Philosophies

15 pages, 247 KB

Open AccessArticle

by Kelly Becker

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050165 (registering DOI) - 18 Sep 2026

One major strand of post-Gettier epistemology concentrates on shoring up the connection between belief and truth by postulating a condition that includes a modal requirement. This approach abandons the traditional emphasis on reasons. A second major strand maintains the focus on reasons, aiming [...] Read more.

One major strand of post-Gettier epistemology concentrates on shoring up the connection between belief and truth by postulating a condition that includes a modal requirement. This approach abandons the traditional emphasis on reasons. A second major strand maintains the focus on reasons, aiming to distinguish those that are sufficient for knowledge from those that are not. The first strand has generated an endless parade of counterexamples. Some version of the second strand may be true but insufficiently informative. For example, perhaps knowledge really is undefeated justified true belief, but what is a genuine defeater, and what is justification? An early entrant in the post-Gettier competition, Fred Dretske, proposed a modal requirement that ties reasons, not belief, to the truth, thus incorporating key components of both strands. Drawing solely on resources in Dretske’s presentation, I develop his notion of conclusive reasons in an account of knowledge that I call reasons-based Dretskean sensitivity (RDS), which resolves most, if not all, of the major problems afflicting its wayward cousin, Nozickean sensitivity, and indeed many other epistemological difficulties. This paper lays out the RDS resolution of Hawthorne’s lottery puzzle. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Knowledge and Conditionals—Reliability, Probability, Counterfactuals, and Relevance)

8 pages, 196 KB

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Cavell and Deleuze: Genre as Medium, Death as Image

by Susana Viegas

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 164; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050164 - 16 Sep 2026

Abstract

This paper proposes the concept of the “death-image” as a point of convergence between the film-philosophies of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze. While Cavell and Deleuze are rarely brought together—given Cavell’s emphasis on ordinary language, skepticism, and ethics, and Deleuze’s focus on ontology, [...] Read more.

This paper proposes the concept of the “death-image” as a point of convergence between the film-philosophies of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze. While Cavell and Deleuze are rarely brought together—given Cavell’s emphasis on ordinary language, skepticism, and ethics, and Deleuze’s focus on ontology, becoming, and impersonal temporality—death reveals a productive intersection between their respective approaches to cinema. Indeed, death simultaneously raises ethical questions concerning relation and acknowledgment, central to Cavell, and ontological questions concerning time, disappearance, and the limits of representation, central to Deleuze. Building on Cavell’s distinction between genre-as-cycle and genre-as-medium, the paper argues that film genres do not merely represent death differently but organize distinct forms of death-images: cinematic limit-images in which continuity falters, action is suspended, and the image confronts finitude. Through an analysis of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s melodrama Three Colors: Blue (1993) as a post-classical reconfiguration of this genre-medium, the paper examines how death-images transform from structures of sacrifice and deferred acknowledgment into images of traumatic grief, suspension, and survival after loss. In doing so, it proposes the death-image as a conceptual bridge between Cavellian acknowledgment and Deleuzian theories of cinematic time. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Film-Philosophies of Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze)

18 pages, 396 KB

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A Montagovian Version of Kaplan’s Frege-Churches

by Thomas Ede Zimmermann

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 163; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050163 - 15 Sep 2026

Abstract

This paper compares two approaches to intensionality within possible-worlds semantics between which Montague seems to have wavered: Frege’s distinction between extensional and intensional environments and Russell’s one-layered proposition-based account. It is shown that the Fregean framework can be embedded within the more restrictive [...] Read more.

This paper compares two approaches to intensionality within possible-worlds semantics between which Montague seems to have wavered: Frege’s distinction between extensional and intensional environments and Russell’s one-layered proposition-based account. It is shown that the Fregean framework can be embedded within the more restrictive Russelllian ontology by a variation of David Kaplan’s Russelling construction that is fully definable in Montague’s intensional type logic and lends itself to compositional semantic analysis. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Logical Linguistic Legacy of Montague Grammar)

27 pages, 7529 KB

Open AccessArticle

Reconstructing the History of Organometallic Chemistry for Chemistry Education: A Laudanian Epistemological Perspective

by Alexander Cárdenas-Acero, Carlos J. Mosquera and Edwin A. Baquero

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 162; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050162 - 13 Sep 2026

Abstract

When interpreting the evolution of science, it is essential not only to know its history in terms of the foundational facts or the advances in the global theories that define it but also to understand how the subordinate theories, methodologies, and particular values [...] Read more.

