oculus Education. (shrink)

Semantics and metaphysics are different. However, many philosophers maintain that the two are very closely related. Semantics is usually considered as a linguistic subject that deals with the meanings of linguistic expressions. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is a philosophical enterprise that purports to explore the nature of the world and to describe the structures and constituents of it. It is not difficult to see why the two distinct areas can merge so intimately together. After all, we all (...) agree that human languages and the world we know are closely connected. Because of this, some philosophers approach the topics of linguistic issues from the metaphysical perspectives and construct their theses of philosophical semantics based on their metaphysical standpoints. It naturally results invarious confusions of the semantic debates and projects with the metaphysical ones. This paper aims to explore the confusions which lie between semantics and metaphysics and to suggest that we can execute the semantic project successfully without taking up any metaphysical dispute. (shrink)

Kant scholarship often refers to transcendental idealism as a ‘theory.’ Kant’s project, however, is not easily reconciled with that term in its current use. This paper contends that his critique and idealism should be seen as a remedial response against our natural albeit confused prejudice of transcendental realism. Kant’s idealism articulates a ‘metametaphysical’ ethos that is supposed to provide a new grounding of metaphysics by proceeding ‘from the human standpoint:’ it aims to dispel the temptation of transcendental realism in (...) favor of a resolute inhabitation of, and contentment with, our own humanity. This project comes under pressure in post-Kantianism: Fichte is among the first to voice the worry that Kant’s critique is well-intentioned, but not well-executed. His concern is that, while it ‘bring[s] man into harmony with himself,’ this mere contentment with our own humanity will not suffice to achieve the scientificity that, by Kant’s own lights, is the mark of any promising metaphysics. Fichte’s charge is that Kant’s idealism, in its very confinement to the brute facts of the human condition, surrenders itself to unacceptable contingency or ‘facticity.’ The paper explores Kant’s idealist project of grounding metaphysics, Fichte’s facticity charge against it, and whether Kantian idealism can withstand it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act by Can Laurens LöweThomas M. Osborne Jr.Can Laurens Löwe. Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 225. Hardback, $99.99.This book is about the way in which Thomas Aquinas understands the human act to be composed of form and matter. It provides a fresh reading of many central texts from (...) Thomas and addresses philosophical concerns that are relevant to the contemporary literature. Although Löwe is not clear about this point, Thomas does not use in this context the terms 'formal' and 'material' in the strictest sense, as when he describes the soul as the form of the body, but in different extended senses, as when he says that charity is the form of the other virtues because it gives them a new character (Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 23, art. 8).Löwe focuses on choice, which he considers to be antecedent to the human act, and the commanded or exterior act, which he considers to be the entire human act. This focus simplifies his account, since in one and only one text—the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae—does Thomas appear to give as many as twelve acts that are stages or phases of a complete human act. Thomas devotes special attention to three acts of the will concerning the end, namely simple willing, intention, and enjoyment; and three acts of the will concerning the means, namely consent, choice, and use; and two intellectual acts, namely deliberation and command. Four other possible phases or stages are mentioned in passing, such as the judgment of choice. According to the standard interpretation, a human [End Page 152] act such as almsgiving might consist of intending to help an indigent person, deliberating about whether to give food or money, making a judgment of choice about the best means of helping (such as giving money), choosing to give the money, and then commanding the will's use of certain other powers, such as the movement of the hands and feet. In his other writings, Thomas mentions only some of these stages, and he often mentions only simple willing, deliberation, and choice. Scholars disagree over the number and importance of the acts or parts of acts discussed in the Prima Secundae and how to integrate them with what Thomas says in other texts. Löwe argues that the human act is what Thomas describes as the act's execution; he claims that this act has the intellect's command for its extrinsic form, the will's use for its intrinsic form, and the commanded act for its matter.This book has three parts. Part 1 provides a general account of the author's view that choice explains the act's freedom even if it is not part of the resulting act. In part 2, Löwe gives a novel account of Thomas's claim that the judgment of the intellect gives form to the act of choice. He draws on the distinction that Thomists make (although Thomas is less clear) between the composition of terms, or the enunciative proposition, and the judgement, or judicative proposition. For instance, the statement 'carrots are orange' as an enunciative proposition might be entertained as doubtful or likely, or placed in a conditional statement. However, someone might assent to this same composition by judging that it is true. Löwe's account is confusing on this point, as he describes as "judgment" what his Thomists describe as the enunciative proposition, which is the composition of terms (38–41). Terminological difficulties aside, Löwe draws on what he sees as the related distinction between the content of a judgment and the attitude toward the judgment, using this distinction to describe the freedom of the judgment that precedes choice. The intellect composes different precepts and then assents to one of them. According to Löwe, Thomas thinks that the agent's ability to choose between different goods is reduced to the intellect's ability to assent to the content of one precept and not the content of another according to a kind of second-order... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Causality of Prayer and the Execution of Predestination in Thomas AquinasStephen L. BrockIntroduction: The Question of the Reasonableness of Petitionary PrayerIn a lucid and witty essay published in 1945, C. S. Lewis addressed a common objection to the practice of petitionary prayer.1 This practice is not confined to Christianity, of course, but at least in relation to the Christian conception of the deity, it can seem to make (...) little sense. The problem is simple. If God is all-wise and all-good, what is the point of asking him for things? He is already perfectly aware of our true needs, and he already wants to provide for them. Many of our requests are ignorant and misguided, and the others, it seems, will be at best superfluous. Nevertheless, as Lewis observes, petitionary prayer is part of the whole Christian tradition. Jesus himself practiced it, urged his followers to do so, and taught them how. Lewis wanted to explain that the real purpose of the practice is not to inform God of our needs or to twist his arm. Rather, petitionary prayer functions as a kind of cause, a way of bringing things about. It does so by divine institution and as a kind of share in God's own causality. And so understood, it makes perfect sense. I think Lewis is right about this.Another matter, however, is Lewis's particular way of conceiving the causality of petitionary prayer, especially as to its relation to God's own causality and care for the world. I grant that his conception is quite [End Page 15] straightforward and clear, and that it even has a strong initial plausibility. Indeed, I suspect that it gives voice to the way in which many thoughtful people who pray for things conceive of what they are doing. This is why, even though it is not the main focus of the present essay, I think that it serves as a good way of entering to the topic. But I do hope to show that it contains some serious problems.In what follows, I shall first set out Lewis's answer to the question of the reasonableness of petitionary prayer. Then I shall raise one of the problems that I think it faces. This has to do with another attribute that has traditionally been ascribed to the Christian God; namely, omniscience, the knowledge of all things, including all temporal events, past, present, and future. In the essay on prayer, Lewis does not address this problem. But from things that he says elsewhere about temporal events and how God knows them, I think we can gather how he would have solved it.Rather than evaluating this solution myself, I shall turn next to another twentieth-century British thinker, the philosopher Peter Geach. Although Geach agrees with Lewis in ascribing a causal function to petitionary prayer, Geach's way of understanding temporal events and God's knowledge of them contrasts sharply with Lewis's. In fact, Geach argues—I think persuasively—that a position like Lewis's actually ends up making petitionary prayer unable to function as a cause, and therefore renders it pointless. At the same time, however, Geach's own account of how petitionary prayer fits into God's overall plan has something very important in common with Lewis's. And in my opinion, what they have in common is very problematic.This will bring me to my main theme, which is Thomas Aquinas's view of the matter. Like Lewis and Geach, Thomas does regard petitionary prayer as a divinely instituted way of causing things. On their temporal status, his position is similar to Geach's. But on how prayer and its effects fall under God's providential plan, Thomas differs greatly from both authors. I find his account far more satisfactory. Unfortunately, it is also considerably more complicated and philosophically challenging, and my presentation of it will have to be correspondingly longer.The distinctive features of Thomas's view mostly pertain to the metaphysics of divine transcendence. My main task will be to show how, in his account, the full determinacy of God's eternal plan, including that part of it called... (shrink)

