Arts and Humanities

Abstract: The functioning of complex natural systems, such as living systems, still lacks a generally accepted theoretical basis and respective empirical verification. We propose an experiment to test whether such systems are subject to a hitherto unknown organizing principle, in which the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle enables ordering phenomena in chaotic or nearly chaotic systems in the sense of a strong emergence principle. Contrary to previous proposals, our hypothesis does not require fragile macroscopic quantum coherence, ensuring compatibility with the harsh conditions in living systems. To test this hypothesis, we suggest comparing two virtually identical, complex artificial neural networks as a quantitative benchmark. One setup utilizes deterministic pseudo-random number generators at key sensitive points, while the other uses quantum-based physical random-number generators. A favorable outcome demonstrating the superiority of quantum randomness would have considerable implications beyond artificial networks, particularly for the discussions on consciousness and free will.

Abstract: In this essay, I try to describe the most fundamental dimensions of our human situation, encompassed as it is by astonishing depths and absolute mysteries. Five primary aspects of this situation can be symbolized under the key terms “mysticism,” “holism,”, “logos,” “freedom,” and “hope.” I try to indicate how these dimensions, along with the dialectics of critical social theory, demand that human beings unite under the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. Both critical social theory and mysticism share something in common that is absolutely fundamental—they open human beings to their utopian horizon.

Abstract: Several experiments have suggested that the complete indistinguishability of quantum systems is to be considered a real phenomenon. Experiments such as the HOM effect, the existence of BECs, the path identity cases, and many others are physical realities of today. Physicists `explain’ these phenomena using different models, such as Bohmian mechanics, relational quantum mechanics or the QBism approach. Most of these models are constructed within a standard mathematical framework, meaning standard mathematics, where all things can, even if only in principle, be distinguished from one another, so complete indistinguishability can only be mimicked. These approaches may work for physical purposes but are debatable regarding logical and metaphysical questions. If we accept that such questions are at least part of the philosophical aspect of quantum physics, then we are authorised to analyse them and try to offer an alternative. Looking for an alternative, we consider Alain Aspect’s and Anton Zeilinger’s views about quantum realism, opting for Aspect’s acceptance of some kind of reality behind the wave-function, while Zeilinger suggests that everything comes from information. In our opinion, the case is the opposite: it is information that comes from the existence of things. The aim of this paper is to justify why we think that the underlying reality (in Aspect’s sense) can be seen as a quantum ontology of non-individuals.

Abstract: The contribution of philosophy in the Islamic world to medieval European thought extends beyond the preservation and transmission of ancient Greek texts. This article examines the interpretative, conceptual, and intellectual roles of Muslim philosophers in the formation of European philosophical traditions, with particular attention to al-Fārābī, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), and Averroes (Ibn Rushd). Adopting a historical and comparative approach, the study considers the translation movements through which ancient and Arabic-language philosophical works circulated, the reception of Islamic philosophical concepts within Latin scholasticism, and the emergence of Averroism in the European university environment. Particular attention is given to the engagement of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas with Arabic philosophy, alongside the debates associated with Siger of Brabant and the University of Paris. The article argues that thinkers of the Islamic world functioned as active producers of philosophical knowledge whose commentaries, critical analyses, and original theories helped reshape the intellectual resources available to European scholars. Their reception also generated disputes concerning the authority of Aristotle, the relationship between reason and revelation, and the scope of philosophical inquiry. By distinguishing intellectual transmission from conceptual transformation, the study presents medieval European philosophy as developing through sustained engagement across linguistic, religious, and cultural boundaries.

Abstract: Revelation occupies a significant position at the intersection of metaphysics, psychology, and political philosophy in Avicenna’s account of prophecy. Building upon questions developed by al-Fārābī, Avicenna explains prophetic knowledge through the exceptional perfection of human cognitive faculties and their relationship with the intelligible order. Although God remains the ultimate source of revelation, its reception is understood within a hierarchy of intellectual and celestial mediation. Prophecy thus represents a distinctive realization of human capacities rather than a phenomenon wholly external to human nature. This article examines the relationship between emanation, the rational soul, intellectual perfection, and the imaginative reception of revealed knowledge. Particular attention is given to the distinction between intellectual apprehension and the representation of intelligible content through images, whether during sleep or in waking experience. The discussion also considers the practical significance of prophecy: the prophet communicates knowledge in forms capable of guiding collective life and shaping moral and political conduct. Avicenna’s account consequently presents revelation as both an exceptional mode of cognition and a foundation for the public responsibilities of prophetic leadership. At the same time, the possibility of related experiences among spiritually disciplined individuals requires a distinction between extraordinary cognition and the full capacities associated with the prophetic mission.

