Pronouns often convey information about a person’s social identity (e.g., gender). Consequently, pronouns have become a focal point in academic and public debates about whether pronouns should be changed to be more inclusive, such as for people whose identities do not fit current pronoun conventions (e.g., gender non-binary individuals). Here, we make an empirical contribution to these debates by investigating which social identities lay speakers think that pronouns should encode and why. Across four studies, participants were asked to evaluate different (...) types of real and hypothetical pronouns, including binary gender pronouns, race pronouns, and identity-neutral pronouns. We sampled participants from two languages with different pronoun systems: English (N = 1,120) and Turkish (N = 260). English pronouns commonly denote binary gender (e.g., he for men), whereas Turkish pronouns are identity-neutral (e.g., o for anyone). Participants’ reasoning about pronouns reflected both a familiarity preference (i.e., participants preferred the pronoun type used in their language) and—critically—participants’ social ideologies. In both language contexts, participants’ ideological beliefs that social groups are inherently distinct (essentialism) and should be hierarchal (social dominance orientation) predicted relatively greater endorsement of binary gender pronouns and race pronouns. A preregistered experimental study with an English-speaking sample showed that the relationship between ideology and pronoun endorsement is causal: Ideologies shape attitudes toward pronouns. Together, the present research contributes to linguistic and psychological theories concerning how people reason about language and informs policy-relevant questions about whether and how to implement language changes for social purposes. (shrink)

Multi-agent systems often exhibit emergent behavior that appears coordinated, intelligent, and irreducible to the behavior of individual components. Yet quantifying the degree to which such systems form integrated wholes remains a major challenge. While Integrated Information Theory (IIT) was originally developed to explain consciousness, its core concept - measuring how much a system resists decomposition - has broader relevance for understanding informational integration in complex systems. However, the exact computation of IIT’s central quantity, Φ, is intractable for all but the (...) smallest networks. In this paper, we propose a scalable spectral approximation, Φspectral, which estimates system-level irreducibility by applying spectral graph theory to pairwise mutual information networks derived from time-series data. The Fiedler vector of the normalized Laplacian defines a minimal bipartition, across which we sum mutual information to estimate informational disintegration. We interpret this measure as a proxy for epistemic emergence (specifically the diachronic case)—capturing practical, observer-relative irreducibility without invoking ontological claims. We also explore the implications of this metric for measuring emergence and consciousness. We evaluate Φspectral across four classes of simulated systems: random, transitional, and synchronized oscillator networks, as well as a biologically inspired combinatorial threshold-linear network (CTLN) governed by graph-theoretic dynamics. Our results show that Φspectral is sensitive not merely to coordination, but to the emergence of structurally differentiated and functionally integrated behavior. In particular, it detects transient integration in transitional systems and reveals the collapse of complexity in fixed-point–convergent CTLNs. These findings suggest that Φspectral offers a principled and computationally efficient tool for analyzing irreducibility and emergence in distributed systems, with potential applications in AI safety, neural computation, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

If anger is the emotion of injustice, and if most injustices have prominent epistemic dimensions, then where is the anger in epistemic injustice? Despite the question my task is not to account for the lack of attention to anger in epistemic injustice discussions. Instead, I argue that a particular texture of transformative anger – a knowing resistant anger – offers marginalized knowers a powerful resource for countering epistemic injustice. I begin by making visible the anger that saturates the silences that (...) epistemic injustices repeatedly manufacture and explain the obvious: silencing practices produce angry experiences. I focus on tone policing and tone vigilance to illustrate the relationship between silencing and angry knowledge management. Next, I use María Lugones’s pluralist account of anger to bring out the epistemic dimensions of knowing resistant anger in a way that also calls attention to their histories and felt textures. The final section draws on feminist scholarship about the transformative power of angry knowledge to suggest how it might serve as a resource for resisting epistemic injustice. (shrink)

You may be familiar with Satoshi Nakamoto, the software engineer. Renowned or reviled, he’s well-known under that guise. You might also know Satoshi as a monetary designer – the creator of a new kind of digital asset. But in this article, we'll introduce you to Satoshi, the social architect and founding father. Our topic is bitcoin’s social layer: its people. Our questions are these: what social features enable bitcoin to be what it is? How does bitcoin’s network of users differ (...) from more familiar institutions or organized groups of people? More to the point: what was Satoshi’s own role in all this? How did Satoshi’s decisions as a social architect shape bitcoin’s future institutional profile? (shrink)

Alison Bailey’s The Weight of Whiteness: A Feminist Engagement with Privilege, Race, and Ignorance examines how whiteness misshapes our humanity, measuring the weight of whiteness in terms of its costs and losses to collective humanity. People of color feel the weight of whiteness daily. The resistant habits of whiteness and its attendant privileges, however, make it difficult for white people to feel the damage. White people are more comfortable thinking about white supremacy in terms of what privilege does for (...) them, rather than feeling what it does to them. The first half of the book focuses on the overexposed side of white privilege, the side that works to make the invisible and intangible structures of power more visible and tangible. Bailey discusses the importance of understanding privileges intersectionally, the ignorance-preserving habits of “white talk,” and how privilege and ignorance circulate in educational settings. The second part invites white readers to explore the underexposed side of white dominance, the weightless side that they would rather not feel. The final chapters are powerfully autobiographical. Bailey engages readers with a deeply personal account of what it means to hold space with the painful weight of whiteness in her own life. She also offers a moving account of medicinal genealogies, which helps to engage the weight she inherits from her settler colonial ancestors. The book illustrates how the gravitational pull of white ignorance and comfort are stronger than the clean pain required for collective liberation. The stakes are high: Failure to hold the weight of whiteness ensures that white people will continue to blow the weight of historical trauma through communities of color. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. (shrink)