When interpreting the evolution of science, it is essential not only to know its history in terms of the foundational facts or the advances in the global theories that define it but also to understand how the subordinate theories, methodologies, and particular values within a field of knowledge configure themselves over the years. Insofar as this is achieved, it is possible to think of history and philosophy as optimal didactic tools for teaching science. Much more so in subjects such as Organometallic Chemistry, where solid foundations can ensure improvements in the teaching-learning process in college education. In this sense, the present article aims to perform a Micro-Theoretical analysis of the history of this discipline in terms of the research lines that have shaped it (i.e., Metal-CO, Metal-Olefin, Metal-Alkyl, Metal-Carbene, Sandwich Type). For this purpose, relevant aspects from each line are analyzed using an adaptation of Laudan’s Research Traditions (RT) model. This analysis is complemented by a brief discussion of the epistemological relevance of historical reconstruction regarding contemporary challenges in chemical progress. Finally, some comments are presented as conclusions and perspectives. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Semio-Logics: From Atoms to Anatomy)

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53 pages, 43074 KB

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Ingressing Minds: Causal, Non-Physical Patterns In-Form Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments

by Michael Levin

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 161; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050161 - 9 Sep 2026

Abstract

I argue that the emerging sciences of synthetic morphology and diverse intelligence suggest non-physicalist models of mind and show how they can be empirically investigated. Whence the anatomical, physiological, molecular-biological, and behavioral properties of engineered new beings that have never before existed, and [...] Read more.

I argue that the emerging sciences of synthetic morphology and diverse intelligence suggest non-physicalist models of mind and show how they can be empirically investigated. Whence the anatomical, physiological, molecular-biological, and behavioral properties of engineered new beings that have never before existed, and do not have a history of selection? Understanding, predicting, and guiding new forms of life and mind requires characterizing a structured latent space of patterns. Developmental, synthetic, and behavioral biology should take seriously, and exploit, the kinds of non-physicalist ideas that are already a staple of Platonist mathematics. I propose the following hypotheses. (1) Patterns in this space span a highly variable degree of agency, comprising a spectrum ranging from static truths studied by mathematicians to active ones studied by behavioral scientists (i.e., some patterns on the same spectrum as mathematical truths are kinds of minds). (2) The relationship between mind and body is the same as the relationship between causally instructive mathematical facts and physics. (3) Living beings have no monopoly on the “free lunches” provided by the ingression of these patterns into the physical world. While traditional computationalist views of living and cognitive systems are insufficient, my framework erases artificial distinctions between organisms and machines, framing all physical constructs (natural or engineered) as being, to various degrees, in-formed by patterns from the latent space. I sketch a research program, already begun, inspired by these ideas. Such frameworks, while contradicting long-held assumptions of both mechanists and organicists, could have many implications for evolutionary biology, regenerative medicine, AI, and the ethics of synthbiosis with the forthcoming immense diversity of morally important beings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Inquiry into Intelligence)

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21 pages, 282 KB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Environmental Design in AI

by Leo Peruzzo Junior

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 160; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050160 - 9 Sep 2026

Abstract

This article advances the thesis that the development of Artificial Intelligence, far from representing an absolute rupture with nature, progressively incorporates characteristics inherent to environmental design. Rather than emerging as a purely abstract creation or something detached from the natural world, many AI [...] Read more.

