Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020063

Authors: Eduardo Duque-Dussán

The problem of meaning in an apparently indifferent universe has long been a central concern of existential philosophy. Classical existentialism addressed this question by emphasizing human freedom, responsibility, and the creation of meaning in the absence of transcendental guarantees, yet it largely remained framed within an anthropocentric horizon. This article introduces the concept of cosmic existentialism as a philosophical framework that situates human existence within the broader context of a scientifically understood cosmos. Through conceptual philosophical analysis, the paper reinterprets key existential categories such as angst, authenticity, and freedom in light of contemporary cosmological perspectives. Within this framework, the indifference of the universe is interpreted as a fundamental existential condition within the cosmological framework adopted in this study that reveals the fragility and contingency of human life. The analysis suggests that recognizing humanity’s lack of cosmic privilege does not lead to nihilism but instead allows meaning to be interpreted as a local, finite, and relational phenomenon. Cosmic existentialism therefore offers a philosophical perspective that integrates existential reflection with modern cosmological understanding and provides a framework for thinking about human existence within an indifferent universe. This standpoint is articulated through several principles, including cosmic indifference, the existential locality of meaning, and the contingency of human existence within the cosmos. Rather than emphasizing the scale of the universe itself, the present analysis suggests that the philosophical significance of cosmology lies in the removal of any privileged standpoint from which human existence can be interpreted.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020062

Authors: Donald A. Landes Kathleen Hulley

From hours spent in waiting rooms amidst uncertainty to the experience of recovering from medical treatments, the lived time of illness is marked by intervals of suspended sense. By disorienting our relation to the future, illness disrupts and reconfigures lived time from within, shaping how we navigate our intersubjective milieu and make sense of our unfolding lives. In this paper, we introduce the phenomenological concept of “protentional friction” as a way of understanding these experiences. Drawing upon Simone de Beauvoir’s work on subjectivity and becoming, alongside Henri Bergson’s and Eugène Minkowski’s emphasis on durée and élan, we demonstrate how protentional friction allows us to negotiate the tensions of our situation, orient ourselves toward the future through projects, and gear into the ongoing work of sense-making. As a counterbalance to normalizing cultural discourses surrounding illness, we reinterpret the idea of the “quotidian” as the everyday practice of sense-making to find and sustain an equilibrium.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020061

Authors: Mackenzie Hawkins

This paper argues that, within established mechanics, a change-first structure of mechanics—one that does not treat background time as fundamental—is as empirically licensed as the familiar time-first structure. Carlo Rovelli’s generally covariant framework and Wonchull Park’s initial conditions framework each provide an independent demonstration of this possibility across classical, relativistic, and quantum mechanics. Park’s Reality View Equivalence is employed as an epistemological constraint on claims of compatibility at the physics–metaphysics interface. The resulting picture of change before time yields structural resources that offer, without mandating, ways of supporting metaphysical projects that emphasize the dynamic nature of reality. Two worked examples are used to illustrate this application: first, by placing local becoming within the change-first state package, and, second, by treating entities that participate in change-first states as necessarily dynamic and thus, arguably, processual.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020060

Authors: Evan Thomas Knott

This paper explores the ethical dimensions of violence in sporting contexts, proposing that violence can be a virtue when characterized by controlled physicality. While society often views violence negatively, the paper argues that within rule-governed sports, certain forms of violence are morally permissible, strategically valuable, and essential to upholding the integrity of the game. Drawing on Suitsian terms and Kantian ethics, the paper develops a theory of lusory violence, distinguishing it from uncontrolled physicality or unmitigated violence. By examining the roles of enforcers in hockey, the development of MMA, and the ethics of sport jiu-jitsu, the paper suggests that violence is acceptable within a lusory framework only when it is purposive, strategically relevant, and constrained by rules that prioritize technical skill over raw damage. Ultimately, the paper argues that the ability to modulate violent behaviour represents a form of moral development, framing virtuous violence as a necessary tool for maintaining natural justice and personal excellence within specific sporting environments. Yet, virtuous violence is subordinate to technique, justice, and other defining elements of sports.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020059

Authors: Jeffrey A. Bell

This essay attempts to bring together the philosophies of Spinoza, Wittgenstein, and Deleuze by developing an ethics of learning that is implicit, and at times explicit, in each of their works. How this comes to be manifest in their works is that for Spinoza, Wittgenstein, and Deleuze, what is most important about this ethics of learning is that it is irreducible to rigid moral laws and to an understanding of reality that is reducible to forms of representational thinking. Most importantly, this essay shows that Spinoza’s understanding of absolutely infinite substance allows Spinoza to develop the ethical project of his Ethics—namely, his ethics of learning—and it is also what helps us to understand what Wittgenstein believed must be passed over in silence. Although the influence of Spinoza on Deleuze is well known, the focus placed here on learning will highlight, and in large part explain, why Spinoza remains a constant thread throughout Deleuze’s work while the importance of other philosophers, such as Nietzsche, slip to the background.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020058

Authors: Paul Redding

The paper starts by questioning the highly influential but extremely misleading characterizations of Plato and Hegel by Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper. It is argued that mathematical assumptions concerning the ancient problem of the incommensurability of continuous and discrete quantities underlie the ways in which Russell and Popper portray the metaphysics of Plato and Hegel—Popper explicitly, and Russell implicitly, presupposing a particular response to this problem by broadening the concept of number to include irrational numbers. Recent work on Plato, however, suggests a different strategy for responding to this ancient conundrum, one that involves a mediated “duality” of the continuous and discrete that Hegel would later generalize to a duality of determinate and indeterminate aspects of cognition more generally. This Platonic alternative had originated with the Pythagorean natural philosopher Philolaus of Croton and would later be expressed in modern mathematics in a non-Cartesian way of applying numerical metrics to geometric figures in disciplines such as projective geometry. Such an alternative approach to both quantitative and conceptual incommensurability, I claim, had influenced Plato’s later conception of philosophical method that would be adopted by Hegel via the intermediary of Leibniz, the first modern “idealist”. Understanding the actual mathematics modeling philosophical concepts for Plato and Hegel becomes crucial for understanding the philosophical claims of modern idealism.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020057

Authors: Jordi Vallverdú

Epistemology remains tacitly anthropocentric: it treats knowledge as something produced and validated through human cognitive capacities such as understanding, intuition, and transparent justification. Yet contemporary science and artificial intelligence increasingly depend on non-human systems that generate mathematically valid results, empirically successful models, and operationally reliable inferences that no human can fully survey or interpret. This article develops xenoepistemics, a structural theory of non-anthropocentric knowledge. The central claim is that epistemic evaluation must be reformulated in terms of system-level properties—reliability, robustness, counterfactual sensitivity, and domain transfer—rather than mentalistic notions such as belief or understanding. I offer (i) a definition of xenoepistemic systems as systems that track structure in a target domain without requiring human-style semantic access; (ii) a minimal account of epistemic agency without minds that avoids trivialization; and (iii) a non-circular trust framework that distinguishes empirical success from epistemic legitimacy using independent validation regimes. This paper addresses a reflexive worry—that a human-authored theory cannot dethrone human epistemology—by separating standpoint from object: xenoepistemics is articulated by humans but is not about human cognition. I discuss the pragmatic value of xenoepistemic knowledge production, the limits of independent verification for opaque systems, domain-relative thresholds for xenoepistemic authority, and the problem of constitutionally human-inaccessible knowledge. Finally, I diagnose and formalize the Marcusian regress paradox: recurrent goalpost-shifting, whereby every machine competence is reclassified as irrelevant once achieved. Xenoepistemics reframes this debate by treating non-human knowledge as a present reality requiring new norms, not as a future curiosity.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020056

Authors: Ernest Billings Brewster

Mereological anti-realism denies the intrinsic reality of both composite wholes and their constituent parts. This paper analyzes the mereological anti-realist argumentation developed by the Sino-Parthian scholar-monk Jizang 吉藏 (549–623 CE) targeting the mereological realist doctrine of the Brāhmaṇical Vaiśeṣika tradition in his understudied Exegesis on the Middle Treatise (Zhongguan lun shu中觀論疏) and Exegesis on the Hundred Verse Treatise (Bailun shu百論疏). By counterbalancing Jizang’s critiques with the Vaiśeṣika mereological realist doctrine on its own terms, this paper critically assesses the viability and coherence of Jizang’s arguments that there are no entities that instantiate mereological relations or properties. An examination of Jizang’s critique of Vaiśeṣika mereological realism brings to light how the Madhyamaka Buddhist doctrine avoids metaphysical nihilism in accounting for how both wholes and parts can possess causal efficacy without being attributed intrinsic reality in and of themselves.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020055

Authors: Baptiste Mélès

Can human languages help us write programs in a different way than we usually do? To examine this question, we first define exactly what it means for a programming language to be “derived from” a human language. Next, we analyse cases in which translating a program from one human language to another does not significantly change the program’s structure. Finally, we examine two game-changing cases: a programming language derived from Latin, in which syntax plays a limited role compared to morphology, and another derived from Classical Chinese, in which little linguistic recursion is available. These examples show that human languages, even ancient ones, are a reservoir for innovation in program writing. One can encourage programming language designers to dare learn foreign languages and not be ashamed of their own native language.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020054

Authors: Mariam Margaryan Aghavni Harutyunyan Silva Petrosyan Ashot Gevorgyan Hayarpi Sahakyan

This article examines contemporary forms of algorithmic governance through a biopolitical framework grounded in Michel Foucault’s analysis of security, risk, and governmentality. Rather than treating algorithmic systems as a rupture with earlier modes of power, the article argues that they intensify a security-based rationality already oriented toward probabilistic reasoning, anticipatory intervention, and the indirect regulation of conduct. Governance increasingly operates by organizing environments in advance, shaping the conditions under which action becomes possible rather than correcting behavior after the fact. Situating transhumanism within this framework, the article approaches enhancement-oriented projects not as speculative or external developments, but as an extension of biopolitical governance from the regulation of life toward its optimization and redesign. Human capacities become objects of assessment and intervention, shifting the biopolitical subject from a bearer of risk to an upgrade-eligible profile oriented toward projected futures. To conceptualize the form of subjectivity produced at the intersection of algorithmic prediction and transhumanist optimization, the article introduces the heuristic figure of Homo virtualis. This figure describes a form of subjectivity in which individuals are approached through predictive profiles rather than stable identities, and responsibility shifts toward managing expected outcomes rather than accounting for past actions. By examining these shifts, the article contributes to debates on algorithmic governance by clarifying how biopolitics, prediction, and subjectivity are reconfigured as futures become increasingly organized in advance. This article adopts a descriptive and analytical approach rather than a normative one.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020053

Authors: Patrick Seniuk

Depression is notable for high rates of disability. The medical model typically characterizes depression as a physiological dysfunction or psychological disorder. However, both views fail to appreciate the phenomenology of depressed experience. Drawing on the existential phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, this article contends that the lived experience of chronic depression is marked by a disturbance between the body-subject and the world. More specifically, the experience of depression is characterized by alienation from the world, self and others. While anti-depressants have long been the first line of treatment of depression, many governments subsidize cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as an adjunct treatment. CBT is said to be the gold standard psychotherapeutic treatment given that it is evidence-based, cost-effective, and short in duration. However, not only are these justifications questionable, but the theoretical underpinnings of CBT have ideological significance. Rather than approaching depressed persons as body-subjects, CBT casts service users as neo-liberal subjects, insofar as depression is characterized as disordered thinking that is independent of a person’s situated life. The emphasis on quickly returning people to work to reduce strain on welfare systems, while a valid economic concern, is not a valid therapeutic concern. The limited choice of subsidized psychotherapeutic options fails to recognize that depression is a heterogenous phenomenon, meaning that the CBT model of disordered thinking is not necessarily representative of the way in which depression manifests.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020052

