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Necessity Without Coercion: Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will and the Recovery of Moral Judgment
No full textJonathan Edwards’ A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of the Freedom of the Will (1754) remains one of the most rigorous examinations of human agency, moral responsibility, and necessity in the history of Christian philosophy. Yet its reception has been persistently hindered by linguistic difficulty, conceptual misreading, and the imposition of modern assumptions concerning autonomy and indeterminacy. This paper offers a sustained academic analysis of Freedom of the Will as presented in the modern translation and commentary edition edited by S. C. Sayles. It argues that Edwards’ central achievement is not the denial of freedom but the rescue of moral judgment from incoherence by re-establishing necessity as non-coercive certainty grounded in motive and inclination. By analysing Edwards’ definitions of will, motive, necessity, contingency, and moral inability, this paper demonstrates that Edwards advances a compatibilist account in which responsibility is preserved precisely through determination rather than despite it. The paper further argues that Edwards’ work exposes a structural contradiction in libertarian accounts of freedom that seek to secure accountability by severing volition from sufficient reason. Finally, the study situates Edwards’ argument within contemporary debates in moral philosophy, law, and theology, showing its enduring relevance wherever judgment, praise, blame, and responsibility are claimed
Refounding the Starting Point of Philosophy: From the Question of Manifestation to the Concept of Pure Suchness哲学起点的重新奠基：从“显现”问题到“纯质”理念
No full text当代哲学面临理论日益精致化与思想实质停滞的深层困境，其根源在于哲学起点处存在一个未被充分审查的前提：无论是传统存在论对“世界”的预设，还是认识论对“主体”的依赖，都已事先默认了“显现”这一事实，而未对“显现本身如何可能”进行追问。本文旨在对此哲学起点实行一次彻底的再奠基。核心论点是：“显现本身如何可能”应取代“何物存在”与“如何认识”，成为第一哲学的根本问题。通过先验分析，本文论证显现作为一种“成就”必有其条件，并在系统排除一切显现者（存在者、空无、逻辑、主体）之后，必然确立一种非对象性的、自我呈现的“明性”作为最终根据。进而，本文将“明性”及其内在规定（自足性、非对象性、纯粹能动性、同一性）概念化为“纯质”理念。需明确，“纯质”并非另一形而上学实体，而是使显现得以可能的先验功能位格。本文的奠基工作，其目的不在于构建新的哲学体系，而在于为哲学确立一个不可再后退的源初出发点，并展望由此展开的未来研究路径。
Contemporary philosophy exhibits a structural tension:
its theoretical instruments grow increasingly refined,
yet its grounding question remains unsettled.
The root of this impasse lies in an inherited but unexamined premise:
both classical ontology and modern epistemology presuppose the fact of manifestation—
the already-given openness in which subject, world, and meaning appear—
without interrogating how manifestation itself is possible.
This paper proposes a fundamental re-foundation of philosophy.
The primary claim is that the question “How is manifestation possible?”
must precede “What exists?” and “How do we know?”,
for both existence and knowledge occur only within an already-manifest field.
Through transcendental analysis, manifestation is shown to be an achievement rather than a brute fact,
and therefore must possess enabling conditions.
A systematic elimination of inadequate candidates—
including entities, nothingness, logical form, and subjectivity—
leads necessarily to a non-objective, self-present, self-grounding capacity to manifest,
which this work terms luminosity.
The inner determinations of luminosity (self-sufficiency, non-objectivity, pure activity, unity)
are conceptually articulated as Pure Suchness.
Crucially, Pure Suchness is not posited as a metaphysical entity,
but as a transcendental functional ground that makes manifestation possible.
The aim of this work is not to build a new speculative metaphysics,
but to establish an irreversible point of origin for philosophy—
a pre-theoretical, non-derivative ground from which ontological and epistemological discourse
can subsequently unfold
Reframing the significance of menstruation: evolutionary insights from an organismal-relational perspective
No full textCultural stigma and medical pathologization have long shaped scientific and social perceptions of menstruation, limiting both research and clinical attention. This paper outlines three major sources of negative perceptions and examines their influence on scientific discourse and cultural attitudes. To counter these biases and misconceptions, evolutionary accounts of menstruation are explored, which emphasize its crucial role in human physiology and reproduction. Two evolutionary approaches to adaptation are compared: one adopts a functionalist stance that assigns specific functions to traits. While this perspective offers a naturalized and positive understanding of menstruation, it remains insufficient to capture the phenomenon’s full complexity. In response, the paper draws on a second approach, organismal and relational, which emphasizes whole-organism adaptation within developmental and ecological contexts. This contrast is also reflected in evolutionary medicine, where organismal approaches support integrative views of disease patterns. Revisiting late 20th-century debates on whether menstruation is adaptive or a byproduct, the paper presents key elements of the alternative organismal-relational perspective. This framework makes it possible to distinguish three broad categories of menstrual pathologies and supports the claim that organismal evolutionary perspectives offer a richer understanding of menstrual health
Scientific thinking vs. free speech: introducing the Cascade model for justifying research-based learning to faculty
No full textResearch-based learning (RBL), promoting an enhanced research-teaching nexus, is a pedagogical approach that has been gaining ground in universities worldwide since the 1990s. What arguments could be used to convince university teachers to RBL into their teaching? In this paper, we try to provide answers by introducing the Cascade Model for justifying RBL, which links RBL to research on epistemic cognition. The model is based on a synthesis of findings from a research network on RBL in the context of higher education reforms in Germany. These findings indicate that a mere focus on teaching formats is not sufficient for the successful implementation of RBL. Rather, the research must be meaningful to those involved - students and faculty alike. The Cascade Model for justifying RBL provides meaningful perspectives on RBL by distinguishing epistemic values that faculty might accept to justify RBL. The model suggests an argumentation cascade of possible references to four epistemic values: scientific, professional, skilled, and social. In this cascade, the link between teaching and scholarly research is progressively decreasing. We applied the Cascade Model to an interview study with 40 university teachers. The model’s categories could be reliably assigned to the responses, with “scientific” being the most frequently cited epistemic value. The ranking of values can be empirically substantiated. As predicted, “higher” levels of justification (i.e., closer to “scientific”) correlate with more RBL teaching