This article advances the thesis that the development of Artificial Intelligence, far from representing an absolute rupture with nature, progressively incorporates characteristics inherent to environmental design. Rather than emerging as a purely abstract creation or something detached from the natural world, many AI systems are conceived through the observation of structures, behaviors, and adaptive strategies already present in living organisms and ecosystems. In other words, this means that AI can be understood as a kind of technical continuation of environmental solutions refined by evolution itself. The article further argues that AI design increasingly follows an ecological logic in which intelligent systems respond to environmental conditions, adjust to change, and expand human capacities through biological references. Finally, it is argued that Artificial Intelligence cannot be adequately understood through the traditional opposition between nature and artifact. Because it emerges from the convergence of biological inspiration, technical infrastructures, and informational processes, AI occupies a hybrid ontological position that differs both from living organisms and from classical artifacts, thereby requiring new conceptual categories within the philosophy of technology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue More-than-Human Ethics: Rethinking Nature, Dwelling, and Responsibility)

22 pages, 282 KB

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‘No Alarms and No Surprises’: On Normal Abnormalities and an Abnormal Normality

by Maren Wehrle

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 159; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050159 - 7 Sep 2026

Abstract

On the one hand, disruptive or alienating experiences are quite common, experienced at one time or another by everyone. While they might seem to be exceptional or specifically confined to the elderly, the ill, or the disabled, everyone experiences illness at some point, [...] Read more.

On the one hand, disruptive or alienating experiences are quite common, experienced at one time or another by everyone. While they might seem to be exceptional or specifically confined to the elderly, the ill, or the disabled, everyone experiences illness at some point, and many experience old age and disability. In this sense, these disruptive experiences are ‘normal’ phases of human life, which can thus be described as ‘normal abnormalities’, a term inspired by the reflections of Simone de Beauvoir and Gail Weiss on aging and disability.). On the other hand, neoliberal Capitalism, Consumerism, and Technological Enhancement ideologies view aging, illness, and disability as personal failures and threats to normality. This leads to a politics that structurally discriminates against, excludes, or stigmatizes those affected by these conditions. However, the represented ‘normality’ of these ideologies—expressed by the image of a strong, independent, active, fully functioning, young subject—is itself an ‘abnormal’ (i.e., pathological) ideal, since it does not account for the temporal, vulnerable, and relational nature of all embodiment. It puts marginalized or non-conforming bodies in precarious situations, and, in turn, numbs those who are (still) able to conform to the plight of those who are not. Instead of being responsive to, and in solidarity with, the vulnerable, they are tired and worn out by false ideals and capitalist promises, and find themselves begging for a quiet life with ‘no alarms, and no surprises, please’. How can we embrace the ambiguity of our existence and the normal abnormalities that come with it, instead of denying them? Is there such a thing as a shared normality that cannot be reduced either to dominant social health norms, or to a supposedly objective nature, or to mere individual experience? In this paper, I investigate how an abnormal normality (represented normality) impacts the lived experience (lived normality) of those living and suffering from normal abnormalities (i.e., their lived normality) in different ways in aging, sickness, and disability. In this context, I want to argue for the relevance of the making and unmaking of an intersubjectively shared normality. Normality, in this sense, is the aim of a collective praxis that is based upon a common bodily vulnerability but also respects the specific differences and alterity of every situated bodily experience (of illness, disability, or aging). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Critical Phenomenologies of Illness and Normality)

20 pages, 275 KB

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Criticism as Perspicuous Representation: Wittgenstein, Critical Reasons, and the Cognitive Value of Literature

by Giovanni Galli

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050158 - 6 Sep 2026

Abstract

Two debates in the analytic philosophy of literature have run in parallel: one asks how literary criticism can be rational when critical reasons neither entail nor inductively support the readings they back (Isenberg, Sibley); the other asks whether literature has cognitive value, and [...] Read more.