Authors: Tarik Mokadi Osama Tawfiq Jarrar Ayman Yousef

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a significant paradigm of methodology and epistemology in the social sciences. Machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and generative models enable researchers to work with big, multimodal datasets, identify complex patterns, and recreate events in the social world in ways that previously were not feasible. At the same time, these innovations also lead to ethical challenges related to algorithmic bias, black boxes, data extractivism, and reinforced structural inequalities in welfare, government services, education, and criminal justice. The article critically questions the social sciences in the light of AI on three dimensions that are inextricably linked, namely: (1) the opportunities that AI provides to social-scientific inquiry; (2) the biases and constraints generated through data, models, and institutional application; and (3) ethical pathways that are necessary for the responsible governance of AI-facilitated research and decision support. The article is based on a scoping, critical thematic review of the recent literature, and its conceptualization of AI as a socio-technical infrastructure is that it produces knowledge and, at the same time, offers power. It explains the impact AI practices have on restructuring disciplines like sociology, psychology, political science, and policy analysis, and how it blindly predicts how data practices, design choices, and governance arrangements can either preserve or destroy existing hierarchies. The paper suggests an analytical framework synthesizing AI practices, social research practices, and governance structures in ethical frameworks. It argues that the emancipatory promise of AI in the social sciences is dependent on the attainment of something beyond principle-based claims of so-called ethical AI by operational governance mechanisms that make systems visible, debatable, and responsible in their respective situations.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020051

Authors: Se Hoon Son

Fairness and minority exclusion have emerged as the central concerns of contemporary Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics. However, standard auditing and documentation practices often fail to capture harms affecting edge cases and marginalized groups. This article argues that this failure is structural: the act of “discretization”—converting continuous reality into discrete governance categories—inevitably produces a “residual.” Drawing on German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling) and continental philosophy (Dilthey, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty), we reconceptualize residuals not as mere noise but as “surprising facts” that should trigger abductive hypothesis revision. We critique checklist-centered governance as a form of proceduralized auditing that can obscure these residuals. This article makes three key contributions: (i) a structural diagnosis of residual production using systems theory and topology; (ii) a philosophical reconstruction of abductive revision as a hermeneutic necessity; and (iii) an institutional design proposal—specifically, the Residual Ledger and Category Revision Protocols—to operationalize “Open Schema” governance.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020050

Authors: Florian Vermeiren

In his seminars, Deleuze claims that Spinoza is ‘an absolute geometrist’. This article contextualizes, explains and substantiates this aspect of Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza. I position Deleuze’s reading within both the long-running scholarly debate on Spinoza’s relationship to mathematics and within the evolution of Deleuze’s own relation to Spinoza. Deleuze’s idea that Spinoza is a geometrist is shown to consist of three elements. First, according to Spinoza, geometry is more fundamental than arithmetic. Second, Spinoza frees geometry from the realm of fiction and abstract and develops, as Deleuze says, a ‘mathematics of the real’. Third, Spinoza finds in geometry a language of univocity, by which he can avoid the equivocity and hierarchy of the Aristotelian worldview.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020049

Authors: Jonah Y. C. Hsu

This paper develops Tone as Ontology, a structural account of being grounded in the invariants of generative systems. We articulate the ontological significance of tone, distinguishing this foundational work from a companion paper that explores its methodological application and formalization. We redefine “tone” as the structural profile of constraints that allows entities to maintain coherence under transformation. The tonal ontology formalizes three invariants—Resonance, Responsibility, and Closure—as conditions of persistence that bridge operational and metaphysical ontology. Concretely, we specify Resonance (relational continuity via recursive feedback), Responsibility (traceable accountability that conserves integrity across transformations), and Closure (recursive self-consistency enabling bounded openness). In contrast to informational or substance-based views, tonal being is understood as the conservation of structure through change. The resulting framework unites physical coherence, informational integrity, and ontological continuity into a generative ontology of integrity, suggesting that to exist is to maintain one’s tone. This paper addresses fundamental questions in meta-ontology, demonstrates how tone generates classical ontological frameworks, and advances a conceptual reorientation for understanding existence as resonant persistence. It outlines testable implications across philosophy of mind, AI ethics, and social/environmental theory. Overall, tonal ontology is presented as a post-informational, structurally grounded account of being.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020048

Authors: Yan Li Xinyue Yao

This article focuses on the origin of “Wenqi Theory”—a core domain of ancient Chinese literary theory—specifically Cao Pi’s proposition that “literature is governed by qi”. It situates this concept within the 21st-century context of cultural globalization to engage in dialogue with Western aesthetics, aiming to revitalize the theory through mutual learning between Chinese and Western civilizations and integrate it into the system of modern transformation for classical literary theory. From the perspective of contemporary theoretical reconstruction, the paper analyzes the modern discourse paradigm of “Wenqi Theory”, traces its philosophical roots, and points out that the “clearness” or “murkiness” of “Wenqi” directly influences the aesthetic value of writing and the evaluation of objects. The study reveals that “Wenqi Theory” possesses rich connotations and unifies multiple dialectical relationships such as author and text, macrocosm and microcosm, personal temperament and acquired cultivation, content and form, fully embodying the distinctive integration of Chinese cultural tradition. Furthermore, the paper studies the lineage of life aesthetics from “Qi-Theory” in philosophy and science to “Wenqi Theory” in literary criticism, and its importance in constructing modern discourse paradigms. Meanwhile, by utilizing the categories of “the sublime” and “the beautiful” in Western aesthetics, it reactivates the contemporary aesthetic implications of “Wenqi Theory” within the context of globalization and cross-cultural exchange. The article endeavours to place this seemingly esoteric concept of classical Chinese literary theory within a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary philosophical horizon for systematic and theoretical interpretation, revealing its universal aesthetic value that transcends specific cultural backgrounds, thereby providing a possible paradigm for the modernization of traditional Chinese literary theory and its participation in international academic dialogue.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020047

Authors: Giorgio Dieci

Recently, a shift from substance-based to process-based ontologies of living beings and biological entities has been widely advocated, largely on the grounds that traditional substance thinking, by encouraging biological reductionism, fails to adequately capture the nature of biological wholes. Process-based approaches are instead taken to provide a more appropriate metaphysical framework for the constitutive dynamicity of living systems. These arguments, however, have been criticized for relying on overly reductive characterizations of substances, which both classical and contemporary accounts describe as inherently involving change and activity. In this essay, I address the substance-versus-process debate from the perspective of contemporary cell biology. I argue that conceiving the cell as a substance is not only compatible with the centrality of processes, but that the cell continues to function as the fundamental reference point in biology precisely because it entails processuality as intrinsic to its dynamic mode of being. Within this framework, subcellular entities are identified by their functional subservience to the cellular whole. On this basis, I propose an empirically grounded criterion for distinguishing between purely processual and substance-like subcellular entities. Processual entities, such as the Golgi complex and the nucleolus, lack dedicated repair systems and tend to disassemble upon inhibition of specific metabolic activities. By contrast, substance-like entities, including cell-derived organelles such as the mitochondrion and the nucleus, depend for their persistence on specific repair systems, and their eventual dismantling under non-permissive conditions cannot be straightforwardly understood as the mere interruption of a process, but instead appears as the outcome of an active, regulated response.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020046

Authors: S. Montgomery Ewegen

This article explores the role that death plays in Heidegger’s ontology after Being and Time, focusing especially on volumes 97–104 of the Gesamtausgabe. Within these volumes, death occupies a pride of place within Heidegger’s being-historical (and post-being-historical) attempts to articulate beyng, coming to play a role as significant as, and not unrelated to, the Nothing. In order to give a full accounting of the role that death plays within these texts, a number of other structurally significant terms within Heidegger’s Seinsdenken—such as Gebirg, Enteignis, Brauch, and Sage—will be examined. It is ultimately argued that these volumes, by exposing the human to the heretofore un-thought truth of beyng (as radical concealment), carry out the transition from “human” to “mortal” so essential to Heidegger’s later thinking.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020045

Authors: Hong Joo Ryoo

Recent arguments in favor of Presentism leverage Markovianity, the principle of the future’s events being able to be determined/influenced only by current events (and sufficiently near events). These approaches, however, leave the room open for objections centered around recent speculative non-Markovian foundations of our physical theories. Using insights from Builes and Impagnatiello’s argument and drawing on recent quantum foundations, I explore how non-Markovian quantum dynamics may constrain metaphysical accounts of time. I compare rough versions of Eternalism and Presentism in their ability to accommodate temporally extended correlations and motivate further development with explicit treatment of non-Markovian physics in the metaphysics of time.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020044

Authors: João Miguel Alves Ferreira

The intricate relationships between humans and animals have long shaped philosophical, cultural and scientific inquiry. This narrative review examines evolving conceptions of animal consciousness, agency and sentience within broader historical, ethical and epistemological contexts. Drawing on philosophy, ethology, neuroscience, psychology and animal studies, it critically engages debates on anthropocentrism, cognitive ethology, moral considerability and relational ontology. By tracing the shift from mechanistic models of animality to embodied and affective accounts of consciousness, the analysis highlights how contemporary scholarship destabilises traditional forms of human exceptionalism. Building on this interdisciplinary synthesis, the article advances a symbiotic humanist orientation that integrates evolutionary continuity with multidimensional models of consciousness and differentiated normative responsibility. The argument culminates in the articulation of a Stratified Relational Responsibility Model (SRRM), which reconciles ontological continuity with asymmetrical accountability. Within this framework, shared evolutionary conditions ground moral considerability, while the emergence of reflexive and institutional normativity intensifies human ethical obligation. The model offers a non-anthropocentric yet normatively robust account of human–animal relations, situating human distinctiveness not in metaphysical superiority but in heightened responsibility within multispecies ecological systems.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020043

Authors: Maria Gallego-Ortiz

Iris Murdoch situates imagination at the core of moral life, challenging moral philosophy’s preference for abstract universal principles over the particularity of lived experience. This paper reconstructs Murdoch’s concept of imagination by tracing her engagement with Plato’s distinction between eikasia and the Demiurge’s ‘high’ imagination, as well as Kant’s notions of empirical and esthetic imagination. I argue that Murdoch’s imagination is best understood as a hermeneutical capacity essential to moral vision. She distinguishes between egoistic fantasy, which distorts reality, and free and creative imagination, which enables a just and loving gaze upon the world. Through imagination, we can replace obscuring images with truer ones, making moral progress an exercise in vision and attention. Murdoch’s account thus offers an alternative to moral theories that overlook the inner life as a site of ethical transformation.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020042

Authors: Jakub Mácha

This paper defends the thesis that LLM hallucinations are best explained as a truth representation problem: Current models lack an internal representation of propositions as truth-bearers, so truth and falsity cannot constrain generation in the way factual discourse requires. It begins by surveying leading explanations—computational limits on self-verification, deficiencies in training data as truth sources, and architectural factors—and argues that they converge on the same underlying representational deficit. Next, it reconstructs the philosophical background of current LLM design, showing how optimization for fluent continuation aligns with coherence-style evaluation and with broadly structuralist, relational semantics, before turning to David Chalmers’s recent attempt to secure propositional interpretability by drawing on Davidson/Lewis-style radical interpretation and by locating propositional content in “middle-layer” structures; it argues that this approach downplays the ubiquity of hallucination and inherits instability from post-training edits. Finally, the paper offers a positive proposal: Atomic propositions should be represented in the basic vector layer, reviving a logical atomist program as a principled route to reducing hallucination.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020041

Authors: Jeffrey Arle

Understanding how high-level meanings emerge from low-level microstate dynamics is a central challenge in both artificial intelligence and consciousness studies. Complex networks can exhibit rich behaviors, yet reliably mapping every microstate onto a semantic label to date seems intractable. To explore these limits, a minimal 4-bit model consisting of only a ring of binary cells updated by a parity-flip rule, coupled with a finite lookup table that assigns conceptual tags to selected microstates, is presented. Two core failure modes are noted. First, noise is found to push the system into out-of-training-set states that a semantic decoder cannot label (“missing-label” errors). Second, distinct microstates collapse into the same semantic tag (“many-to-one” grouping), obscuring their unique identities. These findings demonstrate inherent opacity in semantic mapping and suggest fundamental barriers to reverse-engineering high-level content in artificial or biological networks. Future work includes scaling N and examining partial-observability effects.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020040

