The First International Online Conference Special Issue of the Journal Philosophies: “Intelligent Inquiry into Intelligence” Contributing to the 2025 IS4SI Summit

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to invite submissions to the Special Issue (SI) of Philosophies, titled “Intelligent Inquiry into Intelligence”. This Issue continues and expands a dynamic collegial effort to establish strong philosophical foundations for the study of intelligence—an area of profound relevance across science, technology, culture, and society.

This Special Issue follows the success of the 1st International Online Conference of the Journal Philosophies, held on June 10–14, 2025, which brought together an interdisciplinary community of scholars, researchers, and thinkers to explore intelligence through diverse conceptual lenses and methodological approaches. With its central theme, “Intelligence: Embracing the Diversity of its Conceptualizations and Study Methodologies”, the event offered an engaging platform for rich dialogue and discovery.

Recordings of the keynote and invited talks, panel discussions, and presentations—as well as the Book of Extended Abstracts and the upcoming conference proceedings volume—document a truly inspiring and wide-ranging event. These materials are available on the conference website: (The 1st International Online Conference of the Journal Philosophies - Intelligent Inquiry into Intelligence-Contributing to the 2025 IS4SI Summit,).

Building on this strong foundation, this Special Issue offers an opportunity to deepen and extend the vibrant conversation initiated at the conference. We invite submissions in two main directions.

Expanding the Exploration
The conference programme, shaped by the research interests and contributions of its participants, explored five central themes. Yet the original Call for Contributions (available at: e52d4bedb77f7d2102f8c6d67765050f.pdf) included more than twenty compelling topics, many of which remain open for further exploration. We welcome submissions that address not only the themes already addressed at the conference, but also additional themes described in the original Call for Contributions, the introduction of new philosophical or scientific perspectives, or the proposal of novel conceptual frameworks for understanding intelligence.

Continuing the Dialogue
The discussions and insights shared during the conference have already inspired continued work and new ideas. We invite submissions that build upon those presentations—whether through expanded analysis, new results, or interdisciplinary synthesis. While previously published proceedings papers are not eligible for inclusion in the SI, authors are welcome to submit substantially developed extensions of that work, or entirely new contributions inspired by the conference experience.

The work presented at the conference will soon be published in the form of limited edition proceedings papers in a Special Issue of the journal (MDPI) Proceedings (currently in preparation). This SI is intended as a venue to publish work on the subject of intelligence, possibly published in the proceedings of the conference, but continued and expanded afterwards, along with work by the authors who might not have been contributors to the conference, but who are engaged in the work on its subject.

All submissions to this SI must be original, unpublished works, and therefore papers already published in the proceedings cannot be considered for publication in the SI. However, this does not preclude the submission of substantially extended papers reporting the continuation of the authors’ work after the conference. Moreover, authors who published the results of their work presented at the conference in the proceedings may consider the submission of a paper on another topic to the SI.

Prof. Dr. Marcin J. Schroeder
Prof. Dr. Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• the epistemological status of intelligence
• intelligence and creativity
• intelligence and consciousness