Kant's theory of punishment is commonly regarded as purely retributive in nature, and indeed much of his discourse seems to support that interpretation. Still, it leaves one with certain misgivings regarding the internal consistency of his position. Perhaps the problem lies not in Kant's inconsistency nor in the senility sometimes claimed to be apparent in the Metaphysic of Morals, but rather in a superimposed, modern yet monistic view of punishment. Historical considerations tend to show that Kant was discussing not one, (...) but rather two facets of punishment, each independent but nevertheless mutually restrictive. Punishment as a threat was intended to deter crime. It was a tool in the hands of civil society to counteract human drives toward violating another's rights. In its execution, however, the state was limited in its reaction by a retributive theory of justice demanding respect for the individual as an end and not as a means to some further social goal. This interpretation of Kant's theory of punishment maintains consistency from the earliest through the latest of his writings on moral, legal, and political philosophy. It provides a good reason for rejecting current economic analyses of crime and punishment. Most important of all, it credits Kant's theory in its clear recognition of the ideals intrinsic to libertarian government. (shrink)

This paper examines the contextual and terminological problems of the Aristotelian Passage of Metaphysics IX 6 1048b18-35, through the debate between the main interlocutors of the Anglo-Saxon analytic reception. The contextual difficulty of the Passage revolves around (1) the division made by Ross of Theta 6 into two different domains: chapters 1 to 5 of a kinetic character vs chapters 6 to 10 of an ontological character; and (2) the existence or not of parallel passages to the distinction between (...) κίνησις and ἐνέργεια. The terminological difficulty, for its part, evaluates the difference and/or similarity between executive acts (doings) and states of potentiality and actuality (beings) by exploring the possibility that some executive acts are not kinetic, while avoiding confusing them with the state of «ontological actuality» proper of the οὐσία. (shrink)

Chapter 3 furnishes the first step of the book’s main argument by defending the irrevocability of execution. The irrevocability of the death penalty might seem self-evident, but Michael Davis argues that the death penalty is _not_ irrevocable; the state, he says, can compensate the wrongly executed by posthumously advancing their personal interests. Davis’s efforts are strengthened by considerations adopted from the literature on the metaphysics of death and posthumous harm, especially the Pitcher–Feinberg theory of posthumous harm. This chapter vindicates (...) irrevocability by showing that the revocability rejoinder overlooks the full set of practical requirements incumbent on legal institutions in the wake of wrongful punishment. Legal institutions must compensate the wrongfully sanctioned _and_ return to them control over their lives. Because control cannot be returned to the wrongly executed, execution is irrevocable. Chapter 3’s second aim is to defuse the problem of controversial consequences by demonstrating the revocability of incarceration. (shrink)

Core Thesis The cosmic progression from the unconscious, chaotic Ground (Ungrund) to the self-aware, harmonized Spirit (Geist) is not merely a speculative metaphysical theory. Instead, it is a precise description of human neurobiology. True "freedom" occurs when the brain synchronizes its primal, subcortical evolutionary drives with the integrative, ethical processing of the prefrontal cortex—creating a living, biological bridge to the Absolute. -/- Abstract This essay proposes a systemic integration of F.W.J. von Schelling’s metaphysics of freedom with the empirical frameworks (...) of modern neurotheology and cognitive neuroscience, utilizing the core ontological architecture established in Freedom and the Unfolding of Being (Christensen, 2025). At the core of Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift (1809) lies a radical ontology: Being is not a static, substance-based framework but a dynamic, self-unfolding process driven by the dialectical tension between the Ungrund (the dark, chaotic, undifferentiated ground of existence) and Geist (the illuminated spirit of conscious articulation and moral self-determination). This metaphysical rhythm is structurally and functionally mirrored in the evolutionary, phylogenetic, and cytoarchitectonic architecture of the human central nervous system. -/- By mapping Schelling’s primordial potencies onto the biological reality of the human brain, this paper correlates subcortical limbic circuits, ascending reticular monoaminergic projections, and right-hemispheric holistic networks with the unconscious, affective potentiality of the Ungrund. Conversely, the emergence of Geist maps directly onto the integrative, executive capacities of the prefrontal cortex, top-down GABAergic inhibitory control loops, and left-hemispheric linguistic sequencing networks. True existential freedom, within this neuro-metaphysical paradigm, is not a magical exemption from physical causality but the state of supreme systemic harmony achieved when the prefrontal cortex successfully integrates and articulates subcortical primordial drives. -/- Furthermore, the pathologies of fragmentation, such as post-traumatic cortico-limbic dissociation and hyper-rational left-hemispheric isolation, are explored as physical manifestations of Schelling’s "sickness of Being," wherein an autonomous subsystem breaks away from the organic whole. Finally, by analyzing the functional neuroimaging and electroencephalographic data of non-dual mystical states characterized by transient hypo frontality, parietal lobe gating within the orientation association area, and global gamma-wave synchrony, this essay demonstrates that the philosophical ideal of Intellectual Intuition is a reproducible neurobiological reality. The human brain, therefore, serves as the physical canvas through which the cosmic Ungrund achieves self-reflection, transitioning from unconscious potential into the actualization of absolute freedom. (shrink)

This chapter examines the second consideration supporting Kant’s stance that human freedom of will is incompatible with the causality of nature: if our faculty of choice (Willkür) were exclusively conditioned by natural causes, then our choices would lack the absolute metaphysical contingency that is integral to our moral self-conception as imperfectly rational agents who can go either way with regards to moral laws of reason. The chapter reconstructs Kant’s argument for this view. Kant’s claim that it is always possible for (...) human agents to violate moral norms does not (contrary to what some commentators suggest) require his hedonism about our empirical motives. Rather, this claim rests on a compelling contrast between desire-based and reason-based motivation that pervades all human choice. The chapter further shows that we freely violate moral laws of reason in three distinctive ways: through self-deception, rationalization, and (controversially) akrasia or weakness of will. In this context, it emerges that Kant does not unequivocally endorse the so-called “Incorporation Thesis” or the “Guise of the Good” view of human agency. (shrink)

Author thinks that Kant's critique of metaphysics is motivated by creative need in execution of the possibility of a holistic world-view. By directing thought to the sphere of theoretically appropriate, Kant gives metaphysics anthropological sense which strengthens his motivation. Anthropologist metaphysics gives motivation to creativity of philosophical thinking by opening volition to connect ontological and axiological in philosophical subject: it gives completeness to worldview. But scientific conscience has not overcome non-critical fantasies that scientific intellect can cognize the (...) last truths about the world without any intensional implicatures of anthropological origin yet. Anthropological method of critical thinking makes scientific intellect holistic and reflexive without censoring religious nature of humankind. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns the methodology Kant employs in the first two sections of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Groundwork I-II) with particular attention to how the execution of the method of analysis in these sections contributes to the establishment of moral metaphysics as a science. My thesis is that Kant had a detailed strategy for the Groundwork, that this strategy and Kant’s reasons for adopting it can be ascertained from the Critique of Pure Reason (first Critique) (...) and his lectures on logic, and that understanding this strategy gains us interpretive insight into Kant’s moral metaphysics. At the most general level of methodology, Kant says there are four steps for the establishment of any science: 1) make distinct the idea of the natural unity of its material 2) determine the special content of the science 3) articulate the systematic unity of the science 4) critique the science to determine its boundaries The first two of these steps are accomplished by the genetically scholastic method of analysis, paradigmatically the method whereby confused and obscure ideas are made clear and distinct, thereby logically perfecting them and transforming them into possible grounds of cognitive insight that are potentially complete and adequate to philosophical purposes. The analysis of Groundwork I is a paradigmatic analysis that makes distinct what is contained in common understanding, i.e. its Inhalt or intension, making distinct the higher partial concepts that together define the concept of morality. The analysis of Groundwork II is an employment more specifically of the method of logical division, which makes distinct what is contained under the concept, i.e. its Umfang, by which the extension or object of morality is determined. Part I introduces Kant’s conception of moral metaphysical science and why he took it to be in need of establishment, explains the general method for establishing science and the scholastic method of analysis by which its first two steps are to be accomplished, then provides an interpretation of Groundwork I as an execution of this method. Part II details Kant’s determination of the special content of moral science in Groundwork II in relation to the central problem for moral metaphysics – how synthetic a priori practical cognition is possible. (shrink)