Valuation and Contingency in Biology: A Structural Account of Reproduction, Sacrifice, and Diversity
No full textBiological systems persist, reproduce, and diversify while paying sustained energetic costs that favor equilibration. This paper argues that any coherent explanation of persistence under cost must presuppose two structural primitives: valuation, an internal discriminator that ranks non-equilibrium states above equilibrium and is empirically manifest as paid work against entropy; and contingency, a genuine possibility space in which alternatives to persistence are available. We identify sacrifice as the operational signature of valuation across biological scales and show how diversity functions as a biosphere-level stabilization strategy. The result clarifies, rather than replaces, evolutionary explanation
The best of all possible Leibnizian completeness theorems
No full textLeibniz developed several arithmetical interpretations of the assertoric syllogistic in a series of drafts from April 1679. In this article, I present what I take to be one of his most mature articulations of the arithmetical semantics from that series. I show that the assertoric syllogistic can be characterized exactly not only in the full divisibility lattice, as Leibniz implicitly suggests, but in a certain four-element sublattice thereof. This refinement is also shown to be optimal in the sense that the assertoric syllogistic is not complete with respect to any smaller sublattice using Leibniz’s truth conditions
Language Models’ Hall of Mirrors Problem: Why AI Alignment Requires Peircean Semiosis
No full textThis paper examines some limitations of large language models (LLMs) through the framework of Peircean semiotics. We argue that basic LLMs exist within a “hall of mirrors,” reflecting only the linguistic surface of training data without indexical grounding in a shared external world, and manipulating symbols without participation in socially-mediated epistemology. We then argue that newer developments, including extended context windows, persistent memory, and mediated interactions with reality, are moving towards making newer Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems into genuine Peircean interpretants, and conclude that LLMs may be approaching this goal, and we identify no fundamental architectural barriers that would prevent this. This lens reframes a central challenge for AI alignment: without grounding in the semiotic process, a model’s linguistic encoding of goals may diverge from real-world values. By synthesizing Peirce’s pragmatic view of signs, contemporary discussions of AI alignment, and recent work on relational realism, we illustrate a fundamental epistemological and practical challenge to AI safety and point to part of a solution
Fiction’s Critique: Gray’s _Poor Things_ and the Conduct of Sensibility
No full textNote: This is a pre-print, Author Original Manuscript. The final version was published online in _Textual Practice_ in January 2026. doi 10.1080/0950236X.2025.2608009. Please cite the published version.
This paper explores the extent to which works of literary fiction both resonate with and contribute to the aims of critique, understood along Foucauldian lines as a transformative engagement with modes of subjectivity. Drawing upon Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, these modes are defined in terms of the ‘conduct of sensibility’. Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992) reveals aspects of the conduct of sensibility and of the battle between conflicting forces that strive to give shape to that conduct. In its multi-perspectival staging of the complex formation of a mode of sensibility, the novel makes a contribution to the practice of critique by providing both an analysis of a certain framework of subjectivation and by offering a strategic map for its transformation. If modes of sensibility, along with the socially sanctioned conduct of that sensibility, unfold along an axis of perception, interpretation, and action, then works of fiction offer privileged access to that complex web, not only as tools for analysis but also as interventions that nudge, probe, and disrupt. Hence, rather than critique on its own, or literature on its own, being able to engage in effective critique, my argument is that the practice of critique needs fiction, not as an occasional object of analysis but as a constant ally in its work. The conclusion of this paper, therefore, is not so much that novels can make readers more effective critics, or more virtuous citizens, but that engaging with fiction can make critique itself more effective
时空秩序与感官和谐——中国传统人居文化的美学建构逻辑
No full text摘要：中国传统“风水”文化中的空间营造原则，本质是一套以时空秩序为骨架、全感官
和谐为内核的人居美学体系。本文以《阳宅十书》《黄帝宅经》《地理人子须知》等古
籍为核心文献依据，选取北京四合院、皖南徽派民居、福建土楼等典型案例，从时空
美学的双重维度，系统解构传统人居“四平八稳”“忌缺角”“忌直冲”“忌秽气”等原则的美
学本质。研究表明，传统人居的空间布局既追求对称完整的空间形态美、四季流转的
时间韵律美，又强调眼、耳、鼻、舌、身、意的全感官审美体验适配，其核心是通过
时空秩序的构建，实现居住者与空间环境的精神共鸣。本文通过古籍考据与跨学科阐
释，将传统人居美学与现代环境心理学、空间美学理论相印证，彻底剥离“风水”的迷信
外衣，揭示其作为中国古代人居美学的科学内核与当代价值，为现代空间设计提供兼
具文化深度与审美价值的理论参考
Of marbles and matchsticks
No full textI present a new puzzle about choice under uncertainty for agents whose preferences are sensitive to multiple dimensions of outcomes in such a way as to be incomplete. In response, I develop a new theory of choice under uncertainty for incomplete preferences. I connect the puzzle to central questions in epistemology about the nature of rational requirements, and ask whether it shows that preferences are rationally required to be complete