Abstract: This study introduces the Principle of Conditional Cultural Adaptiveness, establishing that the evolutionary performance of cultural strategies depends strictly on environmental state variables and shifts through equilibrium migration as those macro-conditions change. Modernity is formally conceptualized not as cultural erosion, but as equilibrium migration between state-dependent optima. Existing scholarly interpretations of Javanese maternal domesticity and the construct of kanca wingking frequently emphasize patriarchal gender hierarchies, symbolic cosmology, or moral norms without formally modeling how domestic practices dynamically adjust to resource volatility, environmental hazards, and shifting household bargaining power. We develop an environment-dependent game-theoretic framework linking selected maternal instructions to material resource allocation, homeostatic regulation, risk management, health capital investment, cultural information transmission, and costly signaling. By integrating ethnographic philology with evolutionary game theory, bargaining theory, dynamic optimization, and eco-evolutionary feedback modeling, this research provides a formal computational social science framework for representing cultural persistence and transformation while explicitly differentiating stable household equilibria from equitable distributions of welfare.

Abstract: The rapid ascent of Large Language Models (LLMs) has highlighted the possibility that complex syntactic reasoning and semantic manipulation may occur without subjective experience (qualia), raising fundamental questions about the relationship between cognition and consciousness and challenging key assumptions of computational functionalism. This paper introduces the Ontological Interface Hypothesis (OIH), a speculative ontological framework that proposes a triadic distinction between cognition, consciousness, and biological self-preservation. Within this framework, cognition is conceived as an algorithmic, potentially substrate-independent process, while consciousness and biological negentropy are hypothesized to involve non-algorithmic aspects of a more fundamental ontological layer. The thalamocortical complex is tentatively proposed as a phase-synchronized biological interface linking algorithmic processing to this hypothesized layer, rather than as an additional computational engine. Drawing on concepts from information theory, thermodynamics, and the philosophy of mind, the paper explores the potential implications of this framework for understanding the limits of algorithmic explanations of consciousness and life. It also examines functionalist counterarguments and considers whether artificial systems lacking the proposed biological interfaces might differ fundamentally from living organisms in their capacity for subjective experience, self-preservation, and autonomous agency. Ultimately, the framework suggests that the apparent sentience of advanced AI operates as a hermeneutic illusion, demonstrating that while complex syntax can be computationally simulated, genuine meaning and subjective experience likely require a non-algorithmic ontological anchor. The OIH is presented as a conceptual hypothesis whose ontological assumptions and proposed physical mechanisms remain open to further philosophical analysis and empirical investigation.

Abstract: The concept of entropy is mildly consensual on two apparently paradoxical points: it is a fundamental concept of science, and nobody knows what it really is. Historically, it reveals two great ambitions: to account for the impossibility of perpetual motion in the macroscopic realm, and to derive this account from the microscopic, dynamical laws. The result is a baffling diversity of definitions and interpretations. In this article, we review five of these interpretations: as disorder, unavailability of work, probable state, missing information, and spreading, while discussing their merits in their scientific, historical and philosophical dimensions. The discussions will assess the strengths and weaknesses of these interpretations while highlighting epistemological insights regarding irreversibility, probability, emergence, objectivity and ‘levels of reality’.

Abstract: The ontological transition from biological signaling to the complexities of human natural language has traditionally been conceptualized as a saltational leap—a categorical rupture where mechanical causality terminates and "rational" intentionality emerges. This paper posits the Teleofunctional Evolutionary Representation Model (TERM) as a robust framework to bridge this theoretical lacuna. By synthesizing Ruth Millikan’s biosemantics with a novel structural-functional taxonomic unit termed the "Functure," this study argues for a formal, teleological continuity extending from primordial genetic sequences (R₀) to the sophisticated structures of formal logic (R₃). The analysis provides a rigorous critique of the rationalist tradition, which erroneously treats representation as an exclusively mental phenomenon. Instead, it is proposed that intentionality constitutes a natural property derived from the evolutionary efficacy of producer-consumer systems. The model culminates in a redefinition of logic: rather than a collection of transcendental Platonic laws, logic is understood as the stabilized regulation of representational transitions, selected to facilitate inter-agent social coordination. This exploration offers a naturalized account of semantics, displacing the "subjective mind" from the locus of meaning and repositioning it as an emergent product of teleofunctional history.

