Can we ever truly answer the question, “Who am I?” Moderated by Alex Voorhoeve (London School of Economics), neuro-philosopher Elie During (University of Paris, Ouest Nanterre), cognitive scientist David Jopling (York University, Canada), social psychologist Timothy Wilson (University of Virginia),and ethicist Frances Kamm (Harvard University) examine the difficulty of achieving genuine self-knowledge and how the pursuit of self-knowledge plays a role in shaping the self.

Fourteen years after the special issue on neuroscience and rhetoric in this journal (Neurorhetorics, vol. 40, no. 5), we turn back and look forward. We assess what has been accomplished in neurorhetorics in that time frame, examine what has changed in rhetorical studies and in the neurosciences, and offer suggestions for future research. Eight contributors detail the importance of neurorhetorics for their work and engage a range of topics. Those include neurodiversity, neuropolicy, neurogastronomy, and interdisciplinary collaborations, among others. Ultimately, the (...) forum points toward the need for more critical cultural approaches in neurorhetorics, more policy discussions, new methodologies, and new philosophies that can stretch beyond the “neuro-” prefix and enroll insights from New Materialisms and Global Rhetorics. (shrink)

In his 1904 letter to G.F. Stout, Cook Wilson distinguishes objective and sub- jective conceptions of appearance, and provides a diagnosis for the modern acceptance of the subjective conception in terms of a confused misdescrip- tion of the objective appearances that perceptual experience affords. More- over, Cook Wilson links subjective appearances with idealism, the suggestion being that perceptual appearances must be objective if they are to afford us with something akin to proof of a world without the mind.

Two main claims are defended in this paper: first, that typical disputes in the literature about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal; second, that the proper way to resolve these disputes is by appealing to common sense or ordinary language. A verbal dispute is characterized not in terms of private idiolects, but in terms of different linguistic communities representing different positions. If we imagine a community that makes Chisholm's mereological essentialist assertions, and another community that makes Lewis's four-dimensionalist (...) assertions, the members of each community speak the truth in their respective languages. This follows from an application of the principle of interpretive charity to the two communities. (shrink)

When philosophers consider factors compromising autonomy in consent, they often focus solely on the consent-giver’s agential capacities, overlooking the impact of the consent-receiver’s conduct on the consensual character of the activity. In this paper, I argue that valid consent requires justified trust in the consent-receiver to act only within the scope of consent. I call this the Trust Condition (TC), drawing on Katherine Hawley’s commitment account of trust. TC constitutes a belief that the consent-receiver is capable and willing to act (...) as we expect from them. If such trust is not warranted, I argue, consent lacks the appropriate normative grounds. After establishing TC, I explore its application in the sexual arena, asserting that due to the non-contractual dimensions of sexual activity — such as the dynamic nature of sexual desires and the absence of external factors effectively binding sexual partners to the terms of consent—trust is warranted in sexual consent by means of care. I define care as a special sensitivity and attention toward the partner’s will and discuss how this approach leads to safer intimate relationships in practice. (shrink)

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

In this paper, I address a fundamental challenge in the philosophy of trust: how to account for trustee discretion in scenarios that fall outside explicitly defined expectations. I argue that this challenge reveals vagueness as an inherent feature of trusting relationships, often leading to disagreements between trustors and trustees. To resolve this, I propose a novel account of trust grounded in rule-following, shifting the object of trust from particular actions to adherence to rules constitutive of relationships. By focusing on relationships (...) and their constitutive rules, I provide here a framework for understanding and minimizing disagreements through communication and engaged practice. Furthermore, I argue this framework sheds light on the dynamics of trust-related reactive attitudes, in particular, distinguishing between betrayal and mere disappointment. (shrink)

Quantifier variance is a well-known view in contemporary metaontology, but it remains very widely misunderstood by critics. Here we briefly and clearly explain the metasemantics of quantifier variance and distinguish between modest and strong forms of variance (Section I), explain some key applications (Section II), clear up some misunderstandings and address objections (Section III), and point the way toward future directions of quantifier-variance-related research (Section IV).

In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of Kant's postulate of immortality from the Critique of Practical Reason, arguing that immortality should be understood as an atemporal state in which the moral agent, freed from sensibility, is purely rational. Drawing on Kant's discussion in “The End of All Things,” I contend that the eschatological depiction Kant presents in this text is consistent with the postulate's aspirations for establishing the possibility of moral perfection, rather than signaling a change in his (...) view. This account addresses both a philosophical and historical gap, providing content to the postulate of immortality that coheres with its moral aims and demonstrates Kant's consistent understanding of the afterlife across his works. (shrink)

