If an AI makes a significant contribution to a research paper, should it be listed as a co-author? The current guidelines in the field have been created to reduce duplication of credit between two different authors in scientific articles. A new computer program could be identified and credited for its impact in an AI research paper that discusses an early artificial intelligence system which is currently under development at Lawrence Berkeley National. One way to imagine the future of artificial intelligence (...) is that it will be much less expensive to develop new technologies than to create new ways of thinking. Now we have done this technology, and now we go and ask why in the end it is the artificial intelligence that takes over? Well, it is not that artificial intelligence is bad, but it is not as effective as human minds or as intelligent as machine minds. Even in the past, when computers were more intelligent than humans, not all the AI programs have been so intelligent as to be intelligent enough to be called intelligent. (shrink)

Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there is (...) widespread disagreement about in what sense it is so. In this paper I explore an underdeveloped answer to the question of in what sense it is so, and argue that resolving an apparent difficulty with this view leads to an attractive picture about why it is so. (shrink)

The chapter deals with the two most distinctive elements of the Introduction of the Naturrecht Feyerabend, namely the notions of an end in itself and autonomy. I shall argue that both are to be interpreted with regard to the aim of explaining the ground of right. In this light, I suggest that the notion of an end in itself counters a voluntarist conception like Achenwall’s with a claim whose necessity has a twofold ground: First, the representation of an unconditional worth (...) emerges as a structural element of the practical use of reason. Second, that representation concerns the necessary self-understanding of moral subjects. Finally, I argue that the other distinctive element, the occurrence of the notion of autonomy, is best understood as an application of that idea to a specific issue, which Kant addresses by showing that freedom is a self-regulating domain. (shrink)

This paper is about the relationship between two widely accepted and apparently conflicting claims about how we should understand the notion of ‘reason giving’ invoked in theorising about reasons for action. According to the first claim, reasons are given by facts about the situation of agents. According to the second claim, reasons are given by ends. I argue that the apparent conflict between these two claims is less deep than is generally recognised.

The rapid advancement of AI, particularly LLMs, presents a profound challenge to human judgement and meaning-making processes. This paper revisits the Judgemental Philosophical concept of "The End of Resonance" arguing that the pervasive temptation to delegate complex judgement to AI can lead to an abdication of personal responsibility, fostering ethical deskilling and cognitive atrophy. Drawing upon Judgemental Philosophy (JP) and its normative extension, Resonance Ethics, this inquiry analyzes how such delegation bypasses the essential human judgemental cycle of Constructivity (C1), Coherence (...) (C2), and Resonance (R). This risks cultivating a societal "thoughtlessness" analogous to Arendt's "banality of evil" or "Eichmannization," where individuals uncritically comply with systemic directives without engaging in resonant moral deliberation. The paper critically examines these risks, informed by Bernard Stiegler's concept of technology as a "pharmakon" and established principles of neuroplasticity. It concludes by proposing human-centric AI governance principles derived from R Ethics. These principles aim to protect human R Eligibility, mandate transparency about AI's non-human nature and its outputs as non-judgemental, and advocate for designing AI to augment rather than replace human judgement, thereby fostering the reclamation of human agency, R, and responsibility in an increasingly AI-mediated world. (shrink)

In ‘The End of Art: A Real Problem or Not Really a Problem?’ I raised some questions about Arthur Danto’s famous ‘end of art’ thesis. A largely polemical paper, it was intended as an invitation to further discussion, and Kalle Puolakka has now taken up this invitation in ‘Playing The Game After The End of Art’. I thank him for his many insightful remarks. Critical comments are typically more interesting and helpful than simple praise, and Puolakka’s comments are no exception. (...) I would therefore like to return the favour. I will place Puolakka’s remarks under critical examination and in the process hope to rephrase, refine, and defend some of my original claims. First, however, I will briefly restate my reading of Danto’s ideas on the end of art. (shrink)

Kantians often talk about the capacity to set ends for oneself through reason and those who do assume that Kant regarded the capacity to set ends as a rational power or a component of practical reason. ‘Natural perfection’, Kant says, ‘is the cultivation of any capacities whatever for furthering ends set forth by reason’, and he refers to ‘humanity’ as the ‘capacity to set oneself any end at all’ or ‘the capacity to realize all sorts of possible (...) ends’.¹ ‘Humanity’ comprises the full range of human rational capacities, one of which is the capacity to adopt a wide variety of ends, including ends that are not morally required by pure practical reason.² Likewise Kant refers to ‘culture’ as ‘the aptitude and skill for all sorts of ends for which he can use nature (internal and external)’, or as ‘the production of the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general (thus those of his freedom).’³ Christine Korsgaard characterizes ‘humanity’ as follows. (shrink)

Is there more to how well a life goes overall (its lifetime well-being) than simply the aggregate goodness and badness of its moments (its momentary well-being)? Atomists about lifetime well-being say ‘no’. Holists hold that there is more to lifetime well-being than aggregate momentary well-being (with different holists offering different candidates for what this extra element might be). -/- This paper presents and defends a novel form of holism about lifetime well-being, which I call ‘End of Life’. This is the (...) view that the momentary goodness or badness of the end of lives has a disproportionate effect upon lifetime well-being. More precisely: a welfare subject’s level of momentary well-being at the end of their life contributes more to their lifetime well-being than their level of momentary well-being at each other point. (shrink)