Abstract: This article examines the existential predicament of the digital age through the lens of Paul Tillich’s theory of ultimate concern. While traditional ethical principles often prove abstract when confronted with algorithmic power, an existential inquiry reveals a deeper crisis: digital technology is systematically eroding the essential determinations of the human being—freedom, wholeness, and a unified self-awareness—which are the subjective prerequisites for ultimate concern. Specifically, algorithmic power disciplines choice, scoring mechanisms fragment the life narrative, and virtual identity dissolves the embodied anchor of the self. This leads to a double paralysis of the existential imperative of seeking life and avoiding death: the source of motivation is exhausted by the disenchantment of death and the transfer of existential anxiety, while the direction of pursuit is collapsed by the virtualisation of existence and digital idolatry. To resolve this, the article proposes a two-fold path of existential practice: first, reclaiming the subjective determinations of the human within technological enclosures; second, reconstructing the dialectical movement of seeking life and avoiding death. By transforming digital anxiety into existential anxiety and discerning ultimate symbols from digital idols, individuals can maintain a dimension of transcendence and affirm their humanity in-spite-of the pressures of the system through the courage to be.

Abstract: Sartre’s theory of the look offers a fresh way of re-examining the doctor–patient relationship in clinical surgery. The look is an existential mode through which individuals strive for subjectivity. In the context of clinical surgery, the patient’s look makes the surgeon feel that his or her subjectivity is negated, and this feeling of negation cannot be dissolved regardless of the patient’s condition. It is therefore necessary to move beyond the infinite cycle of the look and to rediscover a path by which the surgeon can return to being-for-itself. From the standpoint of existential ontology, the surgeon attains subjectivity through autonomous surgical action and the assumption of responsibility. From the standpoint of existential sociology, the co-presence of doctor and patient elevates the surgeon’s being-for-itself into a being-for-itself of “us,” and the surgeon’s being-for-itself is made manifest through the process of being responsible for the patient. In terms of existential faith, the awareness of life is fundamental: through an attitude of in spite of, the surgeon cultivates this awareness of life and becomes a being-for-itself.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence systems now perform tasks once thought distinctively human, and this performance often shapes judgments about machine consciousness, agency, and personhood. Much of the literature evaluates these judgments by tracking what systems can do rather than by asking what a person is. This article treats that question as ontologically prior. It asks what conception of human personhood can explain why cognitive performance is insufficient for personhood, and can guide claims about artificial personhood and moral status. Using conceptual analysis, comparative engagement with recent philosophy of artificial intelligence, and dialogue with biblical anthropology, the article develops a four-dimensional relational ontology of the human person, built from embodied selfhood, constitutive relationality, responsible agency, and oriented dignity. It compares this ontology with functionalist, computationalist, capacity-based, relational, and embodied-cognition accounts, and defends the four dimensions as jointly addressing four distinct reductionist tendencies in existing theories. The contribution is this integrated ontology, together with the conclusion that artificial intelligence ethics requires a defensible account of the human person, not an expanding catalogue of machine capability.

Abstract: Intelligence is commonly associated with deliberate reasoning, intention, and an internal controlling process. This article examines intelligence from a functional and physical perspective, proposing that adaptive behaviour can arise from organized systems without requiring a separate internal deliberative agent. The discussion develops a common functional framework for examining adaptive automata across different physical substrates, from biochemical signalling networks in unicellular organisms to convolutional neural networks, Transformer-based language models, and biological neural networks. In each case, environmental or input signals are transformed through structured interactions among system components, producing changes in internal states and outputs that can improve adaptation or task performance. The comparison also considers how learning and parameter modification occur through evolutionary selection, gradient-based optimization, localized learning mechanisms, and biological synaptic plasticity. Stochastic processes are examined as an important source of variability in both biological and artificial systems, while remaining distinct from the structured transformations that generate adaptive behaviour. The analysis does not claim that these systems possess identical architectures or mechanisms, nor does it attempt to resolve the philosophical question of subjective experience. Rather, it argues that the observed adaptive behaviours can be understood within a physical and functional framework in which intelligence is expressed through organized information processing, learning, and adaptation.