Social justice demands that we attend carefully to the epistemic terrains we inhabit as well as to the epistemic resources we summon to make our lived experiences tangible to one another. Not all epistemic terrains are hospitable—colonial projects landscaped a good portion of our epistemic terrain long before present generations moved across it. There is no shared epistemicterra firma,no level epistemic common ground where knowers share credibility and where a diversity of hermeneutical resources play together happily. Knowers engage one another (...) on a politically saturated,unlevel knowing fieldwhere members of dominant groups work to forcibly maintain their epistemic home-terrain advantage. I use the metaphor of the unlevel knowing field to capture these oppressive epistemic structures. The unlevel knowing field is a hungry place where all knowledge that fails to nurture and sustain dominant ways knowing risks being dragged onto the dominator's epistemic home turf to be mined, coopted, consumed, or destroyed. Knowledge and willful ignorance circulate with equal vigor in this hungry world. From the standpoint of oppressed/resisting peoples, the unlevel knowing field is a minefield, an epistemic twilight zone, which must be traversed with considerable care and endless attention. The harms epistemic injustice produces are not disembodied harms. Repeated acts of injustice weather our bodies, dull our minds, weaken our hearts, and traumatize the spirit of our communities. They create public-health precarities and invite mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual illness into our being. Epistemic oppression is a cruel thief. It is disorienting, exhausting, and deadly. It triggers anger, anxiety, depression, and resistance. It steals our time, energy, and attention away from more beautiful things. (shrink)

Many say that ontological disputes are defective because they are unimportant or without substance. In this paper, we defend ontological disputes from the charge, with a special focus on disputes over the existence of composite objects. Disputes over the existence of composite objects, we argue, have a number of substantive implications across a variety of topics in metaphysics, science, philosophical theology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Since the disputes over the existence of composite objects have these substantive implications, they are (...) themselves substantive. (shrink)

This is a creative-commons licensed guide. Its purpose is to provide students with an understanding of some ways in which they might contribute to philosophical conversation. It is also available for free use via my website.

Terence Horgan, George Graham and John Tienson argue that some intentional content is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone. We argue that this would require a certain kind of covariation of phenomenal states and intentional states that is not established by Horgan, Tienson and Graham’s arguments. We make the case that there is inadequate reason to think phenomenology determines perceptual belief, and that there is reason to doubt that phenomenology determines any species of non-perceptual intentionality. We also raise worries about the (...) capacity of phenomenology to map onto intentionality in a way that would be appropriate for any determiner of content/fixer of truth conditions. (shrink)

Classrooms are unlevel knowing fields, contested terrains where knowledge and ignorance are produced and circulate with equal vigor, and where members of dominant groups are accustomed to having an epistemic home-terrain advantage. My project focuses on one form of resistance that regularly surfaces in discussions with social-justice content. Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback is a variety of willful ignorance that many members of dominant groups engage in when asked to consider both the lived and structural injustices that members of marginalized groups experience (...) daily. I argue that this dominant form of resistance is neither an expression of skepticism nor a critical-thinking practice. I suggest that standard philosophical engagements with these expressions of resistance are incapable of tracking the harms of privilege-preserving epistemic pushback. I recommend treating this pushback as a “shadow text,” that is, as a text that runs alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction. I offer this as one critical philosophical practice for making students mindful of the ways they contribute to the circulation of ignorance and epistemic violence during the course of their discussions. (shrink)

This chapter weighs a challenge to the attractive notion that by enabling empathy, fiction affords wide-ranging knowledge of what others’ experiences are like. It is commonly held that ‘seeing the world through others’ eyes’ often requires the empathizer to undergo an imaginative shift in sensibility, and we might naturally think that fiction helps us to effect that shift. However, some recent work on empathy and imagination encourages the conclusion that we are actually rigidly restricted to our own sensibilities even in (...) the wildest flights of imagination great literature can inspire. Drawing on the work of the novelist Zadie Smith, the chapter argues that while our imaginative capacities are not entirely unconstrained by our sensibilities, fiction can still help us to learn about a wide range of human experiences, including the experiences of people whose sensibilities substantially diverge from our own. Notably, fiction can work on our patterns of attention in such a way that we become temporarily ‘not ourselves.’. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a new interpretation of Stoic ontology. I aim to explain the nature of, and relations between, (i) the fundamental items of their physics, bodies; (ii) the incorporeal items about which they theorized no less; and (iii) universals, towards which the Stoic attitude seems to be a bizarre mixture of realism and anti-realism. In the first half of the paper I provide a new model to explain the relationship between those items in (i) and (ii). This (...) model clears up several problems in Stoicism and gives a precise answer to the question of how bodies and incorporeals differ in their mode of being. The second half of the paper considers the vexed issue of the status of those items in (iii), Stoic universals. (shrink)