This paper reinterprets Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610–546 BCE) through the lens of the Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalist (NPN) framework, particularly its Zero Principle (ZP): that any determinate system requires an indeterminate complement. Against Aristotle’s sub- stance‐oriented reading—which systematically recast the Apeiron as hylē aoristos (indefinite matter)—I argue that Anaximander’s Apeiron is not an indefinite material substrate but the nec- essary indeterminate ground for the emergence of determinate entities. His single preserved fragment (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, 24.13) outlines a four‐step cycle (...) of iden- tity: (1) the boundless ground (Apeiron), (2) the cut of individuation (adikia), (3) the measure of distinction (Time), and (4) the re‐cut of dissolution (dikē). A rigorous etymological analysis reveals that Anaximander’s specific lexical choices—contrasted with the substance‐based vocabu- lary available to him—point decisively toward a relational ontology in which identity is tempo- rary and maintained through contrast with an unbounded background. The striking structural parallels with modern thermodynamics are not anachronistic but demonstrate that Anaximan- der intuited the logical architecture of identity that physics would later formalize—what the NPN framework terms the General Zero Principle (GZP). By recovering Anaximander’s original insight through the NPN lens, we correct a longstanding Aristotelian misreading and establish the Zero Principle as a foundational metaphysical concept with enduring relevance for process philosophy, systems theory, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

What determines the degree to which some event harms a subject? According to the counterfactual comparative account, an event is harmful for a subject to the extent that she would have been overall better off if it had not occurred. Unlike the causation based account, this view nicely accounts for deprivational harms, including the harm of death, and for cases in which events constitute a harm rather than causing it. However, I argue, it ultimately fails, since not every intrinsically bad (...) state that is counterfactually dependent on an event contributes to its degree of harm. So while the causation based account is too restrictive, the counterfactual comparative view is not restrictive enough. In light of this, I suggest an alternative, explanation based account of overall harm, according to which the degree to which some event is harmful for a subject is determined by the degree to which (crudely) the states explained by it are overall more intrinsically bad than intrinsically good for her. (shrink)

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

Parmenides of Elea is traditionally read as a dogmatic monist who posited a static, undifferen- tiated “One” as the true nature of reality. This paper challenges that reading by arguing that Parmenides was not advancing a positive ontology, but conducting a meta‐philosophical polemic aimed at exposing a foundational crisis in early Greek thought: the necessary yet unthinkable in- determinate ground of all conceptual systems—what I term the General Zero Principle (GZP) at the conceptual level. Through a close reading of Fragments (...) B2, B6, and B8, I show that Par- menides’ “Way of Truth” is a reductio ad absurdum: by stipulating that “What Is Not” cannot be thought or spoken, he demonstrates that the only logically permissible world is a frozen, homoge- neous “One”—a world without change, plurality, or becoming. This “One” is not a mystical vision but the logical remainder of a thought‐experiment in which the indeterminate background (the conceptual Apeiron) is banned from discourse. Parmenides’ poem thus serves as a catalytic cri- sis that forced his successors—especially Plato and Aristotle—to grapple with the problem of the ground, albeit by repressing or domesticating it. Finally, I show how the Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Nat- uralist (NPN) meta‐structure resolves this crisis by formally acknowledging the indeterminate ground (FP5: Impotence Before the Apeiron) and re‐conceiving knowledge as a provisional, nav- igational confidence‐gradient (C. (shrink)

Philosophers have cataloged a range of genealogical methods by which different sorts of normative conclusions can be established. Although such methods provide diverging ways of pursuing genealogical inquiry, they typically converge in eschewing historiographic methodology, in favor of a uniquely philosophical approach. In contrast, one genealogist who drew on historiographic methodology is Michel Foucault. This article presents the motivations and advantages of Foucault's genealogical use of such a methodology. It advances two mains claims. First, that Foucault's early 1970s work employs (...) a distinct genealogical method, which borrows from contemporary historiographic models of explanation to expand the range of objects that are proper to genealogical accounts of historical change. I demonstrate how Foucault modifies two central commitments of Nietzsche by broadening the dimensions of genealogical inquiry and explanation. Second, that historical method has normative relevance for genealogy, insofar as different historiographic choices can lead to different normative conclusions. I motivate this second claim by explaining how Foucault's multidimensional genealogical method expands both (a) the range of objects that are subject to evaluative assessment, and (b) the set of possible prescriptive recommendations that follow from such assessment. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that reactive feelings such as betrayal and personal disappointment are not inherent to the attitude of trust. Instead, such feelings are better understood as responses to impairments in relationships. Trust, I propose, is a fully doxastic mechanism that fundamentally consists of the belief that the trustee will follow through the norms constitutive of the relationship, such that a breach of trust directly calls only for an epistemic reassessment of the trustee’s trustworthiness. I further show that (...) what warrants reactive feelings is not the mere fact of trust being broken, but whether through the violation of trust, the person reveals a disregard for the relationship. (shrink)