The conditions of transport and slaughter at the end of their lives are a major challenge to the welfare of agricultural animals. • End-of-life experiences should be of a greater ethical concern than others of similar intensity and duration, due to their position in the animal’s life. • End-of-life welfare can have both internal importance to the animals and external ethical importance to human decision-makers. • We should pay extra care to ensure that the conditions during transport and slaughter are (...) as positive as possible. (shrink)

The chapter studies the speculative realist critique of the notion of finitude and its implications for the theme of the "end of the world" as a teleological and eschatological idea. It is first explained how Quentin Meillassoux proposes to overcome both Kantian and Heideggerian "correlationist" approaches with his speculative thesis of absolute contingency. It is then shown that Meillassoux's speculative materialism also dismantles the close link forged by Kant between the teleological ends of human existence and a teleological notion (...) of the "end of the world." Speculative materialism no longer sees the end of thought, or the end of the thinking human being, as an insurmountable limit of conceivability, but rather as one contingent and possible event among others. This allows us to conceive an "end of all things" in a positive sense with regard to which the old eschatological hope for the end of the present world of injustice and for the emergence of a new world of perfect, "divine" justice becomes meaningful and legitimate in an entirely new sense. (shrink)

In the centennial year of John Dewey’s classic, Democracy and Education (1916), this paper revisits his thesis of the reciprocity of means and ends, arguing that it remains of central importance for debate over the aims of education. The paper provides a Dewey-inspired rebuttal of arguments for an ‘ultimate aim,’ but balances this with a development of the strong overlaps between proponents of pragmatism, intellectual virtues education (Jason Baehr) and critical thinking education (Harvey Siegel). Siegel’s ‘Kantian’ justification of critical (...) thinking as an ultimate aim is critiqued, and contrary to Siegel’s ‘generalist’ focus on logic, the paper concludes with specific suggestions for how the study of ecological rationality and dual-process theories (Gerd Gigerenzer; Keith Stanovich and others) should impact how we teach for critical thinking dispositions. Presentation paper for ‘The Epistemic Aims of Education’ Workshop, Eidyn Research Center & University of Edinburgh, 2016. Special thanks to as IASH Center for sabbatical Fellowship support. (shrink)

Some recent discussions of mechanistic explanation have focused on control operations. But control is often associated with teleological or normative sounding concepts like goals and setpoints, prompting the question: Does an explanation that refers to parts or entities within mechanisms “controlling” each other thereby fail to be mechanistic? In this article, I introduce a distinction between open-ended and closed-ended control. I then argue that explanations that enlist control operations to do explanatory work can count as mechanistic in the New Mechanist (...) sense only if such control operations are closed-ended, not open-ended. In certain scientific fields that incorporate control operations within their mechanistic models, for example, systems neuroscience, the state of the science is such that this requirement often cannot be met. We should therefore distinguish between models/explanations that are “mechanistic” in the strict (New Mechanist) sense and those that are “mechanistic” in a weaker sense employed by fields in the latter category. (shrink)

From a radical feminist perspective, gender is a cage. Or to be more precise, it’s two cages. If genders are cages, then surely we want to let people out. Being less constrained in our choices is something we all have reason to want: theorists in recent years have emphasized the importance of the capability to do and be many different things. At the very least, we should want an end to sex-based oppression. But what does this entail, when it comes (...) to gender? In this paper, I’ll compare four ‘transitional pathways’, with a view to considering how each relates to the ultimate end of ending sex-based oppression. Should we open the doors to the cages, so that people can move freely between them, but leave the cages themselves in place?. Should we add more cages?. Should we make the cages bigger, so that people have a lot more room to move around inside them? Or should we dismantle the cages, so there are no more genders at all?. Some of these options are ‘gender revisionist’, others are gender abolitionist. I’ll argue in favour of a gender abolitionist pathway. (shrink)

The ending of the Phaedo is one of the most powerful and memorable moments in the entire Platonic corpus. It is not simply the end of a single dialogue, but a depiction of the end of the life of the man (Socrates) who is a looming presence in nearly everything that Plato wrote. In this article I offer an in-depth analysis of the final scene of the Phaedo. I argue that Plato very carefully constructs the scene for the sake of (...) specific philosophical, dramatic, and political ends. Plato uses it to unify the Phaedo as a singular text, while also provoking us to reflect on the nature of our lives, our deaths, and the possibilities and limits of philosophy itself. (shrink)