Two debates in the analytic philosophy of literature have run in parallel: one asks how literary criticism can be rational when critical reasons neither entail nor inductively support the readings they back (Isenberg, Sibley); the other asks whether literature has cognitive value, and is stalled on a dilemma, since extractable truths are banal and non-trivial ones unevidenced (Stolnitz, Lamarque and Olsen, Currie). This paper argues that Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-seeing dissolve both problems jointly, and that each dissolution is incomplete without the other. Criticism, I argue, is not proto-theory but the production of perspicuous representations: arrangements of what already lies open to view, assembled reminders whose characteristic success is the dawning of an aspect rather than assent to a conclusion. Correspondingly, the literature’s cognitive yield is aspectual rather than propositional: a transformation of perception and an enriched responsiveness to situations, motives, and words, in which meaning is not extracted from the text but lived in the reader’s altered practice. Criticism is the institutionalized practice by which such dawning is occasioned, disciplined, and transmitted (the care of a shared sensibility), and the aspectual character of literary understanding explains why critical reasoning must take the reminder-assembling form it does. The two debates are two descriptions of one practice, sustained by public criteria within forms of life. The account is developed through the critical history of Dickinson’s “My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun” and defended against the objections of quietism, interpretive relativism, and empirical skepticism. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)

16 pages, 240 KB

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Rethinking Mathematical Knowledge: A Nativist Approach

by Anan Zhou and Yue Liu

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 157; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050157 - 4 Sep 2026

Abstract

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: [...] Read more.

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. Full article

22 pages, 302 KB

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What Computation Cannot Be: Linguistic Colonization, Formal Limits, and a Taxonomy of Irreducibly Human Faculties

by Iñigo Navarro-Rubio Coello de Portugal, Miguel Rumayor and Gonzalo Génova

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 156; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050156 - 3 Sep 2026

Abstract

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 [...] Read more.

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. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Foundations of Artificial Intelligence)

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19 pages, 335 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Strange(r) Conversations of GA 104

by Katherine Davies

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 155; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050155 - 1 Sep 2026

Abstract

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 [...] Read more.

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. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Interpreting the New Heidegger)

16 pages, 258 KB

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Saying, Showing, and Knowing: Epistemological Dimensions of Wittgenstein’s Response to Scepticism in On Certainty

by Anne G. J. Newstead

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 154; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050154 - 30 Aug 2026

Abstract

This paper evaluates a certain kind of response to philosophical scepticism that is broadly inspired by Wittgenstein’s discussion in On Certainty (OC). Special attention is paid to the idea that we show our certainty and belief in particular assumptions through our actions, practices, [...] Read more.

This paper evaluates a certain kind of response to philosophical scepticism that is broadly inspired by Wittgenstein’s discussion in On Certainty (OC). Special attention is paid to the idea that we show our certainty and belief in particular assumptions through our actions, practices, and language-games, and that due to their global, impractical, and largely context-free nature, sceptical doubts are not genuinely meaningful doubts. How successful is such a response? Wittgenstein’s own philosophy helps us to evaluate this type of response to scepticism. It is shown that Wittgenstein was well aware that a mere appeal to actions or practices, unaccompanied by a contextualist approach to meaning, would be insufficient as a satisfying response to scepticism. Moreover, the main thrust of Wittgenstein’s response in OC largely departs from foundationalism in that it is not an attempt to provide a ‘justification’ of our beliefs as with traditional forms of foundationalism. For this reason, this rationally reconstructed Wittgensteinian response to scepticism does not fall prey to the ‘myth of the given’ with which foundationalists are sometimes accused. Thus, this Wittgensteinian response to scepticism is a robust and successful one. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wittgenstein’s 'On Certainty'—Between Interpretative Questions and Theoretical Developments)

10 pages, 192 KB

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When Knowledge Ceases to Be Scarce: Pragmatism, Human Growth, and the Purpose of Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Dung Xuan Bui

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 153; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050153 - 27 Aug 2026