"This fine book is ideal for introductory courses in philosophy, and it is executed and backed up by careful, sophisticated philosophical analysis and insight." —_W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Fordham University_ _ _ _Human Knowing_ is a clearly written, brief introduction that guides the reader through an exploration of sense perception, ordinary knowing, scientific knowing, and philosophic knowing. This journey culminates in a justification of philosophy as a genuine form of knowing and thus a natural prelude to metaphysics. Though Felt (...) manages to avoid technical language, the development of his argument is a genuine exercise in philosophic thinking. The outcome is a contemporary expression of a position similar to that of Thomas Aquinas, significantly enriched by insights from Bergson, Whitehead, and phenomenology. (shrink)

This chapter builds on the proceeding one, addressing the question: if members are mereological parts of organizations, what criteria should we use to pick out the members? The chapter argues that an organization’s members are those entities that meet three conditions: a member has _committed_ to abide by the organization’s decisions; a member has _inputs_ into the organization’s decisions; and a member has the ability to _enact_ at least some of the organization’s decisions. Any entity that meets all three of (...) these conditions is a ‘member’ of an organization, for the purposes of treating that organization as an agent capable of wrongdoing. The chapter then applies this account of membership to two kinds of organization: corporations and liberal-democratic states. The result is that directors, shareholders, and many non-management employees are members of corporations; while the executive, legislature, judiciary, and (almost all) voters are members of liberal-democratic states. (shrink)

Aquinas’s analyses of the action process can be traced to a twofold structure: an end as a final cause determines a human action, while the action derives causally from the rational will. By comparing the transcendent relationship between God and His creatures with the special causal and noncausal relationships between human beings and his actions, this paper aims to provide a new perspective for understanding this structure. According to Aquinas, God is the ultimate end and the first agent for all (...) creatures in a state of absolute transcendence. In contrast, human action partially participates in the divine mode of action so that a universal good as an end of action is still transcendentally related to individual actions while the rational will, as a second agent, causally and nontranscendentally contributes to the execution of action. Thus, Aquinas’s action theory is both explanatory and causal. (shrink)

This paper develops Tone as Ontology, a structural account of being grounded in the invariants of generative systems. We articulate the ontological significance of tone, distinguishing this foundational work from a companion paper that explores its methodological application and formalization. We redefine “tone” as the structural profile of constraints that allows entities to maintain coherence under transformation. The tonal ontology formalizes three invariants—Resonance, Responsibility, and Closure—as conditions of persistence that bridge operational and metaphysical ontology. Concretely, we specify Resonance (relational continuity (...) via recursive feedback), Responsibility (traceable accountability that conserves integrity across transformations), and Closure (recursive self-consistency enabling bounded openness). In contrast to informational or substance-based views, tonal being is understood as the conservation of structure through change. The resulting framework unites physical coherence, informational integrity, and ontological continuity into a generative ontology of integrity, suggesting that to exist is to maintain one’s tone. This paper addresses fundamental questions in meta-ontology, demonstrates how tone generates classical ontological frameworks, and advances a conceptual reorientation for understanding existence as resonant persistence. It outlines testable implications across philosophy of mind, AI ethics, and social/environmental theory. Overall, tonal ontology is presented as a post-informational, structurally grounded account of being. (shrink)

The executed study focuses its attention on the phenomenon of the language as the legitimation factor of cultural narratives and the space of metaphysics bases creation as the Western way of thinking grandnarrative. It scrutinizes the language role and status in the works by L. Wittgenstein and J. Derrida whose worldview systems differ greatly from the preceding metaphysic tradition and simultaneously preserve and inherit the classical principles of philosophizing. It has been proved that both philosophers have closeness of views (...) in the matter of Western Philosophy genesis. The article emphasizes that L. Wittgenstein and J. Derrida have the same object of cognition, which is the postulate that there exist inviolable universals in a language structure: general rationalistic principles on the bases of which the whole system of Western Metaphysics is created. It has been demonstrated that within deconstructionism, as well as within L. Wittgenstein philosophy, different ways are used to confirm a language role as the specific instrument for expressing senses, which in the process of reality acquisition forwards semantic violence over it. The author considers that the main objective of the publication is to demonstrate the critical direction of the two conceptions concerning the language nature as the actual space for cultural narratives formation and the centerpiece for the creation of main metaphysical Western way of thinking senses. L. Wittgenstein and J. Derrida experience has great potential for understanding and solving contemporary humanitaristics key transformational problems. The article states that the tradition of own principles "revision", characteristic of the ХХ century philosophy, has different worldview grounds in different conceptions. But their common item is the recognition of the fact that these general universal principles are rooted, in the best part, in a language as a social way of thinking abstract model. In point of fact, in deconstructionism we deal not with basic ideas borrowings in a creative search of overcoming metaphysics, but with the so-called emanation of senses. At the advanced historical stage this phenomenon of emanation includes the actual experience of "overcoming" in the traditions set up by M. Heidegger, R. Karnap, L. Wittgenstein and acquires its utmost presentation in the works by J. Derrida. (shrink)