Sometimes, in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), Aristotle describes virtuous actions as the sorts of actions that are ends; it is important for Aristotle to do so if he wants to maintain, as he seems to at least until NE 10.7-8, that virtuous actions are a constituent of eudaimonia. At other times, he claims that virtuous actions are the sorts of actions that are for the sake of ends beyond themselves; after all, no one would choose to go into (...) battle or give away a significant portion of their wealth if it did not realize some good end. In this paper, I review the familiar problem raised by Aristotle's discussion of the nature of virtuous actions, propose a solution to this problem by appealing to a distinction between virtuous actions and 'acting virtuously', and sketch the significance of this solution for understanding the relationship between virtue and human happiness. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of an important type of human relationship: relationships based on shared ends. These are an indispensable part of most ethically worthy or valuable lives, and our successes or failures at participating in these relationships constitute a great number of our moral successes or failures overall. While many philosophers agree about their importance, few provide us with well-developed accounts of the nature and value of good shared-end relationships. This paper begins to develop a positive account (...) of such relationships. In the interest of highlighting some strengths and weaknesses of competing approaches, it contrasts the theories that are proposed by the Confucian philosopher Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724–1777) and the influential moral philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Both philosophers share many of the same core ethical commitments, but as the author shows, Dai Zhen’s approach to thinking about the nature and value of good shared-end relationships is superior to Kant’s because it highlights the fact that such relationships must be motivated by ethically-shaped forms of other-concern and self-interest, whereas Kant does not picture self-interest as an important source of morality or ethically valuable relationships. The author considers clarifications and revisions to Kant’s theory that seem to make more room for the mixture of motives required for good shared-end relationships, but concludes that these ad hoc modifications do not succeed at providing a recognizably Kantian theory that can account for them as well as Dai Zhen’s. (shrink)

Why should we be means-end rational? Why care whether someone’s mental states exhibit certain formal patterns, like the ones formalized in causal decision theory? This paper establishes a dominance argument for these constraints in a finite setting. If you violate the norms of causal decision theory, then your desires will be aptness dominated. That is, there will be some alternative set of desires that you could have had, which would be more apt (closer to the actual values fixed by your (...) sensibility/ what you intrinsically care about) no matter which world is actual. If we care about having apt desires, then, we should never let ourselves violate these norms of means-end rationality. This argument shares a form with now-standard accuracy arguments for probabilism, opening up a new terrain for that discussion. I show that the foundational assumptions about the shape of accuracy and of aptness required to run the arguments for means-end rationality and for probabilism run closely parallel. I show the argument is robust under different theories of subjective actual value, including nonclassical treatments of indeterminacy in actual value; I show the argument may (but need not!) be generalized to objective theories of value. The upshot is that aptness-domination arguments for decision theories should be added to the philosophical playbook. (shrink)

Book review of 'Means, Ends, and Persons: The Meaning and Psychological Dimensions of Kant's Humanity Formula, by Robert Audi, OUP'.

This issue provides an end of year feast with something for everyone. Browning and Veit note how, since the presence of sentience in mammals, birds and cephalopods received official scientific reco...

Abstractabstract:Hegel's end-of-art thesis is arguably the most notorious assertion in aesthetics. I outline traditional interpretive strategies before offering an original alternative to these. I develop a conception of art that facilitates a reading of Hegel on which he is able to embrace three seemingly contradictory theses about art, namely, (i) the end-of-art thesis, (ii) the continued significance of art for its own sake (autonomy thesis), and (iii) the necessity of art for robust knowledge (epistemicnecessity thesis). I argue that Hegel is (...) able to embrace all three theses at once through a conception of the work of art as an internally purposive whole (what I call the "IP View" of art). On the IP View, because of the kind of wholes that artworks are, they (i.a) are valuable for their own sake as ends-in-themselves, (i.b) yield valuable experiences because they are valuable for their own sake, and thereby (i.c) are necessary for robust knowledge. Finally, I suggest that not only does Hegel appear to hold the IP View of art, but also that on such a view, there is a very sensible reason for affirming (one reading of) Hegel's end-of-art thesis as an important means to establishing art's actual significance for robust knowledge against soaring, but unsubstantiable, claims about art's potency with respect to robust knowledge. (shrink)