My engagement with Dotson’s essay begins with an overview of first- and second-order epistemic exclusions. I develop the concept of an "unlevel knowing field." I use examples from the epistemic injustice literature, and some of my own, to highlight the important distinction she makes between reducible and irreducible forms of epistemic oppression. Next, I turn my attention to her account of third-order epistemic exclusions. I offer a brief explanation of why her sketch of at this level makes an important contribution (...) to the literature on epistemic injustice. In closing I suggest that Dotson’s account of third-order epistemic exclusions has a cognitive bend that limits the resources she might use for bringing about change, and suggest opening up the conversation to include affective, aesthetic or mystical resources. (shrink)

In this article, we identify three key design dimensions along which cryptocurrencies differ -- privacy, censorship-resistance, and consensus procedure. Each raises important normative issues. Our discussion uncovers new ways to approach the question of whether Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies should be used as money, and new avenues for developing a positive answer to that question. A guiding theme is that progress here requires a mixed approach that integrates philosophical tools with the purely technical results of disciplines like computer science and (...) economics. Note: this article is the second entry within a two-part sequence on the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Cryptocurrency. (shrink)

This Paper Offers A New Interpretation of Phaedo 96a–103a. Plato has devoted the dialogue up to this point to a series of arguments for the claim that the soul is immortal. However, one of the characters, Cebes, insists that so far nothing more has been established than that the soul is durable, divine, and in existence before the incarnation of birth. What is needed is something more ambitious: a proof that the soul is not such as to pass out of (...) existence. According to Socrates’s initial response to Cebes at 95e8–96a1, giving such a demonstration requires a thorough investigation into “the reason for coming to be and passing away in general” (ὅλως γὰϱ δεῖ πεϱὶ γενέσεως ϰαὶ Φθοϱᾶς τὴν αἰτίαν διαπϱαγματεύσασθαι.. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics and general relativity provide incompatible descriptions of time. In QM, states evolve unitarily with respect to an external time parameter; in GR, time is a coordinate in a dynamical spacetime geometry. We propose that both quantum and relativistic time emerge from a pre-geometric structure we call Prototime (PT): represented by an orthomodular lattice of consistency relations with zero von Neumann entropy at the fundamental level. PT has no background time, space, or metric—only algebraic relations of compatibility and orthogonality. (...) We formalize PT using an orthomodular lattice Lequipped with a foliation functor F: I →Ctx(L) that maps orderedi ndices to Boolean sublattices (classical contexts). A spectral redundancy functional Φs measures coherence preservation across embeddings. We show that: 1. Stable foliations satisfying Piron-Solèr conditions admit Hilbert-space representa- tions, recovering standard QM with Schrödinger dynamics via Stone’s theorem; 2. The partial order on decoherence events across foliations, together with a natural volume measure, reconstructs Lorentzian spacetime structure; 3. Time—both quantum (parameter along unitary flows) and relativistic (causal or- der)—supervenes on Φs-monotone decoherence gradients. Critically, we provide a computationally tractable implementation of Φs using spectral graph theory on mutual information networks (Bailey and Schneider, forthcoming). Testing this on simulated multi-agent systems—including combinatorial threshold-linear networks (CTLNs) that model graph-constrained neural dynamics—we demonstrate that Φs exhibits characteristic signatures during basin formation, attractor convergence, and coherence-to-classicality transitions. These results provide the first quantitative bridge between abstract PT formalism and testable physical predictions. We identify concrete empirical tests via quantum biology (photosynthetic complexes), quantum decoherence exper- iments, and neural ensemble dynamics. We also resolve the Wheeler delayed-choice experiment within PT, where apparent retrocausality dissolves because decoherence times vary across system components, creating asymmetric basin formation that only appears backward-causal when projected onto classical time. PT thus provides a kine- matical unification of QM and GR with testable predictions, offering a pre-geometric foundation for both fundamental physics and, potentially, theories of consciousness grounded in informational irreducibility. -/- (This piece is the formalism for our “Superpsychism” piece for our forthcoming target paper at The Journal of Consciousness Studies and our paper on Spectral Phi. Comments are very welcome.). (shrink)

This paper develops a relational method for explaining systems whose identity unfolds through time. Standard object-first models treat objects as the basic units of analysis and explain change by adding internal features or temporal extensions. I argue that this approach systematically misrepresents temporal phenomena by assuming stability where none is primitive. This paper introduces a minimal inversion: take relations as ontologically basic and understand objects as the stable appearances generated when certain relational patterns persist within a field. This shift reframes (...) identity, meaning, and agency as relational invariants rather than intrinsic properties, offering a unified account of stability and change without metaphysical inflation. I articulate the structure of this relation-first ontology, develop a method for identifying relational invariants, and show how the approach resolves familiar tensions in the analysis of temporal systems. The result is a simple, general framework for explaining dynamic phenomena across cognitive, semantic, and social domains. (shrink)

Two of life’s greatest mysteries are the phenomena of consciousness and the nature of spacetime. Herein, we use quantum entanglement as an inroad to both, developing a new “superpsychist” panpsychist theory. First, we frame and defend a position in which spacetime emerges from an aspatial, quasi-temporal, reality called “prototime.” We call this view of quantum phenomena the “Prototime Interpretation.” Then, based on our position on entanglement, we develop a new version of panpsychism, which we call “Superpsychism.” Superpsychism locates the highest (...) degree of consciousness at the fundamental, maximally entangled level of reality and treats ordinary minds—and even spacetime itself—as emergent, decohered projections of this underlying resonant whole. Building on our Prototime Interpretation of quantum mechanics, the view starts from a pre-spatiotemporal domain of globally entangled degrees of freedom with effectively zero von Neumann entropy (Schneider and Bailey 2025). Time’s arrow, classical spacetime, and localized systems—brains, organoids, AI architectures, and planetary “global brains”—arise as redundancy-and-resonance structures carved out by decoherence, quantum Darwinism, and spectral constraints on information flow (Bailey and Schneider, forthcoming). Conscious experience is identified with graded patterns of coherence and resonance across these structures, yielding a quantitative bridge between entanglement dynamics, integrated information–style measures, and macro-level phenomenology. (shrink)