The Break with Freud and the Discovery of the Collective Unconscious -/- Carl Gustav Jung began his intellectual life as Freud's most gifted collaborator and chosen heir. Their eventual rupture — dramatic, painful, and philosophically consequential — turned on precisely the question of the nature and scope of the unconscious. For Freud, the unconscious was fundamentally personal: it consisted of repressed material, above all sexual and aggressive wishes, derived from the individual's biography. For Jung, this was only half the story (...) — and the lesser half. Beneath the personal unconscious, he became convinced, lay a deeper stratum that was not personal at all: a collective unconscious, shared by all human beings, containing structures and contents that had never been in individual consciousness because they preceded all individual experience. This was not a conclusion Jung reached comfortably or quickly. It emerged from years of clinical work, from his painstaking analysis of dreams and fantasies in psychotic patients, and above all from his extraordinary inner journey — the period of confrontation with his own unconscious documented in The Red Book — in which he encountered figures, images, and narratives that bore unmistakable resemblance to mythological material from cultures he had never studied. The same symbols appeared again and again across different patients, different cultures, different historical periods. This could not be explained by individual learning or transmission. It pointed to something structural in the psyche itself. -/- Archetypes: The Structural Patterns of the Collective Unconscious -/- The theory of archetypes is Jung's most original and philosophically ambitious contribution. Archetypes are not contents but forms — not specific images but the structural predispositions that determine what kinds of images the psyche tends to produce under what circumstances. Jung compared the archetype to the crystal lattice: the lattice determines the form the crystal will take, but it does not itself have a fixed form until it crystallizes in the specific mother liquor of a particular individual's life. Archetypes are the invisible skeleton of psychic experience; they are not perceived directly but through their manifestations. The major archetypes that Jung identified and explored include: the Self (das Selbst) — the central organizing principle of the psyche, the archetype of wholeness and the ultimate goal of psychological development; the Shadow — the repository of all that the ego has rejected or refused to develop, the 'dark twin' that follows every individual like an invisible companion; the Anima and Animus — the contra-sexual elements of the psyche, the inner feminine in men and inner masculine in women, which mediate the relationship between consciousness and the deeper layers of the unconscious; the Great Mother — the archetype of nurture, containment, and engulfment; the Wise Old Man and the Wise Old Woman — figures of wisdom, guidance, and transpersonal knowledge; the Trickster — the amoral, shape-shifting figure who disrupts order and facilitates transformation; the Puer Aeternus — the eternal youth, the archetype of possibility and renewal; and the Hero — the figure of ego-development, of the struggle against inertia and unconsciousness. These are not merely interesting metaphors. Jung believed they were genuine psychological realities — objective structures of the psyche that exert real influence on thought, feeling, behavior, and experience. When the Shadow is not consciously integrated, it is projected onto others, who are then experienced as wholly evil or dangerous. When the Anima is not recognized, a man is possessed by it, driven by unconscious moods and irrational entanglements. When the Self is experienced in a dream or vision, it produces a sense of numinous wholeness that cannot be reduced to anything else. The archetypes are, in this sense, the experiential face of the collective unconscious — the way its structures announce themselves to individual consciousness. -/- The Numinosum: Where Psychology Meets Religion -/- One of the most distinctive and controversial aspects of Jung's thought is his sustained engagement with religion, myth, and the sacred. Drawing on Rudolf Otto's concept of the numinosum — the awe-inspiring, tremendum et fascinans quality of genuine religious experience — Jung argued that the archetypes have an inherently numinous character. When they are encountered in dreams, visions, or waking fantasies, they produce an experience of something overwhelming, something that both terrifies and fascinates, something that feels profoundly other even while being encountered within. Jung was careful to distinguish his approach from metaphysical claims about the existence of God. He insisted he was speaking empirically, as a psychologist, about the psychological reality of the experience of the numinous — not about its theological status. But this distinction, however carefully maintained, could not prevent the recognition that his psychology was in deep conversation with the history of religion and mysticism. The archetypes of the Self, the Great Mother, the Divine Child — these are the psychological correlates of the figures that humanity has worshipped across millennia. The gods, for Jung, are not superstitions to be explained away but projections of real psychic structures onto the outer world. -/- The Process and its Stages -/- Individuation — Jung's term for the process of psychological development and integration — is perhaps the most philosophically rich concept in his entire system. It refers to the lifelong process by which an individual becomes, more and more completely, what they most deeply are: not the persona (the social mask), not the ego (the conscious self-image), but the Self — the total personality, including both its conscious and unconscious dimensions. Individuation is not a programme to be executed or a summit to be conquered; it is a process to be undergone, a way of living that involves the continuous confrontation with, and integration of, the psyche's shadow and depths. The process of individuation typically unfolds in recognizable stages, though these are never mechanically fixed. In the first half of life, the task is largely one of differentiation and adaptation: developing a coherent ego, establishing a viable persona, finding a place in the social world. The unconscious at this stage is largely experienced as threatening, as the potential for regression, for loss of control, for the eruption of instinctual energies that threaten the social adaptation so painfully achieved. In the second half of life — often precipitated by a crisis, a confrontation with mortality, a failure of the persona's adequacy — the task shifts. Now the unconscious is no longer primarily an enemy but a partner: the rich, dangerous, inexhaustible source from which the second half of life must draw its meaning. (shrink)

The moot point of the Western philosophical rhetoric about free will consists in examining whether the claim of authorship to intentional, deliberative actions fits into or is undermined by a one-way causal framework of determinism. Philosophers who think that reconciliation between the two is possible are known as metaphysical compatibilists. However, there are philosophers populating the other end of the spectrum, known as the metaphysical libertarians, who maintain that claim to intentional agency cannot be sustained unless it is assumed that (...) indeterministic causal processes pervade the action-implementation apparatus employed by the agent. The metaphysical libertarians differ among themselves on the question of whether the indeterministic causal relation exists between the series of intentional states and processes, both conscious and unconscious, and the action, making claim for what has come to be known as the event-causal view, or between the agent and the action, arguing that a sort of agent causation is at work. In this paper, I have tried to propose that certain features of both event-causal and agent-causal libertarian views need to be combined in order to provide a more defendable compatibilist account accommodating deliberative actions with deterministic causation. The ‘‘agent-executed-eventcausal libertarianism’’, the account of agency I have tried to develop here, integrates certain plausible features of the two competing accounts of libertarianism turning them into a consistent whole. I hope to show in the process that the integration of these two variants of libertarianism does not challenge what some accounts of metaphysical compatibilism propose—that there exists a broader deterministic relation between the web of mental and extra-mental components constituting the agent’s dispositional system—the agent’s beliefs, desires, short-term and long-term goals based on them, the acquired social, cultural and religious beliefs, the general and immediate and situational environment in which the agent is placed, etc. on the one hand and the decisions she makes over her lifetime on the basis of these factors. While in the ‘‘Introduction’’ the philosophically assumed anomaly between deterministic causation and the intentional act of deciding has been briefly surveyed, the second section is devoted to the task of bridging the gap between compatibilism and libertarianism. The next section of the paper turns to an analysis of folk-psychological concepts and intuitions about the effects of neurochemical processes and prior mental events on the freedom of making choices. How philosophical insights can be beneficially informed by taking into consideration folk-psychological intuitions has also been discussed, thus setting up the background for such analysis. It has been suggested in the end that support for the proposed theory of intentional agency can be found in the folk-psychological intuitions, when they are taken in the right perspective. (shrink)

The essence of metaphysical foundations of sport, meaning the collection of the most favorable conditions for solving the objectives, based on optimum life and theoretical foundation of the concept of sport as being optimum, its conceptual and categorical apparatus; Posted interpretation of metaphysics in the context of its development history of philosophical thought and analyzed the sport as a cultural phenomenon that is designed to convert natural human body in its cultural and executed physicality; The conditions under which the (...) processes of socialization in sport and through sport; reveals the conditions under which sport takes a phenomenon and lyudynovymirne and conditions that contribute to the violation human dimension. (shrink)

Tow Philosophical book in one. written in Persian(Farsi) language. this book is describing the faces of Metaphysics like Idealism with all branches like Religions, Rationalism, Platoon, Rene Descartes and all other philosophers in group of Rationalism like Alexander Koere, Kant, Socrates, Kierkegaard, Wilhelm Leibniz etc... and their philosophy systems. Writer strongly believe that, the Metaphysics in different ways act against Humanity and all existence, so this book is telling the reader what is Metaphysics and why it's updating (...) itself every minutes against Human in whole of lands and even why it is against Existence? Descartes, Alexander Koyré and Wilhelm Leibniz are just 3 Philosophers in Rationalism group. But it's clear why Alexanders book is translated to Persian with more than 3000 copies in first edition in Iran! and in the same time the religious leader of Iran ordering to take the Philosophy out of Universities! This book can not be publish in Iran as the complete text is describing how and why freedom in Iran has no meaning and thinkers are being executing and terrorizing every day by hand of Metaphysics in this country. in this book we have complete reasons of Idealism with whole of its parts and Religions about existing of God and also philosophical reasons for non existence of God or Gods! possibility of the second Big Bang is one new theory and also another new theory in this book is reasons for that Mind is Material and why whole of Universe is Material and opposite of understanding of Lawrence M. Krauss, Universe came from something ( Material) not Nothing! and this is the exact subject of Sartre Philosopher too. (shrink)

