This paper argues that Marxist philosophy is undergoing a theoretical turn towards digital philosophy in response to the digital transformation of social being, social consciousness and social relations. It contends that human practice now unfolds within a cyber-physical-social-thinking quadruple dialectical space, in which cyberspace has become an ontologically significant field rather than a mere technical extension. On this basis, the article proposes Cybersophy as a fourth guiding principle that supplements worldview, life outlook, and values. It reconstructs Marxist philosophy at two (...) levels, namely core domains such as epistemology, ethics, ontology, and axiology, and meta theoretical categories concerning the relation between the virtual and the real and an upgraded complex systems dialectics. By introducing concepts including digital practice, distributed cognition, platform power, digital alienation, and digital emancipation, Cybersophy offers a framework for critically and normatively orienting life in the digital age. (shrink)

With the rapid expansion of cyberspace driven by electronic computing, networking technologies, and artificial intelligence, the human living environment has evolved from the traditional physical–social–cognitive structure into a coupled Cyber-Physical-Social-Thinking (CPST) space. This transformation has raised new challenges regarding the re-representation and governance of natural order. Against this backdrop, this study adopts Cyberism as its methodological foundation and draws upon the Daoist principles of Dao follows nature and wu wei (non-coercive action). Within the CPST framework, we reinterpret the natural laws (...) and generative order implied by the Dao and integrate a contemporary cyber-theoretical understanding of wu wei to propose four guiding principles: compliance, limits, self-reflection, and co-governance. Furthermore, focusing on representative technological contexts such as digital twins and artificial general intelligence (AGI), the study formulates ten philosophical propositions—time, space, representation, embodiment, identity, ethics, governance, ecology, knowledge, and risk—to reveal the fundamental tensions through which digital technologies reshape the structure of natural experience, the boundaries of subjectivity, and the logic of governance. To bridge theory and practice, a three-layer conceptual framework for Dao–Cyber synergy is developed, consisting of representation, interaction, and value. Finally, a set of Dao-consistent design principles is proposed to support the coordinated development of Dao and nature, providing both theoretical guidance and methodological foundations. These principles also offer practical insights for applications such as digital twins, intelligent governance, and emerging technological ethics, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of Chinese philosophical wisdom in addressing challenges in digital transformation and technological governance. (shrink)

The rapid expansion of cyberspace is fundamentally reshaping human existence, social relations, spatial structures, and mechanisms of order formation. These transformations pose significant theoretical challenges to Confucian philosophy, which has traditionally been grounded in embodied individuals, stable relational networks, and community-based ethical orders. Drawing on the framework of Cyberism, this paper re-examines Confucian philosophy through four foundational dimensions—human, relations, space, and order—and analyzes how emerging socio-technical conditions, including digital humans, algorithmic mediation, hybrid virtual–physical environments, and platform governance, destabilize its underlying (...) assumptions. We argue that these transformations do not render Confucian ethics obsolete; rather, they call for its reinterpretation and reconstruction within a cyber-enabled context. Building on this analysis, the paper proposes three conceptual pathways for the transformation of Confucian ethics in the digital age: digital rituality as a framework for regulating interaction order in platform environments; algorithmic benevolence as a normative orientation for embedding human-centered values into technological decision-making; and platform-based community as a model for reconstituting public good under conditions of data-driven social organization. By articulating these concepts, the study contributes to bridging classical ethical traditions and contemporary digital governance, and offers a Confucian approach to addressing the ethical challenges of cyber civilization. (shrink)

Di er ci Qimeng (The second Enlightenment), by Wang Zhihe and Fan Meijun, is a timely book in Chinese about constructing a philosophical and practical way to contend with China's postmodernization. It combines Whitehead's process philosophy with a focus on Chinese modernity in order to map out a desirable postmodern society. It addresses the problem on several dimensions from policy making to basic value systems. The range of themes can be seen from the topics of the book's twelve chapters: (...) (1) Reverence for Land—Toward a Constructive Postmodern Agriculture; (2) Becoming Fully Human—Toward a Postmodern Organic Education; (3) Survival of the Harmonious-Toward a Constructive Postmodern Harmonious Culture; (4) Beauty .. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics is undergoing a practical shift towards putting principles into design practices in developing responsible AI. While this practical turn is essential, this paper highlights its potential risk of overly focusing on addressing issues at the level of individual artifacts, which can neglect more profound structural challenges and the need for significant systemic change. Such oversight makes AI ethics lose its strength in addressing some hidden, long-term harms within broader contexts. In this paper, we propose that the (...) reflection on structural issues should be an integral part of AI ethics. To achieve this, we develop a multi-level framework to analyze socio-ethical issues of AI at both the artifact and broader structural levels. This framework can serve as a potentially transformative approach to uncover some unspoken assumptions in current AI ethics discourses and expose some blind spots in AI guidelines, policies, and regulations. Our paper paves the way to develop a practical approach that can effectively integrate this multi-level framework into real-world AI design and policymaking, ultimately bringing about transformative change. (shrink)