Abstract: In Sityo Waldo, Tasyo is not simply believed; he becomes a test of whether a community can still ask questions when a speaker's identity begins to carry more weight than the reasons offered. Recent debates on moral testimony ask when deference is permissible or required; work on epistemic authority asks when testimony may rationally displace a hearer's own judgment; work on testimonial injustice examines how credibility assessments can wrong speakers; and work on normative powers and standing to blame shows that who speaks can sometimes partly determine what may validly be demanded. These debates share a question that is rarely stated in a common form: when a speaker's credibility, authority, or standing changes, what else changes with it? This essay offers a speaker-dependence test. It distinguishes the truth of a claim, the evidential role of a speaker, the independent normative force of a reason, and the relational force created by authority or standing. The central claim is that loss of trust in a person does not by itself defeat an independently grounded reason, although speaker identity can matter decisively when credibility is our evidence or when a speech act exercises a genuine normative power. Through the dispute between Tasyo and Mang Isko, and in conversation with current work on testimony, moral deference, epistemic injustice, authority, and blame, the essay shows why neither reverence nor contempt can replace the task of locating the source of a claim's force.

Abstract: Generative AI tools present an unprecedented means through which the written, informational fruits of past social knowledge production may be accessed, and rapidly deployed to accelerate labor tasks, schoolwork, or the building of understanding. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are capable of synthesizing terabytes of information into passable written content at a fraction of the time, expertise, and mental labor once necessary to independent digestion, synthesis, and composition. This new reality has led business leaders and academics to lean into the perceived future represented by these tools, in which their use is either neutral inevitability, or a necessary source of transcendent liberation. In the heat of this zeitgeist, few have critically reckoned with the underlying productive relations represented by these tools at the economic and social levels. Fewer still, have directly confronted the implications towards cognitive labor and mental production posed by emerging research on long-term use of generative tools. The process of LLM-driven production and its widespread deployment across institutions does promote a more efficient form of production. However, the efficiency of this arrangement stems from a diminished instrumentalization of the brain. The form of written mental production represented by partial or full reliance upon LLMs is, by all accounts, an exercise in cognitive disengagement. This exercise, rather than strengthening the brain over the long term, produces structural deficiencies in neural connectivity, diminishing individual capacities of critical and creative thought (Kosmyna et al. 2025, p. 112). Underutilization of the brain breeds reliance upon the tool supposedly made to supplement and extend its labor. This paper approaches generative AI tools on these grounds, through the lens of an extended Marxian theory of alienation. Drawing upon emerging experimental research and heterodox accounts of technological production involving the body and the organs themselves, I argue that the off-loading of the baseline cognitive capacities involved in critical thought, concretized into “intelligent” machinery, constitutes an ongoing estrangement of the individual from her being — or her ability to produce, engage in, and externalize conscious, critical thought. This paper explores larger implications for how we conceptualize production, how we engage with our tools, how our tools shape our understanding, and how the use of our tools reflexively impact our brains and bodies.

Abstract: Cognitive Platonism offers a naturalistic account of abstract forms. It accepts the objectivity and non-arbitrariness of mathematical structures without requiring that they exist as autonomous entities in an independently given Platonic realm. The present paper clarifies this position in response to Michael Levin's recent comparison between his account of Platonic Space and Cognitive Platonism. The central distinction concerns the relation between natural regularities and abstract forms. Natural systems exhibit structured regularities independently of observers, while cognitive agents identify, stabilize, and progressively abstract those regularities into representations, concepts, models, and mathematical structures. Mathematical discovery is therefore compatible with cognitive construction: once an abstract relational structure has been constituted, previously unknown consequences can genuinely be discovered within it. Historical examples such as π, e, and the Pythagorean theorem illustrate how mathematical structures can emerge through interaction with practical and physical problems while later acquiring considerable inferential autonomy. Their necessity does not by itself establish that they exist prior to and independently of the physical world in a separate ontological domain. They may instead express inherent relational properties of nature itself. The paper argues that the main difference between Cognitive Platonism and Levin's Platonic Space concerns ontological direction: whether abstract forms independently exist and are instantiated in nature, or whether they are embodied in natural processes and expressed through cognitive abstractions of relational regularities.