Authors: Yugo Matsumoto

This paper proposes the Unified Observation Layer Theory (UOLT), a structural framework for understanding observation not as an act of cognition, measurement, or subjectivity, but as a layered condition through which the world becomes visible. Contemporary theories across physics, philosophy, and cognitive science often treat observation as a primary explanatory principle, implicitly assuming that what is observed constitutes the world itself. Such approaches repeatedly encounter paradoxes concerning objectivity, incompleteness, and the limits of visibility. UOLT argues that these paradoxes do not arise from epistemic failure or insufficient data, but from a structural confusion between distinct layers of observation. UOLT introduces a three-layer model consisting of an Invisible Layer, a Projection Layer, and a Visible Layer. The Invisible Layer refers to structural conditions that do not appear directly within a given observational configuration, yet are presupposed by the coherence of what becomes established within it. The Projection Layer specifies the conditions under which certain structural relations become stably manifest, including selection, emphasis, and exclusion. The Visible Layer corresponds to the domain in which objects, quantities, causality, language, and time are articulated as established. By separating these layers, UOLT explains why observation can never access the totality of the world, why visibility does not imply completeness, and why similar structural paradoxes emerge across otherwise distinct domains. Importantly, UOLT does not compete with or replace existing physical or philosophical theories. Instead, it repositions them as descriptions operating within the Visible Layer, without reducing the Invisible Layer to hidden variables or metaphysical entities. Unified Observation Layer Theory offers a non-temporal, non-reductive account of observation that clarifies the structural conditions under which reality appears coherent despite being only partially visible. In doing so, it provides a framework for reconsidering objectivity, visibility, and world formation without privileging observation as an ultimate ground. This paper does not aim to propose a unified theory, but to clarify the structural conditions under which observation becomes possible.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020039

Authors: Mesfer Alhayyani

This paper argues that al-Ghazali’s (1058–1111) distinction between taqlid (uncritical acceptance of authority) and ijtihad (independent reasoning) can offer a normative response to the contemporary challenge of fake news, thereby connecting a medieval epistemic framework to a pressing twenty-first-century problem. This study treats fake news as both an epistemic and an ethical challenge. Epistemically, fake news undermines the aim of belief, which is the aspiration toward truth, by introducing and sustaining falsehoods within the testimonial networks on which individuals depend for knowledge. Ethically, it constitutes a form of deception that manipulates audiences, corrodes intellectual virtues such as honesty, and disintegrates the trust between individuals and public institutions that is essential for collective life. Methodologically, this paper adopts an analytical–critical approach. It examines recent philosophical literature on the epistemology of misinformation, reconstructs al-Ghazali’s taqlid–ijtihad framework from his original texts, and then adapts it to the conditions of digital information environments. The resulting model distinguishes between digital ijtihad, the responsible and competent verification of online information, and justified digital taqlid, the legitimate reliance on credible digital authorities when independent verification is impractical. The findings suggest that this adapted framework not only enriches contemporary epistemic theory but also offers practical normative guidance for cultivating responsible belief formation, including in educational contexts where teaching itself functions as a structured form of testimonial exchange.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020038

Authors: Tina Röck

In this contribution, I explore the idea that reality is best understood as fundamentally dynamic and interdependent, i.e., processual, bringing together resources from process thought, phenomenology and the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism. I furthermore explore how this view shapes the ways we speak about, investigate, and understand the natural world. What is novel in my approach is that I bring a phenomenological reading of process in dialogue with Buddhist thought. My paper unfolds in two stages: first, I map key points of convergence between phenomenologically clarified process philosophy and Madhyamaka; second, I consider the broader epistemological and practical consequences of viewing reality as impermanent and dependently arising by looking at Whitehead’s and Nāgārjuna’s views in dialogue. Engaging with Buddhist philosophy alongside phenomenological process thought enables a deeper investigation into the ethical, and lived dimensions of metaphysical inquiry, which are dimensions often sidelined both in Western metaphysics and in some versions of phenomenology, because metaphysical and phenomenological analysis can remain stuck on the conceptual level, detached from both lived experience and practice. By contrast, Buddhist traditions explicitly link philosophical reflection with lived experience and embodied practice throughout. For this reason, sustained dialogue with Buddhist views and practices can expand Western methodology as such and can enrich process-based phenomenological approaches in particular by showing ways to reconnect speculative metaphysics, observation, and the concrete in practical ways.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020037

Authors: Elias Rubenstein

Intelligence metrics based on benchmark performance or population norms are useful for measuring comparative ability within defined test environments, but they do not directly evaluate the structural coherence of an agent’s trajectory across time, domains, and perturbations. This article introduces Reflexive Signature Intelligence (RSI) as a bounded theoretical framework for addressing that different problem. RSI is developed within a causal-symmetric informational perspective in which intelligence is understood as the capacity of a system to maintain and restore alignment with a structurally constrained invariant without collapsing the open gradient of development. On this basis, the paper formulates the Principle of Bounded Subjectivity and the Prohibition of Finality as framework-level principles, arguing that intelligence should be assessed not as arrival at a completed end state but as the quality of an asymptotic trajectory. The framework is then operationalized on two coupled levels: a micro-level proposed as a future measurement program linked heuristically to resilience and prediction-error dynamics, and a macro-level expressed through five dimensions of structural integrity, including reflexive regulation, cross-domain integration, internal consistency, stabilization, and signature-setting. The article concludes by outlining implications for AI evaluation and alignment, with particular relevance for distinguishing full agents, partial systems, and human–AI composite configurations.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020036

Authors: Max Lowdin

Spinoza’s theory of language seems to risk the paradox that no expression of true ideas is possible in linguistic terms. One particular term in the Ethics has stood out as addressing its potential contradictions: quatenus, ‘insofar as’ or ‘to the extent that,’ occurring hundreds of times in the text but still an element of mystery. This article offers an interpretation of this notion inspired by Deleuze’s reading and especially the theme in his seminars, that Spinoza’s project is a ‘general semiology.’ This suggests another way to affirm the coherence of the Ethics, by making a virtuous circle of its ontological and practical registers. Key to this is the notion of ‘sense’ in its genetic role and the overlooked distinction between infinite attributes and the two powers. The senses of words, propositions or demonstrations in the Ethics are not independent of a ‘noncausal correspondence’ between powers of thinking and acting from which they arise, and which quatenus consistently marks.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020035

Authors: Aqib Javaid Parry Mudasir Ahmad Mir Shamsudheen Mannekuzhiyan

This paper examines the Andalusian philosophical tale Hayy Ibn Yaqzān, written by the 12th-century philosopher Ibn Tufail, through the lens of Erik Erikson’s theory of the eight stages of human psychosocial development. In his book The Childhood and Society (1950), Erik Erikson offers eight key insights into how humans progress through different stages of development across their lifespan. The paper argues that Ibn Tufail’s allegory of the titular character, Hayy, is fundamentally a philosophical romance that examines various phases of Hayy’s philosophical development while also reflecting his complex psychosocial evolution. The paper highlights that Hayy’s early nurturance by a doe and his life among animals and plants correspond to Erikson’s stages of trust, autonomy, and initiative. His later intellectual and ethical development aligns with the psychosocial stages of generativity and integrity—though there are notable differences from Erikson’s model at some crucial stages. The Eriksonian model is applied heuristically, not exhaustively, as the overarching aim is to shed light on the classical Islamic philosophical tale by applying a modern theoretical framework to demonstrate how it prefigures contemporary discussions of the human condition, identity, and spiritual integrity. It contributes to ongoing interdisciplinary discussions on Islamic philosophy and developmental psychology by showing how Hayy Ibn Yaqzān can be read as a narrative of psychosocial growth.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020034

Authors: Mosa Motea Pius Oba

Blockchain is frequently presented as a decentralised infrastructure capable of enhancing efficiency and trust by replacing or bypassing legacy institutions. Such accounts, however, often treat blockchain as a neutral technical system and overlook the ethical and political consequences of institutional transformation through code. This perspective article applies Andrew Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology to examine blockchain as a normative socio-technical system shaping institutional transformation, governance practices, and moral expectations. Using a conceptual, critical-theoretical methodology supported by illustrative cases from decentralised finance, blockchain-based land registries, and decentralised autonomous organisations, the paper illustrates how blockchain design and governance embed values that may reinforce exclusion, obscure accountability, and constrain democratic contestation. In response, the article proposes a set of normative principles intended to guide ethical reflection on blockchain-based institutional change: participatory co-design; reflexivity and reversibility; moral pluralism through modular governance; and embedded ethical impact assessment. These principles are advanced as evaluative criteria for ethically responsible blockchain-based institutional transformation. By extending Feenberg’s framework into the domain of blockchain ethics, the paper shifts ethical debate beyond privacy and compliance toward questions of institutional legitimacy, democratic rationalisation, and context-sensitive innovation.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020033

Authors: Sybrand Veeger

The distinction between signs and expressions is essential to unlock Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza. However, during a lecture delivered on 13 January 1981, Deleuze makes a passing remark that complicates this distinction. For Spinoza, Christ’s religion, like political society, is a systems of signs pertaining to the collective imagination that nevertheless is meant to facilitate the transition towards the domain of expressions, that is, to the domain of reason and philosophy. The aim of this paper is to shed light on this ambiguity between signs and expressions in Deleuze’s work on Spinoza. First, I discuss the scattered passages in Spinoza’s oeuvre dealing with the figure of Christ. I then go on to reconstruct Deleuze’s Spinozistic taxonomy of signs. Third, I reconstruct Deleuze’s comparison between Spinoza and Hobbes regarding the emergence of political society from the state of nature. I then propose a close reading of chapter 7 of the Theological-Political Treatise to argue that Christ’s religion, according to Spinoza, should be seen as fulfilling the function of political society in times of crisis. I end with an extensive analysis of Spinoza’s formula “the Spirit of Christ, that is, the idea of God” in light of Deleuze’s reading of the first half of Ethics V. To conclude, I suggest we look at Christ as the conceptual persona of Spinozism.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020032

Authors: Maximilian Zachrau

Process metaphysics seeks to provide a novel foundation for metaphysical explanations of entities in both scientific inquiry and everyday experience. It aims to better explain ongoing phenomena—moving, raining, and the like—by analysing them as fundamental processes (FP), that is, dynamic entities not further reducible. Crucially, I argue, this analysis and the ultimate value of process metaphysical explanation hinge on an understanding of what dynamicity is; without one, the central thesis concerning fundamental processes remains vacuous. The paper examines metametaphysically what an account of dynamicity should provide, defending three desiderata: (1) difference-making: it must draw an informative, not merely stipulative, distinction between dynamic and static entities; (2) explanatory power: it must provide the conceptual resources to yield explanatory claims about dynamic entities and apply broadly. On the basis of these desiderata, I argue that prominent accounts of dynamicity, that is the mereological and modal account, prove unsatisfactory or miss their mark. The paper concludes by developing and defending an account of dynamicity as temporal forward-directedness, thereby linking process metaphysics to realist theories of time.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020031

Authors: Aldo Stella Piergiorgio Sensi

This theoretical–speculative text is structured to emphasize both the novel interpretation of the concept of relation and the value of unity, understood not as unification (i.e., as synthesis), but as a compact unity: the unity that belongs solely to the absolute. The extrinsic relation (äusserliche Beziehung) is a mono-dyadic construct, indicating the conjunction of two extreme terms and a middle term that connects them. The immanent synthesis (immanente Synthesis), according to Hegelian intentions, serves as the sublation of the extrinsic relation, since it indissolubly binds the determinations. Only the immediate relation (unmittelbare Verhältniss) indicates that intrinsic bond, which structurally constitutes determinate identity and which must necessarily result in its sublation.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020030

