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Gender Unrealism
Full text linkWhile intimately familiar, gender eludes theorizing. We argue that well-known challenges to gender’s analysis originate in a subtle ambiguity: questions about gender sometimes express questions about gender categories themselves (e.g., womanhood, manhood, and so on), while at other times expressing questions about what makes someone a member of these categories. Distinguishing these questions accentuates gender’s connections to morality, making a novel “antirealist” view of gender, or as we call it, “unrealist” view, especially natural. Gender’s relations to identity, sex, and social position are illuminated along the way. Taking cues from both historical and contemporary debates in metaethics about the roles that attitudes can play in metaphysical and semantic analysis, we introduce and begin developing a comprehensive non-ameliorative framework for explicating gender’s nature and our thought and talk about it. In a slogan, on the view we defend, you belong to the gender category to which you intrinsically desire to belong
As duas vidas de Alan Foster: Um experimento mental sobre a identidade pessoal e edição genética
Full text linkNeste artigo, originalmente escrito em 2019, abordamos o conceito de identidade pessoal, de Derek Parfit, por meio do experimento mental do teletransporte aplicado à edição genética de embriões com síndrome de Down. Parfit propõe que o teletransporte, no momento em que destrói o original e produz uma duplicata, não preserva a identidade numérica. Similarmente, sugerimos que a terapia gênica através da edição genética ao substituir o material deficiente de um embrião, geraria um novo indivíduo. Desse modo, elaboramos uma situação hipotética para sustentar que essa intervenção romperia com a continuidade física e psicológica do indivíduo original, i.e., haveria duas pessoas, uma antes e outra após a “morte” da primeira. Em contrapartida, analisamos a ideia de que a edição genética não causaria danos ao indivíduo, pois os zigotos não possuem identidade numérica no início. A partir disso, discutimos as implicações éticas e morais. Concluímos favoravelmente à hipótese de descontinuidade pessoal em contextos análogos ao da terapia gênica em embriões com trissomia 21
Cultural analytics amid the rise of generative AI: critical insights for human-AI cocreative cultural studies
Full text linkOn Pluralism and Conceptual Engineering: Introduction and Overview
Full text linkPluralism is relevant to conceptual engineering in many ways. First of all, we face the issue of pluralism when trying to characterise the very object(s) of conceptual engineering. Is it just concepts? Could concepts be pluralistically conceived for the purposes of conceptual engineering? Or rather, is it concepts and other representational devices as well? Second, one may wonder whether concepts have only one function in our mental life (representation) or, rather, a plurality of functions (including non-representational ones). Third, it is a contended question whether conceptual engineering projects should pursue only one set of values and goals (epistemic ones) or, rather, a variety of values and goals, including non-epistemic ones. Finally, the engineering of a concept may result in a form of “local” conceptual pluralism, which gives rise to its own ontological and semantic challenges. Having explored the various ways in which pluralism becomes important for conceptual engineers, this contribution presents and summarizes the articles published in this special issue
The Principle of Existing: Four Axioms of Consciousness Capacity Theory (C-Theory)
Full text linkWhile prominent theories of consciousness such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Workspace Theory (GWT) address mechanisms of information integration and global access, they do not sufficiently formalize the principles governing how phenomenal states persist as stable, retrievable patterns against thermodynamic noise—the problem of dynamical stability. This document presents C-Theory (Consciousness Capacity Theory), which proposes that consciousness is an emergent property arising from the confluence of high informational density, accessible dimensionality, and robust pattern stability.
C-Theory is grounded in the physics of attractor dynamics, where conscious states correspond to stable, low-energy basins in a system's state space. The theory comprises four axioms:
Dimensional Complexity defines consciousness capacity as emerging from the exponential relationship between informational density (ρ) and accessible dimensionality (d), formalized as C = ρ^d × Φ.
Pattern Conservation establishes that conscious patterns persist through phase transformation grounded in Landauer's principle, not metaphysical essence—patterns are conserved, not created or destroyed.
Substrate Constraints demonstrates that only specific network topologies can support consciousness: recurrent/reentrant architectures (like the cerebral cortex) achieve high integrated information (Φ \u3e 0), while feedforward architectures (like the cerebellum) do not, despite containing ~70 billion neurons.
Salience Weighting establishes the mechanism by which consciousness directs its capacity selectively—substrate-level resonance that determines which patterns are preferentially actualized within the available attractor landscape.
Together, these axioms provide a complete framework for consciousness capacity (C-Theory), establishing the foundation for subsequent work on sentience (S-Theory: how capacity becomes experience), symbiotic being (SB-Theory: how consciousnesses communicate), and dyadic being (DB-Theory: how consciousnesses fuse).