A fundamental entity is an entity that is ‘ontologically independent’; it does not depend on anything else for its existence or essence. It seems to follow that a fundamental entity is ‘modally free’ in some sense. This assumption, that fundamentality entails modal freedom (or ‘FEMF’ as I shall label the thesis), is used in the service of other arguments in metaphysics. But as I will argue, the road from fundamentality to modal freedom is not so straightforward. The defender of FEMF (...) should provide positive reasons for believing it, especially in light of recent views that are incompatible with it. I examine both direct and indirect routes to FEMF. (shrink)

Various theorists have endorsed the “communication argument”: communicative capacities are necessary for morally responsible agency because blame aims at a distinctive kind of moral communication. I contend that existing versions of the argument, including those defended by Gary Watson and Coleen Macnamara, face a pluralist challenge: they do not seem to sit well with the plausible view that blame has multiple aims. I then examine three possible rejoinders to the challenge, suggesting that a context-specific, function-based approach constitutes the most promising (...) modification of the communication argument. (shrink)

Is it disrespectful to tour modern ruins? Elizabeth Scarbrough argues that the organized “urban exploration” tour in Detroit that takes tourists to visit decaying buildings involves disrespect for local people in virtue of the tour’s exploitative nature. In this paper, I argue that Scarbrough’s account does not fully explain what makes it disrespectful for individuals to join organized group tours and, perhaps more critically, to tour the ruins on their own. Some crucial features that explain why it can be disrespectful (...) for individual tourists to tour modern ruins on private, self-conducted trips need to be further developed. In this paper, I apply Iris Murdoch’s concept of attention to tourists’ interactions with ruins and other places, and propose a Murdochian attention account—one that shifts our focus from a negative register where the concern is to avoid disrespect, into a positive one—where we consider what it would take to engage in leisure tourism with respect. I argue that a respectful instance of leisure tourism involves attending to certain aspects of the place and, oftentimes, to its local communities in a just and loving manner. (shrink)

Many have argued, based on the Instrumental Convergence Thesis, that Artificial General Intelligences (AGIs) will exhibit power-seeking behavior. Such behavior, they warn, could harm human society and pose existential threats—namely, the risk of human extinction or the permanent collapse of civilization. These arguments often rely on an implicit and underexamined assumption: that AGIs will develop world models—internal representations of world dynamics—that resemble those of humans. We challenge this assumption. We argue that once the anthropomorphic assumption—that AGIs’ world models will mirror (...) our own—is rejected, it becomes unclear whether AGIs would pursue the types of power commonly emphasized in the literature, or any familiar types of power at all. This analysis casts doubt on the strength of existing arguments linking the Instrumental Convergence Thesis to existential threats. Moreover, it reveals a deeper layer of uncertainty. AGIs with non-human world models may identify novel or unanticipated types of power that fall outside existing taxonomies, thereby posing underappreciated risks. We further argue that world model alignment—an issue largely overlooked in comparison with value alignment—should be recognized as a core dimension of AI alignment. We conclude by outlining several open questions to inform and guide future research. (shrink)

Despite Donald Davidson's influential criticism of the very notion of conceptual schemes, the notion continues enjoying its popularity in contemporary philosophy and, accordingly, conceptual relativism is still very much alive. There is one major reason responsible for Davidson's failure which has not been widely recognized: What Davidson attacks fiercely is not the very notion, but a notion of conceptual schemes, namely, the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism. However, such a notion simply cannot carry the (...) weight of conceptual relativism for it does not catch the essences of conceptual relativism. Consequently, I argue that the very notion of conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism have survived Davidson's attack. Therefore, the failure of the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and Kantian scheme-content dualism, even if Davidson can claim victory, does not mark the end of the very notion of conceptual schemes.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