Authors: Qing Sun Shangcheng Tang

With conditional probability as a primitive notion rather than a ratio of classical probability, we extend the language of epistemic logic by introducing conditional probability operators. We propose a conditional probabilistic epistemic logic (CPEL) based on the general frame, which enables the assignment of conditional probabilities to any formula in the language defined in this paper. Furthermore, we discuss the relationship between knowledge and conditional probability in CPEL, as well as the connection between indicative conditionals and conditional probability. Finally, we present a sound and weakly complete axiomatization for our framework and demonstrate its application in analyzing the lottery paradox.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020029

Authors: Waleed Mouhali

We argue that turbulent irreversibility is best explained as an asymptotic feature of a singular inviscid limit—a reclassification of admissible entities and balances at ν→0—rather than as a mere residual effect of molecular viscosity. Tracing a conceptual line from Euler and Kármán–Howarth to Onsager, Duchon–Robert, Kato/Prandtl, and modern convex integration results, we show that the limit theory reclassifies the admissible entities: from smooth Euler fields (energy conserving) to rough weak solutions equipped with a positive defect measure in the energy balance. The constant inter-scale process (energy flux) observed at high-Reynolds number therefore persists at ν=0 as a structural feature of the limit ontology. We articulate three selection principles—the local energy inequality, the exact third-order law, and scale-locality—as ontological constraints that reconcile mathematical non-uniqueness with physical uniqueness. A brief conceptual history clarifies how the arrow of time in turbulence emerged through successive shifts of entities and invariants, and a comparison with other singular limit explanations (Boltzmannian irreversibility, shocks, renormalization) situates the account within general foundations of physics. Methodologically, we recast LES/closures as asymptotic mediators validated by flux plateaus and viscosity-free diagnostics, not microscopic subgrid fidelity.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020028

Authors: Efraín Villamor Herrero

Previous scholarship has explored the Buddhist perspective on war and peace in Early Buddhism, offering valuable insights into Buddhist attitudes toward war. However, the specific ways in which warriors were persuaded through arguments to convert to Buddhism, and the prevalence of warfare-related allusions in Buddhist teachings, are still a topic underexplored that has not received sufficient attention in previous scholarship. This study examines the significance of references to the war context in the Pāli Canon. Comparing it with Brahmanical prose and Jain scriptures and contrasting the transmission of Buddhist thought into the Chinese language, this study demonstrates the narratives on the spiritual contest and the Buddhist warriors’ proclamation of Brahminical terms and ideals for royal patronage. This article discusses the significance of the relationship between the war context in the Nikāyas and the historical implications of incorporating the ideals and archetypes of Aryan warriors into Buddhist teachings.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020027

Authors: Francisco Jose Gonzalez

For Martin Heidegger’s quest to understand the meaning of being, Aristotle’s repeated claim that being “is spoken of in many ways” was both an inspiration and a provocation. Yet the places where Heidegger directly confronts and seeks to understand Aristotle’s claim are surprisingly few, with the most extensive and open-ended reflection now to be found in the recently published volume 91 of the Gesamtausgabe. Heidegger here, unlike too many others and himself elsewhere, does full justice to the radicality of Aristotle’s claim that refers not only to the different senses of being according to the categories (‘substance’, ‘quality’, ‘quantity’, etc.), but also to non-categorial senses (‘truth’, ‘accidental being’, ‘dunamis and energeia’) and sub-senses and refuses to reduce this plurality within plurality of senses to a unity. The Aristotle highlighted here is not the systematic but rather the ‘broken’ one. In the notes, Heidegger furthermore considers the possibility that this indeterminacy and darkness at the heart of Aristotle’s ontology, rather than a limitation due to an understanding of being as presence from the perspective of logos, reflects the indeterminacy and darkness at the heart of being itself. Heidegger’s ‘broken’ and even contradictory reading of Aristotle in these notes thus becomes his own attempt to think through the meaning of being in its withdrawal.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020026

Authors: Edward L. Keenan

We characterize semantically quantified subjects, type (et,t), in English and show that the Boolean closure of the generalized existential and universal quantifiers is exactly the conservative ones. We prove that all subjects are expressible as Boolean functions of Montagovian individuals and that all mathematically extend to objects, type (eet,et). But quantified objects also include many functions that are not subject extensions, contrary to usual textbook assumptions. This is because two-place predicates (P2s) have more structure than one-place ones (P1s), so quantified objects have more to vary with/depend on. For example, we illustrate how lexical P2s in English can force their models to be infinite; P1s provably cannot.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020025

Authors: Ivano Caponigro

Richard Montague (1930–1971) is known as a founding figure of natural language semantics, i.e., the formal study of the semantics of natural languages by means of tools from mathematical logic. Less well known is that Montague maintained a strongly skeptical view on the possibility of a systematic logico-philosophical analysis of natural language for most of his short life, adhering to the then-common belief that natural languages are fundamentally different from the languages of logic. Completely unknown, until now, has been how Montague underwent a 180-degree turn in the last few years of his life, in the late 1960s, and pioneered a precise formal analysis of the syntax and semantics of fragments of English in three seminal papers that established the research framework, the methodology, and the formal tools for the new field of study. I provide a precise and documented answer to when, where, and how Montague’s intellectual turn occurred and how it relates to Montague’s previous research interests and work.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020024

Authors: Johnny Sakr

Missing Acknowledgements [...]

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11020023

Authors: Qirou Xiao Qiaoyun Zhang

A spatial awareness is a fundamental aspect of dance, reflecting deep philosophical ideas and aesthetic values across different cultures. While existing studies often focus on theatrical or biomechanical analyses, few explore how material cultural artifacts, such as pottery and porcelain figurines, reveal spatial differences in dance. This study addresses this gap by comparing Chinese pottery figurines from the Neolithic to Tang dynasties with Western Meissen porcelain dancers from the 18th century onward, applying a three-dimensional framework of “Movement Scheduling Space—kinetic space—expressive space.” Drawing on Confucian principles of “Harmony between Heaven and Humanity” and Christian notions of transcendence, the research examines how cultural traditions shape the spatial expression in dance. The findings show that Chinese dance emphasizes inward, upper-body movements extending from two-dimensional to one-dimensional space, reflecting a centripetal, earthly orientation. In contrast, Western dance expands from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space, emphasizing outward, lower-body movements symbolizing transcendental aspirations. Additionally, Chinese dance focuses on subtle hand gestures, while Western dance highlights expressive foot movements. By integrating artifact-based analysis with cultural and philosophical interpretation, this study offers a fresh approach to comparative dance philosophy, providing valuable insights for the reinterpretation of traditional aesthetics in modern choreography.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010022

Authors: Ilgin Aksoy Corry Shores

At the end of Deleuze’s lectures on Spinoza of 1980–1981, he asks his students to “imagine a Spinozist gambler.” Yet he ends the course offering few clues about how to picture this figure. Here we provide an interpretation of the Spinozist gambler based on both its Spinozist conceptual context and its place in Deleuze’s broader philosophy of gambling play. Accordingly, we examine Spinozist gambling in terms of Deleuze’s account of Spinoza’s three types of knowledge, and we compare the Spinozist gambler to Deleuze’s more prominent figure of the Nietzschean dice-thrower. We thereby offer a tripartite characterization of the Spinozist gambler following its place in Spinoza’s epistemology, which we further refine by examining Deleuze’s comments on indeterminism in Spinoza and Nietzsche. We argue that, according to Deleuze, the Spinozist gambler controls chance through rational organization, whereas the Nietzschean gambler affirms and embraces chance itself. And by means of this analysis, we advance our knowledge of both Deleuze’s Spinozism and his philosophy of play.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010021

Authors: Roland Breeur

In 1948 Sartre wrote an essay about the absolute space in Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures. This notion of absolute space is also used by Gilles Deleuze, inspired by the art critic and philosopher Henri Maldiney, in his approach of the notion of essence in Spinoza. In the first part of this article, I explain what this absolute space is about, and how it helps us to better understand Spinoza’s theory of the relation between essences and existence of modi in their relationship with—and dependency of—the substance. In a second part, I explain Sartre’s notion of absolute space in order to illustrate his inversion of the relation of essence and existence, and what this inversion means on a metaphysical level. I conclude with the suggestion that Sartre’s early philosophy and his notion of absolute consciousness and freedom can be interpreted as a kind of Spinozism, stripped of its essences.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010020

Authors: Pavel Straňák

Contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) achieves remarkable results in data processing, text generation, and the simulation of human cognition. However, it appears to lack key characteristics typically associated with living systems—consciousness, autonomous motivation, and genuine understanding of the world. This article critically examines the possible ontological divide between simulated intelligence and lived experience, using the metaphor of the motorcycle and the horse to illustrate how technological progress may obscure deeper principles of life and mind. Drawing on philosophical concepts such as abduction, tacit knowledge, phenomenal consciousness, and autopoiesis, the paper argues that current approaches to developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) may overlook organizational principles whose role in biological systems remains only partially understood. Methodologically, it employs a comparative ontological analysis grounded in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, systems theory, and theoretical biology, supported by contemporary literature on consciousness and biological autonomy. The article calls for a new paradigm that integrates these perspectives—one that asks not only “how to build smarter machines,” but also “what intelligence, life, and consciousness may fundamentally be,” acknowledging that their relation to computability remains an open question.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010019

Authors: Simona Trifu

This article explores Mihail Aslan’s volume of poetry Late Geometries, Rejected through the prism of an in-depth psychoanalytic reading. The text highlights how the poetic work constitutes an expression of deep psychic processes, centered around the concepts of early trauma, narcissistic deficit, and failure of the primordial environment. Through theories by authors such as Winnicott, Anzieu, Green, and Kristeva, the article reveals how Aslan’s creation functions as a transitional space, in which a complex dialectic takes place between Eros and Thanatos, between the constitution of the self and its waste. Writing thus becomes an act of psychic survival, a way to metabolize the traumatic experience and to reconstruct an inner geometry, albeit “late” and “rejected”.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010018

Authors: Boumediene Hamzi

This essay explores the metaphysical and philosophical implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) through the intersecting insights of René Guénon (ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Yaḥiā), Martin Heidegger, and Ibn al-ʿArabī. It argues that modern AI systems, particularly in their statistical and data-centric forms, are not merely instrumental tools but expressions of a deeper metaphysical worldview-one rooted in quantification, abstraction, and utility. Guénon’s critique of the “reign of quantity” and Heidegger’s notion of Enframing (Gestell) converge in diagnosing the loss of qualitative and sacred dimensions in modern life. While Heidegger’s phenomenology provides a powerful immanent critique of technological reductionism from within the Western philosophical tradition, Guénon’s metaphysical traditionalism articulates a diagnosis of modernity that resonates with Islamic metaphysics, especially as articulated by Ibn al-ʿArabī. The essay includes Heidegger in the argument as a representative of a critique of modern technology issuing from the Western tradition itself, and by emphasizing his shared concerns with Guénon, whose metaphysics resonates with Ibn al-ʿArabī’s metaphysics. Through a comparative metaphysical framework, this paper proposes an Islamic response to AI that avoids both technophilia and technophobia, insisting instead on a spiritually grounded ethic of technology that preserves human’s dignity and mission. Methodologically, the essay restores a prior order often inverted in contemporary AI ethics: ontology (what AI is) grounds epistemology (what it can know), and only then can ethical evaluation be coherent.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010017