I examine two startling claims attributed to some philosophers associated with Megara on the Isthmus of Corinth, namely: Ml. Something possesses a capacity at t if and only if it is exercising that capacity at t. M2. One can speak of a thing only by using its own proper A6yor;. In what follows, I will call the conjunction of Ml and M2 'Megaricism'.1 The lit­ erature on ancient philosophy contains several valuable discussions of Ml and M2 taken individually.2 But there (...) is no discussion of them together, much less of their logical relations. I intend to remedy that lack, and to show why it is a lack worth remedying. My aims are both philosophical and historical. Inevitably, in saying anything new and interesting about Megaric views, I will be adopting assumptions scarcely free from controversy, and indulging in quite a bit of charitable recon­ struction. But the resulting picture is of considerable interest. For it explains why, although Ml and M2 seem to have little to do with one another, it is in fact small wonder that anyone who held one would hold the other, for, as I attempt to show, they entail each other. It explains why the Megarics are associated in the primary literature with the names of such diverse philosophical ancestors as Parmenides and Protagoras. And it explains why, although they are both false, Ml and M2 were claims taken seriously by both Plato and Aristotle, who in developing their own views on modality and language saw reason to mention Megaricism, and to argue against it. (shrink)

This document presents the formal foundation of Relational Structuralism (RS), a minimal relational ontology designed to model generativity, emergence, and coherence without reliance on object‑centered metaphysics. RS introduces seven irreducible primitives—metapiris, context, genoplas, field, invariant, collapse, and combination—and a grammar specifying their legal interactions. These primitives jointly describe how relational distinctions are generated, stabilized, transformed, and composed into higher‑order structures. RS reconceives objects as derived constructs: context‑stabilized invariants produced through acts of reference rather than foundational units with intrinsic properties. This (...) reframing dissolves longstanding tensions in substance‑based metaphysics and provides a unified, scalable account of identity, transformation, and emergent order. The foundation sheet establishes the primitive layer, boundary conditions, and revision protocol that anchor the RS framework and serve as the canonical reference for subsequent theoretical and applied work. (shrink)

In this paper I address a tension in Samantha Vice’s claim that humility and silence offer effective moral responses to white shame in the wake of South African apartheid. Vice describes these twin virtues using inward-turning language of moral self-repair, but she also acknowledges that this ‘personal, inward directed project’ has relational dimensions. Her failure to explore the relational strand, however, leaves her description of white shame sounding solitary and penitent. My response develops the missing relational dimensions of white shame (...) and humility arguing that this strand, once visible, complicates Vice’s project by (1) challenging her unitary and homogenous view of white identity, and (2) demonstrating the important role vulnerability plays in our understandings of white shame. (shrink)

Alors que les phénoménologues prétendent avoir dépassé le solipsisme, la plupart n’ont en fait que repousser les frontières de l’intersubjectivité des individus humains aux individus des autres espèces. Pourtant, Husserl reconnaît l’existence d’une intersubjectivité interspécifique, c’est-à-dire d’une intersubjectivité dépassant les limites de l’espèce. Il va même jusqu’à affirmer qu’on comprend parfois mieux un animal familier qu’un humain étranger. Toutefois, même s’il admet que plusieurs animaux sont capables d’une vie de conscience subjective et qu’ils vivent dans un monde de sens partagé, (...) il ne les considère pas comme des « personnes » selon sa conception exigeante de la « personne » associée à la rationalité, à la maturité, la normalité et l’historicité. Reste qu’être une « personne », en son sens le plus primordial – et plus décisif puisque c’est celui sur lequel s’édifient des conceptions politiques,juridiques et éthiques – signifie simplement être le sujet d’un monde environnant, d’un monde commun et d’une existence biographique. Distinguer deux sens du concept de personne permet de reconnaître que les animaux ont part à la transcendantalité, qu’ils ne sont pas simplement en vie mais ont une vie à la fois biographique et communautaire, même s’ils ne sont pas en mesure de réfléchir à cette vie de conscience qui est la leur pour considérer leur place dans l’enchaînement des générations et pour adopter ce que Husserl appelle une « vocation ». La phénoménologie husserlienne des anomalies permet ainsi de reconnaître que les animaux ressortissent bien de la figure d’autrui, qu’ils sont des alter ego sujets d’une vie de conscience, et qu’à ce titre ils participent pleinement, comme les enfants, les fous et les étrangers, à la co-constitution du monde de l’esprit. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence increasingly governs decisions in medicine, finance, and national security, yet its reasoning often remains opaque. Prevailing approaches treat opacity as a technical obstacle—assuming that with sufficient data, computational power, or interpretability tools, explanations can, in principle, be recovered. This paper challenges that assumption by distinguishing between weak inexplainability, where explanations are possible but practically inaccessible, and strong inexplainability, where explanation fails in principle for ontological or linguistic reasons. Drawing on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, Wittgenstein’s reflections on the limits of (...) language, and the concept of algorithmic incompressibility, the paper develops a tractable multi-modal framework that operationalizes this distinction for institutional oversight. The framework defines three epistemic modalities - baseline provability (□P ), meta-level provability (□M ), and human legibility (□H ) - corresponding respectively to what can be certified, what must be assumed, and what can be understood. Bridge axioms connect these modalities to practices such as verification, interpretability probes, and causal intervention. The resulting theorems identify when opacity is weak or strong, including cases of inaccessible metalanguages, failure of human-concept alignment, and macro-level non-decomposability. The Epistemic Firewall Theorem shows that explanations cannot invoke meta-level claims the baseline system cannot possibly certify. Distinguishing weak from strong opacity clarifies the conditions of institutional justification in AI governance, with weak opacity inviting technical remedies and strong opacity demanding moral restraint. (shrink)