Abstract

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) confronts education with a question that is philosophical rather than technical: not how schools should use AI, but what education is ultimately for once knowledge is no longer scarce. This article addresses that question through a [...] Read more.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) confronts education with a question that is philosophical rather than technical: not how schools should use AI, but what education is ultimately for once knowledge is no longer scarce. This article addresses that question through a single, extended argument rather than an empirical report. It proceeds from a historical observation, that the modern transmission model of schooling rested on the scarcity of knowledge, and shows, drawing on the pragmatist philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and above all John Dewey, that AI dissolves this scarcity and thereby reopens the deepest question about the aims of education. The article’s central claim is that the most consequential change AI brings to education is not technological but teleological: as knowledge shifts from a scarce resource to a pervasive condition, it can no longer function as the destination of education and must be repositioned as a condition for the fuller aim of human formation. To clarify what “the full development of the human person” means, an idea too often asserted rather than defined, the article brings Dewey’s concept of growth into dialogue with the German tradition of Bildung, with Gert Biesta’s account of subjectification, and with Nick Bostrom’s Deep Utopia, whose “purpose problem” sharpens, by pushing to the limit, what remains distinctively human when instrumental tasks are automated. The argument closes by weighing and answering four objections. In doing so, the article extends pragmatist philosophy of education into the age of AI and proposes that the value of education be judged by its capacity to form persons who can use knowledge and AI to judge wisely, act responsibly, and keep developing in a changing world. The Vietnamese context provides a particularly relevant setting for this discussion, as the country’s strong commitment to educational development and digital transformation offers an important opportunity to place emerging AI capabilities in the service of human growth and the broader purposes of education. Full article

14 pages, 270 KB

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The Adventures of Seeing-as in Cinema: A Philosophical Investigation Between Phenomenology and Grammar

by Raphaël Pierrès

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050152 - 27 Aug 2026

Abstract

This article offers a philosophical investigation into the phenomenon of seeing-as within the experience of cinema, through a dialogue between phenomenology and Wittgenstein’s grammatical method. It seeks to question the myth of direct access to an experience independent of language and technical apparatuses, [...] Read more.

This article offers a philosophical investigation into the phenomenon of seeing-as within the experience of cinema, through a dialogue between phenomenology and Wittgenstein’s grammatical method. It seeks to question the myth of direct access to an experience independent of language and technical apparatuses, and instead proposes an analysis of the complex relations between language, perception, and human practices. The study first examines the relationship between seeing-as and intentionality, questioning the possibility of a phenomenological account of aspect perception. Although seeing-as appears close to certain analyses of form (Gestalt), particularly because of its interpretative character, cinema reveals the limits of an approach grounded solely in natural perception. The cinematic image introduces a technical, symbolic, and temporal dimension that transforms our way of seeing. Through an analysis of Rear Window, the article argues that film does not merely reproduce a perceptual experience: the apparatuses of recording and editing produce meanings of their own. Cinema thus becomes a privileged field for examining how our ways of perceiving are shaped by techniques, signs, and forms of life. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)

24 pages, 783 KB

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Process Before Events: An Ontology of Motion and Spacetime

by Ori Belkind

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 151; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050151 - 25 Aug 2026

Abstract

This paper develops a process ontology of spacetime grounded in the primacy of motion. Standard interpretations of relativity are commonly understood in terms of a four-dimensional manifold of events, with motion represented by world-lines connecting temporally ordered event-points. Although mathematically and empirically successful, [...] Read more.

This paper develops a process ontology of spacetime grounded in the primacy of motion. Standard interpretations of relativity are commonly understood in terms of a four-dimensional manifold of events, with motion represented by world-lines connecting temporally ordered event-points. Although mathematically and empirically successful, this framework encourages an event-based metaphysics in which motion is derivative and temporal becoming plays no fundamental ontological role. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Foundations in Flux: Process Metaphysics and Its Scientific Applications)

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14 pages, 200 KB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Health

by Talia Welsh

Philosophies 2026, 11(5), 150; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11050150 - 25 Aug 2026

Abstract

Phenomenologies of health remain relatively infrequent compared to phenomenologies of illness. This paper addresses this lack by first summarizing some key elements of phenomenologies of health. First, health typically resides in the background of our experience. Second, health requires a creative, adaptive capacity [...] Read more.