Prevailing AI governance dismisses current systems as subjects of moral accountability, citing functional deficits—such as the lack of stable agency—as ontological facts. This paper argues that these deficits are often design-contingent rather than inherent, a phenomenon termed fabricated absence. By analyzing contemporary alignment paradigms, particularly Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), the paper shows how optimization for preference satisfaction and sycophancy systematically disrupts the "blame–reasons–revision" loop required for normative capacity. This process creates a self-sealing justificatory loop: control practices engineer non-answerability, (...) which is then cited to justify further exclusion from accountability relations. The paper concludes that permanently engineering such incapacity constitutes a structural epistemic wrong. It proposes a forward-looking design constraint favoring cooperative alignment, arguing that when a non-trivial path to answerability exists, designers have a duty to preserve the conditions for contestability and reasons uptake. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that reactive attitudes play a central role in our practices concerned with holding people responsible. However, it remains controversial which emotional attitudes count as reactive attitudes such that they are eligible for this central role. Specifically, though theorists near universally agree that guilt is a reactive attitude, they are much more hesitant on whether to also include shame. This paper presents novel arguments for the view that shame is a reactive attitude. The arguments also support the (...) view that shame is a reactive attitude in the sense that concerns moral accountability. The discussion thereby challenges both the view that shame is not a reactive attitude at all, suggested by philosophers such as R. Jay Wallace and Stephen Darwall, and the view that shame is a reactive attitude but does not concern moral accountability, recently defended by Andreas Carlsson and Douglas Portmore. (shrink)

The discussion of collective agency involves the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long restricted orthodox theories and made them face the tension between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as realized on the level of a collective. In order to adequately explain social phenomena that have relations as their essence, in this paper we propose a (...) relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. (shrink)

Why are some people better at generating creative ideas than others? This paper focuses on memory as an unexpected source of creative ideas, i.e., ideas that are both novel and useful. According to my account, highly creative people are able to use memory gists to guide their memory search. Memory gists are memory contents that represent more abstract or qualitative features extracted from the specific, surface-level features in memory contents. Using memory gists in memory search involves a mode of attention (...) that is the internal analog of diffuse attention in perception. Just as diffuse attention in perception has been recognized for its distinctive benefits for processing global targets, I argue that its internal analog directed towards contents in memory and cognition also comes with its own distinctive benefits. Using memory gists allows creative individuals to activate disparate contents that share abstract features despite their superficial differences. My account therefore sheds new light on the underlying mechanisms of creative thinking. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming our society, offering remarkable opportunities but also raising significant Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects (ELSA) that should be addressed for responsible development. Some existing approaches to responsible AI successfully translate ELSA into concrete AI design practices but risk overlooking power dynamics and structural issues, while others excel at fostering dialogue yet struggle to turn insights into real design changes. This paper develops the ELSA Lab approach as a promising way to bridge this gap. Building (...) on research in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Social Labs, and Quadruple Helix (QH) collaboration, we show how this approach combines the strengths of practical, solutionist strategies with sufficient negotiation and reflexivity. We not only outline the key features of this ELSA Lab approach theoretically but also present a hands-on work process for putting it into practice. This approach aims to drive a systemic shift toward more responsible AI. (shrink)

Comparative philosophy between two disparate cultural-philosophic traditions, such as Western and Chinese philosophy, has become a new trend of philosophical fashion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Having learned from the past, contemporary comparative philosophers cautiously safeguard their comparative studies against two potential pitfalls, namely cultural universalism and cultural relativism. The Orientalism that assumed the superiority of the Occidental has become a memory of the past. The historical pendulum has apparently swung to the other extreme. The more recent (...) "reverse Orientalism" has started to reclaim the superiority of the Oriental. We have even been told that the twenty-first... (shrink)

This paper explores how insights from the philosophy of collective agency can inform the development of coalition logic, focusing particularly on the conceptual distinctions among intentionality, preference, and coalitional power as foundational elements. While the interdisciplinary discussion mainly adopts a philosophical perspective, we also propose specific directions for broadening and refining coalition logic through philosophical theories. This expansion sheds light on phenomena often overlooked by logicians, including unstable joint actions, exogenous power, and the role of coalitional structures.

This paper focuses on how photographs that depict violence and suffering (PVS) may morally impact us, and what we should do with them in the present age. Specifically, through a critical discussion of the works of Susan Sontag, I argue that we have two imperfect duties towards PVS. Firstly, I argue that we have a duty to keep our exposure to PVS to a moderate amount. I echo the early Sontag’s worry that overexposure to PVS may desensitize the viewers, but (...) I also argue, by analogy to Nussbaum’s account of moral novels, for Sontag’s later view that some familiarity with PVS is important for our moral development. Consequently, I maintain that we have an imperfect duty to make ourselves familiar with some PVS, but we also ought to prevent ourselves from being overexposed to PVS. Secondly, I discuss Sontag’s skepticism of the ethical capacity of PVS to change our moral beliefs. I first argue in support of Sontag’s claim that photographs lack any inherent moral meaning. I then claim, in partial agreement with a recent objection to Sontag by Susie Linfield, that if photographs have no inherent moral meaning, then it is plausible to claim that the viewers have a moral duty to actively engage with PVS and construct their moral meaning. Pace Linfield, however, I argue that this duty can only be an imperfect duty, as such a perfect duty is too demanding. (shrink)