It is no accident that white privilege designed to be both be invisible and weightless to white people. Alison Bailey’s “On White Privilege and Anesthesia: Why Does Peggy McIntosh’s Knapsack Feel Weightless?” extends a weighty invitation white readers to complete the unpacking task McIntosh (1988) began when she compared white privilege to an “invisible and weightless knapsack.” McIntosh focuses primarily making white privilege visible to white people. Bailey’s project continues the conversation by extending a ‘weighty invitation’ to white (...) readers to explore why the metaphorical knapsack, despite the weight of its contents, feels weightless. Here’s the short answer. The knapsack only feels weightless because white people have become anesthetized us to our own brokenness. We are more comfortable considering what white privilege does for us than what it does to us. People of color feel the weight of whiteness every day. The weighty invitation invites white readers to become sensitive to our own insensitivity. To do this Bailey (1) explores white resistance to unpacking the weight; (2) people of color’s testimonies to the daily impact of the weight on their bodies; and (3) how the anesthesia of white privilege distorts our humanity. The article concludes with a McIntosh style list of that the anesthesia of privilege distorts white people’s humanity. (shrink)

In the Republic Plato contrasts dialectic with mathematics on the grounds that the former but not the latter gives justifications of some kind for its hypotheses, pursuing this process until it reaches ‘an unhypothetical principle’. But which principles are unhypothetical, and why, is rather dark. One reason for this is the scarcity of forms of that precious word, ‘unhypothetical’ (aνυπoθετος), used only twice by Plato (Rep. 510 b 7, 511 b 6) and just once by Aristotle (Metaph. 1005B14). But that (...) very scarcity also suggests the intriguing possibility that Aristotle has Plato’s text in mind when he uses the word, so we might expect to understand Plato better by grasping how Aristotle took him. That is a notoriously defeasible assumption since plenty of modern accounts of Plato want to save him from Aristotle’s numerous critiques, and hence imply that the master of them that know frequently missed the point when it came to his own master. But surely we can be more confident that Aristotle will give us access to Plato when it appears not merely that he is dealing with the same topic, but using the same rare vocabulary to boot. Hence the understandable temptation to turn to Metaphysics Γ for help in identifying Platonic unhypothetical principles. I shall argue that Aristotle is indeed thinking of Plato’s text when he uses the word for ‘unhypothetical’, and further that what is explicitly an unhypothetical principle for Aristotle might well have been one for Plato too. But later I shall claim that their joint use of a much more common word in the same philosophical context is either coincidence or misunderstanding on Aristotle’s part, for he must mean something different by it from what Plato means. (shrink)

This paper aims to achieve a better understanding of what Socrates means by "συμφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν" in the sections of the "Phaedo" in which he uses the word, and how its use contributes both to the articulation of the hypothetical method and the proof of the soul's immortality. Section I sets out the well-known problems for the most obvious readings of the relation, while Sections II and III argue against two remedies for these problems, the first an interpretation of what the (...) συμφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν relation consists in, the second an interpretation of what sorts of thing the relation is meant to relate. My positive account in Section IV argues that we should take the musical connotations of the term seriously, and that Plato was thinking of a robust analogy between the way pitches form unities when related by certain intervals, and the way theoretical claims form unities when related by explanatory co-dependence. Section V surveys the work of IV from the point of view of the initial difficulties and suggests further consequences for the hypothetical method, including the logical relation between the συμφωνν[unrepresentable symbol]ν and διαφωνε[unrepresentable symbol]ν relations, and the need for care in ordering the results of a hypothesis. (shrink)

My contribution to this conversation sets out to accomplish two things: First, I offer a definition of epistemic pushback. Epistemic pushback is an expression of epistemic resistance that occurs regularly in classroom discussions that touch our core beliefs, sense of self, politics, or worldv iews. Epistemic pushback is structural: It broadly characterizes a family of cognitive, affective, and verbal tactics that are deployed regularly to dodge the challenging and exhausting chore of engaging topics and questions that scare us. It can (...) take such forms as direct deep hostility, knee jerk skepticism, or silence. Good teaching should not only track the production of knowledge, but also the production of ignorance. There are forms of epistemic pushback that are ignorance producing, so I work with students to cultivate a mindfulness around epistemic pushback by treating it as a ‘shadow text.’ The remainder of the paper explains the nature of shadow texts, and offers suggestions for how to navigate them. (shrink)