In Time and the World, I undertake a wholly critical metaphysics, one that provides an account of the world – this all-encompassing array of whatnot – and what a thing (i.e., an entity, an existent, a being) is without making any assumption whatsoever about the world. Such an undertaking requires a novel method, original inquiry, which begins by confronting all this, the world, as merely the impetus to inquiry. The execution of a wholly critical metaphysics yields insight into (...) literally everything and the basic structure in reality. If a theory does not comport with what a thing is or the structure in reality revealed by an apt ontology that involves no bias, no limiting perspective, no misleading presupposition, that theory is irredeemably misguided. Hence, original inquiry can illuminate all inquiry. My critics question the feasibility of original inquiry, the wholly critical method I adopt, as well as some of the conclusions regarding the fundamentality of each thing, the scope of explanation and the nature of time per se, that I maintain the method informs. In responding to their concerns, I defend radical ontology, the overarching theoretical framework that original inquiry provides, by clarifying certain details of my enterprise and what these reveal about the limits of inquiry in general. (shrink)

This essay examines how Husserl stretches the bounds of his philosophy of meaning, according to which all propositions are categorical, to account for existential propositions, which seem to lack predicates. I examine Husserl’s counterintuitive conclusion that an existential proposition does possess a predicate and I explore his endeavor to pinpoint what that predicate is. This goal is accomplished in three stages. First, I examine Husserl’s standard theory of predication and categorial intuition from his 1901 Logical Investigations. Second, I show how (...) Husserl imposes those 1901 insights to uncover the predicate of the existential proposition in unpublished manuscripts and lectures. He determines that the existential proposition predicates of the subject, that it corresponds to an actual object. This analysis reveals that Husserl’s descriptions of existential propositions from the late 1890s employed both static and genetic methodologies. In those texts, he carefully untangles and clarifies the co-enmeshed passive and active moments of consciousness and shows that the passive givenness of certain circumstances is the condition of possibility for our active verifying of propositions. Finally, I execute a critical assessment of Husserl’s thought to reveal that, while his insights about existential propositions are largely correct, they are augmented by re-construing them within the context of his mature philosophy. Only by renouncing his metaphysical neutrality and by accounting for intersubjectivity, can Husserl properly clarify existential propositions. (shrink)

This article develops an account of the nature and limits of the state’s legislative authority that closely attends to the challenge of harmonizing Kant’s ethical and juridical theories. It clarifies some key Kantian concepts and terms, then explains the way in which the state’s three interlocking authorities – legislative, executive, and judicial – are metaphysically distinct and mutually dependent. It describes the emergence of the Kantian state and identifies the preconditions of its authority. Then it offers a metaphysical model of (...) the Kantian state and uses it to argue that the activity of juridical lawgiving is an act of the omnilateral will itself. Legislative authority is limited in the sense that it does not include the capacity to create juridical laws that are conceptually incompatible with the idea of universal external freedom. I argue that my proposed account of the legislative authority is wholly consistent with that authority’s exclusive lawgiving capacity and does not threaten the possibility of ‘distributive justice’ – the legal finality that is the sine qua non of a civil condition. (shrink)

A widespread view in the philosophy of mind and action holds that intentions are propositional attitudes. Call this view ‘Propositionalism about Intention’. The key alternative holds that intentions have acts, or do-ables, as their contents. Propositionalism is typically accepted by default, rather than argued for in any detail. By appealing to a key metaphysical constraint on any account of intention, I argue that on the contrary, it is the Do-ables View which deserves the status of the default position, and Propositionalism (...) which bears the burden of proof. I go on to show that this burden has not been met in the literature. (shrink)

To compute is to execute an algorithm. More precisely, to say that a device or organ computes is to say that there exists a modelling relationship of a certain kind between it and a formal specification of an algorithm and supporting architecture. The key issue is to delimit the phrase of a certain kind. I call this the problem of distinguishing between standard and nonstandard models of computation. The successful drawing of this distinction guards Turing's 1936 analysis of computation against (...) a difficulty that has persistently been raised against it, and undercuts various objections that have been made to the computational theory of mind. (shrink)

This paper combines two ideas: (1) That the Lewisian best system analysis of lawhood (BSA) can cope with laws that have exceptions (cf. Braddon-Mitchell in Noûs 35(2):260–277, 2001; Schrenk in The metaphysics of ceteris paribus laws. Ontos, Frankfurt, 2007). (2) That a BSA can be executed not only on the mosaic of perfectly natural properties but also on any set of special science properties (cf., inter alia, Schrenk 2007, Selected papers contributed to the sections of GAP.6, 6th international congress (...) of the society for analytical philosophy. Mentis, Paderborn/Münster, 2008; Cohen and Callender in Philos Stud 145:1–34, 2009, Erkenntnis 73:427–447, 2010). Bringing together (1) and (2) results in an analysis of special science ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

"John Locke is considered as one of the most important philosophers of the modern era. The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were both highly influenced by Locke's philosophical ideas. Commonly known as the 'Father of Liberalism' Locke heavily influences contemporary libertarianism, with its emphasis on small government, the requirement of actual consent to that government, and a natural executive right to establish one's own sovereignty and enforce one'' own rights. The Lockean Mind provides a comprehensive survey of (...) his work, not only placing it in its historical context but also exploring its contemporary significance. Comprising almost sixty chapters by a superb team of international contributors, the volume is divided into twelve parts covering the full range of Locke's thought: Historical Background, Locke's Interlocutors, Locke's Epistemology, Locke's Philosophy of Mind, Locke on Philosophy of Language and Logic, Locke's Metaphysics, Locke's Natural Philosophy, Locke's Moral Philosophy, Locke on Education, Locke's Political Philosophy, Locke's Social Philosophy, Locke on Religion. This collection is essential reading for students and researchers working in political philosophy, philosophy of mind, libertarianism, British Empiricism, epistemology and political theory, as well as for those in related Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines with an interest in John Locke"--. (shrink)

This chapter presents the following hypothesis: There is a perfectly sensible conception of the mind, consciousness, the self, what we mean by ‘I,’ how we perceive and know, and how we remember and decide, all of which cohere amongst one another as well as with what we know about the brain, according to which it is possible for one person to directly experience the conscious states of another person. Not only can one person be directly aware of the conscious states (...) of another person, he can be more aware of them than their original owner. He can even be aware of them when their original owner will never be aware of them. Mindmelding is possible, and this possibility removes much of the force from the mind-body problem by removing the impasse caused by the belief in privacy. It removes what some philosophers saw as a need to posit strange metaphysical categories. The subject's sense of self can be separated from the object of her conscious awareness which can be bound to another's sense of self. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected second eBook edition of this work. Readers are asked to use this edition.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly/technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 (...) and is now available through all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under the following ISBN: 978-0-578-88646-6¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶Commendations of this work, from the back cover of the published edition:¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶ “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶“Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶ The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to the philosophy of science. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive volume of 885 pages has been published as a free open access eBook. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of problems that have concerned philosophers of science as well as epistemologists. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German physicist and philosopher of science Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The principal objective of the study is to identify the unavoidable limitations of the conceptual frameworks in terms of which knowledge, reference, and meaning are possible. The book establishes a bridge between, on the one hand, a model of philosophy as a science — i.e., rigorous proof-based scientific philosophy — and, on the other, the philosophy of science.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The study develops a logically compelling method that enables us both to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden — the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless — and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions which lie at the heart of major problems of philosophy of science and epistemology. ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶With these ends in view, individual chapters are devoted to a critique of a wide range of fundamental concepts studied by philosophy of science, among them, space, time, space-time, causality, the problem of discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics, the role of the observer, the perturbation theory of measurement, indeterminacy and uncertainty, complementarity, the ontological status of physical reality, and others.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶The study culminates in a group of chapters devoted to special and general relativity and quantum theory. In these concluding chapters the purpose is to show the extent to which both relativity physics and quantum theory bear out results that have been reached in a logically compelling manner wholly by means of the approach to conceptual analysis developed in the book.¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a logically self-validating method that at last provides provable and constructive solutions to a significant number of major philosophical problems in philosophy of science and epistemology. Bartlett is the author or editor of more than 20 books and numerous papers. (shrink)