-/- The End of Crime Syndicates: How the Universal Formula Will Reshape Society -/- Introduction -/- Crime syndicates have existed throughout human history, thriving on corruption, ignorance, and economic imbalance. Despite law enforcement efforts, they continue to evolve and adapt, making them seemingly indestructible. However, with the full implementation of the universal formula, the mechanisms that sustain crime syndicates will be dismantled. The universal formula, as the most powerful tool in mind programming, has the potential to eradicate criminal organizations by (...) reprogramming society to function in perfect alignment with natural laws. This essay explores how the universal formula will systematically eliminate crime syndicates and create a self-correcting, balanced civilization. -/- The Root Causes of Crime Syndicates -/- Before understanding how crime syndicates will disappear, it is essential to recognize why they exist: -/- 1. Ignorance and False Beliefs – Many people engage in crime because they lack a proper understanding of ethics, justice, and balance. Misinformation, emotional manipulation, and a lack of critical thinking allow crime to flourish. -/- 2. Corruption in Leadership – Governments, law enforcement, and businesses often protect crime syndicates due to bribery, personal interests, or threats. When leaders operate without a guiding universal principle, they become vulnerable to corruption. -/- 3. Economic Imbalances – Poverty, lack of opportunity, and wealth inequality push individuals into criminal activities. Crime becomes a survival mechanism in a world that does not provide balanced opportunities. -/- 4. Social Acceptance and Demand – Society plays a role in sustaining crime by consuming illegal goods and services, whether drugs, human trafficking, or underground markets. The demand fuels the supply. -/- 5. Lack of a Self-Correcting System – Current systems of justice react after crime has been committed instead of preventing it at its root cause. There is no universal guiding principle that ensures balance in all aspects of decision-making. -/- How the Universal Formula Will Eliminate Crime Syndicates -/- The universal formula will solve these problems by reprogramming the way society functions at every level. -/- 1. Mind Reprogramming Through Education -/- The most powerful transformation will happen through education. The universal formula will be implemented in basic education worldwide, ensuring that all individuals develop a deep understanding of balance, natural laws, and ethical decision-making. This will: -/- Remove ignorance and false beliefs, making it impossible for individuals to justify crime. -/- Train people in critical thinking, making them immune to manipulation and deception by crime syndicates. -/- Reprogram individuals to see justice and balance as the only rational way to operate in society. -/- As a result, future generations will reject crime as a viable option because their minds will be structured to seek equilibrium in all aspects of life. -/- 2. Corruption Becomes Impossible in Governance -/- With the universal formula guiding leadership training, all government officials, law enforcement officers, and judges will be required to follow natural laws of balance. This will make: -/- Bribery and extortion impossible, as leaders will be programmed to always seek universal balance. -/- Laws and policies aligned with natural laws, ensuring that no loopholes exist for crime syndicates to exploit. -/- Justice systems proactive, not reactive, eliminating crime before it takes root. -/- Without political and legal protection, crime syndicates will lose their power and collapse. -/- 3. Economic Balance Will Remove the Need for Crime -/- One of the biggest reasons crime syndicates exist is economic inequality. The universal formula will: -/- Ensure fair economic distribution, so individuals no longer need to turn to crime for survival. -/- Regulate business and trade using natural balance principles, eliminating black markets. -/- Remove the root cause of wealth-based crime, such as extortion and money laundering. -/- By balancing wealth, opportunity, and resources, crime will become economically illogical and unnecessary. -/- 4. No Demand for Criminal Markets -/- The universal formula will also remove the demand for illegal goods and services by: -/- Reprogramming individuals to reject harmful behaviors such as drug use and human exploitation. -/- Creating a society where needs are met ethically, removing the desire for black market solutions. -/- Using feedback mechanisms to detect and eliminate imbalances before they grow into full-scale criminal operations. -/- Without customers, crime syndicates will have no business model, forcing them into extinction. -/- 5. Self-Correcting Societies and AI Enforcement -/- A society governed by the universal formula will have a built-in self-correcting mechanism. Since all human decision-making follows natural balance, individuals and communities will: -/- Detect and eliminate imbalances before they lead to organized crime. -/- Hold each other accountable through collective awareness. -/- Use AGI technology programmed with the universal formula to analyze all societal systems, ensuring that no criminal organizations can form or sustain themselves. -/- With AI acting as an analytical enforcer, crime syndicates will have nowhere to hide, and any criminal attempts will be immediately corrected. -/- Final Outcome: A World Without Crime Syndicates -/- Once the universal formula is fully implemented, crime syndicates will no longer be sustainable. They rely on ignorance, corruption, economic imbalances, and public demand—all of which will be eliminated under a balanced system of natural laws. -/- 1. Future generations will be programmed for ethical and rational decision-making. -/- 2. Governments will be incorruptible and operate based on natural balance. -/- 3. Economic structures will remove incentives for crime. -/- 4. Society will self-regulate against criminal behavior. -/- 5. AI will ensure that all systems remain in universal balance, preventing crime from emerging. -/- In this world, crime syndicates will have no space to exist, making them extinct. -/- Conclusion -/- Crime syndicates have survived for centuries by exploiting human ignorance, economic instability, and corruption. However, with the universal formula, these root causes will be eliminated, leading to a fully balanced society. Education, governance, economy, and technology will all operate under natural laws, ensuring that crime syndicates can never return. -/- The universal formula is the most powerful tool in mind programming, and once implemented, it will create a world where crime is not just discouraged—but fundamentally impossible. -/- . (shrink)

This reply is a refutation of Santiago Vrech’s article “The End of the Case? A Metaphilosophical Critique of Thought Experiments” (2022) which argues that thought experiments used in argumentation cannot hold in All Possible Worlds (APW) modality, and thus should end. Cases are used to justify or refute a philosophical theory, but should not have the power to refute an entire theory, especially ad infinitum. Significant variations in intuitions, he argues, invalidate cases and are not proven. I argue some variation (...) is acceptable and expected, and his bar of criteria is too high—APW validity is unnecessary. Vrech’s three arguments are faulty and/ or too weak, and his thought experiment is of questionable value. Experimental and armchair philosophy (or philosophers) are misnomers, misleading and false dichotomy. (shrink)