My project is to explain why the question ‘How does it feel to be a white problem?’ cannot be answered in the fluttering grammar of white talk. The whiteness of white talk lies not only in its having emerged from white mouths, but also in its evasiveness—in its attempt to suppress fear and anxiety, and its consequential [if unintended] reinscription and legitimation of racist oppression. I White talk is designed, indeed scripted, for the purposes of evading, rejecting, and remaining ignorant (...) about the injustices that flow from whiteness and its attendant privileges. I want to suggest a new point of entry—a way to flip the script, so to speak. I begin with some observations about the basic advantages and disadvantages of using white talk as a route into the white problem. My account develops an expanded version of Alice MacIntyre’s definition of white talk that is attentive to the racialized bodily scripts that accompany white talk. I argue that white talk persists because it has an enduring and powerful moral, ontological, and epistemic pay off for white folks. I explore each payoff with an eye towards clarifying how white talk functions to maintain the illusion that we are invulnerable beings. Next, I pause to reply to the popular objection that this particular critique of white talk silences white people in conversations on race. If we cannot address the question ‘how does it feel to be a white problem’ in the fluttering grammar of white talk, then how shall we begin? In closing, I suggest that we might reduce fluttering by replacing white talk with a discourse of vulnerability, where vulnerability is defined not as weakness, but as a condition for potential. I offer some brief guidelines for how we might start this conversation. (shrink)

The dominant paradigm in AI safety treats the central problem as one of alignment: ensuring powerful AI agents pursue goals consistent with human values. This framing presumes a singular, bounded agent with a coherent utility function and a legible objective. Yet, as AI systems are increasingly embedded across cloud platforms, social media, sensors, and human-computer interfaces, we face something different: the instantiation of AI megasystems – vast, decentralized, and emergent networks in which humans, organizations, and heterogeneous models are coupled through (...) feedback loops. Building on and extending Susan Schneider’s “Global Brain” argument, we contend that alignment is conceptually mismatched to this setting. The megasystem is goal‑pluralistic and often non‑agentic at the macro-scale; “aligning” it is like aligning a market or an ecosystem. Instead, we propose a shift toward regulatory thermodynamics: a systems-theoretic approach that treats stability, modularity, and resilience – not utility maximization – as the primary design and governance goals. Using tools from non‑equilibrium thermodynamics and complex systems (entropy, information bottlenecks, phase transitions, critical slowing down), we outline diagnostics and interventions suitable for planetary‑scale AI. The piece closes with a policy program emphasizing structural constraints, coupling “speed limits,” and real-time early‑warning indicators to manage tipping points, together with responses to key objections. Schneider is right that we face a new kind of control problem; our claim is that megasystems cannot be aligned – only stabilized. (shrink)

Sara Ruddick's contemporary philosophical account of mothering reconsiders the maternal arguments used in the women's peace movements of the earlier part of this century. The culmination of this project is her 1989 book, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Ruddick's project is ground-breaking work in both academic philosophy and feminist theory. In this chapter, I first look at the relationship between the two basic components of Ruddick's argument in Maternal Thinking: the "practicalist conception of truth" (PCT) and feminist standpoint (...) theory (FST). I argue that Ruddick is never clear about the exact relation between the two components. These tensions point to a deeper problem in Ruddick's discussion of the critical power of maternal thinking. The diversity of maternal practices presents a genuine challenge to Ruddick’s account. I argue that neither of the components she explores can adequately ground a feminist peace politics without first answering the question of who speaks for mothers. While I can suggest ways to make Ruddick's argument consistent, she still faces-despite her claims of universality- the deeper problem of reconciling her account of maternal practice with the genuine diversity of actual maternal practices. (shrink)

Book Panel on Zoopolis including articles by Clare Palmer, Dinesh Wadiwel and Laura Janara and a reply by Donaldson and Kymlicka.

Drawing upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological constitution of the Other through Einfülhung, I argue that the hierarchical distinction between higher and lower animals – which has been dismissed by Heidegger for being anthropocentric – must not be conceived as an objective distinction between “primitive” animals and “more evolved” ones, but rather corresponds to a phenomenological distinction between familiar and unfamiliar animals.

Paper presented at the Heidegger Circle 2011. Although Aristotle’s influence on young Heidegger’s thought has been studied at length, such studies have almost exclusively focused on his interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics, physics and metaphysics. I will rather address Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle’s ontology of life. Focusing on recently published or recently translated courses of the mid 20’s (mainly SS 1924, WS 1925-26 and SS 1926), I hope to uncover an important aspect of young Heidegger’s thought left unconsidered: namely, that Dasein’s (...) existential structures – Befindlichkeit, Understanding and being-with-one-another through language – arose from his close reading of Aristotle’s ontology of life, of animal life. (shrink)

This paper presents a Kantian aesthetic argument in defense of weak transhumanism, contending that human fragility, finitude, and imperfection are not shortcomings to be transcended but essential conditions of beauty and meaning. Against the backdrop of accelerating technological advancement—particularly developments in artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and radical enhancement—the paper challenges the assumptions of strong transhumanism, which seeks to overcome the limits of the human condition. Drawing on Immanuel Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment and the sublime, it argues that the value (...) of human life is not merely instrumental or functional, but aesthetic and intrinsic. Through a series of distinctions between moderate and radical enhancement, the paper defines weak transhumanism as an ethically cautious path that permits technological improvement of the human condition without severing humanity from its essential nature. By contrast, strong transhumanism risks collapsing the tension between aspiration and limitation, flattening the richness of lived experience into a sterile pursuit of digital perfection. If meaning arises from finitude—if the sublime is felt in the confrontation with mortality and uncertainty—then efforts to erase these conditions may undermine the very sources of value we seek to preserve. The Promethean gift of imperfection, far from a curse, is reimagined as a foundation for beauty and purpose. The paper concludes by calling for epistemic humility and restraint in guiding future technological development—urging us to enhance human life not by erasing its limits, but by honoring them. (shrink)