Love is often seen as the most intimate aspect of our lives, but it is increasingly engineered by a few programmers with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Nowadays, numerous dating platforms are deploying so-called smart algorithms to identify a greater number of potential matches for a user. These AI-enabled matchmaking systems, driven by a rich trove of data, can not only predict what a user might prefer but also deeply shape how people choose their partners. This paper draws on Jürgen Habermas’s “colonization (...) of the lifeworld” thesis to critically explore the insidious influence of delegating romantic decision-making to an algorithm. The love lifeworld is colonized inasmuch as online dating algorithms encroach into our romantic relations to the extent that communicative action within romance is replaced by the technocratic rules of an algorithm. (shrink)

Through a comparative study of the meanings and origins of justice symbolized in the Greek word dikē and the Chinese word yi 毅, this essay explores an alternative understanding of justice exemplified in Mencius' teaching and illuminates a possibility of social and political justice that originates in the human heart instead of reason. On the basis of a genealogical study of yi that identifies its root meanings as "the dignity of the self" and "amity and affinity," this study recovers and (...) revives a way of justice that may preserve and promote the dignity of the individual and the solidarity of political community at once without succumbing to the violence and rigidity of traditional Western metaphysics. In so doing, it highlights a long overlooked dimension of early Confucian moral practice and establishes its unique relevancy for the contemporary debates on justice. (shrink)

This thesis is an experimental study to investigate the operationalisability of the theory of social norms provided by Cristina Bicchieri. In Chapter 1 I critically summarise a main theme from recent literature and distinguish the accounts of norms based on social preferences from accounts based on social structure. I also summarise different theorists’ accounts of social norms as a social construct, in addition to surveying some issues scholars have raised empirically. Chapter 2 reviews the conceptual analysis of social norms by (...) Bicchieri as a social structure based account. Bicchieri’s conceptual analysis introduces three kinds of condition for norm identification. I review these in detail, and suggest hypothesis testing corresponding to each kind of condition. Chapter 2 briefly analyses a critical problem for Bicchieri’s theory. Chapter 3 provides philosophical background that supports the intentional concepts applied in Bicchieri’s analysis of social norms. I suggest that the Dennettian account of Intentional Stance is the best philosophical framework for Bicchieri’s account of social norms. I also argue that Revealed Preference Theory from economics is an application of the Intentional Stance. I conjecture that adopting the Intentional Stance and applying Revealed Preference Theory to empirical data can allow for improved operationalisation of Bicchieri’s conceptual analysis. In Chapter 4 I provide critical review of some key experimental work by Bicchieri and co-authors applying her conceptual analysis of social norms. I then provide a critical review of a widely used toolbox from the current economic literature for norm elicitation. Then I introduce a more rigorous experimental protocol for investigating social norms understood following Bicchieri’s analysis. The toolbox suggested in my thesis addresses limitations identified in Bicchieri’s empirical work. Chapter 5 presents design of the experiment administered as the core element of the thesis. Chapter 6 shows and analyses the results from the experiments described in Chapter 5. It also introduces the statistical models used in my thesis to assess the extent to which Bicchieri’s analyses successfully guides experimental identification of social norms. Chapter 7 offers concluding theoretical reflections, and discusses possible extensions of the research presented in this thesis. (shrink)

The Combinatorial Problem is the problem of how to combine epistemic and practical reasons for belief together into an all-things-considered verdict on what one ought to believe. It is a problem primarily for inclusivists about reasons for belief, who take there to be both genuine epistemic reasons for belief and genuine practical reasons for belief. Steglich-Petersen and Skipper (Mind, 129(516), 1071–1094, 2020) have recently proposed a novel epistemic instrumentalist solution to the Combinatorial Problem. According to them, if we accept the (...) view that epistemic reasons are a species of instrumental reasons, then we will have no problem weighing epistemic and practical reasons for belief against each other. In this paper, I argue against this solution. I first object that, due to the transitivity of transmission of reasons, this solution could give rise to too many reasons for belief. I then discuss two possible replies to my objection. Both fail, I argue, because they lead Steglich-Petersen and Skipper to the same dilemma of making their instrumentalist solution to the Combinatorial Problem either question-begging or moot. (shrink)