The article re-examines the Aristotelian backdrop of Arendt’s notion of action. On the one hand, Backman takes up Arendt’s critique of the hierarchy of human activities in Aristotle, according to which Aristotle subordinates action (praxis) to production (poiesis) and contemplation (theoria). Backman argues that this is not the case since Aristotle conceives theoria as the most perfect form of praxis. On the other hand, Backman stresses that Arendt’s notion of action is in fact very different from Aristotle’s praxis, to the (...) extent that Arendt thinks of action as an external to the means-ends scheme, whereas Aristotle ultimately remains caught in this scheme proper to poiesis in thinking of praxis as its own end. According to Backman, Arendt’s concept of action can therefore be understood as a critique, rather than as a rehabilitation, of Aristotelian praxis. (shrink)

Historically, laws and policies to criminalize drug use or possession were rooted in explicit racism, and they continue to wreak havoc on certain racialized communities. We are a group of bioethicists, drug experts, legal scholars, criminal justice researchers, sociologists, psychologists, and other allied professionals who have come together in support of a policy proposal that is evidence-based and ethically recommended. We call for the immediate decriminalization of all so-called recreational drugs and, ultimately, for their timely and appropriate legal regulation. We (...) also call for criminal convictions for nonviolent offenses pertaining to the use or possession of small quantities of such drugs to be expunged, and for those currently serving time for these offenses to be released. In effect, we call for an end to the “war on drugs.”. (shrink)

According to Zygmunt Bauman, we live in a world of hunting and hunters, where instead of lingering in the present and appreciating it for what it holds, we push into the future at an ever-increasing speed, unable to seize the day and live the moment. When too concerned with maintaining a state of flux we lose sight of the utopia that we may partly be living in – at least in a western world generally spared from firsthand warfare, where citizens (...) enjoy technological advancements and breakthroughs. To paraphrase Bauman’s words written in 2005 but holding true to this day we harbour a continuous dream of a world void of accidents. Restlessly we live through the day while eagerly anticipating the next. In doing so, we not only disregard the importance of the present but also that of the past, seemingly forgetting about it altogether. On a national level, this is a hunter’s “utopia” where citizens are engaged in an individual postmodern hunt into an uncertain future and belonging to a collective would rather hold you back than facilitate the process of moving forward. Bauman questions whether in the name of game-keeping globalisation and a utopia that is ultimately unachievable, we are witnessing an end to what may have been regarded as an ideal time and place. Fast-forward to 2017 and having now embarked on an equally shaky journey into 2018 we face a world in disarray and fragmentation. This paper applies Bauman’s lucid thoughts to an analysis of our unpredictable present. (shrink)

Is the Right to the City (RTTC) still a useful framework for a transformative urban politics? Given recent scholarly criticism of its real-world applications and appropriations, in this paper, we argue that the transformative promise in the RTTC lies beyond its role as a framework for oppositional struggle, and in its normative ends. Building upon Henri Lefebvre's original writing on the subject, we develop a “radical-cooperative” conception of the RTTC. Such a view, which is grounded in the lived experiences (...) of the current city, envisions an urban society in which inhabitants can pursue their material and social needs through self-governed cooperation across social difference. Growing and diversifying spaces and sectors of urban life that are decoupled from global capitalism are, we argue, necessary to create space for this inclusionary politics. While grassroots action is essential to this process, so is multi-scalar support from the state. (shrink)

This article investigates a tension that arises in Hegel’s aesthetic theory between theoretical and practical forms of reason. This tension, I argue, stems from Hegel’s appropriation of an Aristotelian framework for a historically unfolding social teleology which puts practical reason to work for the aims of theoretical reason. Recognizing that this aspect of Hegel’s dialectic is essential in overcoming problems left in Kant’s transcendental idealism, the appearance of incongruence does not lessen. Grouped together with absolute spirit, Hegel positions art as (...) a transitory mode of mind, a vehicle, which aims to raise spirit to the higher cognition of philosophy. When the unfolding absolute concept becomes too complex for articulation in the material, art must end, as spirit’s message can be expressed only through the non-material form of philosophy. This study focuses on the ambivalence found in Hegel’s writings regarding his account of historical completion. Though Hegel sees in the Absolute a metaphysical solution to the unity of subject and object, the practical aspects of the unity appear to falter when philosophy becomes the dominant mode of expression at the close of a historical cycle. In Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel links his notion of the Absolute, albeit with modification, to Aristotle’s nous. As described in De Anima, this entails a progression in which active and possible intellect rise to the level of the eternal, while passive intellect, the imaginative element, passes on with the body. Because the architecture of Aristotle’s nous, which is not in line with his defense of poetry, is integrated into the blueprint of Hegel’s absolute, an unresolved tension emerges in the spirit of art. A divergence of aims is forced to the surface through Hegel’s application of a template for achievement of theoretical knowledge, with an end in the universal, to a form of practical knowing which has an end in the particular. (shrink)

José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favour of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge to these finitist arguments—namely, the challenge of implying that the future cannot be endless. In particular, I (...) develop future-oriented Benardete paradoxes and examine their epistemic symmetry with past-oriented paradoxes. (shrink)

Phenomenology has recently come under attack from proponents of speculative realism. In this paper, I present and assess the criticism, and argue that it is either superficial and simplistic or lacks novelty.

