The 1st International Online Conference of the Journal Philosophies  ^†

1. Introduction

In an era of unprecedented technological advancements in intelligent and cognitive technologies, the concept of intelligence—both human and artificial—stands at the center. The journal Philosophies held an online conference on the subject of “Intelligent Inquiry into Intelligence” on 10–14 June 2025. This event was designed to transcend the superficial discourse often found in popular media and to focus on the essence and implications of intelligence in its multiple contexts, transcending the most common comparisons of human and technological capacities. Some of these contexts, such as artificial intelligence or advanced alien intelligence, generate interest among the general audience, while others are familiar only to a narrow group of experts (e.g., intelligence characterizing multiple forms of life starting from a cellular level). The conference sought to establish the conceptual and methodological foundations for productive interactions and cooperation between diverse directions of inquiry and to foster a thoughtful and rigorous examination of intelligence, supported by interdisciplinary research and philosophical reflection.

Having become ubiquitous—and increasingly charged with evaluative and cultural weight—the term “intelligence,” once a straightforward word, is now overshadowed by buzzwords and misconceptions. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in 1881, “Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords […]” [1] p. 41. Substituting “catchwords” for “buzzwords,” the same can be said today.

This conference aimed to cut through the confusions and myths that currently surround AI and intelligence in general, promoting informed discussions that have the potential to shape future policies, educational frameworks, and wider society. By bringing together leading philosophers and researchers from diverse fields, the organizers sought to build a solid foundation for the study of intelligence that moves beyond the hype and toward profound insights, striving to achieve a deeper, more nuanced understanding of intelligence in our rapidly changing world.

Following the mission of the journal hosting the conference, Philosophies, the general goal of the conference was to promote mutually stimulating interactions between philosophical reflection, scientific research, and other forms of intellectual inquiry, including diverse forms of expression for philosophical reflection. The subject of these diverse inquiries was intelligence considered within the broad context of the following themes: information, knowledge, rationality, logic, computation, complexity, creativity, autonomy, agency, life, cognition, and consciousness. None of these ideas have yet achieved the status of a clear, uniformly defined, and well-understood concept that could be used as a steppingstone in the study of the others. Instead, they each constitute part of a family of concepts—that is, a mutually interdependent network. Even information, which is typically considered more general than the other ideas on the list and seems to fit the role of a “genus for definitions” rather well, has multiple competing conceptualizations and a history of unsettled attempts to equip it with semantic characteristics.

A secondary but closely related goal supporting the integration of diverse forms of inquiry into intelligence was to prevent the confusion so typically created by the diverse contexts of these inquiries. It is a popular but dangerous assumption that in the absence of definitions of concepts that escape rigorous analysis, we can use their common-sense understanding. The danger is in the illusion of commonality. Empirical studies have shown that common sense turns out not to be very common (not in the Voltairean sense of its rarity, but as the lack of uniform understanding) [2]. Thus, the claim that common-sense communication secures mutual understanding may have been an old illusion already known to Socrates: the use of the same words does not imply the same meaning. Here, philosophy helps in finding, if not commonly accepted definitions, then interpretive methods of hermeneutics.

The organizers of this conference attempted to bring to the attention of all participants the need for creating a common ground that incorporates intelligence (artificial and natural, including human) and its entire network of related concepts, including information, knowledge, rationality, logic, computation, complexity, creativity, autonomy, agency, life, cognition, awareness, and consciousness. This means that whenever these concepts are employed in the study of intelligence, it is essential that we do not proceed under the assumption that their meaning is self-explanatory. This conference had as its primary goal the bringing together of diverse perspectives on intelligence, and this means that its relations to other relevant concepts are of special importance. All studies on the configuration of concepts have been invited to contribute to this goal.

2. Highlights of the Program

The program of the conference was designed to encourage interactions and discussions, with its events scheduled around the keynote lecture and invited talks, which all culminated in panel discussions with ample time for all participants to ask questions or make comments. The program of each day of the conference has been focused on the day’s distinctive theme (from the list below), reflected in the subjects of the daily panel discussions:

• AI for Philosophy;
• Intelligence Beyond Anthropomorphization: Intelligence and Life;
• Critical Discussions of AI, Values, Ethics;
• Intelligence Beyond Anthropomorphization: Widening the Perspective;
• From Human to Artificial Intelligence.