Abstract: This article reconstructs the central methodological idea of Ukrainian philosopher of science Dmytro T. Krivenko (1941–1994): dialectics is not a universal algorithm governing the development of physical knowledge, whereas a multilevel hierarchical organization can be traced both in the gradual refinement of concepts and in radical changes of models. The source base comprises Krivenko’s published works on the formation of quantitative concepts, informational levels of physical knowledge, and the coarse-graining of complex systems, together with the author’s clearly identified personal recollections. The abandonment of the substantial theory of caloric and the successive transformation of atomic models show that a new theoretical level need not form a symmetrical ‘synthesis’ of thesis and antithesis: it may reject the ontological core of the preceding model while retaining part of its empirical or mathematical content. Dialectics is interpreted as one local mechanism of transition between levels, and hierarchical methodology as a more general framework for organizing such transitions. The article also demonstrates the integrity of Krivenko’s philosophical project: the hierarchical principle extends from the methodology of physics to the ontology of the human being in Prynat i prynatyka and to the analysis of political positions, where democracy appears not as a compromise between extremes but as a higher level of freedom, dignity, and responsibility. This reconstruction is applied to contemporary physics: from experimental observables and nuclear models through hadronic and mesonic effective descriptions to QCD, and to the cautious formulation of preon hypotheses. Hierarchical philosophy does not establish the existence of a deeper level of matter; rather, it specifies requirements for a model: retention of validated content, an explicit domain of applicability, new independent consequences, and a route back to experiment.

Abstract: In a recent paper in this journal, Robert Knowles (2026) defends a novel "malfunctionalist" diagnosis of the semantic paradoxes: Liar sentences fail to express propositions because they are self-dependent—their truth-values would have to be determined by themselves. This paper argues that malfunctionalism faces a devastating revenge problem. I construct a sentence, (R), that encodes Knowles's own diagnostic apparatus within the object language. When Knowles diagnoses (R) as "self-dependent", he thereby makes (R) true—yet (R) cannot consistently express the truth that his diagnosis makes true. The diagnosis is thus self-undermining: It vindicates the very sentence it was meant to disqualify. This is not merely an expressive cost but a fundamental instability that threatens the coherence of the malfunctionalist framework. The upshot is a dilemma: Either Knowles must concede that his diagnosis is inexpressible in natural language—a form of semantic pessimism—or he must retreat to a merely Tarskian treatment, abandoning his ambition to provide a genuine hermeneutic diagnosis of how natural language actually functions.

Abstract: This essay proposes the elegant simulation as a reframing of the philosophical simulation debate. Its aim is not to provide evidence that reality is or is not a simulation, but to ask what kind of architecture would make a simulated reality plausible as a lived world. Contemporary discussions of simulation often focus on whether our world could be generated by advanced external agents. I argue that this model remains too centralized, externalist, and technologically narrow. A more coherent simulation scenario would not require a total universe computed in full from outside, but a distributed architecture of rendering in which reality becomes locally explicit through interaction, perception, embodiment, and consciousness. Drawing on Bostrom’s simulation argument, Chalmers’s account of virtual realism, Godfrey-Smith’s critique of simulation scenarios, Umwelt theory, the problem of qualia, Global Workspace Theory, Grinberg-Zylberbaum’s syntergic theory, and Bohm’s notion of implicate order, the essay develops an ontology of rendering. Within this framework, perception is understood as translation, conscious beings as nodes of instantiation, and lived reality as a locally unfolded interface between structured background, physical explicitness, and phenomenal presence. The elegant simulation does not deny reality, nor does it claim to solve the hard problem of consciousness. It proposes instead that the simulation debate should shift from the question of whether the world is externally simulated to the question of how any simulated reality could become available, coherent, and inhabitable from within.

Abstract: In the philosophy of language, Frege’s (1892) distinction between sense and reference provides a foundational framework for identity statements. Geach’s (1967) relative identity breaks out of the framework of absolute identity and opens another vista for us. Putnam’s (1975) “Twin Earth” thought experiment, with its astonishing insight, pushes externalism to the extreme, successfully challenging the internalist model of meaning and setting the basic agenda for decades of subsequent debate on the problem of reference determination. However, despite the inspirational value of these groundbreaking works, a thought-provoking phenomenon is that the debates they triggered—such as those surrounding core cases like the Ship of Theseus and identical particles—seem to have reached a certain impasse. This paper argues that this impasse may not stem from the depth of the problem itself, but precisely from a deep, unexamined presupposition shared by these otherwise highly persuasive theories: namely, the assumption that there exists some single, decisive category (whether microscopic physical structure or historical causality) that can once and for all answer the question of identity. This paper proposes that, rather than continuing to seek a better single answer under this presupposition, a more productive approach may be to reflect on the presupposition itself. To this end, we attempt to analyze the problem from a different angle. Interestingly, this angle shows that the aforementioned seemingly opposing outstanding theories can actually all be understood as special cases of this theory under different categories; the difficulties they encounter become inevitable precisely when they attempt to make assertions across categories. Therefore, this paper is not intended to negate previous work, but aims to provide a new path for resolving a series of philosophical difficulties arising from category mistakes by clarifying the valid scope of application of these theories.