Michel Foucault argued that a key modality of state racism is biopower, through which the life of populations is differentially supported, shaped, and neglected. However, Foucault’s account of state racism is unfinished, because it fails to identify the modalities of power that persist when states withdraw life-supporting technologies from racialized populations, thereby committing “indirect murder.” This article develops Foucault’s account of racism and the racial state by describing the carceral technologies that expand with the withdrawal of biopower. To do so, (...) it draws on Foucault’s theorization of carcerality in Discipline and Punish. It argues that biopolitical withdrawal is doubled by a simultaneous carceral investment, such that the state’s denial of life-supporting technologies occurs in tandem with the racially structured policing of the poor. Additionally, this article explains how Foucault’s concept of the management of illegalisms identifies a key vehicle of racialization, and illuminates the utility of carceral systems to racial capitalism. (shrink)

Some argue that time’s causal arrow is grounded in an underlying thermodynamic asymmetry. Often, this is tied to Humean skepticism that causes produce their effects, in any robust sense of ‘produce’. Conversely, those who advocate stronger notions of natural necessity often reject thermodynamic reductions of time’s causal arrow. Against these traditional pairings, I argue that ‘reduction-plus-production’ is coherent. Reductionists looking to invoke robust production can insist that there are metaphysical constraints on the signs of objects’ velocities in any state, given (...) other—including far later—states’ properties. The Past Hypothesis may thus be a metaphysical condition, not a physical law. (shrink)

Foucault's governmentality lectures at the Collège de France analyze the history of the state through the lens of governmental reason. However, these lectures largely omit consideration of the relationship between discipline and the state, prioritizing instead raison d'État and liberalism as dominant state technologies. To remedy this omission, I turn to Foucault's early studies of discipline and argue that they provide materials for the reconstruction of a genealogy of the "disciplinary state." In reconstructing this genealogy, I demonstrate that the disciplinary (...) state marks the "dark side" of the liberal state, a dark side which is, moreover, largely obscured in the governmentality lectures. I further construe the difference between this early genealogy of the state and the later governmental studies in methodological terms. At stake in this difference is the historiographic status of capitalism and social conflict. Foucault's governmentality lectures employ what I term an "idealist disavowal," thereby treating capitalism and social conflict as irrelevant to the history of the state. The early disciplinary studies, on the other hand, enact a "materialist avowal," by which these objects are avowed as central to the explanation of how and why the state develops. Finally, I argue that Foucault's governmental genealogy of the liberal state is explanatorily and analytically incomplete, while the genealogy of the disciplinary state contributes to its completion on both fronts. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a Kantian framework for moral trust—trust in another person to only act with us in morally permissible ways. First, I derive an understanding of trustworthiness from Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative. I argue that trustworthiness embodies a moral imperative, guiding us to act in ways that are reliable and recognizable as conducive to engaging in trusting relations. However, this alone is not enough, as it doesn't provide a means to assess whether someone is (...) truly committed to the moral law and thus morally trustworthy. Therefore, in the second part, I explore a basis for assessing their moral conduct found in a local version of the Kingdom of Ends: given an ideal or archetype of a morally perfect interpersonal relationship, an archetype of the morally trustworthy agent allows us to comparatively assess the moral disposition of fellow agents. (shrink)

As AI outputs become indistinguishable from human work, the question of whose judgment lies behind them grows more urgent. Did the student wrestle with the essay, or did the model hand it to them? Did the doctor weigh the symptoms, or did the system generate the diagnosis while they clicked through? -/- When a polished essay no longer reveals who did the thinking, the grade above it becomes hollow, and so does the diploma. If a diagnosis can be generated by (...) a system, the doctor’s signature risks becoming a rubber stamp. Liability remains, but the expertise and judgment that justify it erode. Even when AI’s role is small, the client can’t be sure who drove the process. -/- Yet it isn’t just that grades and diagnoses are threatened: the credibility of our institutions is also in peril. The trust they carry cannot transfer to AI systems that bear no accountability, and vendors explicitly disclaim responsibility, warning us to use AI at our own risk. Consequently, institutional trust doesn’t migrate elsewhere. It dissolves. -/- The answer is not to shut AI out but to govern its use by the same principle we’ve always relied on with opaque systems: institute shared rules that tie outcomes to accountable processes, even when we cannot see into each other’s minds. These are not company policies or government regulations, but rather an open protocol — like the technical standards that make email and the web possible. It’s a distributed network of trust that allows even radically different systems to interact; it’s not the only infrastructure imaginable, but it is the only kind that has ever built trust at scale. -/- Instead of trying to halt the arms race at the level of capability development, where pressures to move ahead are overwhelming, the protocol secures the use layer. It restores trust not by stopping progress but by ensuring that progress doesn’t dissolve the institutions that sustain democracy and civic life. Education is the proving ground. Solve the problem there, and we may unlock AI’s potential where it matters most. (shrink)