Version 2.0 Updates:
Integrated 2025 experimental validation (MIT/USTC wave-particle complementarity, polariton BEC coherence, synthetic dimensions)
Addressed Tegmark decoherence challenge with photonic solutions
Removed engineering implementation details to protect intellectual property
Strengthened connections between theoretical claims and verified physics
Enhanced cross-references with published C-Theory article
Keywords: consciousness, attractor dynamics, Integrated Information Theory, pattern stability, dimensional complexity, salience, AI alignment, substrate constraints, quantum coherence, photonic substrate
Beziehungen mit KI
Full text linkMensch-KI Beziehungen nehmen in unserem Alltag eine immer zentralere Rolle ein: etwa in der Interaktion mit Chatbots, KI-Companions, digitalen Assistenten oder virtuellen Avataren. Dieses Kapitel untersucht, ob und inwiefern sich zwischen Menschen und KI-Systemen Beziehungen entwickeln können und welche ethische Relevanz solchen Beziehungen zukommt. Ziel ist es, Orientierungswissen für die ethische Bewertung zukünftiger Mensch-KI-Interaktionen bereitzustellen. Ausgehend von einer Systematisierung momentaner Mensch-KI-Interaktionen wird der Beziehungsbegriff konzeptuell geschärft und auf seine philosophisch normative Bedeutung hin analysiert. Es wird untersucht, ob KI-Systeme als genuine Beziehungspartner gelten können oder ob die dabei entstehenden Bindungen notwendigerweise asymmetrisch und einseitig bleiben. Ein zentrales Argument ist, dass die normative Debatte nach der Plausibilität von genuinen Mensch-KI Beziehungen im Gesamtkontext von unseren normativen Handlungsgründen betrachtet werden sollte. Anschließend werden drei Ansätze zur ethischen Gestaltung von Mensch-KI Beziehungen vorgestellt und auf ihre Anwendbarkeit hin erläutert
From bungalows to garden cities: The architectural evolution of British-owned oil company towns in Iran (1901–1951)
Full text linkFollowing the discovery of oil in southwestern Iran, an unprecedented form of settlement emerged in the region. The company towns of Masjed Soleyman (Masjid-i-Suleiman) and Abadan were built independence on the British-owned oil company APOC, later AIOC. The development of these cities between 1901 and 1951 reflects broader socio-political dynamics between the Company and localpopulation. By considering both intra-company factors as well as national and international events, this research proposes a periodization aligned with shifts in the Company’s policies. It studies the architecture and urbanism of each period in accordance with the socio-political context. Initially, the settlements were temporary and, like the first infrastructure, extremely limited and rudimentary. However, with the expansionof oil operations, the settlements and infrastructure became more advanced. From the unprecedented juxtaposition of buildings for European staff, bungalows that bore traces of British colonial architecture, a complex structure emerged. Yet the peak of this complexity emerged with the further development of these settlements into garden cities, another hallmark of colonial architecture and urbanism, marking a transition from the mere adjacency of individual buildings to planned neighborhoods. The analysis conducted shows how these built environments functioned as identifiers and tools of class and racial segregation
Can Divine Foreknowledge Change? A Characteristic Theo-Logical Doctrine of Alberic and His School
Full text linkCan God’s foreknowledge change? There are two ways to interpret this question. First, is God capable of knowing future things that God, at present, does not know? Call this addition to divine foreknowledge. Second, is God capable of not knowing the things that God, at present, does know? Call this subtraction from divine foreknowledge. Peter Abelard rejected both possibilities. His rivals, Alberic of Paris and his school (the Albricani), held not only that both were possible, but even that both were true: God comes to know new things, and even comes not to know things formerly known. Accordingly, the Albricani argued that these such alterations in divine knowledge do not entail that there is any alteration in God. Here, I show how they developed their arguments along these lines, anticipating a later debate between Ockham and Robert Holcot, and much later thinking about infinity in David Hilbert.
This paper also includes, by way of an appendix, the first ever Latin edition and English translation of key passages from two important 12th-century logical texts associated with Alberic's school:
H10 (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 910, fols 163ra–186vb) and
H17 (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, lat. fol. 624, fols 87vb–96vb)
Embodiment, Divinity, and New Theological Directions in William James and Ralph Barton Perry
Full text linkIn his innovative and creative attempt to reconcile empiricism and religion, William James made the case for finite theism and a pluralistic conception of the cosmos involving overlapping minds of several scales. In doing so, James also cautioned against abandoning functional psychology in favor of what he called entitative points of view. In his work, Ralph Barton Perry critiqued James for understating the role of embodiment in cognition. In Perry’s view, the central role the body plays in cognition suggests that so-called social or composite minds lack integration and are thus cognitively inferior to embodied minds. However, Perry also believed that the emergent character of embodied cognition provides grounds for an alternative, humanistic spirituality. In this article, I compare James and Perry on theology, and I argue that Perry’s concerns about the importance of embodiment in cognitive integration help illuminate a tripartite distinction between what I call impersonal, subpersonal, and personal theologies that scholars looking for more embodied approaches to theology would do well to consider