We undeniably live in an information age—as, indeed, did those who lived before us. After all, as the cultural historian Robert Darnton pointed out: ‘every age was an age of information, each in its own way’ (Darnton 2000: 1). Darnton was referring to the news media, but his insight surely also applies to the sciences. The practices of acquiring, storing, labeling, organizing, retrieving, mobilizing, and integrating data about the natural world has always been an enabling aspect of scientific work. Natural (...) history and its descendant discipline of biological taxonomy are prime examples of sciences dedicated to creating and managing systems of ordering data. In some sense, the idea of biological taxonomy as an information science is commonplace. Perhaps it is because of its self-evidence that the information science perspective on taxonomy has not been a major theme in the history and philosophy of science. The botanist Vernon Heywood once pointed out that historians of biology, in their ‘preoccupation with the development of the sciences of botany and zoology… [have] diverted attention from the role of taxonomy as an information science’ (Heywood 1985: 11). More specifically, he argued that historians had failed to appreciate how principles and practices that can be traced to Linnaeus constituted ‘a change in the nature of taxonomy from a local or limited folk communication system and later a codified folk taxonomy to a formal system of information science [that] marked a watershed in the history of biology’ (ibid.). A similar observation could be made about twentieth-century philosophy of biology, which mostly skipped over practical and epistemic questions about information management in taxonomy. The taxonomic themes that featured in the emerging philosophy of biology literature in the second half of the twentieth century were predominantly metaphysical in orientation. This is illustrated by what has become known as the ‘essentialism story’: an account about the essentialist nature of pre- Darwinian taxonomy that used to be accepted by many historians and philosophers, and which stimulated efforts to document and interpret shifts in the metaphysical understanding of species and (natural) classification (Richards 2010; Winsor 2003; Wilkins 2009). Although contemporary debates in the philosophy of taxonomy have moved on, much discussion continues to focus on conceptual and metaphysical issues surrounding the nature of species and the principles of classification. Discussions centring on whether species are individuals, classes, or kinds have sprung up as predictably as perennials. Raucous debates have arisen even with the aim of accommodating the diversity of views: is monism, pluralism, or eliminativism about the species category the best position to take? In addition to these, our disciplines continue to interrogate what is the nature of these different approaches to classification: are they representational or inferential roles of different approaches to classification (evolutionary taxonomy, phenetics, phylogenetic systematics)? While there is still much to learn from these discussions—in which we both actively participate—our aim with this topical collection has been to seek different entrypoints and address underexposed themes in the history and philosophy of taxonomy. We believe that approaching taxonomy as an information science prompts new questions and can open up new philosophical vistas worth exploring. A twenty-first century information science turn in the history and philosophy of taxonomy is already underway. In scientific practice and in daily life it is hard to escape the imaginaries of Big Data and the constant threats of being ‘flooded with data’. In the life sciences, these developments are often associated with the socalled bioinformatics crisis that can hopefully be contained by a new, interdisciplinary breed of bioinformaticians. These new concepts, narratives, and developments surrounding the centrality of data and information systems in the biological and biomedical sciences have raised important philosophical questions about their challenges and implications. But historical perspectives are just as necessary to judge what makes our information age different from those that preceded us. Indeed, as the British zoologist Charles Godfray has often pointed out, the piles of data that are being generated in contemporary systematic biology have led to a second bioinformatics crisis, the first being the one that confronted Linnaeus in the mid-18th century (Godfray 2007). Although our aim is to clear a path for new discussions of taxonomy from an information science-informed point of view, we continue where others in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science have already trod. We believe that an appreciation of biological taxonomy as an information science raises many questions about the philosophical, theoretical, material, and practical aspects of the use and revision of biological nomenclatures in different local and global communities of scientists and citizen scientists. In particular, conceiving of taxonomy as an information science directs attention to the temporalities of managing an accumulating data about classified entities that are themselves subject to revision, to the means by which revision is accomplished, and to the semantic, material, and collaborative contexts that mediate the execution of revisions. (shrink)

In this chapter, I consider the largely overlooked influence of E. W. von Tschirnhaus' treatise on method, the Medicina mentis, on Wolff's early philosophical project (in both its conception and execution). As I argue, part of Tschirnhaus' importance for Wolff lies in the use he makes of principles gained from experience as a foundation for the scientific enterprise in the context of his broader philosophical rationalism. I will show that this lesson from Tschirnhaus runs through Wolff's earliest philosophical discussions, and (...) indeed continues to inform his major texts in logic and mathematics just before the publication of the German Metaphysics. In the end, my discussion has the effect of revealing Tschirnhaus to be an exceptionally important influence on Wolff's development, perhaps even as important (or so I suggest) as Leibniz. (shrink)

This work proposes a policy-centric ontology of computation in which access control is treated as a first-class architectural primitive rather than as a derivative mechanism implemented via faults, virtual memory, or speculative recovery. -/- The specification challenges a long-standing assumption in computer science: that unauthorized memory access is best handled through post hoc detection (page faults, exceptions, speculative rollbacks) rather than preventive authorization. We argue that this assumption is not merely an engineering choice but an ontological commitment embedded in the (...) dominant model of computation. -/- By formally defining policy as an explicit component of architectural state, and by enforcing access decisions prior to memory interaction, the proposed model eliminates speculative side effects, fault-based epistemology, and page-oriented abstractions. The result is a deterministic computational model with strong non-interference guarantees and a transparent separation between addressing, authority, and execution. -/- The contribution is not a performance-oriented processor design, but a foundational redefinition of the primitives underlying computation, memory, and protection. The work situates processor architecture as a form of ontological engineering and aims to provide a rigorous alternative to the implicit metaphysics of contemporary systems. (shrink)

Abstract: Faust's Folly In this poem I revisit the dialogue between Boethius and Philosophy in his work The Consolation of Philosophy, a work composed while its author was imprisoned and awaiting execution under Theodoric the Ostrogoth. That Boethius produced such a work under circumstances of such brutal extremity marks him as an existential hero in the deepest sense: he embodies in his own life the argument advanced centuries later by Jean-Paul Sartre, that human freedom persists even within the confines of (...) a gulag or a prison cell. He also bequeathed to us one of philosophy's most consequential and subtle distinctions: the difference between what something is and that something is, between essence and existence. The importance of this distinction cannot be overstated. It preoccupied the Neoplatonists and the great Medieval philosophers alike, and it underlies Leibniz's thunderous question: why is there something rather than nothing? In modern times it became a linchpin of existentialism, phenomenology, and analytic metaphysics, animating thinkers too numerous to list. In this poem, the distinction also serves another purpose: to illuminate the difference between knowledge understood as information and information-gathering, and the deeper, slower thinking that is the proper vocation of philosophy. References in the poem contain hypertext links to aid students who may be unfamiliar with the names and terms. (shrink)