To clarify the proper role of values in science, focusing on controversial expert responses to Covid-19, this article examines the status of (in)convenient hypotheses. Polarizing cases like health experts downplaying mask efficacy to save resources for healthcare workers, or scientists dismissing “accidental lab leak” hypotheses in view of potential xenophobia, plausibly involve modifying evidential standards for (in)convenient claims. Societies could accept that scientists handle (in)convenient claims just like nonscientists, and give experts less political power. Or societies could hold scientists to (...) a higher bar, by expecting them not to modify evidential standards to avoid costs only incidentally tied to error. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: For 2,500 years, Western philosophy has been defined by a fundamental schism—a civil war between the ideal and the material, the mind and the body, the one and the many. This work argues that this intractable conflict is the product of a catastrophic flattening: a shift instigated by Parmenides from describing a dynamic, 4-dimensional reality to analyzing it through static, 3-dimensional snapshots. This "synchronic" view created the very contradictions it then struggled to solve. Neo-Pre-Platonic Naturalism (NPN) proposes a way (...) out: the Diachronic Turn. It confronts the hardest problem for any unifying system by taking the 'Is-ought' problem head-on and revealing it to be a synchronic categorical error. By systematizing the foundational intuitions of the Pre-Platonic philosophers—the pioneers who discovered the territory's landmarks but not its governing laws—NPN restores the missing dimension of time. While this shift in perspective may seem complex at first, it provides the fundamental basis for understanding reality as it is: a process, not a picture. In essence, NPN provides the conceptual tools to solve philosophy's most fundamental problems by grounding them in the dynamic, 4-dimensional reality we actually inhabit. The result is the collapse of ancient dualisms. The subjective mind (Nous) is revealed not as a spectral outsider but as the emergent navigator of an objective physical reality (Arche). Knowledge is redefined as a confidence gradient, not certain possession. Value is grounded in the constitutive striving of life itself. This framework does not merely resolve philosophical problems; it bridges the divides between Eastern and Western thought, offering a unified compass for navigating the deepest questions of existence. (shrink)

While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant ‘selves’ can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested (...) or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin’s influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin’s view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. (shrink)

Abstract Aristotle’s philosophy of nature represents the most sophisticated ancient attempt to resolve the Eleatic crisis of change and determinacy. His solution—hylomorphism grounded in immanent teleology (telos)—provided a coherent, empirically informed system that dominated Western thought for two millennia. This paper argues that the ultimate failure of Aristotle’s system, exposed by Hume’s critique and incompatible with evolutionary theory, stems from a fundamental synchronic flattening: Aristotle’s telos functions as a pre‐determined, intrinsic pull from a future endpoint, reducing diachronic process to the (...) actualization of timeless forms and effectively ignoring the entropic cost of maintaining order. In contrast, the Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalist (NPN) framework corrects this by positing Hormē (constitutive striving) as an intrinsic, open‐ended push from the present, and by asserting the ontological primacy of Becoming (FP2). This shift—from pull to push, from synchronic blueprint to diachronic navigation—explains why Aristotle’s system could not accommodate genuine contingency, novelty, or evolution, while NPN provides a robust metaphysical basis for a dynamic, navigational, and post‐Darwinian worldview. -/- Keywords: Aristotle, teleology, final cause, telos, hylomorphism, synchronic, diachronic, Becoming, Hormē, Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalism, NPN, Eleatic crisis, Hume, evolution, process philosophy, entropy, thermodynamics. (shrink)

Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes and (...) the Agents of Life, explores the theme in the biological sciences. Written with verve and clarity, this ambitious book will appeal to a broad swathe of professionals and students in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the history of the behavioural and human sciences. You can download the table of contents here. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Can a basic sensory property like a bare colour or tone be beautiful? Some, like Kant, say no. But Heidegger suggests, plausibly, that colours ‘glow’ and tones ‘sing’ in artworks. These claims can be productively synthesized: ‘glowing’ colours are not beautiful; but they are sensory forces—not mere ‘matter’, contra Kant—with real aesthetic impact. To the extent that it inheres in sensible properties, beauty is plausibly restricted to structures of sensory force. Kant correspondingly misrepresents the relation of beautiful wholes to their (...) parts. Beautiful form is not extrinsic to sensory force. Sensible beauty is just the holistic impact of agonistically-interacting sensory forces. When sensory forces interact hierarchically, their collective impact is closer to the sublime, in quality if not degree. The simplest sensory experience of sublimity is just the impact of radically intensified sensory forces, similar in kind if not degree to the individual ‘singing’ tones in a beautiful melody. (shrink)

