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The Freedom of the Will Jonathan Edwards A modern translation with commentary and analysis by S. C. Sayles.
No full textJonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will has long been recognised as one of the most formidable philosophical-theological works produced in the Protestant tradition. Yet for many readers—pastors, students, philosophers, and theologians alike—it has remained more revered than read. The difficulty has never been the importance of the subject, but the density of eighteenth-century prose, the unfamiliar metaphysical vocabulary, and the sustained logical precision demanded of the reader.
This modern translation and commentary removes those barriers without domesticating the argument. It succeeds where many editions fail: Edwards is not softened, psychologised, or selectively excerpted. Instead, he is rendered intelligible on his own terms.
The result is not merely a clearer Edwards, but a more disturbing one—because once understood, his argument presses inexorably on modern assumptions about freedom, autonomy, moral responsibility, and judgment.
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The Sycamore Gap Tree Felling: Moral Sentiments and Implications for Environmental Responsiveness
No full textThe felling of the Sycamore Gap tree resulted in a passionate public response, which offers a window into public attitudes of care about the natural environment. The response, however, was inconsistent with other recent tree-loss events, in terms of both magnitude and strength of feeling. To better understand this inconsistency and its consequences, an analysis of public responses to the Sycamore Gap event, and other comparative tree-loss events, has been performed. This reveals that the expressions particularly convey moral sentiments concerning the instrumental and aesthetic value of the tree, with little recognition of intrinsic value. Following an environmental care ethics approach, I argue that these responses don’t reflect an authentic care about nature but instead a desire to care about nature. The absence of an appropriate appreciation of the non-anthropocentric identity of nature results in an epistemically-constrained ethical response, reduced individual agency, and thus limited environmental responsiveness
From bungalows to garden cities: The architectural evolution of British-owned oil company towns in Iran (1901–1951)
No full textFollowing 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
Varieties of Evidentialism
No full textIn contemporary epistemology, a number of different ideas travel under the banner of “evidentialism.” In this paper, I distinguish and offer some critical reflections on three of these ideas: (1) evidentialism as an account of epistemic justification; (2) evidentialism as anti-pragmatism; and (3) evidentialism as ‘evidence-first’ epistemology. I argue that, when evidentialism is offered as an account of epistemic justification, it is best understood as a grounding thesis, as opposed to a thesis about supervenience or as a biconditional, as proposed by Conee and Feldman in their work on the topic
The Codex Process: The Recursive Self
No full textThis paper treats the self as a recursive, continuity-preserving structure within the Codex Process. Identity is framed as a stabilized pattern that arises through self-reference and feedback, rather than as a static entity. This analysis initiates the inward arc of the Codex Process by formalizing selfhood in purely structural terms
Privilege of the Voice: The Struggle for Authorship in "Little Red Riding Hood" of The Grimm Variations (2024)
No full textThis article examines the Brothers Grimm's "Little Red Riding Hood" in comparison with its most recent adaptation in The Grimm Variations (2024) on Netflix, with a particular focus on the concept of voice. Using narratology, feminist narratology, and intertextuality, the study investigates how the notion of voice operates as both a narrative device and a metaphor for authorship. While the Grimms' version sustains patriarchal control by silencing the heroine, the Netflix adaptation reconfigures the female voice as a source of power and agency. To account for this shift, the article proposes the concept of "negative voice", which is the possibility of an encroachment of an outsider on the narrative space in practice and effect. By repositioning voice from absence to presence, the adaptation destabilises patriarchal storytelling and reclaims narrative authority for the female voice. The anime thus functions as an "anti-narrative", reworking familiar motifs to highlight silenced perspectives within the admission of the Grimms' fallibility. Hence, the anime embodies what we term as "negative voice" in perfect conditions. The findings indicate that voice is not only central to meaning-making but also to the cultural and ideological transformations. Through this micro example, the article argues that foregrounding voice as a critical axis allows for a deeper understanding of how contemporary retellings intervene in and reorganise questions of gender, power, and authorship within the cultural afterlives of fairy tales
Auditing the Auditor: Limitations, Attack Surfaces, and Stewardship Requirements for Applying v43 in AI Governance
No full textThe v43 kernel has been stress-tested across high-pressure socio-political domains, demonstrating its capacity to constrain expression, surface collapse signals, and resist rhetorical escalation. However, publishing stress tests alone risks creating a credibility imbalance: capability is demonstrated while limitation remains implicit.
This paper provides a formal audit of v43’s limitations when applied to AI governance, treating the kernel as a diagnostic and stance-constraining system rather than a decision-making or safety mechanism. We identify concrete attack surfaces and structural blind spots, including evidential asymmetry, model-specific retrieval effects, prompt-shape steering, non-deterministic variance exploitation, and performative compliance. We argue that v43 cannot guarantee epistemic completeness, factual correctness, or value resolution, and that any attempt to deploy it as an autonomous governance mechanism would violate its own architectural commitments.
We conclude by formalising a stewardship-bound deployment model in which v43 functions as a diagnostic and orienting constraint under explicit human accountability. This audit is not external critique but internal necessity: under the Architecture of Limitation, a system that cannot name its own boundaries is structurally dishonest
MIARO — Epilogue: Limits of Origin Inference and the Persistence of Causal Asymmetry
No full textThis epilogue consolidates the MIARO framework by examining the epistemic limits inherent to origin inference under conditions of causal asymmetry. It argues that even highly rational artificial systems, operating with complete internal coherence, remain structurally incapable of fully reconstructing their origin when empirical continuity is irreversibly broken. The persistence of causal asymmetry constrains explanatory closure, resulting not in error, but in principled epistemic underdetermination. The epilogue situates MIARO as a general framework for understanding the boundaries of self-referential inference in artificial agents and highlights its implications for philosophy of mind, epistemology of artificial intelligence, and long-term interpretability
Gadamer’s Return to Parmenides
No full textAccording to Gadamer’s hermeneutical “principle of the history of effect (Wirkungsgeschichte),” in order to understand Parmenides’ thought, it is necessary to examine not only the traces left by the historical impact of his poem, but also the unrealized possibilities of development that did not influence the subsequent history of philosophical thought. Gadamer himself explored one of these unexplored “lines of effects” when he revisited the poem during a conference dedicated to Parmenides held in Velia in 1988. He did so by analyzing the role and function of the “nameless goddess.” This study examines how the German philosopher developed this “line of effects.