Authors: Paul Keen

If modern readers sometimes find Adam Smith’s laissez-faire market vision in Wealth of Nations difficult to reconcile with his emphasis on sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which Smith published in 1759 while serving as Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, the fault may be ours. For many of Smith’s eighteenth-century contemporaries, the connections between the two books would have been obvious: they were distinct but converging aspects of an Enlightenment project to lay the ethical foundations of an urban middle-class discourse of polite sociability that reflected Britain’s status as a modern transactional society. This focus on the moral dimensions of eighteenth-century Britain’s experience of commercial modernity becomes especially clear when we read Smith in the philosophical context out of which his ideas emerged, including writers such as Joseph Addison, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume. Closer attention to these earlier writers, especially Steele and Addison’s Spectator, offers a powerful reminder of the philosophical complexity of this project and a timely rejoinder to current efforts to sever economic policies from ethical imperatives in the name of an often brutal protectionism today.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010016

Authors: Francisco Javier Lopez Frias

In this article, I critique the dominance of internalism in sport philosophy and outline an alternative theoretical framework that integrates internal and external elements while striving to transcend the dichotomous language used to conceptualize sport. The analysis begins by claiming that internalism conflates three fundamental teleological aspects of sport: goals, point, and purposes. I argue that this conflation limits internalism’s ability to explain the complexity of sporting practices. By carefully distinguishing these elements, I illustrate their distinct roles in shaping sport and explore how they interact. I conclude by proposing that the alternative pluralist framework briefly sketched here enables a more comprehensive understanding of sport.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010015

Authors: Adil Guler

This article develops a structural–analogical framework to investigate conceptual resonances between Qur’an 24:35—the Verse of Light—and contemporary relational models in physics, while maintaining firm epistemic boundaries between theology, philosophy, and empirical science. The Qur’anic metaphors of niche, glass, tree, oil, and layered light depict a graded ontology of manifestation in which being unfolds through ordered relations grounded in a transcendent divine command (amr). By contrast, modern physics—as represented by quantum field theory, loop quantum gravity, and cosmological models—operates entirely within immanent causality, conceiving spacetime and matter as relational, dynamic, and structurally emergent. Despite their distinct registers, both discourses converge structurally around a shared grammar of potentiality, relation, and manifestation. Drawing on classical Islamic metaphysics—especially al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-Anwār—alongside contemporary relational ontologies in physics (Smolin, Rovelli, Markopoulou), the article argues that “real time” functions as an ontological choice that conditions intelligibility, agency, and novelty. The Qur’anic notion of nūr is interpreted not as physical luminosity but as the metaphysical ground of determinability, while the quantum vacuum is treated as a field of latent potential—without suggesting empirical equivalence. Rather than concordism, the comparison highlights a structural resonance (used here as a heuristic notion indicating pattern-level affinity rather than equivalence, correspondence, or empirical verification): both traditions affirm that reality is neither static nor substance-based, but arises through dynamic relational processes grounded—whether transcendently or immanently—in principled order.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010014

Authors: Alexander George Kurtz

The persistence of ordered experience in a quantum-branching universe raises fundamental questions about how continuity is maintained across multiple possible outcomes. The Frame Survival Model (FSM) is a theoretical framework grounded in quantum decoherence, and is applicable to any system—biological or artificial—capable of sustaining integrated, survival-compatible states. FSM models reality as a sequence of discrete “Hyperframes”—complete matter–energy configurations defined by quantum decoherence events. At each transition, a system either proceeds along a survival-compatible path or terminates its trajectory within that branch. When applied to consciousness, FSM formalizes subjective continuity as “threading” through a network of compatible Hyperframes, yielding an observer-relative path through the multiverse. The same formalism extends to other coherent, path-dependent processes, making FSM relevant to physics, information science, and the life sciences. By providing operational definitions for survival filtering, informational coherence, and frame-to-frame stability, FSM unifies continuity across domains and re-contextualizes longstanding paradoxes—including subjective death, quantum immortality, and identity persistence—without invoking new physics. It further suggests experimentally approachable implications, such as modulation of perceived time by changes in decoherence rates, positioning FSM as both a general continuity principle and a testable framework for applied fields such as cognitive neuroscience.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010013

Authors: Charles Altieri

Poetry is not philosophy, nor was it meant to be, except on rare, glorious occasions. And only Wittgenstein seems willing to claim that philosophy should be written as poetry. Yet it is difficult to imagine poetry not wanting to impinge on the cultural roles played by at least some philosophy. And some philosophers, like Hegel and Heidegger, want to influence the course of poetic practice. So it seems useful to inquire into the various ways these two disciplines can overlap or complicate one another’s modes of inquiry, even if one has no hope of securing abstract definitions for either practice. Those with the appropriate philosophical background, for example, could articulate tensions within a culture’s intellectual life as a means of specifying how an author develops emotionally resonant concrete experiences grappling with this environment. One example might be examining how the need to address Humean skepticism helped shape the development of Romantic ways of making constructive imagination inseparable from attentive states of perceptive involvement in the world. Another example might focus on efforts by contemporary poetry to correlate the work performed by ordinary language philosophy with Heideggerean ideals of building and dwelling potentially applicable to the frameworks provided by philosophical grammar.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010012

Authors: Adilbek K. Bisenbaev

This article proposes a redefinition of scientific authorship under conditions of algorithmic mediation. We shift the discussion from the ontological dichotomy of “tool versus author” to an operationalizable epistemology of contribution. Building on the philosophical triad of instrumentality—intervention, representation, and hermeneutics—we argue that contemporary AI systems (notably large language models, LLMs) exceed the role of a merely “mute” accelerator of procedures. They now participate in the generation of explanatory structures, the reframing of research problems, and the semantic reconfiguration of the knowledge corpus. In response, we formulate the AI-AUTHorship framework, which remains compatible with an anthropocentric legal order while recognizing and measuring AI’s cognitive participation. We introduce TraceAuth, a protocol for tracing cognitive chains of reasoning, and AIEIS (AI epistemic impact score), a metric that stratifies contributions along the axes of procedural (P), semantic (S), and generative (G) participation. The threshold between “support” and “creation” is refined through a battery of operational tests (alteration of the problem space; causal/counterfactual load; independent reproducibility without AI; interpretability and traceability). We describe authorship as distributed epistemic authorship (DEA): a network of people, artifacts, algorithms, and institutions in which AI functions as a nonsubjective node whose contribution is nonetheless auditable. The framework closes the gap between the de facto involvement of AI and de jure norms by institutionalizing a regime of “recognized participation,” wherein transparency, interpretability, and reproducibility of cognitive trajectories become conditions for acknowledging contribution, whereas human responsibility remains nonnegotiable.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010011

Authors: Joseph Rivera

Love’s Movement, Love’s Gift [...]

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010010

Authors: Rossella Lupacchini

One of Wittgenstein’s most quoted passages from his Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology concerns Turing’s “machines” and says verbatim: “These machines are humans who calculate. And one might express what he [Turing] says also in the form of games.” This passage not only captures the kernel of Turing’s conceptual argument for the adequacy of his definition of “computability”, as presented in his article On Computable Numbers (1936), but also helps clarify Turing’s idea of “mechanical intelligence.” Indeed, the notion of game provides an ideal means to focus on similarities and differences between Turing and Wittgenstein’s views of mechanical procedures, mathematical understanding, and thinking activity. The live encounter between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alan Turing took place in Cambridge in 1939, when Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics were regularly attended by Turing. Interestingly, during the conversations between the two, Turing seems to play the role of the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, to allow the present Wittgenstein to reassess what he deplores as mistaken or misleading in his early work. As for Turing himself, his reflection on thinking machines from the late 1940s demonstrates the significance of his dialogue with Wittgenstein.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010009

Authors: Mark Rathbone

Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776) offer a distinctive perspective on moral development that avoids succumbing to the limitations of capitalism and utilitarianism by supporting both moral agency and the importance of enabling structures and systems in commerce. Corruption of moral sentiments cannot be averted by enforcing only mechanical structures and systems of compliance with governance rules, regulations, and disciplinary processes to control employees. Compliance then follows a means-to-an-end logic for maximising profit, which becomes a barrier for autonomous moral development or is even incapable of moral decision-making, as suggested by Hannah Arendt. Smith’s originality lies in grounding this analysis with an affirmative view of human nature and liberty, which enables him to move beyond purely legalistic or moralistic approaches to understand and counter moral failure. Smith offers a distinctive perspective on moral development in commerce, integrating human cognition, moral philosophy, and enabling structural and systemic design that avoids the displacement of responsibility noted by Albert Bandura. For Smith, the corruption of moral sentiments is distorted by the natural need for praise from others at all costs, as opposed to praiseworthy conduct. His remedy is a two-fold process of moral education in which the impartial spectator extends the natural desire for praise to prioritise honour and integrity in behaviour that is praiseworthy. However, moral education also requires a structural social space that is not prescriptive or legalistic to enhance the freedom to develop morally by exercising the choice to strive towards ethical behaviour. In this manner, self-interest enables moral development through natural means that prioritise honourable conduct and perpetuates sympathetic sentiment in which the well-being of others is considered.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010008

Authors: Adil Guler

This article reconceptualizes entropy not as a metaphysical substance but as a structural constraint that shapes the formation, energetic cost, and durability of records. It links the coarse-grained—and typically irreversible—flow of time to questions of moral responsibility and divine justice. Drawing on the second law of thermodynamics, information theory, and contemporary cosmology, it advances an analogical and operational framework in which actions are accountable in an analogical sense insofar as they leave energetically costly traces that resist erasure. Within a Qur’ānic metaphysical horizon, concepts such as kitāb (Book), ṣaḥīfa (Record), and tawba (Repentance) function as structural counterparts to informational inscription and revision, without reducing theological meaning to physical process. In contrast to Kantian ethics, which grounds moral law in rational autonomy, the Qurʾān situates responsibility within the irreversible structure of time. Understood in this way, entropy is not a threat to coherence but a condition for accountability. By placing the Qurʾānic vision in dialog with modern science and theology, the article contributes to broader discussions on justice, agency, and the metaphysics of time within the science–religion discourse.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010007

Authors: Federico Divino

This paper aims to provide an in-depth and detailed overview of the relationship between language and cognition in Pāli Buddhist texts. These reflections will touch on several fundamental themes, such as the role of signs in structuring cognitive processes and semiosis as a force linked to the proliferation of concepts and percepts, whose organization underlies the constitution of a shared and partly subjective “world”. The paper will engage with linguistics, semiotics, and biosemiotics in order to acquire a vocabulary capable of better understanding the Buddhist reflections on these issues, and, where possible, it will also offer a genealogical inquiry that explains why the theme of language takes on the pivotal role it holds in Pāli Buddhism.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010006

Authors: Graziosa Luppi

This review provides a systematic critique of the debate between two paradigms in the philosophy of mind—the Naturalist–Externalist Research Program (NERP) and the Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program (PIRP)—with particular focus on Uriah Kriegel’s reconciliation project. Following Kriegel’s view, attention is given to rational agents’ awareness of their mental states—a key issue since most current artificial intelligence systems aim to model rational thinking and action. Naturalist accounts derive mental content from brain activity and environmental interaction, emphasizing a constitutive dependence of the former on the latter. In contrast, phenomenological theories assert that the object of mental states is an internal semblance presented to the subject. Within this framework, I maintain that Kriegel attempts to naturalize mental content within the framework of a Same Order theory, but this limits his ability to demonstrate that intentionality is grounded in consciousness in the sense of the Phenomenal Intentionality Research Program. Compounding this issue, the idea that the mind arises from manipulating representations has been challenged by dynamical approaches to cognitive science, yet advanced representational models persist, often simulating phenomenological qualities through forms of internal data organization. Methodologically, the approach is primarily comparative and reconstructive, focusing on the structural tensions and theoretical commitments that distinguish NERP and PIRP.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010005

