PhilArchive
Not a member yet
119355 research outputs found
Sort by
A Model of Interaction Between Localized Residual Information Entities (REE) and Biophysical Perceptors — A Philosophical Framework for Misuse Prevention and Interpretive Boundaries —
No full textThis paper presents a philosophical examination of a hypothetical model describing interactions between localized residual information entities (REE) and biophysical perceptual systems. Rather than asserting an established scientific claim, the model is proposed as a conceptual framework intended to clarify interpretative boundaries surrounding anomalous perceptual experiences. It aims to reduce misinterpretation by explicitly framing REE as a provisional, falsifiable construct subject to critical analysis. The paper does not offer medical, psychological, or therapeutic guidance. Discussions of perception and cognition are limited to theoretical considerations and must not be treated as substitutes for professional care. This work functions as a philosophical companion to previously published REE-related theoretical preprints, contributing to conceptual clarification within philosophy of mind and related fields
Theories of Women’s Oppression Between Marxism and Feminism: Finding a New Approach for Understanding Gender
No full textIn the 70s, Marxist-feminist currents defined gender through the division of labor that relegated women to the home and made their work unwaged. However, the assignment of domestic tasks to women remains a more complex process than it has been made out to be. By opening the scopes from the Marxist feminist debates around gender, this study aims to define the gender category through concepts developed in the critique of political economy and its study of the capitalist social relation. Through this insight, I argue that during the first two centuries of capitalism the necessities for the establishment of the family institution and the figure of the free individual laborer were resolved through a specific division of labor that created a relation of domination within the family household, which was reified as the category of gender. By understanding how the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production give way to the division of labor, this study attempts to revitalize the Marxist debate on gender and relate it to the cycle of capitalist production
Care of the Self and the Politics of Pleasure: Foucault, S/M, and Resistance
No full textThis study explores consensual sadomasochism (S/M) as a contemporary expression of Michel Foucault’s “care of the self ” (epimeleia heautou), Greco-Roman practices aimed at cultivating auton-omy through conscious regulation of body, pleasures, and social relations. Though historically distant, S/M shares self-regulation, ethical codification, and the fusion of pleasure and discipline. Emerging in the 1980s within gay subcultures amid HIV/AIDS and growing institutional control over sexuality, it operates as a technique of subjectivation and micropolitics of resistance. Rather than merely opposing norms, S/M invents modes of life beyond institutional capture, mak-ing pleasure a formative, ethically governed dimension of existence
Embodiment, Divinity, and New Theological Directions in William James and Ralph Barton Perry
No full textIn 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
The Principle of Predictable Intervention: A Universal Constraint on Actionable Intelligence in Complex Systems
No full textThis paper introduces the Principle of Predictable Intervention (PPI), an original, interdisciplinary universal constraint proposed by the author, governing intelligent action within complex systems. Unlike traditional epistemological or reductionist approaches, PPI does not seek to define systems by their intrinsic essence, but by the boundary conditions under which interventions produce reliably predictable outcomes. The central claim is straightforward: no system can sustain interventions at layers where outcomes become unpredictable relative to inputs. This principle provides a unified framework for analyzing decisions across diverse fields including artificial intelligence, medicine, governance, and philosophy of mind. The implications are profound: genuine creativity, autonomy, and free consciousness, as commonly understood, may not be physically instantiable without violating PPI
Group Evidence, Group Belief, and Group Responsibility Transmission
No full textEvidence matters for responsibility. This paper investigates implications of this insight for group responsibility and the literature on group belief. In particular, we will be focusing on the transmission of group responsibility from group to individual. We will argue that there are cases in which responsibility transmits fully (to all members of the group), partially (to some but not all of its members), or not at all (to none of its members), and we will explore some implications of these observations for accounts of group belief and evidence in the literature on social epistemology. More specifically, we will provide reason to think that these observations provide support for an account of group belief that we favour over its main rivals in the literature
Language As Interface: Underconstraint, Genealogy, and Moral Incommensurability
No full textPersistent moral and institutional disagreement is often treated as a problem of language: a consequence of ambiguity, vagueness, or insufficient conceptual precision. This assumption presupposes that language plays a cognitively foundational role in abstract reasoning, such that greater linguistic clarity should, in principle, secure convergence. This paper argues that this expectation is historically contingent and empirically underconstrained.
Drawing on contemporary cognitive-neuroscientific evidence indicating a functional dissociation between language-selective systems and domain-general reasoning and evaluation, the paper reframes language as a specialised communicative interface rather than the medium of abstract thought. On this view, language enables coordination and articulation but does not supply the non-linguistic evaluative structures that generate moral judgment.
The central claim is genealogical and diagnostic rather than refutational. Cognitively foundational conceptions of language emerged under conditions of empirical opacity and hardened into orthodoxy, licensing the expectation that semantic refinement should resolve abstract disagreement. When this expectation fails, disagreement is misdiagnosed as a communicative defect rather than a reflection of deeper ontological divergence.
The paper argues that many moral disagreements track incompatible, largely tacit models of agency, motivation, and human nature. In such cases, moral terms function as coordination labels over divergent evaluative frameworks rather than as carriers of shared semantic content. Ontological plurality does not entail relativism or moral equivalence, but it does undermine the assumption that language provides a neutral adjudicative standpoint. The persistence of disagreement, therefore, is not anomalous but structurally predictable given the functional limits of language
Seven Daily Practices to Imbibe Wismad in Our Lives
No full textWismad is a central concept in Sikh philosophy, referring to a profound state of awe, wonder, and reverential amazement experienced in the awareness of the Divine and the vastness of creation. It is not mere surprise or emotional excitement, but a deep existential and spiritual orientation in which the ego recedes, and the individual becomes receptive to the Infinite. Wismad is cultivated through mindfulness, Naam Simran, and attunement to the Divine presence within and beyond creation
ER: Existence, Reality and Time (Reading sample)
No full textER: Existence, Reality and Time continues
the journey begun in Time Explained.
While the earlier book offered a broad
introduction to the mysteries of time and
first outlined the framework of Existential
Realism (ER), this work takes the next step:
a deep dive into the philosophical heart of ER.
At once rigorous and accessible, the book
explores how existence unfolds in the
present, how reality extends into past
and future, and why becoming—rather
than static being—must stand at the
center of our understanding of time. It
responds to the many questions raised
by Time Explained, clarifying, expanding,
and strengthening the vision of a temporal
system that unites lived experience with
scientific insight