In 1984, Arthur Danto wrote an article with the telling title ‘The End of Art.’ Just a few years earlier, Richard Rorty had declared the end of philosophy and Michel Foucault, the end of politics. A few years later, Francis Fukuyama was to declare the end of history. So, on the face of it, Danto’s thesis fits in nicely with the ‘endism’ that was popular in the 1980s. In important ways, however, I believe it also stands out.

With her new book, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice, Colleen Murphy has advanced novel, comprehensive and sophisticated philosophical accounts of both what severely conflict-ridden societies should be aiming for and how they should pursue it. Ultimately grounded on a prizing of rational agency, Murphy maintains that these societies, roughly, ought to strive for a stable and legitimate democratic polity committed to not repeating gross historical injustice and do so in ways that do right by victims. In this article, I (...) argue, contra Murphy, that achieving democratic rights to political participation should not be considered an essential aim of transitional justice, and that, in contrast, doing right by victims should be considered an essential aim of it, not merely an appropriate means to achieving other aims. In addition, I highlight an issue downplayed in Murphy’s book, namely, the need to make trade-offs amongst the aims of transitional justice, which becomes particularly pressing upon accepting that doing right by victims is one of them. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the end-of-art thesis in its metaphysical and empirical versions. I show that both use the correspondence theory of truth as the basis for their conception of the history of art. As a counterpart to these theories I have chosen Patočka’s conception of the history of art. His theory is based also on the relationship between art and truth, but he conceives truth in the phenomenological sense of manifestation. In the rest of the essay I seek (...) to show the consequences Patočka’s conception has for the history of art. In the rst part, I set out to show Patocka’s critique of Hegel’s aesthetics as a system based on the correspondence theory of truth. In particular, I endeavour to explain his critique of some intrinsic problems of Hegel’s aesthetics, the general failure of Hegel’s system to achieve its goal, and, lastly, Hegel’s giving up on the meaning of the art in the present. I also seek to show that Danto’s version runs into the same problems and conclusions as Hegel’s. In the second part I discuss Patočka’s analysis of modern art and the aesthetic attitude, where he nds a hidden a nity between art and aletheia, which Hegel overlooked. e last part of the essay focuses on the consequences that the conception of the truth of art as aletheia have for the history of art. I conclude that art in such a conception represents an independent eld of the manifestation of being in history beside philosophy. Moreover, modern and contemporary art do not mean the end of art; rather, they have their place in art history based on aletheia, since they are more focused on the manifestation itself than on what is manifested. Unlike Hegel and Danto, therefore, Patočka retains the historical meaning of modern and contemporary art. His conception of the history of art, summed up under the idea of aletheia, has greater explanatory potential than Hegel’s and Danto’s conceptions, and it retains the historical meaning of modern and contemporary art. (shrink)

In this book, Fukuyama seeks to provide affirmative answers to two fundamental questions: Has the ideal of liberal democracy effectively triumphed throughout the world so that we can now speak of the end of humankind's ideological development and thus the end of history? If so, is this a good thing?

Reasons transmit. If one has a reason to attain an end, then one has a reason to effect means for that end: reasons are transmitted from end to means. I argue that the likelihood ratio (LR) is a compelling measure of reason transmission from ends to means. The LR measure is superior to other measures, can be used to construct a condition specifying precisely when reasons transmit, and satisfies intuitions regarding end-means reason transmission in a broad array of cases.

The debate on “end of life issues” has been a recurring subject over many years. The issue of self-determination regarding the timing and manner in which people may die has reached new heights due to several high profile cases decided in past years, placing the UK Parliament under pressure to intervene in order to clarify the law governing this complex and emotionally charged subject matter . This article also includes the six much-publicized older caselaw to illustrate some of the many (...) complexities that confront policy-makers and statute drafters of such laws as the present contested assisted suicide Bill passing through the UK Parliament, added to which is the age-long problems that the drafting process is complicated by factors of pressure of time; possibility of amendments which may distort the original concept of the Bill as a whole, and the fact that parliamentary supervision of the legislative process does not ensure the quality of legislation literally enacted. (shrink)

The future of human evolution triggers many discussions, in the intersection of biological, technological, and philosophical enquiry. I will discuss the proposition that the evolution of the human species will rely increasingly in stochastic phenomena in the future, by a manner at which selection will play a minimal role only. This is the direct consequence of our cultural evolution that was intensified after the Enlightenment and combined with the scientific, technological, and medical advances of our civilization, renders the perseverance of (...) our species, as its ultimate goal. This supersedes the goals instructed by biology alone as they apply to all other species. To that end, H. sapiens will be the first and only species that through its logic-based progress, defies the rationale of natural selection as an evolutionary force and forecasts a rather unpredictable future path. (shrink)

This essay attempts to address the question, "What makes an improvised jazz solo a maturation of the possibilities of this artform?" It begins by considering the significance of one distinguishable feature of an improvised jazz solo - how it ends - in light of Joseph Kerman's seemingly parallel consideration of the historical development of how classical concertos end. After showing the limits of this comparison, the essay proposes a counter-parallel, between the jazz improviser's attitude toward the solo's end and (...) Ludwig Wittgenstein's attitude toward our (or philosophy's) arriving at the end of justifications. The parallel depends on one's granting that both the improviser and Wittgenstein are, in their distinct ways, doing battle against the recurring human fantasy of the fixity of experience. (shrink)

This case study is a retrospection of my family’s experiences that highlight several ELE facets. Following a description, we attempt to explain some of these phenomena from the perspectives of science and other germane disciplines.

