The vocabulary of artificial intelligence has colonized human self-description. Terms historically reserved for conscious agents—intelligence, learning, understanding, creativity—now routinely designate computational processes that bear no phenomenological resemblance to the experiences that they originally named. This conceptual erosion is not merely semantic; it undermines our capacity to articulate what distinguishes human cognition from machine operation at a moment when that distinction matters most. This article develops a dual-path argument for the identification of irreducibly human capacities. A via negativa assembles four independent lines of formal and philosophical reasoning—Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, Turing’s halting problem, Searle’s Chinese Room, and the frame problem—that establish principled limits to what computation can achieve. A via positiva draws on phenomenology to positively characterize the structures of human existence that lie beyond those limits: embodiment, intersubjectivity, temporality, being-in-the-world, and subjective experience. The convergence of these independent paths—each pointing from its own starting point toward the same boundary—grounds a taxonomy of five Unique Human Faculties (creativity, moral judgment, self-determination, empathy, and sentience) that resist mechanization in principle. The article concludes that the burden of proof now lies with those who claim that formal computation can exhaust human understanding, and argues that the simulation–possession distinction provides a principled basis for restoring conceptual clarity to discourse about artificial intelligence.
This paper develops a nativist approach to mathematical knowledge as an alternative account within the philosophy of mathematics. Rather than beginning with the ontological status of mathematical objects, it argues that any satisfactory account of mathematical knowledge should address three closely related questions: how to understand and justify truth-talk in mathematical practice, how mathematical knowledge is acquired, and why some mathematical knowledge has indispensable applications in the sciences. The paper first examines representative nominalist and Platonist responses to these questions. Nominalist accounts, while avoiding the specific epistemic difficulty associated with abstract objects, face challenges in explaining the non-arbitrariness of mathematical practice and the indispensability of mathematics in certain scientific theories. Platonist accounts, while offering a straightforward semantics of mathematical truth, still face the familiar epistemic problem of explaining how we acquire knowledge of abstract mathematical entities and require a fuller account of the applicability of mathematics to the empirical sciences. Against this background, the paper proposes two nativist theses: that some mathematical knowledge is innate, and that mathematics may function more fundamentally as a cognitive pattern than as a cognitive capacity. On this basis, mathematical knowledge is construed as cognitively dependent, while mathematics itself is understood as underlying our representations of the world. The paper concludes that the nativist account provides a framework for reconsidering the legitimacy of truth-talk in mathematical practice, the acquisition of mathematical knowledge, and the applicability and indispensability of some mathematics to sciences.
Three new conversational texts appeared with the 2025 publication of volume 104 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe. This article introduces these conversations to an anglophone Heidegger studies readership and situates their profound dramatic and thematic interrelations with Heidegger’s previously published conversational texts. A significant concern of his work, Heidegger’s thinking of Gespräch stretches from at least the 1930s through the 1950s. Additionally, recent research has demonstrated its profound importance in the “Four Notebooks” material—drafts and notes for a book project Heidegger ultimately abandoned. Building upon this scholarship, this article offers an interpretation of the new conversations of GA 104 through exploring the significance of the figure of the Stranger in each text.
The contribution of this essay to two rather distinct academic literatures is two-fold. First, it reconceives the significance of Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect–seeing, which are generally taken to be revelatory of language narrowly conceived, and instead explores the connection between aspect–seeing—what Wittgenstein identifies as one “among the concepts of experience”—and the nature of experience itself. It does so by noting the importance to Wittgenstein of inventing “fictitious natural history” to reveal the connection between what we say and the kind of creature we are. It then examines other fictitious natural histories involving aspect–seeing (or its absence) that illustrate some “very general facts of nature”—facts that, the essay contends, help form the fundamental conditions for our finding one another intelligible. Second, the essay reconceives what constitutes the significance of jazz improvisation (and possibly other forms of spontaneous activity, though those are not explored here) by grounding this significance in these same very general facts of nature. It develops this thought by considering the implications of a different fictitious natural history involving musical performance, and through a remarkable if complex instance of an exemplary improvised jazz solo by Charlie Parker.