Authors: Marcel Dubovec

This paper reinterprets Plato’s anecdote of Thales’ fall into the well in the Theaetetus. In contrast to readings that view this episode as a merely comic critique of the impractical intellectual, this study situates it within the broader context of Plato’s philosophical reorientation of wonder from cosmology to ontology. Drawing on Hans Blumenberg’s intellectual–historical approach and contrasting it with Aristotle’s epistemological conception of thaumazein in the Metaphysics, this paper combines conceptual analysis with close textual readings of the Theaetetus, Symposium, and Phaedrus under a unitarian assumption of continuity. This comparative inquiry reveals that Plato transforms wonder from a state of aporia or perplexity into an ecstatic participation in the realm of Forms, thereby redefining the philosophical act itself. This study argues that Plato “lets Thales fall” precisely to withdraw wonder from cosmological observation, embodied in the figure of Thales, and to reclaim it as the ontological foundation of philosophical contemplation.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010004

Authors: Ziya Kıvanç Kıraç Fırat Kargıoğlu Oğuzhan Göktolga

In this article, the philosophical (critical) continuity between ancient Greek skepticism (Pyrrhonism) and postmodern political theory is pointed out. This continuity (philosophical reincarnation) is demonstrated by referring to Sextus Empiricus’ writings on Pyrrhonism, as well as two different approaches that are considered to reflect postmodern political theory in its most salient features, such as anti-fundamentalism: Chantal Mouffe’s “project of radical democracy” and the “art of doubt” in Ulrich Beck’s “reflexive” modernity. The content of the identified continuity is basically the following: Just as the Pyrrhonian philosopher aspires to achieve serenity of spirit by suspending judgment through doubt (“epoche” and “ataraksia”) [epəkē –αταραξία], the postmodern theorist aims to end organized political violence by doubting all modern truth allegations. In other words, the individual hope of the Pyrrhonian philosopher is reproduced in the postmodern mind as a socio-political ideal. In Michel Foucault’s terms, the “regime of truth” or the “politics of truth” is an option that often leads to the “terror of truth”. The politics of doubt, on the other hand, is a peaceful, tolerant alternative. According to the postmodern theorist, skepticism is a highly strategic element of a pluralist (libertarian) democratic order. The intellectual way to make modern democracy even more democratic is, first and foremost, through a skepticism that makes absolutely no concessions to truth allegations. In this respect, the most uncompromising skeptic in the history of philosophy is the Pyrrhonian philosopher. Pyrrhonism is the summit of anti-dogmatism. This means that the postmodern theorist is not so much a postmodern agent. In other words, postmodern political theory is the theory of an innovation that is already obsolete.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010003

Authors: Lilian Suzanne Alweiss

This paper examines what Hannah Arendt means when she urges us to “love the world as it is” considering that we live in a world that is marred by injustice and violence. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part, demonstrates how Arendt’s concept of amor mundi is deeply influenced by her reading of St. Augustine. The second part, in turn addresses the challenge of loving the world as it is, given Arendt’s agreement with Augustine that we live in a desert. It argues that Arendt departs from Augustine on two fronts, first she rejects notions of original sin and forgiveness in favour of reconciliation, and second, she rejects the idea of divine grace claiming that our only hope for a new humanity lies in loving the world as it is.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010002

Authors: Suhail Ahmad

This article re-interprets V. S. Naipaul’s “Tell Me Who to Kill” from In a Free State (1971) through a Heideggerian lens, focusing on the ‘groundlessness’ of existence and the dialectics of ‘danger’ that structure the unnamed narrator’s life within colonial ‘modernity’. Using Hiedegger’s phenomenology as a rhetorical hermeneutic, it traces how ordinary existential structures—fear, anxiety, boredom, curiosity, idle talk, and ambiguity—surface in the narrator’s and other characters’ comportments and speech. In Heidegger’s sense, these moods do not simply describe psychological states but reveal the conditions of Dasein’s being-in-the-world and the ontological disclosures of a being unhomed by empire. By situating Heidegger’s concepts of Dasein, thrownness, and fallenness within Naipaul’s world of migration, labour, and racial precarity, the paper reveals how metaphysical homelessness becomes historically tangible. The narrator’s obsessive drive for success, his failed fraternal duty, and his descent into estrangement dramatize a colonial subjectivity torn between aspiration and abjection. In reframing Heidegger through the postcolonial experience, the article both deprovincializes European existentialism and reclaims phenomenology as a site for interrogating the psychic economies of empire. Ultimately, the novella becomes a poetics of nihilism—where the search for authenticity collapses under the weight of displacement.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies11010001

Authors: Glyn Morrilll

In the context of formal grammar we sketch a review of the smooth integration of the logical semantics of Montague with the logical syntax of Lambek: Lambek-Montague grammar. This highlights a pristine compositional architecture of categorial grammar founded on methodology of computational logic. The main finding is that this approach lends itself to a further technical refinement of represention of grammar as Girard proof nets; we conclude by mentioning this prospect.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060139

Authors: Chamara Panakaduwa Paul Coates Mustapha Munir Srimal Samansiri

Design science research (DSR) has become a popular method in information systems research and has been warmly welcomed in other disciplines as well. The importance of DSR is evident, in terms of its contribution to knowledge, as well as the creation of artefacts to solve problems of common interest. While it has demonstrated a clear methodology for achieving research goals, the philosophical underpinnings are not widely synthesised. There are inconsistencies and voids related to the philosophical aspects of DSR. For example, there is an inconsistent argument among researchers regarding the definition of design science research in the first place. This study analysed six key texts published within the last fifteen years in design science research along with a critical discussion, with the help of the existing literature. Accordingly, the study presents suggestions for the philosophical aspects of DSR. Namely, the definitions related to DSR terms (design, design science, design science research, and research), philosophical aspects (ontology, epistemology, and axiology), and theory development approaches (inductive, deductive, abductive, and retroductive), as well as research strategies were discussed. This is recommended to take as a starting point for a formative discussion of the topic, fine-tuning ideas with a critical eye.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060138

Authors: João Miguel Alves Ferreira

This article proposes a conceptual reformulation of the phenomenon of boredom by carefully distinguishing ordinary situational or psychologically driven boredom from what is here termed existential boredom: a specific mode of disconnection in which the subject’s capacity to inhabit a meaningful horizon of possibilities becomes temporarily suspended. Rather than interpreting boredom as a mere lack of stimulation, momentary dissatisfaction, or simple emotional discomfort, the study argues that certain forms of boredom reveal a phenomenological contraction of possibility, involving disturbances in lived temporality, value orientation, imaginative projection, and embodied intentionality. Through a critical analysis of key thinkers, the article clarifies the tensions and limitations within classical accounts and delineates the proposed concept of existential boredom from adjacent phenomena such as Unheimlichkeit, Frankl’s “existential vacuum”, clinical apathy, and everyday boredom. It is argued that existential boredom functions as a phenomenological indicator of existential disconnection, not as an ontological diagnosis of meaninglessness but as a liminal experience that renders visible the temporary suspension of the structures that normally sustain meaningful world-disclosure. This conceptualisation also illuminates the contemporary prevalence of this affective state within contexts of hyper-stimulation, attentional fragmentation, and the erosion of meaning frameworks. By offering an integrated analytical framework, the article contributes to a more rigorous understanding of boredom as an existential phenomenon, with implications for philosophy, contemporary psychology, and the study of human experience in modern life. This approach not only expands our understanding of boredom but also invites us on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060137

Authors: Johnny Sakr

This paper investigates how abstracta, such as numbers or functions, can be said to emerge at particular times, as in the claim that “complex numbers did not exist before the sixteenth century.” Standard accounts encounter well-known difficulties. Platonism posits timeless entities and struggles to explain historical emergence, while nominalism denies mathematical existence and fails to explain applicability. The paper develops a neutralist metaontology that interprets temporally indexed existence claims as statements about when a concept is available within a community’s inferential and representational practices. Unlike deflationary or thin-object views, neutralism distinctively formalizes these claims through the operator EXt(x), which captures the historical emergence of abstracta without positing timeless entities. Formally, ‘x exists at t’ is true iff EXt(x), where EXt(x) specifies that x is licensed by the rules, resources, and acceptance conditions operative at t. This framework provides a systematic account of temporally indexed existence claims in mathematics, illustrated by historical cases such as zero and complex numbers, and improves on both Platonist and nominalist approaches.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060136

Authors: Alexandru Baltag Sonja Smets

We use a novel type of epistemic logic, employing comparative knowledge assertions, to analyze the relative epistemic powers of individuals or groups of agents. Such comparative assertions can express that a group has the potential to (collectively) know everything that another group can know. Moreover, we look at comparisons involving various types of knowledge (fully introspective, positively introspective, etc.), satisfying the corresponding modal-epistemic conditions (e.g., S5, S4, KT). For each epistemic attitude, we are particularly interested in what agents or groups can know about their own epistemic position relative to that of others.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060135

Authors: Roberto Marchesini

This essay explores the posthumanist reconfiguration of the body, contrasting it with the humanist paradigm rooted in somatic appropriation and compensatory technology. While the humanist model views the body as incomplete and in need of external support, the posthumanist approach proposes an ontology of Being-a-Body, grounded in virtuality, relationality, and ecological situatedness. Central to this view is the concept of ontopoiesis—the body’s becoming through continuous relational activity. The essay emphasizes a shift from exemption to exuberance: technology no longer compensates for bodily deficiency but expands its virtual potential. This technopoietic process entails a reorganization of somatic structures, opening the body to new possibilities of actualization. The resulting condition—characterized by instability, hybridity, and transformation—defines a “technological sublime,” where the body is decentralized from its anthropocentric core and immersed in a fluid network of meaning. This posthumanist vision challenges essentialist assumptions, offering a dynamic and open-ended understanding of corporeality in the age of technogenesis.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060134

Authors: Robert Francescotti

Here I develop an account of what makes something a part of the body. The account presented is not an analysis of parthood generally, but an analysis of parthood specifically for what we are inclined to call a “body,” including but not limited to the bodies of human and nonhuman organisms. Drawing on influential accounts of parthood in the philosophical literature, with an emphasis on the core idea that something is a part in virtue of its contribution to the whole, I develop an analysis of bodily parthood that identifies what contribution to a body is necessary and sufficient for being a part of that body.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060133

Authors: Bram Hennekes

In the original publication [...]