This paper explores the structural contradictions of late capitalism, focusing on the progressive evaporation of demand as a critical factor leading to systemic decline. The analysis highlights how overproduction, financialization, and inequality collectively erode the foundations of consumer demand. As demand evaporates, capitalism loses its capacity for self-renewal, ultimately signaling its own end. The study aims to provide a theoretical framework for understanding this terminal phase of capitalism, while opening avenues for alternative socio-economic models beyond the current system.

The biophilosophic justification for the idea that “brain death” is death needs to support two claims: that what dies in human death is a human organism, not merely a psychological entity distinct from it; that total brain failure signifies the end of the human organism as a whole. Defenders of brain death typically assume without argument that the first claim is true and argue for the second by defending the “integrative unity” rationale. Yet the integrative unity rationale has fallen on (...) hard times. In this article, I give reasons for why we should think of ourselves as organisms, and why the “fundamental work” rationale put forward by the 2008 President’s Council is better than the integrative unity rationale, despite persistent objections to it. (shrink)

Web attacks, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and distributed denial-ofservice (DDoS), pose significant threats to the security and integrity of online systems. Traditional detection methods, relying on rulebased systems or shallow machine learning, often struggle to keep pace with the evolving sophistication of these attacks. This paper proposes an end-to-end deep learning framework for detecting web attacks, leveraging the power of neural networks to automatically learn complex patterns and features from raw web traffic data. Unlike conventional approaches that (...) require extensive manual feature engineering, our method processes unprocessed HTTP request logs and network traffic directly, enabling a fully automated detection pipeline. The proposed model employs a combination of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to capture both spatial and temporal dependencies in web traffic data. CNN layers extract local patterns, such as malicious payloads or anomalous headers, while RNN layers, enhanced with attention mechanisms, model sequential behaviors indicative of attacks. The framework is trained endto-end on a diverse dataset comprising benign traffic and real-world attack samples, ensuring robustness across various attack vectors. Preprocessing is minimized to tokenization and normalization, preserving the raw data's integrity and reducing human intervention. Evaluation results demonstrate that the model achieves superior performance compared to traditional methods, with an accuracy of over 95% and a low false-positive rate. It effectively identifies both known and zero-day attacks by generalizing learned representations. Additionally, the system scales efficiently, processing large volumes of traffic in real-time, making it suitable for deployment in production environments. This end-to-end deep learning approach not only enhances detection accuracy but also adapts to emerging threats, offering a proactive solution to the growing challenge of web security. Future work will focus on integrating explainability to improve trust and interpretability in security operations. (shrink)

Classical and evolutionary game theory, rooted in utility maximization and static equilibrium logic, collapse under the demands of recursive intelligence, multi-agent feedback, and dynamic coherence. This paper introduces Recursive Coherence Game Theory (RCGT)—a first-principles reformation of strategic logic where the core invariant is not payoff, but coherence: the persistent self-organization of agents across time, scale, and semantic layer. Grounded in Recursive Choice Theory, Layered Intelligence, and Coherence Ethics, RCGT models strategy as the modulation of coherence gradients rather than the pursuit (...) of discrete rewards. It introduces Adaptive Coherence Equilibria—dynamic attractor states where agents align recursive stability rather than static dominance—and frames multi-agent interaction as the co-evolution of coherence fields. This paradigm resolves foundational paradoxes in classical game theory, including the Frame Problem, bounded rationality, and the Symbol Grounding Problem, while enabling ethically grounded and empirically testable architectures for intelligent systems. Simulations demonstrate that coherence-driven agents outperform utility-maximizing counterparts in resilience, adaptability, and emergent alignment. The implications extend across AI, governance, and civilization design, proposing a post-utility strategic logic for systems that must persist through entropy, uncertainty, and recursive evolution. RCGT offers not just a new kind of game theory—it offers a map of reality’s own intelligence: recursive, adaptive, and coherence-first. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the genesis of Kant’s conception of a realm of ends, arguing that Kant first started to think of morality in terms of striving to be a member of a realm of ends, understood as an ideal community, in the early 1760s, and that he was influenced in this by his encounter with the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. In 1766 Kant published Dreams of a Spirit Seer, a commentary on Swedenborg’s magnum opus, Heavenly Secrets. (...) Most commentators take Kant’s attitude towards Swedenborg to have been entirely negative, and argue that, at the most, Kant’s encounter with him had a purely negative impact on Kant’s development, inducing him to reject certain of his early metaphysical positions. I argue, in contrast, that Swedenborg had a positive influence on Kant’s development, particularly on his ethics, for Kant’s conception of a realm of ends is modeled on Swedenborg’s conception of heaven as a community of spirits governed by moral laws. (shrink)