My essay draws attention to several little-known texts by Wittgenstein in which he addresses the processes which may precede a genocide. I seek to demonstrate that Wittgenstein’s thought contains resources that may be drawn on in confronting such ethical and political problems, and more specifically, in addressing issues that arise in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The resources I locate in Wittgenstein’s work include techniques for shifting attitudes and for redirecting attention, for unsettling interlocutors from their complacency and for leading them to transform their ways of seeing the problems they confront. In this connection, I reflect on the ethical and political efficacy of experiences of the uncanny. I also find in Wittgenstein the suggestion that moral philosophy calls for a mode of engagement which is essentially first-personal, and refuses to separate the biographical from the philosophical. In order to put this suggestion to the test, the essay is written in the idiom of autotheory.
This paper builds on insights in disability studies, queer theory, feminist philosophy, and critical phenomenology to reframe the meaning and value of ordinary, physical objects that are part of the worlds that people with dementia share with their close family and friends. I offer a queer crip critical phenomenological reframing of dementia’s objects to better understand and critique normalized structures of ableism that shape dementia experience, especially when first-person experience of dementia cannot be transparently communicated. I argue that such a reframing of dementia’s objects furthers understanding of how dementia is a disability justice issue and opens possibilities for more just care for people with dementia and members of their care communities.
This article explores the topic of digital sovereignty from the vantage point of the theory of politics, maintaining that AI disrupts the traditional Westphalian principle of state sovereignty. Drawing on the normative frame of Roberts and the comparative analyses of Larsen and Kurbalija, it illustrates the three competing philosophical models of digital self-determination: the liberal market model (United States), the techno-legal rights model (European Union), and the cyber-sovereignty model (China), and evaluates the normative presumption. It furthermore assesses these models in light of emerging legislative patterns in Vietnam, arguing that true digital sovereignty requires more than technical infrastructure but a philosophically cohesive conception of collective self-determination in an increasingly interconnected world. The article concludes with an outline for a relational account of digital sovereignty incorporating autonomy/interdependence.
Contemporary critiques of digital capitalism have examined behavioural data extraction, algorithmic governance, attention capture, and platform regulation, while debates about responsibility have generally focused further downstream on consent, moderation, and individual conduct. The relation between these two moments nevertheless remains under-conceptualised. Digital infrastructures increasingly help organise the pre-reflective conditions under which significance, urgency, and practical orientation emerge; yet conduct formed within these environments is subsequently attributed to users as though those formative conditions were neutral background. To conceptualise this relation, the article introduces affective heteronomy: the systematic organisation of affectively charged orientations from which conduct arises, whereby solicited responses are experienced, and later attributed, as the subject’s own. Anchored in Adorno’s account of freedom, unfreedom, and the bodily addendum, the argument proceeds through conceptual reconstruction and immanent critique, bringing that account into conversation with surveillance and data colonialism, societies of control, algorithmic governmentality, affect theory, platform governance, and neoliberal responsibilisation. The central problem is neither influence nor responsibility considered alone, but an asymmetry between formation and judgment: the same order that helps organise the conditions of conduct later disregards those conditions when demanding an account. The article concludes that critique cannot abolish the entanglement of freedom and unfreedom, but it can require practices of answerability to account for the infrastructures that help form the conduct they attribute.
In this note, it is shown, following up on a conjecture of Joyce Friedman and David Warren in 1980, and in contrast with what is commonly assumed, that the reduction of applied λ-terms in Richard Montague’s intensional logic does not need to conflict with other possible reductions. For a confluent reduction, one only needs to access more rules than just the λ-reduction alone. In addition, we need to draw from principles, such as λ-Application Distribution and λ-Argument Exploitation, and suitably adjust the concept of a normal form.
Recent years have seen explosive growth of both personal and professional use of large language models (LLMs). This article considers the impact of these developments on formal and informal cyber–social systems: the meta-systems created through integrative interactions between (groups of) humans and technological components. The analysis is based on Emergent Information Theory, a theoretical framework encompassing both biological and technological information systems. A qualitative distinction is demonstrated between LLM-based cyber–social systems and those involving other types of information technology such as expert systems and traditional fixed-function software. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential impact of this relatively new type of artificial intelligence on the future of cyber–social systems.
A common idea is that logical truth values are fixed independently of the objects to which logic is applied. Topos theory reveals a different possibility. In a topos, the available truth values and logical operations depend upon the structure of its objects’ subobjects (generalized parts). In fact, the familiar first-order semantics of sets appears as one instance of this more general phenomenon: it is a logic arising from a particular algebra of parts (namely, the algebra of subsets). This paper provides a detailed exposition of this idea for philosophers without prior training in category theory. Using sets and directed multigraphs as running examples, it explains how a topos’s internal logic—including its truth values—depends upon the structure of its subobjects.