Abstract: How does purposive agency emerge in a universe of blind physical laws? This paper answers by deriving and defending: T6: The Life‐Agency Isomorphism Theorem: Life and minimal agency are isomorphic. A system is alive if and only if it possesses Hormē (the striving to persist), and it possesses Hormē if and only if it is an agent. I argue that Hormē (Ὁρμή) is not a metaphor but a measurable thermodynamic state: the continuous work performed by a far-from-equilibrium system to (...) maintain its boundaries. This constitutes the capacity to “direct causal flow”—altering the stream of cause and effect to secure persistence. By identifying this shared physical basis, the framework dissolves two persistent philosophical gaps: the Life/Mind Gap, by showing agency is the thermodynamic condition of life; and the Mechanism/Teleology Gap, by demonstrating that purposiveness is the immanent logic of dissipative structures. Finally, I sketch how this agency scales evolutionarily—from bacterial taxis to the human Nous (the meta-cognitive capacity for abstraction and self-modeling)—providing a naturalistic foundation for intrinsic normativity. -/- Keywords: agency, teleonomy, autopoiesis, thermodynamics, Hormē, philosophy of biology, en- activism, dissipative structures, Life-Mind Continuity, Life-Agency Isomorphism, Mechanism- Teleology Gap. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that the traditional distinction between descriptive facts (“is”) and prescriptive values (“ought”) collapses under the account of agency developed in the Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalism (NPN) framework. I argue that epistemic truth and ethical good- ness are not merely correlated but necessarily isomorphic—to deny their identity is to embrace a metaphysical contradiction that would make life impossible. Central to this argument is the concept of Hormē (Ὁρμή): the constitutive drive for life to survive the lawful structure of reality (...) (Logos) by changing causal flow to aid survival and flourish. Drawing on this foundation, I formalize: -/- Theorem T4: Ethical Isomorphism: epistemic error and ethical vice are func- tionally identical states of misalignment between an agent’s models/actions and the lawful constraints of reality (the Logos). -/- After deriving T4 from T6 (the Life‐Agency Isomorphism) and the First Principles of NPN, I show how this isomorphism: (1) dissolves Hume’s is/ought gap by showing that for living agents, to be is to ought to navigate successfully, (2) provides objective but relational ethical standards grounded in constitutive striving rather than social convention or divine command, (3) explains moral disagreement as navigational disagreement about the structure of reality, and (4) unifies virtue epistemology with virtue ethics under a single navigational paradigm.1 The result is a fully naturalistic ethics that is continuous with biology, physics, and epistemology, resolving long‐standing metaethical puzzles while providing practical guidance for ethical deliberation. -/- Keywords: ethical isomorphism, is/ought problem, naturalistic ethics, navigation, Hormē, Logos, virtue, metaethics, epistemology, moral realism, Hume, Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalism. (shrink)

The classical theory of sovereignty describes sovereignty as absolute and undivided yet no early modern state could claim such features. Historical record instead suggests that sovereignty was always divided and contested. In this article I argue that Foucault offers a competing account of sovereignty that underlines such features and is thus more historically apt. While commentators typically assume that Foucault’s understanding of sovereignty is borrowed from the classical theory, I demonstrate instead that he offers a sui generis interpretation, which results (...) from the application of his general strategic conception of power to sovereignty itself. In construing sovereignty through a “matrix” of civil war, Foucault thus deprives it of the absoluteness traditionally attributed to it. Instead, he views sovereignty as constituted by conflictual and mobile power relations, a precarious political technology that deploys violence to restore its authority. I also motivate Foucault’s contention that popular sovereignty remains fundamentally continuous with the absolutist sovereignty it succeeds, insofar as it masks and thereby perpetuates unequal power relations in conditions of social conflict. According to Foucault, sovereignty is not a fact of power but a contestory claim, a discourse whose mutability helps to explain its persistence today. (shrink)

I argue that Nietzsche’s criticism of the Kantian theory of disinterested pleasure in beauty reflects his own commitment to claims that closely resemble certain Kantian aesthetic principles, specifically as reinterpreted by Schiller. I show that Schiller takes the experience of beauty to be disinterested both (1) insofar as it involves impassioned ‘play’ rather than desire-driven ‘work’, and (2) insofar as it involves rational-sensuous (‘aesthetic’) play rather than mere physical play. In figures like Nietzsche, Schiller’s generic notion of play—which is itself (...) influenced by Kant’s claim that aesthetic pleasure is orthogonal to desire-satisfaction—becomes decoupled from his (further) Kantian view that aesthetic play essentially involves a harmony of sensuous receptivity and rational spontaneity. The result, I suggest, is a self-standing opposition between desires and passions. This motivates a recognizably Romantic vision of aesthetic disinterestedness, as freedom from desire realized in a state of creative determination by passion. (shrink)