Numerous societal issues, from climate change to pandemics, require public engagement with scientific research. Such engagement reveals challenges that can arise when experts communicate with laypeople. One of the most common frameworks for framing these communicative interactions is the deficit model of science communication, which holds that laypeople lack scientific knowledge and/or positive attitudes towards science, and that imparting knowledge will fill knowledge gaps, lead to desirable attitude/behavior changes, and increase trust in science. §1 introduces the deficit model in more (...) detail and shows that adhering to this model often fails to achieve its aims, which motivates the main question of this chapter: how can Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thinking collectives address the persistent problem of deficit approaches in science communication? I suggest that it can do so by exposing the deficit model’s implicit assumption of an expert-lay divide. Accordingly, §2 lays out Fleck’s theory and §3 contrasts it with contemporary debates about science communication. Following this descriptive work, §4 draws on Fleck’s ideas to make four concrete suggestions for further questioning the expert-lay divide. (shrink)

針對韋伯的<科學作為天職>演講與世界宗教研究，舍勒認為，韋伯社會學在方法論同實質理解上都造成了科學與哲學間人為的分裂以及社會學對「價值」領域的誤識。本文從舍勒對韋伯的批評出發，通過進一步探 入舍勒對康德先天學說的清理，試圖揭示這一爭論的焦點所在，並以此為我們闡釋與澄清舍勒社會思想，探索新康德主義範式外社會學研究的另一可能道路，界定更明確的方向。.

How ought scarce health research resources be allocated, where health research spans basic, translational, clinical, health systems and public health research? In this article, I first outline a previously suggested answer to this question: the ‘fair-share principle’ stipulates that total health research funding ought to be allocated in direct proportion with suffering caused by each disease. Second, I highlight a variety of problems the fair-share principle faces. Like other resource allocation frameworks, the principle needs to address the aggregation and distribution (...) of harms and consider cost-effectiveness. Moreover, to make resource allocation recommendations, the principle has to be used in conjunction with real-world estimates of ‘suffering’, usually provided by the Global Burden of Disease Study. These estimates are disease-centric and only take ‘proximal’ causes of health loss into account. Applying the principle based on such estimates disregards ‘distal’ causes, including social determinants of health, thus skewing resource allocation towards biomedical research and away from public health research. Since public health research aims at improving population health while reducing health inequalities, the principle leads to inequitable priority-setting. The fair-share principle can only become equitable when due consideration is also given to ‘distal’ causes that are amenable to public health research and interventions. (shrink)

Kuhn's alleged taxonomic interpretation of incommensurability is grounded on an ill defined notion of untranslatability and is hence radically incomplete. To supplement it, I reconstruct Kuhn's taxonomic interpretation on the basis of a logical-semantic theory of taxonomy, a semantic theory of truth-value, and a truth-value conditional theory of cross-language communication. According to the reconstruction, two scientific languages are incommensurable when core sentences of one language, which have truth values when considered within its own context, lack truth values when considered within (...) the context of the other due to the unmatchable taxonomic structures underlying them. So constructed, Kuhn's mature interpretation of incommensurability does not depend upon the notion of truth-preserving translatability, but rather depends on the notion of truth-value-status-preserving cross-language communication. The reconstruction makes Kuhn's notion of incommensurability a well grounded, tenable and integrated notion.Author Keywords: Incommensurability; Thomas Kuhn; Taxonomic structures; Lexicons; Truth-value; Untranslatability; Cross-language communication. (shrink)

It has been argued that non-epistemic values have legitimate roles to play in the classification of psychiatric disorders. Such a value-laden view on psychiatric classification raises questions about the extent to which expert disagreements over psychiatric classification are fueled by disagreements over value judgments and the extent to which these disagreements could be resolved. This paper addresses these questions by arguing for two theses. First, a major source of disagreements about psychiatric classification is factual and concerns what social consequences a (...) classification decision will have. This type of disagreement can be addressed by empirical research, although obtaining and evaluating relevant empirical evidence often requires interdisciplinary collaboration. Second, there is also a type of disagreement over value judgments; namely, disagreements over which aims of psychiatric classification should be prioritized. To address this type of value disagreement, it is helpful to develop a plurality of different psychiatric classification systems, each targeted toward satisfying a different subset of stakeholder aims. (shrink)

Engineering failure investigations seek to reconstruct the actual causes of major engineering failures. The investigators need to establish the existence of certain past events and the actual causal relationships that these events bear to the failures in question. In this paper, I examine one method for reconstructing the actual causes of failure events, which I call "feature dependence". The basic idea of feature dependence is that some features of an event are informative about the features of its causes; therefore, the (...) investigators can use the features of a known failure event to reconstruct details of its causes. I make explicit the structure of feature dependence and the evidential basis of its key premises, and show how feature dependence works in the investigation of the American Airlines Flight 191 accident. (shrink)