Negotiation theory has long focused on tactics, incentives, and strategic behavior, yet it lacks a coherent account of the underlying relational dynamics that determine whether a negotiation escalates or stabilizes. This paper introduces a structural model of de‑escalation grounded in relational orientation rather than adversarial positioning. I argue that escalation is not caused by disagreement, emotion, or misaligned interests, but by a collapse in the relational field that constricts agency for one or both parties. De‑escalation, therefore, is not a technique (...) but a geometric shift: widening the field, restoring orientation, and re‑establishing the conditions under which both parties can act without threat. The model identifies three core moves—widening, grounding, and stabilizing—that reliably dissolve escalation across domains, from crisis negotiation to everyday conflict. These moves are analyzed not as psychological interventions but as structural transformations that change the shape of the interaction itself. By reframing negotiation as the management of relational geometry, the paper unifies insights from behavioral psychology, conflict resolution, and systems theory into a single, operational framework. The result is a practitioner‑ready model that explains why traditional negotiation advice often fails and provides a clear, non‑coercive path toward restoring agency, reducing threat, and enabling constructive agreement. (shrink)

This paper develops a relational method for explaining systems whose identity unfolds through time. Standard object-first models treat objects as the basic units of analysis and explain change by adding internal features or temporal extensions. I argue that this approach systematically misrepresents temporal phenomena by assuming stability where none is primitive. This paper introduces a minimal inversion: take relations as ontologically basic and understand objects as the stable appearances generated when certain relational patterns persist within a field. This shift reframes (...) identity, meaning, and agency as relational invariants rather than intrinsic properties, offering a unified account of stability and change without metaphysical inflation. I articulate the structure of this relation-first ontology, develop a method for identifying relational invariants, and show how the approach resolves familiar tensions in the analysis of temporal systems. The result is a simple, general framework for explaining dynamic phenomena across cognitive, semantic, and social domains. (shrink)

This paper offers a simple account of how I understand childhood development as a process of relational meaning‑making. It outlines the structural shifts children undergo as they integrate experience, without proposing a new theory or competing with existing models. The aim is only to describe the developmental structure as I see it, in case this perspective is useful to others.

This paper proposes a cautious, developmentally grounded hypothesis about the functional role of the rose‑hip neuron, a recently identified and potentially human‑specific inhibitory interneuron in cortical layer 1. Drawing on its distinctive morphology, selective targeting of distal pyramidal dendrites, and unique genetic profile, the paper suggests that the rose‑hip neuron may contribute to the fine‑grained gating of relational integration in the human cortex. This interpretation does not claim a definitive function; instead, it offers a coherent framework that links existing empirical (...) findings with a structural account of how organized meaning emerges. The paper outlines testable predictions concerning developmental timing, compartment‑specific modulation, context‑dependent activation, and possible human‑specific contributions, providing a conceptual foundation for future empirical work. (shrink)

This paper develops a relation‑first ontology in which stable patterns, not objects, serve as the basic units of metaphysical explanation. By shifting the primitive from “things” to the relational structures that sustain coherence over time, the account reframes identity, agency, behavior, and moral orientation as emergent features of a dynamic field. The framework dissolves familiar puzzles about persistence, change, and action by showing how stability arises from continuous relational organization rather than from underlying substances. The result is a simple and (...) unified picture of reality in which meaning, direction, and transformation follow from the structure of relations themselves. (shrink)

Conflict doesn’t arise from incompatible people but from incompatible frames. When two parties lock into misaligned interpretations of the situation, every move—no matter how well‑intended—intensifies the spiral. Conflict Resolution Now presents a fast, practical method for restoring alignment in real time. Instead of debating content, the framework identifies the structural mismatch driving the escalation and offers immediate interventions that reduce threat, re‑establish shared orientation, and reopen agency for both sides. The result is a universal, teachable approach that works across relationships, (...) workplaces, and high‑stakes environments. This paper shows how to see the underlying structure of any argument, interrupt the cycle before it hardens, and guide people back to clarity and cooperation—quickly, reliably, and without force. (shrink)

This paper argues that the familiar notion of an “object” conceals a structural mistake. We treat objects as independent units that possess attributes, yet this picture cannot account for how identity persists through change or how attributes arise in the first place. I show that objects are better understood as stable patterns within a relational field, where attributes function as the mind’s way of tracking continuity across time. Reframing objects in this way dissolves long‑standing puzzles about persistence, change, and individuation, (...) and clarifies why our ordinary ontology feels intuitive despite being structurally incomplete. (shrink)