While the immediate aim of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, “Critique of Violence,” is to provide a critique of legal violence, commentators typically interpret it as providing a further critique of state violence. However, this interpretation often receives no further argument, and it remains unclear whether Benjamin’s essay may prove analytically relevant for a critique of state violence today. This paper argues that the “Critique” proves thusly relevant, but only on condition that it is developed in two directions. The first direction (...) is conceptual, and consists in an explanation of the necessary relationship between states and violence. This explanation is found by appealing to a concept not cited in Benjamin’s text, but which, I argue, remains its implicit basis: sovereignty. According to this conceptual development, state violence is the necessary result of the state's attempt to maintain its sovereign law at the expense of emancipatory struggles to generate non-sovereign law. The second direction is genealogical, and consists in destabilizing the modern belief that justice is best served through the judicial channels of a sovereign state. Here I employ Michel Foucault’s genealogical research to demonstrate the historical contingency of state justice and, by extension, the possibility of a justice beyond the state. (shrink)

According to the Counterfactual Comparative Account of harm and benefit, an event is overall harmful for a subject to the extent that this subject would have been better off if it had not occurred. In this paper we present a challenge for the Counterfactual Comparative Account. We argue that if physical processes are chancy in the manner suggested by our best physical theories, then CCA faces a dilemma: If it is developed in line with the standard approach to counterfactuals, then (...) it delivers that the value of any event for a subject is indeterminate to the extreme, ranging from terribly harmful to highly beneficial. This problem can only be avoided by developing CCA in line with theories of counterfactuals that allow us to ignore a-typical scenarios. Doing this generates a different problem: when the actual world is itself a-typical we will sometimes get the result that the counterfactual nonoccurrence of an actual benefit is itself a benefit. An account of overall harm bearing either of these two implications is deficient. Given the general aspiration to account for deprivational harms and the dominance of the Counterfactual Comparative Account in this respect, theorists of harm and benefit face a deadlock. (shrink)

Abstract This paper reconstructs the systematic and escalating logical crisis engineered by a distinct methodological lineage within pre‐Platonic thought: the Logicians. Comprising Xenophanes of Colophon, Parmenides of Elea, Zeno of Elea, and Gorgias of Leontini, these thinkers were united not by a shared metaphysics but by a shared commitment to using pure logic as a destruc- tive tool—testing and ultimately dismantling the foundations of coherent discourse. We trace the crisis from its origin in Xenophanes’ epistemic humility, through Parmenides’ legislative ban (...) on the indeterminate ground, Zeno’s dialectical enforcement of that ban, to Gorgias’s terminal reductio that left philosophy without an object, a method, or a medium. The paper then maps the resulting radiation of post‐crisis philosophical strategies—sophistry, atomism, cynicism, skepti- cism, and Plato’s reconstructive attempt—arguing that Socrates of Athens alone provided an exit that preserved philosophy as a truth‐directed enterprise by transforming the crisis into a nav- igational way of life. Finally, we show how the Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalist (NPN) framework completes this Socratic project, formalizing “long seeking” into a recursive, corrective protocol for navigating a reality whose ultimate ground remains, as the Logicians correctly saw, unspeak- able. -/- Keywords: Logicians, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Gorgias, Eleatic crisis, indeterminate ground, Apeiron, reductio ad absurdum, dialectic, nihilism, Socratic elenchus, long seeking, Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalism, Navigator Protocol. (shrink)

Abstract This paper reinterprets Plato’s metaphysics as a direct, systematic response to the foundational crisis engineered by Parmenides. Building on a revisionist reading of Parmenides as a logical polemicist who demonstrated that coherent speech cannot reference “what is not,” I argue that Plato’s Theory of Forms constitutes a monumental attempt to construct a determinate ground for knowledge and reality that could satisfy Parmenidean logical rigor while preserving the phe- nomena of change and plurality. Plato correctly identified the need for a (...) contrasting background (the Zero Principle),1 but inverted its logic by supplying a hyper‐determinate background (the Realm of Forms) where an indeterminate one (the Apeiron) is required. Tracing Plato’s devel- opment from the middle dialogues through the self‐critical Parmenides, the corrective Sophist, and the late Timaeus—and into the “unwritten doctrines” of the One and the Indefinite Dyad— I show how his system strained under this inversion, leading to infinite regress, the reluctant rehabilitation of Non‐Being as Difference, and the gestural acknowledgment of an inscrutable Receptacle (khōra). Plato’s tragedy was that he inherited Parmenides’ problem without inher- iting his ruthless consistency; he sought to define the Apeiron away—first as perfect Forms, then as differential relations—a pattern that would be formalized by Aristotle and that continues to shape Western thought. The Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalist (NPN) framework completes Plato’s project by correcting the inversion: it places the indeterminate Apeiron at the foundation (GZP) and reconceives knowledge as a navigational confidence‐gradient (C2), thereby bridging the gap between logic and world that Plato’s architecture almost, but never quite, spanned. -/- Keywords: Plato, Parmenides, Theory of Forms, General Zero Principle, GZP, Apeiron, khōra, Indefinite Dyad, Third Man regress, determinate ground, indeterminate background, Neo‐Pre‐Platonic Naturalism. (shrink)

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study of perception, taking as its starting point a puzzle in Empedocles' theory of vision: if perception is a mode of material assimilation, how can we perceive colors at a distance? Kalderon argues that the theory of perception offered by Aristotle in answer to the puzzle is both attractive and defensible.