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060132

Authors: Asadullah Khan

This paper traces the development in Heidegger’s thinking of truth from the early drafts of “On the Essence of Truth” (1930) to the published essay of 1943/49. It argues that the shift from the early thinking of truth, which understands truth as disclosure in terms of horizonal projection, to the later conception, which understands truth as disclosure granted by the open-region (die Gegnet), marks a deepening that entails significant development in Heidegger’s thinking as a whole. This paper follows the development of the relation between comportment, letting-be, disclosure, and concealment in early drafts, and shows how the later published version rethinks these in light of a more primordial openness that had remained unthought in the early drafts.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060131

Authors: Yuhong Wang

The Diamond Sutra and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, though grounded in distinct traditions, converge in their critique of the substantial “self,” revealing it as a fantasy produced by symbolic or conceptual structures. The Sutra dismantles attachment to “name-and-form,” asserting that realizing emptiness (śūnyatā) entails realizing non-self (anātman). Lacan, through the mirror stage, the Symbolic Order, and the Real, exposes the subject’s alienation within language, where desire continually circles around a constitutive lack. Both disclose that symbolic systems simultaneously generate and obscure reality. Practically, the Diamond Sutra prescribes the letting-go of all attachments—“letting the mind function without abiding anywhere”—while Lacan’s ethics of “traversing the fantasy” calls for confronting one’s fundamental lack and assuming responsibility for desire. By juxtaposing their approaches to the deconstruction of ego-fantasy, critique of symbolic mediation, and transcendence of illusion, this paper illuminates a shared insight into the interrelation of desire, language, and the real.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060130

Authors: Zixu Zhu Hui Deng Mingyong Hu Nianming Hu Zhihong Zhang

This study investigates how the traditional Chinese “philosophy of self-cultivation and awakening” (xiu-wu) can be systematically harnessed to foster Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) among undergraduates. Through historical–philosophical reconstruction and conceptual analysis, the study distills three recurring instructional principles—gradual cultivation (jian-xiu), gradual awakening (jian-wu), and sudden awakening (dun-wu), and their dialectical synthesis, and re-casts them as design parameters for thinking-centered instruction. These principles are then translated into a macro-level instructional metaphor, the Bridge-Building Model, which sequences curricular elements as bridge piers (the teaching process of “gradual cultivation”), bridge deck (student-constructed “an isolated fragments of knowing”), and final closure (holistic knowledge). The model integrates constructivist, behaviorist and intuitive dimensions: repetitive, scaffolded tasks foster behavioral automaticity; guided reflection precipitates incremental insight; and calibrated “epistemic shocks” elicit sudden reorganization of conceptual schemata. The framework clarifies the locus, timing and contingency of each phase while acknowledging the metaphysical indeterminacy of ultimate “holistic” mastery. By translating classical Chinese pedagogical insights into operational design heuristics, the paper offers higher-education instructors a culturally grounded, theoretically coherent blueprint for systematically nurturing HOTS without sacrificing the spontaneity essential to creative cognition.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060129

Authors: Paula Quinon

This paper investigates intensional differences between programming languages—understood as differences in how computational processes are expressed, structured, and specified rather than merely in what they compute. While such differences have been studied in classical models of computation, they remain underexplored in the context of programming languages. Yet, programming languages undeniably compute, and any account of what “computing” means must include the ways in which they do so. The paper first clarifies the extensional/intensional distinction and introduces a methodological framework to study this distinction based on Carnapian explication. It then follows an idealized programming workflow, which I structure according to the Carnapian framework, to identify where and how intensional differences arise—including during problem specification, algorithm design, language choice, data representation, and physical implementation. The final part situates intensionality within the broader epistemology of programming practice, examining how it is shaped by type-theoretic assumptions, social and historical context, and the implications of bounded outcomes. Throughout, the paper examines both the “nature” (inherent features of computable functions) and “nurture” (human factors influencing programming language design and use) of intensional differences.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060128

Authors: Lorenzo Magnani

Starting from classical philosophical suggestions about the status of happiness recipes that suggest the optimal ways to reach it, I will soon illustrate the fundamental Kantian suggestion: “No one can coerce me to be happy in his way”, that is, an individual has the right to choose their own kind of happiness “provided he does not infringe upon that freedom of others to strive for a like end which can coexist with the freedom of everyone”. I will conclude that happiness (and even its very possibility) is constrained in a relational interplay in a collective of human beings. Thanks to the events that took place during the notorious “enclosures”, which violently expropriated peasants by destroying their homes and cottages during the so-called primitive accumulation of capitalism, I will provide a very clear example of the relational nature of happiness and even its potential to be jeopardized. The idea of a “moral bubble” will be proposed as an explanation for why some people fail to recognize the harm they create when they jeopardize the happiness of other humans. A study of the current predatory neoliberal capitalism’s peculiar propensity to make the majority of people unhappy will be the focus of the last section. The article interdisciplinarily aims at bridging philosophy, economics, sociology, and political theory, enriching the philosophical analysis with historical and contemporary contexts, and also providing the following critical engagement: the analysis of how dominant narratives and economic frameworks serve to mask violence, thus challenging readers at least to reconsider accepted truths about progress and prosperity.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060127

Authors: Shangyuan Li Yan Li

Video games prioritize “fun” and “immersion”, yet suffering can disrupt play. Using phenomenology of emotion, this study examines Black Myth: Wukong as a case where suffering is integral to gameplay and narrative. It argues that suffering awakens player subjectivity, enabling resistance to algorithmic and biopolitical constraints. As mass art, video games harness suffering’s affective power to transform players from passive participants to active agents, revealing their potential for resistance.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060126

Authors: Ahmet Küçükuncular

I defend a diachronic constraint on justification as a necessary condition for knowledge. In my view (JTB + D), a belief is knowledge-apt only if its justification is maintainable over a context-sensitive interval Δ under ordinary avenues of evidence-accrual, including reliable memory, testimony, and communal inquiry, with no accessible undefeated defeaters arising within that interval. This temporal, process-sensitive requirement mitigates Gettier-style luck by targeting “snapshot” justification that would easily collapse under minimal further scrutiny (as in Fake Barn County), while avoiding infallibilism and over-intellectualism. I calibrate Δ by stakes and domain volatility to avoid vagueness and moving goalposts, distinguish responsive stability from mere habituation, and show how the account handles no-new-evidence scenarios without undermining ordinary memorial and testimonial knowledge. Conceptually, the proposal integrates internalist and externalist insights as it preserves reason-responsiveness over time and serves as an actual-world temporal analogue of safety, not a standalone fourth ‘dimension’. I engage canonical cases and acknowledge Zagzebski’s challenge: the view does not promise full Gettier immunity, but it raises the bar for counterexamples in ordinary environments. The result is a principled, parameterised refinement of the justification condition that better captures knowledge as an enduring, responsibly supported true belief.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060125

Authors: Leonardo André Paes Müller

Some mid-eighteenth-century Political Economists, among them Adam Smith, employed the conceptual and methodological tools from General Grammar. Instead of offering, at the outset, a set of formal definitions of their concepts, they departed from ordinary language’s words (‘popular notions’, as Smith puts it) and endeavored to map all the different meanings of a particular notion. The goal of this paper is to follow Smith’s efforts as Grammarian by offering a mapping of the meanings of the word trade in the Wealth of Nations. According to Smith, trade has (1) a proper and original meaning as occupation or métier, that is, a specific productive activity or branch of labor; (2) a derived meaning as business, when it involves the employment of capital in pursuit of profit; and (3) an abstract meaning as commerce, especially when referring to a sector of economic activity, such as domestic or foreign trade. The article argues that key Mercantilist errors also stem from a grammatical confusion between these meanings, illustrating the critical aspect of Smith’s Political Economy.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060124

Authors: Patrícia Vieira

In a recent stay in Senegal, I had a chance to contemplate a baobab tree (Adansonia digitata)1 located in the Bandia Reserve, whose hollow interior had been used as a burial site [...]

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060123

Authors: Qian Zhang

If evaluated solely by Raz’s criteria, Dworkin’s interpretive theory of law indeed faces a crisis of authority justification. This controversy stems from their divergent understandings of the nature of authority. By drawing on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to interrogate the rational foundation of prejudice, the rational essence of authority is re-exposed. Authority is a rational and free activity, tied to recognition, and manifests as the possibility of being justified through reasoning. Dworkin’s methodological approach provides a robust justification for legal authority, which manifests in three key dimensions. First, the very act of interpretation demonstrates recognition that authority constitutes a rational activity, thereby affirming that the establishment of legal authority represents a voluntary, autonomous, and reason-governed enterprise. Second, the interpretive theory of law correlates with the be-earned character of authority across three constitutive aspects: its susceptibility to justifiability, its normative demand for justification, and its substantive realization through justificatory practices. Third, the substantive content of interpretive theory corresponds to the epistemic features of authoritative justification—including its informational properties, scope of application, communal dimensions, and capacity for adaptive rationalization. Consequently, contra Raz’s critique, Dworkin’s theoretical framework successfully provides a coherent account of legal authority’s justificatory foundations.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060122

Authors: Jonah Y. C. Hsu

This paper presents a methodological framework, Tonal Isomorphism (TI), derived from Tonal Meta-Ontology (TMO), focusing on operational protocols rather than ontological foundations. Tonal Isomorphism is framed as a meta-protocol rather than a metaphysical doctrine: its purpose is to provide a transferable logic that bridges disciplinary silos. We argue that knowledge breakthroughs can emerge not through trial-and-error experimentation alone, but through the isomorphic translation of tonal structures into domain-specific models. The methodology is demonstrated through three key contributions: (1) the Operationalization of Metaphysics, where tonal principles are expressed in executable forms such as the ToneWarp Equation and integrity-preserving responsibility chains; (2) the Unified Generative Field, a cross-domain modeling scaffold applicable to contexts ranging from arithmetic closure to digital trust protocols; and (3) the Generative Proof, which positions the methodology itself as a living demonstration of its claims, resistant to external mimicry. In an era defined by AI’s capacity for replication and simulation, Tonal Isomorphism offers a framework for knowledge generation where truth is not fixed discovery but a defensible, continuously enacted act of creation.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060121

Authors: Paolo Diego Bubbio Meredith Trexler Drees

This article examines how Kant’s conception of sacrifice in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason connects with his account of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment. We argue that the analogy between sacrifice and sublimity illuminates the transformation involved in moral rebirth, whereby the old self is relinquished for the sake of the new. This transformation comprises two interrelated aspects: suppressive sacrifice, which subordinates self-centered inclinations to the moral law, and kenotic sacrifice, in which self-centeredness is relinquished as part of a radical reorientation of one’s disposition. By situating these aspects within Kant’s discussions of grace, the archetype–prototype distinction, and the imagination’s “sacrifice” during experiences of the sublime, we show how sacrifice functions as a symbol both of the moral exemplar (Vorbild) and of the conversion process. The resulting threefold analogy—between the old/new self, Christ’s kenotic self-emptying, and the imagination’s renunciation within the experience of the sublime—reveals how aesthetic experience, especially the sublime, helps exemplify and empower moral transformation in Kant’s thought, supplementing what his ethics alone can explain.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060120

Authors: Terence D. Agbeyegbe

This paper examines the conceptual relationship between Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments and Kenneth Boulding’s integrative systems approach to economics. Rather than claiming a direct intellectual lineage, we argue that Boulding’s work addresses a specific limitation in Smith’s moral framework: Smith’s restriction of justice to commutative duties (non-interference with persons, property, and promises) leaves the systematic organization of beneficent motivations underdeveloped, which modern economies require. Through a close analysis of Smith’s concept of beneficence in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and Boulding’s grants economy in The Economy of Love and Fear, we demonstrate that Boulding provides theoretical resources for understanding how moral motivations beyond reciprocal exchange can be systematically integrated into economic analysis. This comparison illuminates both the strengths and limitations of Smith’s naturalistic approach to moral economics. It suggests how contemporary business ethics might move beyond the stakeholder–shareholder debate toward a more comprehensive understanding of corporate moral agency.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060119

Authors: Erik Yves Adalberon

This paper aims to outline a framework based on John Dewey and his ideas relating to the topic of habit formation and change. The approach utilised in this article can best be described as a semi-systematic reading and is based on 884 extracts taken from his bibliography. Tendencies that were observed in this material include a distinction between flexible and inflexible habits, and how habit formation and change can be explained by central variables like valuation, experience, and conditions.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060118

Authors: Aldo Stella Federico Divino

The order of the references in the published version is incorrect [...]