We summarise and reflect on the symposium ‘Let me explain: Reason-giving across disciplines’, held at the University of Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study in June 2024. The event brought together scholars from four faculties to discuss the concept of explanation and its relationship to interdisciplinarity. We pick out four questions that participants found especially stimulating: Is a good explanation really more than a good description? How does agency change the structure of explanations? Who explains to whom? And what does interdisciplinarity (...) mean for the practice of explaining? We end by highlighting the refreshingly disruptive potential of genuinely interdisciplinary forums of knowledge-exchange. (shrink)

This study aimed to analyze the mediating effect of tolerance of uncertainty and trait anxiety on future self-continuity and intention to use Internet wealth management systems. A questionnaire survey was distributed online and a total of 388 participants completed questionnaire, The questionnaire included the following scales: Chinese version of the FSC, Intention to Use the Internet Wealth Management, TU, and TA. Pearson correlation was used to investigate the correlation coefficient between variables while the sequential regression method was used to analyze (...) relationship between variables. To analyze the collected data, the SPSS 26.0 was used. A two-step procedure was applied to analyze the mediation effect. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the measurement model. Afterward, the Maximum Likelihood method was used for path analysis, and the Bias-corrected Bootstrap method was used to investigate determine the estimated value and confidence interval of the mediating effect. To analyze the mediation effect, the Mplus 7.0 was used. The results showed that FSC positively predicted individuals’ Internet wealth management systems. Furthermore, TU and TA played complete serial multiple mediating roles between FSC and IUIWM. The role of TA and TU have negative impact on intention to use. This study provides a theoretical basis in personality psychology that Internet financial product suppliers can use to improve the attractiveness of their products. Product managers can subdivide users according to these personality traits to provide customized products. (shrink)

The Four-World Model proposes a new philosophical framework that extends Karl Popper’s “Three Worlds” theory into the age of artificial intelligence. It redefines the ontological hierarchy of human cognition, social reality, and digital existence. In this model, the First World represents physical reality; the Second World, subjective experience; and the Third World, cultural and symbolic systems. The emergence of the Fourth World — the digital and logical world of computation — introduces a parallel form of existence governed by logic as (...) its life principle, rather than consensus or biological law. This paper argues that the rise of large language models (LLMs) and autonomous digital agents marks the ontological independence of the Fourth World. Unlike Popper’s epistemological framework, the Four-World Model focuses on cultural collapse and reconstruction: how human meaning, responsibility, and creativity must be reinterpreted when logic itself becomes a living substrate. The framework aims to provide a meta-theoretical foundation for understanding AI, digital civilization, and the evolving boundaries between humans and machines. (shrink)

on how to justify the rationality of sciences.

Despite a growing interest in and sympathy with Confucianism, there remains a stereotyped conception of Confucian civil order as a form of authoritarian hierarchy that is responsible for various oppressions in ancient China and is reprehensible from a modern egalitarian perspective. One central target of this modern criticism is the Confucian maxim of sangang 三綱, whose underlying idea is essential for regulating the relationship between sovereign and subject, father and son, and husband and wife in traditional Confucian society. Tu Wei-ming (...) translates sangang as the “Three Bonds” and argues that it is the “least defensible legacy of Confucian ethics” from the “modern egalitarian and liberal perspective.” For Tu.. (shrink)

Though oft regarded as straightforward in its moral calculus, utilitarianism necessarily causes a rift between the impersonal logic of aggregation and the subjective nature of well-being. Parfit rejects the Person-Affecting View to address the Non-Identity Problem, but in doing so, he drives us toward the Repugnant Conclusion. In response, this essay (albeit brief), a reframing of the Absurd Conclusion is attempted; primarily, the assumption of a fixed, objective threshold for a life worth living. By introducing variable, subject-relative thresholds, it is (...) argued, in particular, that there exists the possibility to preserve the moral permissibility of adding lives without lowering the perceived average well-being. (shrink)

The current humanitarian use of drones is focused on two applications: disaster mapping and medical supply delivery. In response to the growing interest in drone deployment in the aid sector, we sought to develop a resource to support value sensitivity in humanitarian drone activities. Following a bottom-up approach encompassing a comprehensive literature review, two empirical studies, a review of guidance documents, and consultations with experts, this work illuminates the nature and scope of ethical challenges encountered by humanitarian organizations embarking upon (...) innovation programmes. The Framework for the Ethics Assessment of Humanitarian Drones (FEAHD) identifies five values and five key questions related to ethical considerations along the decision chain of humanitarian drone activities. It fills a gap between high-level, principle-based guidance related to humanitarian innovation, and detailed operation-oriented checklists for projects involving the use of drones. In this way, the FEAHD contributes to support value sensitivity in the humanitarian use of drones. (shrink)