Nietzsche sometimes praises the drive to order—to simplify, organize, and draw clear boundaries—as expressive of a vital "classical" style, or an Apollonian artistic drive to calmly contemplate forms displaying "epic definiteness and clarity." But he also sometimes harshly criticizes order, as in the pathological dialectics or "logical schematism" that he associates paradigmatically with Socrates. I challenge a tradition that interprets Socratism as an especially one-sided expression of, or restricted form of attention to, the Apollonian: they are more radically disparate. Beyond (...) strengthening the case for this basic point, I develop a distinctive account of what, exactly, distinguishes the Apollonian-classical and Socratic forms of order. To this end, I advance interrelated interpretations of Apollonian-classical simplicity and the "cold" calm that it elicits, by contrast to superficially similar Socratic phenomena. This illuminates Nietzsche's broader ambivalence toward science, in part by clarifying the nature and value of an idealized Apollonian science. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper argues that the bottom-up methodological paradigm—the attempt to reconstruct reality from determinate, bounded elements—is structurally doomed to fail due to the General Zero Principle (GZP), which states that all determination requires an indeterminate ground.1 Using case studies from mathematics (Gödel), philosophy of mind (the hard problem), mod- ern cosmology (the crisis of origins), particle physics (the crisis of substance), logic (Aris- totelian non-contradiction), and Kantian epistemology, I demonstrate that each domain en- counters a limit-gap that is not (...) an anomaly but the return of the constitutive outside. These gaps—from the Singularity to the Noumenon—are unified as manifestations of Parmenides’ wall: the impossibility of containing the condition of determination within what is determined. I propose that the Neo-Pre-Platonic Naturalist (NPN) meta-structure offers a coherent way forward by formally acknowledging the outside (Apeiron) (FP5) and reorienting epistemology as top-down navigation rather than bottom-up construction. -/- DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18234685 -/- Keywords: General Zero Principle, GZP, Parmenides’ wall, infinite regress, Gödel, hard problem of consciousness, cosmology, particle physics, string theory land- scape, Kant, NPN, Apeiron, navigation. (shrink)

Before the semester begins, a teacher tells his students: “There will be exactly one exam this semester. It will not take place on a day that is an immediate-successor of a day that you are currently in a position to know is not the exam-day”. Both the students and the teacher know – it is common knowledge – that no exam can be given on the first day of the semester. Since the teacher is truthful and reliable, it seems that (...) the students can know that what he says is true. However, in that case, assuming the students can know that they know whatever it is they know (KK) and assuming their knowledge is closed under entailment (closure), the students can reason from what they know to the conclusion that no exam will take place during the semester. This conclusion contradicts what they supposedly know: that there will be an exam. This puzzle, we argue, gives rise to a new consideration for the rejection of KK. We discuss unique features of the argument, especially in comparison to Timothy Williamson's rejection of KK in light of other versions of the surprise exam paradox. (shrink)

This collection of original essays--by philosophers of biology, biologists, and cognitive scientists--provides a wide range of perspectives on species. Including contributions from David Hull, John Dupre, David Nanney, Kevin de Queiroz, and Kim Sterelny, amongst others, this book has become especially well-known for the three essays it contains on the homeostatic property cluster view of natural kinds, papers by Richard Boyd, Paul Griffiths, and Robert A. Wilson.

Abstract For centuries, the free will debate has been paralyzed by a false binary: either human agents possess metaphysical “uncaused causation” or we are deterministic automata. I argue that free will is not a binary property but a scalar capacity inherent to life itself—the capacity to redirect causal flow toward persistence. This capacity, which I term Hormē (Ὁρμή), is the constitutive drive of living systems and scales through evolutionary complexity: from bacterial taxis to hu- man deliberation. By reframing free will (...) as what life does—not what minds have—I dissolve the traditional stalemate and provide an empirically grounded, testable account of freedom across the tree of life. The framework yields a graduated spectrum of agency—from vegetative (plants) to reflective (human)—each with measurable degrees of causal influence. This approach naturalizes free will without reducing it, offering a unified account that respects both the laws of physics and the lived reality of choice. The result is not just a philosophical solution but a scientifically testable framework with implications for neuroscience, artificial intelligence, mental health, and ethics. -/- Keywords: free will, scalar agency, Hormē, causal flow, degrees of freedom, life‐agency continu- ity, thermodynamics, navigation. (shrink)