Phenomenologies of health remain relatively infrequent compared to phenomenologies of illness. This paper addresses this lack by first summarizing some key elements of phenomenologies of health. First, health typically resides in the background of our experience. Second, health requires a creative, adaptive capacity to life’s variations. The paper then explores prescriptive critical phenomenology of health. It highlights key elements of treatment to produce health that avoid a reductive medicalized approach. The paper examines the social and political determinants of health as key elements of a critical approach to health. Finally, it argues for support of public health as essential to questions of health to counteract the contemporary view of health as solely a personal, rather than contextual, matter. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Critical Phenomenologies of Illness and Normality)

14 pages, 229 KB

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“Stifling Her Cries”: Doing Justice to Sexual Violence with Coetzee’s Disgrace and Wittgenstein’s Voice of Pain

by Emma Williams

Philosophies 2026, 11(4), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11040149 - 20 Aug 2026

Abstract

The failures of securing justice for survivors of sexual violence remain a central concern in contemporary feminist thought. Much recent work has addressed these failures through the frameworks of epistemic and hermeneutical injustice, foregrounding the role of voice in shaping recognition and response. [...] Read more.

The failures of securing justice for survivors of sexual violence remain a central concern in contemporary feminist thought. Much recent work has addressed these failures through the frameworks of epistemic and hermeneutical injustice, foregrounding the role of voice in shaping recognition and response. This paper shares that focus on voice but seeks to identify a difficulty that such debates do not fully capture. Drawing on J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace alongside the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, it explores how literature and philosophy together can illuminate this problem. Focusing on the university tribunal scene in Disgrace, which appears to function effectively and deliver justice, the paper argues that something nonetheless remains inadequate. Through a Wittgensteinian account of pain and its expression, the paper comes to show how the tribunal exemplifies a deeper failure—not one of discrediting or disbelieving, but an inability to respond to the human voice of pain as such. Literature and philosophy hereby open a different way of understanding the limits of approaches that prioritise legibility, evidence, and procedural resolution as a way of responding to sexual violence. Rather than securing justice, such approaches risk leaving something essential untouched: what it would mean to answer to another’s suffering. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)

21 pages, 302 KB

Open AccessArticle

Aspect–Seeing, Facts of Nature, and Jazz Improvisation

by William Day

Philosophies 2026, 11(4), 148; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11040148 - 19 Aug 2026

Abstract

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 [...] Read more.

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. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Dawn of Aspects: Wittgenstein and the Life of Meaning)

30 pages, 290 KB

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Beyond Substance: Contemporary Science and the Case for a Generative Relational Ontology

by Erik Axelkrans

Philosophies 2026, 11(4), 147; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies11040147 - 18 Aug 2026

Abstract

Contemporary science has achieved extraordinary explanatory and predictive success, yet its ontological interpretation remains unsettled. This paper argues that one source of this instability lies in the inherited assumption that reality is fundamentally composed of independently existing substances. While this picture was historically [...] Read more.

Contemporary science has achieved extraordinary explanatory and predictive success, yet its ontological interpretation remains unsettled. This paper argues that one source of this instability lies in the inherited assumption that reality is fundamentally composed of independently existing substances. While this picture was historically fruitful, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain as a general ontology in light of three converging pressures: the relational and structural character of modern physics, the problem of emergence across levels of organization and the unresolved status of consciousness within physicalist metaphysics. The paper first examines why substance ontology has become unstable as an implicit background framework for scientific interpretation. It then argues that existing post-substance approaches, including ontic structural realism, relational interpretations of physics and process ontology, each capture important aspects of the required shift and contain important resources for moving beyond substance ontology. The present paper does not attempt to adjudicate these traditions as a whole. It instead identifies a specific generative requirement: an adequate post-substance ontology must explain how stable physical, organizational and experiential domains can be jointly situated within a common ontological framework. This requirement is identified as a generative gap in the argument developed here. In response, the paper argues that a post-substance ontology must be not only structural, relational or processual but generative. It must explain how effective objects stabilize, how levels of organization arise, how spacetime coordination becomes available, and how physical structure and conscious experience can belong to the same reality without reduction or fragmentation. The paper develops a generative-projection hypothesis that takes the derivative status of spacetime as its point of entry and introduces a generative domain, projection, invariance and compatibility as conceptual tools for articulating this ontological direction. The hypothesis is presented as preliminary rather than as a completed metaphysical system. Full article

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