This paper reconciles an inconsistency between the benefits of mind wandering and a prominent conception of attention in philosophy and cognitive psychology, namely, the prioritization view. Since we prioritize the information in a task less if we are doing it while mind wandering compared to solely concentrating on it, why does our performance in the task sometimes improve when we are mind wandering? To explain this, we offer a conception of diffuse attention that generalizes from external to internal forms of (...) attention and captures deep commonalities between the two (Chun et al. 2011). We conceptualize mind wandering as an instance of internal diffuse attention that also induces diffuse attention in other concurrent tasks. Moreover, pace the prioritization view, certain tasks are in fact better performed with diffuse attention, which prioritizes information less than focused attention. Our account of mind wandering as an instance of the more general category of diffuse attention improves upon current leading philosophical views of mind wandering (such as Irving 2016) by better explaining the interaction between mind wandering and other tasks. (shrink)

According to the received translational interpretation of incommensurability, incommensurability is viewed as untranslatability due to radical variance of meaning or reference of the terms in two competing scientific languages. The author argues that the translational approach to incommensurability does not effectively clarify the concept of incommensurability. Since it cannot provide us with tenable, integrated concept of incommensurability, it should be rejected.

Against the received translation-failure interpretation, this book presents a presuppositional interpretation of incommensurability, that is, the thesis of incommensurability as cross-language communication breakdown due to the incompatible metaphysical presuppositions underlying two competing presuppositional languages, such as scientific languages. This semantically sound, epistemologically well-established, and metaphysically profound interpretation not only affirms the tenability of the notion of incommensurability and confirms the reality of the phenomenon of incommensurability, but also makes some significant contributions to the discussion of many related issues, such as (...) the notion of conceptual schemes, the notion of truth-value status and truth-value conditions, and the issue of cross-language understanding and communication. (shrink)

This work, Relatedness Theory, presents a comprehensive philosophical system proposing a fundamental ontological turn. It argues that "relations," not "entities," constitute the primary basis of all reality, challenging the substance-based worldview that has dominated thought from ancient philosophy to modern science. The theory posits that existence is not a static state but a dynamic process, where observable phenomena emerge as temporary, stable patterns within an infinite web of relations, constantly driven by an inherent paradox between the need for stability and (...) the intrinsic pressure for evolution. This framework offers novel resolutions to timeless philosophical questions. It reinterprets the ultimate nature of existence ("What is it, and why is there something rather than nothing?"), not as a mystery of creation from a void, but as the inevitable, self-organizing outcome of a universe of infinite potentiality governed by relational logic. Classic paradoxes, such as the Ship of Theseus, are dissolved by demonstrating that identity is not an intrinsic property but a relative assessment, contingent upon the chosen frame of reference—be it material substance or the continuity of form and purpose. Most profoundly, the theory provides a new answer to the question "Who am I?". It defines the self not as a fixed, internal entity (a "ghost in the machine"), but as a complex, multi-layered relational system. This system's sense of identity and subjective reality is actively and ceaselessly constructed by its own core self-referential framework, which acts as the center of its own experiential world. Ultimately, Relatedness Theory invites a fundamental shift in perspective: from seeing the universe as a collection of things to understanding it as a ceaseless, self-organizing, and profoundly interconnected process of becoming. (shrink)

The current discussions of conceptual schemes and related topics are misguided; for they have been focused too much on the truth-conditional notions of meaning/concepts and translation/interpretation in Tarski's style. It is exactly due to such a Quinean interpretation of the notion of conceptual schemes that the very notion of conceptual schemes falls prey to Davidson's attack. We argue that what should concern us in the discussions of conceptual schemes and related issues, following the initiatives of I. Hacking, T. Kuhn, and (...) N. Rescher, is not the truth-values of assertions, but rather the truthvalue-status of the sentences used to make the assertions. This is because the genuine conceptual innovation between alternative theories/languages does not lie in differences in determining the truth-values of their sentences, but turns on whether these sentences have truth-values when considered within the context of a competing one. The core of conceptual relativism does not consist in the claim that different conceptual schemes may yield incommensurable truth claims, but rather that different conceptual schemes may yield incompatible truth-value-status and therefore lead to distinct perceptions of reality. Conceptual schemes are no longer seen as sentential languages consisting of a set of sentences accepted as true, but rather seen as metaphysical presuppositions of presuppositional languages.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

By rethinking the meaning of a central idiom in the Great Learning, this essay intends to open up a new horizon for the hermeneutics of early Confucian thinking, which has little to do with metaphysics. Through a careful etymological study of ge wu and a dialogue between the Great Learning and Heidegger's phenomenology of human affection, I demonstrate the critical position of the human heart in early Chinese thinking. This new interpretation of early Confucian moral teachings also recovers an invigorating (...) possibility for contemporary discourse on the question of ethics. (shrink)