This article undertakes a systematic comparative study of the critiques of modernity advanced by René Guénon (1886–1951) and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā (b. 1944). Both thinkers arrive at convergent diagnoses of modernity’s spiritual and ethical failures from fundamentally distinct intellectual starting points—Guénon from the universal perennialist metaphysics of primordial Tradition, Ṭāhā from Islamic philosophy of language, logic, and ethics. Drawing on Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times alongside Ṭāhā’s Rūḥ al-Ḥadātha (The Spirit of Modernity), Al-ʿAmal al-Dīnī wa-Tajdīd al-ʿAql (Religious Practice and the Renewal of Reason), and Rūḥ al-Dīn (The Spirit of Religion), and supported by secondary scholarship including Wael Hallaq’s Reforming Modernity (2019) and the edited volume Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm (2020), the article argues that the philosophical significance of their encounter lies not merely in their convergences—both condemn the reduction of human life to quantitative and instrumental horizons—but in the productive tension between Guénon’s initiatory-metaphysical model of restoration and Ṭāhā’s trusteeship-based ethic of engagement. Where Guénon describes Western civilization as a civilization of “moralism”—a shifting, interest-driven ethical veneer concealing the absence of genuine transcendent principles—Ṭāhā constructs an affirmative alternative through his concept of i’timāniyya (trusteeship), which grounds reason, speech, and knowledge in an ethics of responsibility toward God, others, and creation. The article further argues that these two thinkers together illuminate a double rupture at the heart of modernity: the loss of metaphysical orientation (the vertical rupture) and the collapse of ethical trusteeship (the horizontal rupture).
This article develops a systematic reinterpretation of Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a human-centered renewal of the theory of justice grounded in Adam Smith’s moral philosophy. The central claim is that the epistemological foundation of Sen’s theory does not primarily depends on Kantian normativism mediated by Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness, but rather on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, particularly it depends on the concepts of “sympathy”, “impartial spectator”, and justice interpreted as “a social practice”. Through a genealogical reconstruction that brings Aristotle, Adam Smith, and Amartya Sen into dialog, the paper argues that the capability approach can be interpreted as an alternative tradition to Enlightenment theories of justice, because oriented toward human person flourishing and the public evaluation of real freedoms. By overcoming the limits of classical liberal egalitarianism and transcendental institutionalism, the article shows that Sen’s formalization of extended sympathy within social choice theory enables a comparative, pluralistic, and non-dogmatic conception of justice, capable of assessing real social states without recourse to transcendental foundations. In line with the thematic focus of the Special Issue Adam Smith’s Philosophy and Modern Moral Economics, the paper highlights the implications of this interpretation for contemporary moral economics, economic justice, human development, and the role of markets in pluralistic democratic societies.
What is time? In this paper, I defend the view that time is change. In Section 1, I introduce the view that time is change and contrast it with an alternative view. In Section 2, I draw on recent developments in higher-order metaphysics to defend a particular theory of change, and therefore, of time. Finally, in Section 3, I respond to several objections to the view that time is change.
The traditional Chinese ecological aesthetics takes ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ [天人合一] as its philosophical core and constructs a cosmological landscape of coexistence and prosperity between humans and nature. Given the challenges of the global ecological crisis, this research draws on the ecological aesthetic wisdom of ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ to systematically explore its theoretical support and practical value for building a Beautiful China. By employing a mixed-method approach that integrates textual analysis, policy review, and multi-case comparative study, this research finds that in the process of building a Beautiful China, the traditional ecological aesthetic wisdom of ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ has achieved creative transformation and innovative development through the spatial creation of ‘Poetic Dwelling’, the green economy characterized by ‘Suitable for Employment’ and the ecological empowerment for the principle of ‘Suitable for Nurturing Life and Tourism’. This has paved a distinctive path for green development that integrates cultural subjectivity, ecological principles, and modern governance technologies. The discussion further emphasizes that intelligent ecological governance, leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, provides a key technological pathway for the contemporary transformation of ‘the Unity of Heaven and Humanity’ philosophy. This study provides a unique ecological and cultural foundation for building a Beautiful China and for global ecological protection.