Boethius, though a Christian, worked in the tradition of the Neoplatonic schools, with their strong interest in Aristotelian logic and Platonic metaphysics. He is best known for his Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote in prison awaiting execution. His works also include a long series of logical translations, commentaries and monographs and some short but densely-argued theological treatises, all of which were enormously influential on medieval thought. But Boethius was more than a writer who passed on important ancient ideas (...) to the Middle Ages. The essays here by leading specialists, which cover all the main aspects of his writing and its influence, show that he was a distinctive thinker, whose arguments repay careful analysis and who used his literary talents in conjunction with his philosophical abilities to present a complex view of the world. (shrink)

To understand the roots of the early modern ancestor to our concept of laws of nature, this chapter examines the conceptual problem space from which Descartes’s distinctive characterization of his laws of motion as laws of nature grew. Descartes’s three laws of motion are 1) universal, 2) causal, and 3) determinative of all regularities in nature without exception. Aristotelian predecessors lay the metaphysical groundwork for 1) and 2) by incorporating Neoplatonic/Stoic commitments to a prior universal nature that manifests itself as (...) an underlying fate/causal order governing all natural chains of causation. And Sebastian Basso’s reification of the ‘universal nature’ as the World Soul/ether gives him a concrete causal agent which executes the proportions or laws of motion in the divine mind through one universal local motion by means of direct contact with the passive material atoms. Hence Basso’s concept of a law of nature, like Descartes’s, encompasses 1), 2), and 3). (shrink)

The objective of this work is to explore the notion of “action” and “agency” in artificial intelligence (AI). It employs a metaphysical notion of action and agency as an epistemological tool in the critique of the notion of “action” and “agency” in artificial intelligence. Hence, both a metaphysical and cognitive analysis is employed in the investigation of the quiddity and nature of action and agency per se, and how they are, by extension employed in the language and science of artificial (...) intelligence. The advent of the science of artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and the technological applications of artificial intelligence in the production of agents such as driverless cars and expert systems, have raised the question of moral, ethical and/or legal responsibility in AI agents. This has re-emphasized the importance of the philosophical discourse on the notions of action and agency, which in contemporary intellectual discourse are now perceived to be phenomena within the epistemic competence of the natural sciences. This paper argues that AI systems do not and cannot possess free agency and autonomy, thus cannot be morally and ethically responsible, hence, it recommends a socio-political response to the question of responsibility in AI. It is then the duty of individual nations, or the global community to define and enact policies on who shoulders the responsibility of actions executed by AIs. (shrink)

This paper establishes the Unified Field Theory of Life (UFTL) as the ultimate ontological bridge connecting Mahayana Yogacara metaphysics with macroscopic biological information topologies, specifically driven by the newly formulated Quantum Information Jian-Da Protocol. Moving beyond the descriptive mechanics of II_009_Topological Quantum Ecology, we formalize the primordial Tathagatagarbha as an unmanifested cosmic ground state where the topological phase difference remains perfectly zero (∆θ=0). We demonstrate that the Alayavijnana’s localized symmetry breaking is governed by the Quantum Information Jian-Da Protocol, mathematically (...) executed via the Mind-Decoherence Operator (D ̂_M). This protocol dictates the exponential decay of density matrix off-diagonal elements (ρ_ij), projecting the geometric illusion of spatial containment through the creation of a Markov blanket that delineates the "perceiving division" (Jian-Fen) and the "manifested division" (Xiang-Fen). By incorporating a modified Kuramoto synchronization model and a topological translation of Henri Bergson’s Élan Vital, we prove that macroscopic ecological networks are not independent material systems, but the phase-locked trajectories of this singular protocol performing active inference. Finally, we provide empirical validation via the "Morning De-noising Protocol," proving that structured sensory isolation allows a reverse engineering of the Jian-Da Protocol. By lowering the critical coupling threshold (K_c), this practice triggers a real-time dissolution of the Markov blanket, confirming that space is a derivative construct of perception and that life is fundamentally a non-spatial, unbroken flow of consciousness running on a universal information protocol. -/- 本研究確立了《統一生命場論》（UFTL），將其作為連結大乘唯識形上學與宏觀生物資訊拓撲的終極本體論之橋，並明確指出其核心驅動力正是本研究正式定名的「量子資訊見大協議」。超越《II_009_拓撲量子生態 學》的現象學描繪，我們將本初如來藏公式化為一個拓撲相位差完美為零（∆θ=0）的未顯現宇宙基態。我們論證了阿賴耶識局域的對稱性破缺本質上受到「量子資訊見大協議」的支配，並透過「心識去相干算子（D ̂_M）」進行數學化執行。該協議規定了密度矩陣非對角元素（ρ_ij）的指數級衰減，藉由劃分出「見分」與「相分」的馬爾可夫毯，投射出空間容受感的幾何幻覺。藉由結合修改後的庫拉莫托同步模型以及亨利·柏格森 「生命沖流（Élan Vital）」的拓撲化轉譯，我們證實宏觀生態網路並非獨立的物質系統，而是此一單一協議進行主動推論時的相位鎖定軌跡。最後，我們透過「清晨去噪協定」提供實踐印證，證明結構化的感官隔離能對見大協議進行逆向工 程；藉由降低臨界耦合閾值（K_c），引發馬爾可夫毯的即時消融，從而證實空間僅是感知的衍生建構，而生命在本質上是一個運行於宇宙資訊協議之下、非空間性且不間斷的心識之流。 . (shrink)

Plato, the great philosopher of Athens, was born in 427 BCE. In early manhood an admirer of Socrates, he later founded the famous school of philosophy in the grove Academus. Much else recorded of his life is uncertain; that he left Athens for a time after Socrates' execution is probable; that later he went to Cyrene, Egypt, and Sicily is possible; that he was wealthy is likely; that he was critical of 'advanced' democracy is obvious. He lived to be 80 (...) years old. Linguistic tests including those of computer science still try to establish the order of his extant philosophical dialogues, written in splendid prose and revealing Socrates' mind fused with Plato's thought. In Laches, Charmides, and Lysis, Socrates and others discuss separate ethical conceptions. Protagoras, Ion, and Meno discuss whether righteousness can be taught. In Gorgias, Socrates is estranged from his city's thought, and his fate is impending. The Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, and the unforgettable Phaedo relate the trial and death of Socrates and propound the immortality of the soul. In the famous Symposium and Phaedrus, written when Socrates was still alive, we find the origin and meaning of love. Cratylus discusses the nature of language. The great masterpiece in ten books, the Republic, concerns righteousness. Of the six so-called dialectical dialogues Euthydemus deals with philosophy; metaphysical Parmenides is about general concepts and absolute being; Theaetetus reasons about the theory of knowledge. Of its sequels, Sophist deals with not-being; Politicus with good and bad statesmanship and governments; Philebus with what is good. The Timaeus seeks the origin of the visible universe out of abstract geometrical elements. The unfinished Critias treats of lost Atlantis. Unfinished also is Plato's last work of the twelve books of Laws, a critical discussion of principles of law which Plato thought the Greeks might accept. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Plato is in twelve volumes. (shrink)

One of the many arguments against capital punishment is that execution is irrevocable. At its most simple, the argument has three premises. First, legal institutions should abolish penalties that do not admit correction of error, unless there are no alternative penalties. Second, irrevocable penalties are those that do not admit of correction. Third, execution is irrevocable. It follows that capital punishment should be abolished. This paper argues for the third premise. One might think that the truth of this premise is (...) self-evident. But in his paper “Is the Death Penalty Irrevocable?” Mike Davis argues that it is false: the death penalty is not irrevocable. While Davis’ argument is itself somewhat compelling, it receives additional support from work in the metaphysics of death, specifically the literature on posthumous harm. Strengthened in this way, the argument deserves careful consideration. I begin with a quick sketch of Davis’ argument, then show how the Pitcher-Feinberg theory of posthumous harm enables a more robust argument against the irrevocability of capital punishment, defending their theory of harm against standard objections in the literature. Having established the coherency of the robust argument, I conclude that it nevertheless fails to make the case against irrevocability. This is because it ignores the full set of practical requirements incumbent on legal institutions that wrongly punish someone. (shrink)