The five themes for each day of the conference were derived from the common motifs of the keynote lecture and invited talks, and the shorter contributing presentations were scheduled to correspond to the theme of the day. In this way, each day represented a continuous, coherent discussion of some aspects of intelligence.

To report on all the contributions to this conference would exceed the scope of this Editorial. Instead, we will present only the keynote and invited speakers and the titles of their talks. The keynote lecture was as follows:

• Stephen Wolfram: “Computational Foundations of Minds and the Universe.” This lecture was followed by a discussion moderated by Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic.

Below are the invited speakers and the talks they gave, listed in alphabetical order.

• Selmer Bringsjord: “Variegated Common Sense Versus the Science of Universal Intelligence, When the Aliens Arrive”
• David Gamez: “Intelligence and Consciousness in Natural and Artificial Systems”
• Michael Levin: “Mind Everywhere: Recognizing and Communicating with Unconventional Intelligence”
• Lorenzo Magnani: “Abductive Intelligence and Creativity—The Role of Eco-Cognitive Openness and Situatedness”
• Marcin Milkowski: “No Intelligence without Representation”
• Vincent C. Müller (with Guido Löhr): “AI Philosophy: A New Philosophical Method”
• Diane Proudfoot: “Four Myths about Turing’s View of Intelligence and His Test”
• Oron Shagrir: “The Mathematical Objection to Artificial (Machine) Intelligence”
• Jordi Vallverdú: “Cognitive Romanticism: Humans are Worse than Stochastic Parrots!”
• Hector Zenil: “Why LLMs Can’t Escape the Pattern-Matching Prison if They Don’t Learn Recursive Compression”

The invited speakers, joined by Daniel Boyd, Edward A. Lee, Rafal Maciag, and Sheri Markose, participated as panelists in daily discussions moderated by the Conference Co-Chairs, Marcin J. Schroeder and Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic.

3. Dissemination of the Content of Contributions

All conference events, including the keynote lecture and the following keynote discussion, invited lectures, panel discussions, contributed talks, and short poster presentations, have been video recorded, and the recordings are accessible at the conference website, https://sciforum.net/event/IOCPh2025. The Book of Abstracts, including all the extended abstracts of invited and contributed presentations, can be accessed at https://sciforum.net/event/IOCPh2025?section=#BookofAbstracts. The posters accepted at the conference can be accessed via the Poster Gallery on the conference web page.

Presenters were invited to submit their papers either to this volume of Proceedings or to the conference Special Issue of Philosophies, which is still open for submissions (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/philosophies/special_issues/JVHU7V3T97). The opportunity to submit papers to Proceedings was open only to conference presenters, and these were intended to serve primarily as reports of work presented at the event. The Special Issue of Philosophies, which is open to all authors working on the conference topic, accommodates more extensive studies, including those continued after the conference or developed independently.

4. Statement of Peer Review

By submitting this volume, the editors certify that all papers have been peer-reviewed. Expert referees reviewed all papers to the expected standards of Proceedings. This review was independent from that of the extended abstracts for conference presentation.

• Type of peer review: single-blind.
• Conference submission management system: SuSy.
• Number of submissions sent for review: 24.
• Number of submissions accepted: 21.
• Number of submissions published: 21.
• Acceptance rate (number of submissions accepted/number of submissions received): 0.875.
• Total number of reviewers involved: 38.
• Peer-review process and regulations: Reviews were conducted in a single-blind manner, with the entire procedure carried out through the MDPI SuSy platform. At least one (but typically two or three) review report(s) was collected for each paper, and the evaluations were carried out by qualified independent experts.

The authors made sufficient revisions based on the review reports. The final decision was made by the chairs of the conference.

The organizers of the conference would like to use this opportunity to express their gratitude to the peer reviewers for their contribution to the quality of the published papers through their extensive, valuable comments and suggestions.