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Une passion genrée? L’itinéraire de la compassion dans la littérature médico-philosophique moderne (1660-1780)
No full textCompassion is mentioned and studied within 17th- and 18th-century philosophical and medical literature as an emotional phenomenon. The advent of iatrophysics in explaining bodily functions, and the adoption of vitalist approaches, appear to have strongly influenced its conceptualisation. This study offers a historical overview, analysing a series of explanations and definitions of compassion formulated between 1660 and 1780 within various cultural contexts. The author detects a process of progressive genderisation of compassion, similar to that undergone by other passions, which were divided up during the Enlightenment into a kind of taxonomy of feelings. The article concludes by examining empirical psychological studies to show how this gendered categorisation of the emotional universe, fuelled by modern medical literature, still influences our perception of the self and otherness
Causal Models and Causal Relativism
No full textA promising development in the philosophy of causation analyzes actual causation using structural equation models, i.e., “causal models”. This paper carefully considers what it means for an interpreted model to be accurate of its target situation. These considerations show, first, that our existing understanding of accuracy is inadequate. Further, and more controversially, they show that any causal model analysis is committed to a kind of relativism – a view whereby causation is a three-part relation holding between a cause, an effect, and something else. In particular, insofar as a causal model analysis construes causation mind-and-language independently, it must treat causation as relative to a specification of background possibilities – i.e., a ‘modal profile.’ Or, so I argue
Alexandre de la Charme’s Chinese–Manchu Treatise Xingli zhenquan tigang (Sing lii jen ciyan bithei hešen) in the Early Entangled History of Christian, Neo‐Confucian, and Manchu Shamanic Thought and Spirituality as Well as Early Sinology
No full textThe work Xingli zhenquan tigang (Sing lii jen ciyan bithei hešen) was written in Chinese and Manchu by the French Jesuit Alexandre de la Charme (1695–1767) and published in Beijing in 1753. The first two sections of this paper provide an introduction to de la Charme’s work biography and to further textual and historical contexts, explore the peculiarities of the subsequent early German reception of the work almost 90 years later, and introduce the content from an overview perspective. The third section explores the most essential con‐ tents of Book 1 (of 3) of the Manchu version. The investigation is based on Hans Conon von der Gabelentz’s (1807–1874) German translation from 1840. Camouflaged as a Confucian educational dialogue, and by blurring his true identity in his publication, de la Charme criticizes Neo‐Confucian positions from an implicitly Cartesian and hidden Christian perspective, tacitly blending Cartesian views with traditional Chinese concepts. In addition, he alludes to Manchu shamanic views in the same regard. De la Charme’s assimilating rhetoric “triangulation” of three different cultural and linguistic horizons of thought and spirituality proves that later Jesuit scholarship reached out into the inherent ethnic and spiritual diversity of the Qing intellectual and political elites. Hidden allusions to Descartes’s dualistic concepts of res cogitans and res extensa implicitly anticipate the beginnings of China’s intellectual modernization period one and a half centuries later. This work also provides an example of how the exchange of intellectual and religious elements persisted despite the Rites Controversy and demonstrates how the fading Jesuit mission influenced early German sinology. I believe that this previously underexplored work is significant in both systematic and historical respects. It is particularly relevant in the context of current comparative research fields, as well as transcultural and interreligious intellectual dialogue in East Asia and around the world
MetaEthics: Foundation and Method for the Future of Ethics
No full textMoral theory often fails to secure a universal, non-arbitrary ground, sliding into relativism or dogma. This white paper develops MetaEthics: the Ethics of Metaphysical Congruence (henceforth MetaEthics), a framework that anchors normativity in Reality and Awareness, the constitutive preconditions of agency, and treats morality as a coordination technology for coherent action. Axiom 1: agents cannot coherently step outside Reality and Awareness; Axiom 2: the most fundamental trait of this field is unity, the structural necessity of coherence; Axiom 3: actions are morally better insofar as they show congruence with that same structural coherence. From these, we derive the Non-Undercutting Principle (NUP): No agent may coherently act in ways that undercut the enabling conditions of agency. We articulate the Enabling Conditions of Agency (ECAs)—Reality-Contact, Cause & Effect, Shared Reference, Mutual Respect, organized by the Metaphysical Triad (Identity, Causality, Teleology). We then introduce the MetaEthics Congruence Method (MCM), an operational discipline built around Hard Gates (non-derogable ECA thresholds), Tripwires (pre-committed review triggers) and Indicators (empirical cues), with optional domain Guardrails. Applications span personal conduct, institutional design and policy. The paper compares MetaEthics with leading alternatives and addresses standard objections. We argue that MetaEthics functions as a universal, non-arbitrary and testable protocol of coherence, a moral infrastructure for coordinated agency across contexts. Keywords: MetaEthics; metaphysical congruence; unity; Enabling Conditions of Agency; Non-Undercutting Principle; Reality-Contact; Cause & Effect; Shared Reference; Mutual Respect; Congruence
Chatbot Epistemology
No full textThis piece considers the epistemological challenges that arise with the
increasingly widespread use of AI chatbots. I articulate a problem that
they present—the ‘boiling frog problem’. According to the metaphor, if
you boil a frog by putting it in scalding water, it will try to save itself, but if
you put the frog in a pot of tepid water, it will remain unaware of the rising
water temperature and therefore, make no attempt to escape to save
itself. In both cases, the outcome is the same—the frog dies. Likewise, I