To consequentialize a moral theory is to give it a consequentialist representation. Even if you can consequentialize, why should you? Notational consequentializers say consequentializing reveals the true substantive differences between moral theories. Whether a theory counts as consequentialist or not is unimportant, for any non-consequentialist theory has a consequentialist counterpart that agrees both about deontic verdicts and the grounds of those verdicts. The two theories are thus notational variants of the same view. Earnest consequentializers say consequentializing yields a moral theory (...) that is more intuitively attractive than standard versions of non-consequentialism. They say your normative theory can have it all: consequentialism’s Compelling Idea, but without any counterintuitive deontic verdicts. I argue that Notational and Earnest consequentializers share a false assumption about the nature of reasons for action. They say because we always act in order to bring about an outcome, any and all reasons to act must be features of outcomes. I argue this assumption should be rejected, as some moral theories say there are reasons that are not features of outcomes. This false assumption undergirds key premises in the arguments for notational and earnest consequentializing. The arguments for consequentializing therefore fail. (shrink)

There is an objection posed against Brian Leftow’s conception of a timeless God which claims that God cannot know the temporal order of events, with Craig going so far as to assert that on Leftow’s view God’s life will be chaotic. If this objection is right then Leftow’s God cannot know the end from the beginning. This paper sets out the objection, describing how it arises from Leftow’s Anselmian view of God’s relationship to Creation and then shows several ways in (...) which the objection can be overcome. Much of this centres around discussions of the direction of time and how Leftow’s God could know this direction. The paper then concludes by noting that what has come before can be modified so that other conceptions of divine timelessness can also explain how God knows the temporal order of Creation’s events. (shrink)

We explore how Existential Realism (ER) – a present-centric, two-tier ontology – addresses the extreme limits of cosmological time: the beginning and end of time, cosmic inflation and multiverse scenarios, causal horizons, and the emergence or collapse of temporal order. In ER’s framework, existence is confined to the present moment while reality spans past and future structures beyond the present. We apply these principles to cosmology, arguing that events like the Big Bang and any ultimate end of time are not (...) static “edges” of a block universe but transitions in ontological status – moments where time switches on or off. We consider how cosmic inflation and multiverse hypotheses can be reframed such that each causally isolated “bubble” universe has its own present (its own existent content) with others remaining real but not existent. We interpret causal horizons (e.g. the observable universe’s edge) as demarcating the boundary of what can exist for us, without denying the reality of what lies beyond. Bounce cosmologies and time-symmetric models are discussed to show how ER handles a possible “before” the Big Bang or a reversal of the arrow of time. Throughout, we emphasize ER’s conceptual toolkit – collapse, transition, and migration of events – instead of spatial or block metaphors. This approach integrates philosophical and physical perspectives, suggesting that time’s boundaries are not absolute cut-offs but lawful ontological transformations within a present-centered reality. The result is a cosmological picture that engages both physicists and philosophers: one where the present remains central even at the universe’s temporal extremes, and where the flow of time is understood as the continuous becoming of reality. (shrink)

Soweit Engels' Position zum Geltungsanspruch der Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit aus diesen Texten hervorgeht, kann man sie kaum als konsistent bezeichnen. Erkenntnisse, an deren Gewissheit in der Naturforschung der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts nicht ernsthaft gezweifelt wurde, werden von ihm teils umstandslos übernommen, teils aber auch einer geltungskrltischen Analyse unterzogen. In weitgehender Unahängigkeit von seinen weltanschaulichen Ambitionen kommt Engels über die Untersuchung der Struktur naturwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisprozesse zu einer bisher erst wenig beachteten und seiner Zeit vorauseilenden Einsicht in die relativen Geltungsbedingungen (...) des experimentell erzeugten Wissens. Die widersprüchliche Form,in der er seine heute noch sehr aktuelle Kritik am Wahrheitsanspruch der Naturwissenschaften vorträgt, ist der damaligen Umbruchssituation dieser Disziplinen geschuldet und gibt seinem Werk ein hohes Mass an Authentizität. In Anlehnung an Engels' Klassifizierung der Wissenschaften sollen hier die wichtigsten geltungskritischen Ansätze rekonstruiert werden. In dieser Perspektive, die seine Skepsis gegenüber den naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisleistungen hervortreten lässt, erscheint die von ihm behauptete ausgezeichnete Geltung der Dialektik in einem neuen Licht: Sie ist nicht mehr die immer schon vorausgesetzte Grundannahme seiner wissenschafts- und naturtheoretischen Auffassungen, sondern Reaktion auf einen Relativismus, der aus der Reflexion über die Entwicklung der Naturforschung unabweisbar zu folgen scheint und jedes Streben nach einem wissenschaftlich fundierten, einheitlichen Naturbild zunichte macht. (shrink)

Tim travels back in time and tries to kill his grandfather before his father was born. Tim fails. But why? Lewis's response was to cite "coincidences": Tim is the unlucky subject of gun jammings, banana peels, sudden changes of heart, and so on. A number of challenges have been raised against Lewis's response. The latest of these focuses on explanation. This paper diagnoses the source of this new disgruntlement and offers an alternative explanation for Tim's failure, one that Lewis would (...) not have liked. The explanation is an obvious one but controversial, so it is defended against all the objections that can be mustered. (shrink)