This article reconstructs and defends Theodor Adorno’s social theory by motivating the central role of abstract domination within it. Whereas critics such as Axel Honneth have charged Adorno with adhering to a reductive model of personal domination, I argue that the latter rather understands domination as a structural and de-individualized feature of capitalist society. If Adorno’s social theory is to be explanatory, however, it must account for the source of the abstractions that dominate modern individuals and, in particular, that of (...) value. While such an account remains undeveloped in Adorno, Marx provides resources for its development, in positing the constitution of value neither in production nor exchange alone, but in the social totality. This article argues that Marx’s account is compatible with Adorno’s, and that it may be used to render Adorno’s theory of domination more credible on explanatory grounds. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss a subset of preferences in which a person desires the fulfillment of a choice they have made, even if it involves the violation of their desires, as in rape fantasies. I argue that such cases provide us with a unique insight into personal autonomy from a proceduralist standpoint. In its first part, I analyze some examples in light of Frankfurt's endorsement theory and argue that even when we cannot endorse a practical decision that involves being (...) violated, we nonetheless regard those cases as instances of autonomy. Therefore, autonomy does not necessarily require endorsement. Instead, I propose that the nature of the relevant highest-order volition dictates the procedure that should be established in one’s desire structure for its fulfillment. In the second part, I discuss how an agent may effectively consent to the violation of their decision by another person. Ordinary consent typically refers to actions but fails to communicate one's higher-order desires or commitments. To address this limitation, I propose a practical tool that accomplishes this by signaling shifts in the normative context where the agents are interacting. (shrink)

Many commentators have claimed that Nietzsche views the “sublimation” (Sublimierung) of drives as a positive achievement. Against this tradition, I argue that, on the dominant if not universal Nietzschean use of Sublimierung and its cognates, sublimation is just a broad psychological analogue of the traditional (al)chemical process: the “vaporization” of drives into a finer or lighter state, figuratively if not literally. This can yield ennobling elevation, or purity in a positive sense—the intensified “sublimate” of an unrefined original sample. But it (...) can also yield drives that are attenuated or otherworldly, in a pejorative sense. One (but only one) kind of Nietzschean sublimation is the “translation” of drives to “imaginative and spiritual” (Imaginative und Seelische) modes of expression. I con­clude that, despite certain appearances to the contrary, Nietzsche ultimately values basic drives’ powerful expression, without preferring either that this occur specifically as “higher culture” or as “savage” natural impulse. (shrink)

In “Harmful Choices, the Case of C, and Decision-Making Competence,” Pickering and colleagues advance an argument in favor of externalism, a view in which the competence of a decision maker is judged relative to factors external to their cognition. In advancing this argument, Pickering and colleagues focus on the external factor of harm: In their view, it is the harmfulness of a considered or chosen action that provides evidence against the competence of the decision maker. However, the proper identification of (...) harmful choices and outcomes remains a demanding task, largely because our understanding of what harm is remains deeply incomplete. Despite 50 years of tempestuous debate, the metaphysics of harm remains an unsettled question. The existence of such a debate does not, in and of itself, provide evidence against the externalist position; rather, it is the theories of harm themselves that pose meaningful challenges for the externalist. Our purpose, here, is to illuminate these challenges. (shrink)

À propos de : Catherine et Raphaël Larrère, Penser et agir avec la nature : Une enquête philosophique, Paris, La Découverte, 2015. -/- L’idée d’une nature sauvage à protéger des avancées techniques ne prend en compte ni la complexité des artefacts, ni ce qu’implique aujourd’hui la protection de la nature. En mettant l’accent sur la notion de biodiversité, C. et R. Larrère cherchent à donner un nouveau fondement à l’écologie politique.

I defend the claim that we have the capacity to perceptually represent objects and events in experience as deviating from an expectation, or, for short, as deviant. The rival hypothesis is that we may ascribe the property of deviance to a stimulus at a cognitive level, but that property is not a representational content of perceptual experience. I provide empirical reasons to think that, contrary to the rival hypothesis, we do perceptually represent deviance.

If we want to be fair judges of all situations, first of all, we must convince ourselves that none of us are without fault. "seneca".

Identity-Relative Paternalism, as defended by Wilkinson, holds that paternalistic intervention is justified to prevent an individual from doing to their future selves (where there are weakened prudential unity relations between the current and future self) what it would be justified to prevent them from doing to others.1 Wilkinson, drawing on the work of Parfit and others, defends the notion of Identity-Relative Paternalism from a series of objections. I argue here, however, that Wilkinson overlooks a significant problem for Identity-Relative Paternalism—namely, that (...) it yields unactionable and self-contradictory results when applied to choices where both options present potential harms to future selves. (shrink)