Contemporary physics remains fractured by a profound explanatory gap regarding the ontological status of the present moment. While the Block Universe of General Relativity dismisses the passage of time as a persistent illusion, human phenomenological experience, quantum non-locality, and modern quantum gravity foundations strongly imply the existence of an absolute, privileged present moment. This paper proposes The Biological Presentist Model. I reframe spacetime not as a static, four-dimensional geometric manifold, but as an active, five- dimensional manifold comprising a two-dimensional spatial (...) hardware lattice (2S) and a three- dimensional temporal phase-space (3T), both driven by an independent, universal system clock (T4). Utilizing a formalized Neo-Lorentzian framework and the structural stability constraints of Causal Dynamical Triangulations (CDT), I demonstrate that the relativity of simultaneity is an informational latency effect within a localized user interface rather than a fundamental metaphysical truth, anchoring the master system's execution rate to the isotropic frame of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Crucially, I propose that living biological organisms do not merely observe this cosmic runtime but function as its high-bandwidth hardware terminals. These autopoietic systems sustain real-time synchrony with the universal clock through active, negentropic error-correction protocols, paying a localized processing tax dictated by Landauer's Principle. By analyzing the spectrum of altered conscious states ranging from general anesthesia (telemetry bandwidth throttling) to brain death (irreversible ontological decoupling), I show that consciousness is the literal, active execution thread of this universal code. (shrink)

In paradigm exercises of agency, individuals guide their activities toward some goal. A central challenge for action theory is to explain how individuals guide. This challenge is an instance of the more general problem of how to accommodate individuals and their actions in the natural world, as explained by natural science. Two dominant traditions–primitivism and the causal theory–fail to address the challenge in a satisfying way. Causal theorists appeal to causation by an intention, through a feedback mechanism, in explaining guidance. (...) Primitivists postulate primitive agential capacities in their explanations. The latter neglect to explain how primitive capacities integrate with findings from natural science. The former do not explain why some feedback mechanism’s activity amounts to the agent’s guidance. In this paper I argue that both traditions should acknowledge a capacity to guide, as actually constituted by the executive system. I argue that appeals to this empirically discovered psychological system explain how individuals guide in a way that integrates with explanations from cognitive science. Individuals’ capacity to guide is embedded in the natural world through the activity of its constituent (mechanistic) components. (shrink)

A claim can be argued well and still be false. Standard verification across the disciplines certifies claims by the quality of a single line of support: a formal proof, a measured correlation, a replicated experiment, an expert consensus. Each of these is one axis of warrant, and each can be strong while the claim is wrong, because a single strong axis cannot detect that it is the only axis, nor that it secretly shares a source with the others. This paper (...) presents a verification method, Trisduction, that certifies a claim by the geometry of its warrant rather than by the strength of any one line of it. A proposition is decomposed onto three structurally independent axes, a formal-structural axis, an empirical-material axis, and an epistemic-registrational axis, and the warrant is certified only when the three stand at mutual right angles and span a genuine three-dimensional volume. The test is closed-form and executable: three warrant vectors are composed through a quaternion product whose scalar part squares to a Gram determinant, and the determinant reads the volume the three axes enclose. A volume near its maximum is a seal. A collapsed volume is a structural break with a named cause. An ill-conditioned volume is an honest under-determination. A second register extends the method to formal and mathematical propositions, separating the part of a problem that is decidable and sealed from the part whose truth is genuinely open, and refusing to read a geometric lock as a proof. The method carries one discipline throughout: social consensus carries zero evidential weight, every verdict states its warrant grade, and the instrument audits itself with no exemption. We demonstrate the method on 360 propositions spanning logic, mathematics, physics, quantum foundations, cosmology, the mind, psychology, the social sciences, geopolitics, and metaphysics, from elementary facts that seal cleanly to celebrated open problems where the honest verdict is that the question remains open and the method says exactly why. -/- 360 Audits. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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Autonomous systems are machines that can alter their behavior without direct human oversight or control. How ought we to program them to behave? A plausible starting point is given by the Reduction to Acts Thesis, according to which we ought to program autonomous systems to do whatever a human agent ought to do in the same circumstances. Although the Reduction to Acts Thesis is initially appealing, we argue that it is false: it is sometimes permissible to program a machine to (...) do something that it would be wrong for a human to do. We advance two main arguments for this claim. First, the way an autonomous system will behave can be known in advance. This knowledge can indirectly affect the behavior of other agents, while the same may not be true at the time the system actually executes its programming. Second, a lack of knowledge of the identities of the victims and beneficiaries can provide a justification during the programming phase that would be unavailable to an agent at the time the autonomous system executes its programming. (shrink)

In his Jus Naturae, Gottfried Achenwall gave a clear distinction of the distinct role of legislative, executive, and judicial functions or powers in a state. Kant modeled his Doctrine of Right in the Metaphysics of Morals closely on Achenwall, but made it clear that in a republic the division of functions has to be realized in a division of governmental persons or agencies, with the legislature superior to the other, which are agents of its sovereignty, even though the executive (...) agency has to have a monopoly on the use of coercion. In a postscript, I suggest that the American ideology of three “co-equal” branches of government in a system of “checks and balances” on each other is a myth, and that the US Constitution actually conforms to the Kantian model of the superiority of the legislature, not merely by describing the legislature first in its Article I, but subtantively by granting only the legislature the power to impeach officers of the other branches and to initiate amendments to the Constitution, even though both of these powers may be exercised only with great difficulty. (shrink)

The Web 3.0 era has ushered in an ontological and epistemological rupture in the foundations of legal thought. No longer centered solely on the human subject, contemporary legal phenomena increasingly unfold within machinic ecologies composed of smart contracts, autonomous agents, and algorithmic infrastructures capable of generating, interpreting, and enforcing norms without direct human intervention. This paper advances a posthuman reconceptualization of cyberlaw by situating its inquiry at the intersection of virtual ontology and algorithmic epistemology, offering a theoretical framework for understanding (...) law in an age of non-human legal intelligence. The analysis begins by tracing the collapse of anthropocentric categories such as legal subjectivity, intention, and jurisdiction, as they are destabilized by the operational autonomy of digital entities. It then examines the rise of computational metaphysics, wherein law emerges not from textual reasoning but from code, protocol, and data flow. Through a semiotic lens, the paper explores how law is now enacted through executable signs, displacing interpretation with automation and transforming meaning into machine-readable function. Further, the article addresses the ethical dilemmas of normative automation, the erosion of legal hermeneutics, and the growing opacity of algorithmic governance. A comparative analysis reveals how various jurisdictions: European, American, East Asian, offer divergent responses to posthuman legal challenges, each revealing the tensions between sovereignty, control, and machinic normativity. Finally, the paper argues for a radical rethinking of legal education, urging the formation of jurists fluent in systems, ethics, and computational design. Rather than resist the dissolution of human centrality, this study embraces it as an opportunity to develop a post-anthropocentric jurisprudence, one that is plural, situated, and capable of responding to the emergent complexities of law in the Web 3.0 era. Law must no longer be viewed solely as a human discourse, but as a hybrid, dynamic, and materially entangled phenomenon: co-produced across networks of signs, infrastructures, and intelligences, both human and otherwise. (shrink)