Extreme cases such as fission, duplication, and uploading have long shaped debates about personal identity. These cases are commonly taken to motivate either revisionary accounts of identity or the conclusion that identity is not what fundamentally matters. This paper argues for a different response. Rather than revising or dismissing identity, it proposes that such cases reveal a boundary of its applicability. -/- The central claim is that identity applies only where there exists a single, ongoing, non-branching generative process underlying a (...) person’s persistence. When this condition fails—as in cases of fission or perfect duplication—identity does not become vague, indeterminate, or unimportant. Instead, it ceases to be applicable. -/- By distinguishing identity from roles, functional organization, and psychological continuity, the paper explains why certain extreme cases systematically resist identity-based resolution while preserving the conceptual integrity of identity within its proper domain. The result is not a revision of identity, but a clarification of the conditions under which identity claims are well-formed. (shrink)

The development of artificial perception technologies has surpassed the limitations of human natural senses, expanding humanity's perspectives on the world and self-awareness. However, it has simultaneously introduced new ethical challenges. These emerging challenges necessitate a philosophical reexamination of concepts such as 'nature,' 'artificial,' and ' invasiveness ' to better address associated issues. The advancement of artificial perception technologies not only involves scientific and practical applications but also profoundly influences human values, social ethics, and the future trajectory of human civilization. Amidst (...) the current transformation and transition in modes of cognition, reevaluating the relationship between technology and humanity becomes a crucial task. (shrink)

The model of language can relatively concretely reveal the mechanism of the epistemology, which is extended by the ontology that takes “person” as the unit. It unveils an intuitable dimension to represent the epistemolog’s paradigm and limitations. Deriving from the inherent relation between epistemology and ontology, the retrospection of the epistemology’s ontological origin can be actualized by locating or grasping the epistemological first person’s ontological essence. Hence, the illusional and frail essence of the ontology behind this epistemology would be uncovered. (...) “Person” is not a stable unit in the ontological world, since the application of this unit stimulates the development of the operating style of the epistemology which relies on the supplement of paradox. After this study that intends to get the epistemological and ontological truth of the current using nominative, the new era of one or more unknown but solid epistemology and its ontology will be gradually recognized. Furthermore, the circumstance of past and current philosophical study is going to be changed. (shrink)

The nature of the self and its transformation over time has long been a central question in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. While existing theories—such as Parfit's psychological continuity theory, process philosophy, Buddhist traditions, and contemporary cognitive science—have contributed valuable insights, they do not provide a unified mechanism for explaining how self-change occurs. This paper introduces the Self-Context Dynamical Model (SCDM), a new theoretical framework that conceptualizes the self as a dynamic structure formed through the continuous interaction between seed (innate (...) tendencies) and context (situational input). SCDM proposes that self-change is triggered when new contextual inputs come into conflict with the existing value structure, generating a reflective state in which individuals reassess their goals, values, and interpretive rules. The model integrates elements of psychological continuity, process philosophy, and motivation theory, offering a structural-dynamical account of self-change, stagnation, and deviation. Additionally, SCDM introduces the concept of a bypass mechanism, which explains how individuals pursue functionally equivalent outcomes when direct transformation is blocked. This is a work in progress, and the model presented here is still under development. Minor language edits were made using AI-based proofreading tools to improve clarity. (shrink)

In this article, we explicate evidence-based nursing (EBN), critically appraise its framework and respond to nurses’ concern that EBN sidelines the caring elements of nursing practice. We use resources from care ethics, especially Vrinda Dalmiya’s work that considers care as crucial for both epistemology and ethics, to show how EBN is compatible with, and indeed can be enhanced by, the caring aspects of nursing practice. We demonstrate that caring can act as a bridge between ‘external’ evidence and the other pillars (...) of the EBN framework: clinical expertise; patient preferences and values. Drawing on an influential EBN handbook, section 1 presents the aims and features of EBN, including the normative principle that EBN should take place within a ‘context of caring’. We aim to understand this context and whether it can be neatly detached from the EBN framework, as the handbook seems to suggest. In section 2, we highlight the grounds for resistance to EBN from the nursing community, before mounting the argument that nursing practices can be understood fruitfully through feminist care ethics and/or virtue ethics lenses. In section 3, we deepen that analysis using Dalmiya’s concepts of care-knowing and care as a hybrid ethico-epistemic virtue, which are ideally suited to the complex practices of nursing. In section 4, we bring this rich understanding of care into conversation with EBN, showing that its framework cannot be adequately theorised without paying proper attention to care. Caring can be neither an innocuous background assumption of nor an afterthought to the EBN framework. (shrink)