This paper offers a structural explanation of market bubbles, panics, and regime shifts by reframing price formation as a presentation‑driven process rather than a reflection of underlying fundamentals. I argue that markets do not aggregate information so much as they stabilize around shared presentations that collapse a wide range of possible trajectories into a single, self‑reinforcing path. When a presentation becomes dominant—whether bullish, bearish, or narrative‑neutral—it constrains the space of viable actions for participants, producing coherence that looks like consensus but (...) is actually structural alignment. Regime shifts occur when the prevailing presentation loses its ability to organize expectations, allowing a new trajectory to propagate through the system. This framework unifies bubbles, crashes, and sideways markets under a single mechanism: the rise, stabilization, and breakdown of presentation‑driven coherence. The result is a model of markets that explains their characteristic instability without appealing to irrationality, perfect rationality, or exogenous shocks. (shrink)

This paper develops a relational structural account of emergence that resolves long‑standing tensions in philosophy of science and complexity theory. Traditional object‑first ontologies treat systems as collections of discrete entities, making higher‑level structure appear either trivially reducible (weak emergence) or metaphysically mysterious (strong emergence). I argue that this impasse arises from the assumption that objects are fundamental. On a relational structural ontology, relations are primary and objects are stable relational regimes. Emergence is therefore the formation of new relational invariants when (...) a system’s constraints stabilize into a coherent regime. This mechanism—constraint, coherence, and regime formation—explains how higher‑level patterns arise, why they exhibit stability, and how they exert causal influence without violating micro‑dynamics. The framework dissolves the weak/strong emergence distinction, clarifies downward causation, and unifies examples across physics, biology, cognition, social systems, and artificial intelligence. By grounding emergence in relational geometry rather than object‑based metaphysics, the paper offers a domain‑agnostic foundation for multi‑scale explanation. (shrink)

We propose the Prototime Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which claims that quantum entanglement occurs in a "prototemporal" realm that underlies spacetime. Our paper is tentative and exploratory. The argument form is inference to the best explanation. In Section One, we claim that the Prototime Interpretation (PI) is worthy of further consideration as a superior explanation for perplexing quantum phenomena such as delayed choice, superposition, the wave-particle duality and nonlocality. In Section One, we introduce the Prototime Interpretation. Section Two identifies its (...) advantages. Section Three discusses several implications of the view, such as its deterministic nature and relation to the simulation hypothesis. (shrink)

Learner’s attitude towards modular distance learning catches uncertainties as a world crisis occurs up to this point. As self-learning modules (SLMs) become a supplemental means of learning in new normal education, this study investigated efficiency towards the learners’ attitude and performance. Specifically, the study described the learners’ profile and their attitude and performance towards SLMs. It also ascertained the relationship between the learner’s profile with their attitude and performance, as well as the relationship between attitude and performance relevant to SLMs. (...) A descriptive-correlational research design was employed in the study with 88 non-randomly chosen participants from secondary schools in West Philippines. The learners’ GWA (general weighted average) was used to determine their performance and a survey questionnaire for their profile and attitude. Frequency counts, percentage, and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data gathered with the aid of Jamovi software. Results revealed a strong correlation between attitude and performance, but there was no link between learner’s attitude and performance as to the learner’s profile. It was affirmed that attitude is a compelling factor that is related with performance. Hence, this research has broader ramifications that can direct the Bureau of Learning Delivery to orient the module writers to further contextualize the learning materials that can compound learner’s disposition and academic performance. (shrink)

This paper argues that artificial intelligence is best understood not as an agent, collaborator, or quasi‑mind, but as a cognitive tool whose function is to amplify, stabilize, and extend human reasoning. Using the relational ontology developed in Relational Structuralism (RS), the paper shows that AI systems do not possess intentions, understanding, or epistemic agency; instead, they operate as high‑bandwidth pattern‑completion engines that reflect and reorganize user‑provided structure. Treating AI as a tool dissolves common confusions about alignment, authorship, and responsibility by (...) grounding the interaction in a clear division of labor: humans supply orientation, goals, and meaning, while AI supplies frictionless articulation, compression, and structural manipulation. The paper concludes by outlining a relational framework for responsible use, emphasizing that AI’s power emerges not from autonomy but from its role as an extension of human cognitive action. (shrink)

This paper develops a relational account of identity, behavior, normativity, and agency grounded in a single organizing principle: systems persist by maintaining coherence across time. Beginning from the premise that relations precede objects, the framework derives a sequence of axioms showing how coherence‑preservation generates the familiar structures of organized life without invoking essences, internal agents, or teleological primitives. Systems maintain identity by minimizing incoherence, regulate themselves by preserving coherence‑enabling constraints, and develop directional tendencies through the reinforcement of coherence‑increasing interactions. Error (...) signals arise when coherence is threatened, and recurrent corrections stabilize into norms and functions. As interacting systems align these norms, shared structures—linguistic, institutional, and symbolic—emerge to stabilize coherence across larger scales. These structures enable anticipatory organization, allowing systems to project coherence forward in ways that resemble intention and agency. The resulting framework offers a unified, non‑teleological account of how complex behavior and meaning emerge from relational dynamics, providing a common explanatory structure for physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. (shrink)

Truth is typically framed as a cognitive property: something grasped in propositions, evaluated by minds, or justified through reasoning. This paper argues that truth is more basic than cognition. Acognitive biological systems—such as sperm cells navigating chemotactic gradients—succeed or fail according to objective environmental structures that distinguish correct from incorrect movement without requiring beliefs or concepts. These cases show that truth functions as a structural constraint embedded in the world, not as a product of mental activity. Cognition refines access to (...) these constraints but does not generate them. Reframing truth as acognitive restores its fundamental role: marking alignment or misalignment with the way the world is. (shrink)