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060117

Authors: Oleksii Kostenko Oleksii Dniprov Dmytro Zhuravlov Oleksandr Tykhomyrov Serhii Vladov

This article explores the philosophical and legal foundations of the Metaverse as an emerging socio-technological reality. It examines the co-evolution of technology, law, and society, emphasizing the need for new frameworks to address identity, subjectivity, and regulation in virtual spaces. Central to the analysis is the concept of Metasubjectivity, which affirms the ontological equality of humans, AI, and digital avatars. The study critiques classical anthropocentric paradigms and highlights postanthropocentric approaches that integrate ethical pluralism and algorithmic governance. Key risks, including dehumanization, identity crises, and algorithmic discrimination, are discussed in the context of digital subjectivity and emerging e-jurisdictions. The study presents a philosophical model that integrates critical rationalism, process philosophy, and the e-jurisdiction legal paradigm, with the aim of ensuring fairness and balance in digital ecosystems.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060116

Authors: Constantinos Xenofontos

This paper employs allegory to examine how pupils experience exclusion in mathematics education. Using Dante’s Inferno as a structural frame, I present nine fictional narratives aligned with the nine circles of Hell. These depict recurring learner experiences: displacement, disorientation, mechanical drill, grade-chasing, resistance, doubt, internalised failure, performance without understanding, and withdrawal. The narratives are not verbatim accounts but constructed stories synthesising themes from research, classroom practice, and observed discourse. Through narrative inquiry, each story reframes issues such as language barriers, high-stakes assessment, proceduralism, and stereotype threat—not as individual shortcomings but systemic conditions shaping learner identities. The allegorical mode makes these conditions vivid, positioning mathematics education as a moral landscape where inclusion and exclusion are continually negotiated. The analysis yields three insights: first, forms of exclusion are diverse yet interconnected, often drawing pupils into cycles of silence, resistance, or performance; second, metaphor and fiction can serve as rigorous research tools, allowing affective and structural dimensions of schooling to be understood together; and third, teacher education and policy must confront the hidden costs of privileging narrow forms of knowledge. Reimagining classrooms through Dante’s allegory, this paper calls for pedagogies that disrupt exclusion and open pathways to belonging and mathematical meaning.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10060115

Authors: José Nunes de Alencar Francisca Rego Rui Nunes

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) supplies the best available data, yet clinicians still face low-value care, surrogate-driven reversals, and pseudoscientific claims. We propose Semi-Imperative Evidentialism (SIE), a normative framework that links evidential warrant to proportionate professional duties while preserving patient autonomy. Using a targeted narrative review in philosophy of science, bioethics, and clinical epidemiology, we distilled six binary attributes to classify activities as Science, Pseudoscience, or Non-science. Scientific items enter a two-tier ladder—Tier 1 (established clinical evidence) or Tier 2 (emerging or preclinical evidence)—with status re-scored as randomized trials, living meta-analyses, and post-marketing safety signals accrue. SIE maps tiers to action: Tier 1 should be offered or strongly recommended, with reasons documented if declined; Tier 2 should be discussed with explicit consent, preferably within trials or registries; Pseudoscience should be refused or discontinued with corrective education; Non-science may be acknowledged as contextual support when safe and non-substitutive. Worked examples—antiarrhythmic suppression post–myocardial infarction (CAST) and “complementary cancer cures”—illustrate earlier and more transparent course-correction. SIE provides a fallibilist bridge from evidence to duty, constraining discretion without eroding autonomy; prospective audits and cluster trials should test its impact on prescribing and consent.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050114

Authors: Karen Shiratori Emanuele Fabiano

What is a plant? A photosynthesizing organism, molecule, commodity, songs, images, oniric experience, spirit…Indigenous perspectives show that plants cannot be thought of without the relationships that constitute them. We contextualize our reflection in plant extractive activities that, by reducing sociality with these non-humans to anonymous, non-situated knowledge, feed a transit of knowledge based on a relational extractivism. Thus, in this article, based on one historical case and another ethnographic one involving two South American plants—cinchona (Cinchona officinalis) and matico (Piper aduncum)—we present a reflection on plant agency from the perspective of Amazonian peoples, with the intention of showing how these beings are conceived of as subjects who are part of kinship relations, but also of predation. We take shamanic and artistic experiences as ethnographic cases to argue that the Western categories of biology are insufficient to define and circumscribe the so-called plant kingdom according to certain Amazonian conceptions.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050113

Authors: Ana Borovecki

This contribution provides an overview of clinical ethics, examining the evolution of the field and its philosophical foundations. The evolution from the mid-1970s to the present day highlights clinical ethics as an interdisciplinary field where experts often collaborate to solve complex medical problems. Clinical ethics is embedded in medical practice, positioned at the intersection of medicine and philosophy, and grounded in various ethical and bioethical theories. Some problems in clinical ethics stem from underlying shortcomings within the healthcare system, while future challenges for the field are also underlined.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050112

Authors: Deborah Tollefsen

Mind shaping is a concept in philosophy and cognitive science that explores how social and cultural interactions influence the development of individual minds. Rather than viewing cognition as a strictly internal or individual process, the literature on mind shaping emphasizes the profound role of external, interpersonal, and societal factors in shaping mental capacities, beliefs, and behaviors. In this paper, I bring the discussion of mind shaping to bear on discussions of mental state ascription to groups.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050111

Authors: Haijin Xie Ruifeng Yan

Many scholars believe that the Yi Jing 易經 (the Book of Changes) and traditional Chinese medicine share common mathematical principles, which are both predicated on the ontological of qi 氣 and the cosmological of correlative between nature and human. Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes the systemic organization of organs, meridians, qi, and blood as central components by incorporating the mathematical principles, including the theory of “Chaos-Crack”, the infinite classification methods of yinyang 陰陽, the generative and restrictive interactions of wuxing 五行, and the metaphysical significance of special numbers such as one, two, three, etc. Traditional Chinese medicine also formulates many theories and methodologies by integrating these mathematical principles with the schemata of luoshu 洛書 and jiugong 九宮, as well as the special combination numbers such as tianliu diwu 天六地五. This research tries to explain the mathematical principles and applications from the body dimension in traditional Chinese medicine.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050110

Authors: Julian Hart

One of the greatest quests in physics in current times is the search for a grand unified theory—to bring all the forces of nature into one coherent explanatory framework. Despite two centuries of progress, both in comprehending the individual forces and formulating mathematical constructs to explain the existence and operation of such forces, the final step to unify the localised atomic and subatomic forces with gravity has proven to be elusive. Whilst recognising that there are arguments for and against the unification of all the forces of nature, the pursuit for unity has been driving many physicists and mathematicians to explore increasingly extraordinary ideas, from string theory to various other options requiring multiple dimensions. Can process philosophy ride to the rescue? By changing our perspective, it might be possible to derive a provocative and compelling alternative way to understand basic (and advanced) physics. This process approach would see all matter objects, at whatever scale, as energetic systems (inherently dynamic). Through the use of game theory, there is a way to appreciate the combination of entropy together with all the apparent forces of nature, being gravity and the more localised forces, within a singular, metaphysically consistent, construct. The outcome, however, challenges our whole understanding of the universe and fundamentally changes our relationship with matter.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050109

Authors: Diego Colomés Luca Valera

In this paper, we analyze the concept of need that we find in the foundation of Carl Menger’s value theory to then confront it with such heterogeneous philosophical theories as Ludwig Feuerbach’s dialectic of feelings, Arnold Gehlen’s notion of humans as defective beings, and Ortega y Gasset’s theory about the role of technology and production in the human project. In general terms, these authors worked with the same notion of need that Menger used, but from an anthropological perspective. In this sense, we hypothesize that, despite belonging to heterogeneous philosophical traditions, the authors above can help us fully understand the concept of need in Menger, a notion that he did not develop in depth. In doing so, we attempt to show that this implicit content prefigures an anthropology that conceives human beings as primarily active and axiological beings. With this, we also aim to show the hermeneutical richness of the concept of need, as well as its relevance for creating interdisciplinary connections for future research.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050108

Authors: Henryk Anzulewicz Athanasios Rinotas

Aristotle’s theory of soul was a hot topic in the Late Middle Ages and it sparked a great series of debates with serious theological and philosophical implications. The medieval commentators of Aristotle played a crucial role in the dissemination of these debates since their explanations and commentaries on Aristotle’s theory of soul served as a springboard for further discussions. One of the most important medieval commentators of Aristotle was Albert the Great (ca 1200–1280) who dealt extensively with the topic of soul and its connection with the doctrine of intellect. Albert discussed the subject of soul not only in the Aristotelian commentaries but also in many genuine works of his which delineated Albert’s theory of soul in great detail. This paper will primarily focus on two works of Albert, De homine and Liber de natura et origine animae; it aims to provide a coherent account of Albert’s early theory of soul and to shed some light on important hermeneutical issues that derive from these two works.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050107

Authors: Nađa Vesić Đorđe Vukašinović

In this paper, we revisit Kant’s conception of political freedom and draw a connection to the concept of freedom presented in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals—a practical concept of freedom that is immediately grounded in the transcendental concept of freedom. Also, we defend the traditional viewpoint on the relationship between Kant’s theory of morals and the theory of Right, which is equivalent to the claim that political freedom is based on the definition of freedom in the Groundwork.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050106

Authors: Leandro Gualario

This work aims to summarize the history and mutations of Lindy’s Law (or the Lindy Effect)—a mathematical distribution that originated from television commentary—and to first test this principle in the context of a recent new iteration: Lindy’s Law as a proxy to describe the significance of longevity as a factor in the retention of scientific theories.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050105

Authors: Fabrizio Turoldo

This article shows how “reasons of state” can sometimes influence end-of-life care decisions made by top politicians. Drawing on Ivan Illich’s concept of “medical nemesis” and the myth of Tithonus and Eos, it argues that the success of medicine in prolonging life can, paradoxically, increase suffering and raise ethical dilemmas, particularly when medicine is used to ensure the continuity of power. Through the analysis of four historical cases—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Francisco Franco, Josip Broz Tito, and François Mitterrand—the article highlights some issues related to the concealment or deliberate manipulation of information about the health of political leaders, invasive and disproportionate medical interventions, and various conflicts that can arise between clinical goals and political objectives. The article then adopts the doctrine of the “king’s two bodies”, revived in contemporary times by Ernst Kantorowicz, to interpret these dynamics as attempts to merge the leader’s mortal body with an eternal political body, generating a dangerous identification that fuels therapeutic excess. By decoupling the natural body from the political body, the study calls for transparent and ethically grounded frameworks capable of balancing privacy, continuity of government, and limits on the use of medical care.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050104

Authors: Phrarajsuddhivajiramedhi Chaiyan Chattalayo Suebkrapan Phrakhrupalad Charkrapol Acharashubho Thepa Phrakhrusangkharak Suriya Pabhassaro Sapanthong Netnapa Sutthirat

This research article explores the integration of Buddhist and philosophical principles into educational methodologies to enhance learning skills. The objectives were to develop a creative educational model, identify key factors influencing learning skills, and assess the approach’s effectiveness. The study targeted students from higher education institutions as the population. A purposive sampling technique was employed, selecting participants who demonstrated an interest in or familiarity with Buddhist teachings and philosophical inquiry. The research employed a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques. Tools included questionnaires/surveys, semi-structured interview questions, and observations, supplemented by focus group discussions and thematic analyses and a suitability and feasibility evaluation form. The analyses were performed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), content analysis, theme analysis, and data saturation. Statistics were in the form of percentages, means, SDs, t-values, and exploratory factor analyses (EFA). The results indicated that integrating Buddhist practices, such as mindfulness and reflective thinking, with philosophical methods, such as critical inquiry and dialogue, significantly improved students’ cognitive, emotional, and ethical development. Key findings highlighted the importance of fostering an environment encouraging open-mindedness, self-reflection, and ethical reasoning. The study’s significance lies in its contribution to educational innovation, providing a framework for integrating spiritual and philosophical dimensions into contemporary education. This approach enhances traditional academic skills and promotes holistic development, preparing students for personal and societal challenges.

Philosophies doi: 10.3390/philosophies10050103

Authors: Ruili Wang

Can human–machine hybrid systems (HMHs) constitute genuine collective agents? This paper defends an affirmative answer. I argue that HMHs achieve collective intentionality without shared consciousness by satisfying the following three functional criteria: goal alignment, functional complementarity, and stable interactivity. Against this functionalist account, the following two objections arise: (1) the cognitive bloat problem, that functional criteria cannot distinguish genuine cognitive integration from mere tool use; and (2) the phenomenological challenge, that AI’s lack of practical reason reduces human–AI interaction to subject–tool relations. I respond by distinguishing constitutive from instrumental functional contributions and showing that collective agency requires stable functional integration, not phenomenological fusion. The result is what I call Functional Hybrid Collective Agents (FHCAs), which are systems exhibiting irreducible collective intentionality through deep human–AI coupling.