This article explores the ecological crisis as a multidimensional phenomenon that engages humanity at an existential and therefore philosophical level. Starting from the recognition of the authentic human condition, as that of a being deeply rooted in an ecosystem whose balance sustains its well-being, it argues for moving beyond the anthropocentric fallacy that has driven humankind to pursue its dream of Promethean domination. Rather, the complex nature of the human being, at once biological and cultural, carries a message of universal solidarity. In ignoring this message, humanity has betrayed its true identity: that of a steward of life understood in its universal dimension. As a conscious part of nature, humanity is entrusted with caring for it, adopting a more-than-human ethics grounded in respect and love for the relationships that connect all things within the web of life. This calls for revisiting the anthropological question through a systemic lens, opening onto an alternative epistemological and ontological perspective, one that allows us to rethink humanity’s relationship with the entire ecosphere and imagine a different way of co-dwelling on Earth.
Background: Arthur Schopenhauer’s On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (in its revised 1847 edition) has been variously interpreted as an epistemological prelude to his metaphysics of will, as a continuation of Kantian transcendental philosophy, or as an early expression of Schopenhauer’s broader soteriological concerns. These readings often differ in emphasis but converge in treating the text primarily as subordinate to Schopenhauer’s later system or early intellectual development. Methods: This article offers a systematic textual reconstruction of the 1847 edition within the Kantian tradition of transcendental critique. It proceeds through close reading and conceptual analysis of Schopenhauer’s articulation of the principle of sufficient reason, situating individual argumentative steps within both Kantian and post-Kantian debates. The aim is not to deny the relevance of systematic or developmental readings, but to clarify the internal philosophical function of the text’s argumentative structure. Results: The analysis shows that Schopenhauer’s account of the principle of sufficient reason consistently operates as a critical and immanent framework for structuring possible explanation rather than as a metaphysical grounding principle. Across its four domains, the principle is differentiated into irreducible forms governing distinct types of object-relation, thereby constraining illegitimate transitions between epistemic justification and ontological explanation. This reading highlights (i) the internal differentiation of explanatory forms, (ii) the restriction of causal claims to intra-phenomenal relations, and (iii) the systematic limitation of metaphysical grounding strategies. Conclusions: On this reading, the Fourfold Root does not function primarily as a foundational doctrine for Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of will, but as a critical investigation into the limits of metaphysical explanation within experience. It thereby reconfigures metaphysical inquiry as a reflective clarification of the conditions under which explanation is possible, rather than as a doctrine of ultimate ontological grounds.
It is widely accepted that there is a modal condition on knowledge. There are two main candidates in the literature: safety and sensitivity. My goal in this paper is to revisit this debate in the context of anti-risk epistemology. This approach is meant to offer an independent way of determining the modal condition on knowledge (i.e., as opposed to simply pitching modal conditions against one another and seeing which one accommodates the wider range of cases). Interestingly, while anti-risk epistemology favors safety over traditional formulations of sensitivity, it also leads to a very specific way of formulating the safety condition on knowledge. Given that sensitivity might also be reformulated along anti-risk lines, a natural question to ask is where this leaves the debate between safety and sensitivity. I will be suggesting that the most plausible anti-risk formulation of sensitivity is equivalent to the corresponding formulation of safety. If that is right, then ultimately the moral to draw from anti-risk epistemology is not that it favors safety over sensitivity but that it leads to a formulation of the anti-risk condition on knowledge whereby this distinction collapses.
This article develops a conceptual account of semantic displacement in conversational AI. The central question concerns how agency is affected when systems do more than automate information retrieval and begin to supply the descriptions, classifications and normative cues through which users understand what they are doing. Drawing on philosophy of action, philosophy of language, hermeneutics, philosophy of technology and critical accounts of algorithmic mediation, this article reconstructs the relation between meaning and action as a condition of agency. Its methodological approach is conceptual and diagnostic, oriented toward clarifying a problem that becomes visible when established theories are brought together in relation to contemporary conversational systems. The article interprets these systems as operational semantic infrastructures that organize context-sensitive linguistic uptake within practical environments such as health, work, education, administration and everyday self-management. It then introduces semantic displacement as the condition in which action-relevant meanings become increasingly organized, prioritized and consolidated outside the agent’s own participatory interpretation. The argument contributes a vocabulary for distinguishing agency-enhancing semantic support from forms of semantic substitution that weaken interpretive participation. It concludes by proposing semantic sovereignty and interpretive contestability as normative ideals for human agency in AI-mediated environments. The argument specifies action as intentional conduct understood under socially available descriptions and cognition as situated interpretive sense-making rather than purely internal computation. It also clarifies three conditions under which semantic support becomes displacement: opaque semantic generation, practical stabilization and reduced interpretive contestability.