argue that the combination of factors I identify in this piece, over time, will
give rise to detrimental engagements with chatbots and ultimately, to
diminished human autonomy. The factors I consider include problems
with digital privacy, misplaced epistemic trust in AI companions, LLM
emergence, the use of personality profiling and adaptive language, misattributing
sentience to LLMs, and more
Report on Times Higher Education: Conflicts of Interest in Rankings, Journalism, and Consultancy
No full textThis report examines Times Higher Education (THE) as a conflicted commercial intermediary whose roles in rankings, journalism, consultancy, and elite convening undermine transparency and accountability in higher education governance. Unlike universities, regulators, or charities, THE operates as a private company without fiduciary obligations to the public, yet wields quasi-regulatory influence over institutional reputations and policymaking. Through analysis of its World University Rankings, consultancy services, paywalled journalism, and the July 2025 soirée with political figures, the report demonstrates how THE exemplifies epistemic clientelism: influence and information are brokered through closed commercial and social circuits rather than open scrutiny. The paper argues for statutory transparency obligations, structural separation of functions, and recognition of THE as an interested party in parliamentary processes. These measures are necessary to ensure that higher education policy and governance are not distorted by private incentives operating behind opaque structures
Consent Theory as Hermeneutical Injustice
No full textI describe respects in which an over-emphasis on the role of consent in sexual ethics gives rise to hermeneutical injustices. Although consent is widely invoked with feminist motivations to combat rape culture, the role to which it is often put, I argue, is often antithetical to its laudable feminist aims. Various influential stereotypes about consent and sex influence the public imagination, interacting to produce and reinforce harmful "inference tickets" that impede public and individual understanding of important positive and negative kinds of sexual interactions. Rather than trying to replace inadequate conceptions of consent with more inflationary ones, feminists should use different language and frameworks to express their critiques and motivate positive cultural change
Logical Nihilism: Where the Disagreement Stems from
No full textIn this paper, I explore various versions of logical nihilism and
situate Russell’s account within the broader literature. I argue that recent
objections by Dicher and Haze, as well as any analogous attempts to rebut Russell’s version of logical nihilism by proposing logical systems that treat PREM and SOLO as logical constants, are ultimately unsuccessful
if these proposed systems are neither universal nor equipped with any
canonical application(s)
Synthesis The Trajectory of Thought Between Experience, Form, and the Civilizational Dimension
No full textThis document is not an autonomous scholarly article, a theoretical treatise, or a final model claiming to offer a completed explanation. It should be read as a collection within which a trajectory of thought is recorded – a path that moves through different levels of experience, disciplines, and scales of reality without reducing them to a single principle. SYNTHESIS does not construct a new system; rather, it demonstrates how various texts, intuitions, and conceptual attempts relate to one another over an extended period of time.
This text also serves a clarifying function: it allows the reader to understand what all these works are about when viewed within a single scale. Each of the author’s writings – from early exploratory pieces to fully articulated conceptual works – becomes legible as part of a continuous development rather than as isolated projects. For this reason, the document presents each work in a brief, review-oriented manner, outlining a coherent sequence of evolution that would otherwise remain implicit.
The materials included here differ in genre, style, and purpose. Early intuitive texts, hypothetical formulations, institutional academic works, published articles, and reflective summaries coexist within this collection. They have not been artificially unified or rewritten into a single idiom. This heterogeneity is not a flaw but an intentional structural feature: the document preserves the tension between distinct modes of articulation in order not to lose the logic of their emergence.
It is important to clarify what should not be expected from this text. It does not propose a universal theory, does not compete with established scientific paradigms, and does not seek definitive legitimation within one discipline. There is no attempt to “prove” hypotheses in the strict sense or to replace diverse domains of experience with a single model. Likewise, this document is not a memoir, although personal experience is present as a medium of sensitivity rather than an aim in itself.
At the same time, SYNTHESIS is not an arbitrary essayistic compilation. The texts are held together by a shared internal logic: attentiveness to processes of transition, inertia, cyclicality, dissonance, and the possibilities of integration without simplification. This logic unfolds from the phenomenology of bodily and sensory experience to the analysis of social, cultural, and civilizational processes. The author works not with isolated objects but with relations between levels – with the spaces in between, where conflict, loss, or coherence emerge.
The mode of writing combines analytical description, reflective commentary, and restrained essayistic elements. This is not a stylistic preference but a methodological necessity: complex processes cannot be adequately expressed in a single language without reducing their depth. Accordingly, the reader is invited not to a linear reading oriented toward rapid conclusions, but to an attentive engagement that allows for pauses, returns, and shifts in tempo.
SYNTHESIS does not attempt to resolve the questions it raises. Its function is to register a mode of thinking that holds multiplicity without fragmentation, acknowledges the limits of knowledge, and resists the premature harmonization of complexity. The document may be seen as an intermediate form between a personal archive and a public corpus – not fully complete, yet possessing enough internal structure to be perceived as a coherent whole