Volume 8, Issue 1

In response to this issue’s theme of Can robots be sensual? two propositions are discussed from a design researcher’s perspective. Four devices across two speculative projects Habitat Robots and Soil Protector Robots are presented. Speculative Realist ideas provide reasoning for design approaches to metaphorise sensed environmental data into multi-sensorial performances that the devices embody. Facilitated through the projects are philosophy of design concerns, such as asymmetrical relations, the nature of data, and language about the devices prefiguring sensorial expectations. The performative behaviours of these multi-sensorial robots evoke a sense of things by removing the truthiness of data and thereby emancipating language from privilege and expertise, subverting expectations of technology, and notions of urban Nature. Through Harman’s Quadruple Object , we speculate on asymmetricality within object relations, including between the devices and the practices of design itself. Thereby, allowing ontological design implications to be reviewed – where acts of designing in turn design us; design processes are not only entwined prefiguratively, but are companion output artefacts of these technological ecology interfaces. The devices bring together and physicalise questions of contextual boundaries and politics between humans, technology, and Nature.

As robots evolve from functional machines to potential sexual companions, they embody both utopian hopes and dystopian fears. This article explores the ethical implications of sex robots, focusing on power dynamics, objectification, and gender performance. Through Ann Cahill’s concept of derivatization, the article argues for a nuanced understanding of sexual objectification in the context of robo-erotics. While sex robots offer new possibilities for intimacy and desire, they also risk reinforcing problematic gender norms and power structures. The article introduces a queer utopian framework, oscillating between hope and disgust, to examine how sex robots might subvert or perpetuate traditional scripts of sexuality. Ultimately, this work aims to situate sex robots within the broader landscape of technological advancement and its potential to reshape human sexuality.

For Aristotle, human beings are deeply social creatures, a trait that contributes to the meaningfulness of our lives. In more recent philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre similarly argued that our existence is informed by our unavoidable social relations, even as he also emphasized the quest for individual freedom. What happens when the “Other” in these relationships are artifacts, such as robots? Can robots liberate us from our existential dependence on other humans? Should they do so, in light of Aristotelian and Sartrean ethics? With recent technological advancements, an increasing amount of scholarly literature has emerged about the use, meaning, and limits of innovations such as sex- or love-robots. In this article, we will first explore the relevance of Aristotle’s virtue ethics in relation to romantic love ( eros ) and social technologies. We will then examine Sartre’s existentialism as in some respects a continuation of Aristotelian ethics and assess its applicability to eros in our technological age. Finally, we will conduct a case study on love-robots, reviewing recent scientific studies to evaluate their ethical and social implications from the perspectives of Aristotle and Sartre. We argue that neither Aristotle nor Sartre would endorse the view of love-robots as part of our social well-being.

Can chatbot-based virtual relationships replace physical ones? One possible bottleneck is lack of empathy in chatbots, as well as the attraction of physical relationships. Through a mixture of survey and respondent interviews, we investigate perceived chatbot empathy with devoted users, as well as how virtual relationships have affected their physical relationships. We found that Replika users experience high levels of empathy in their interactions with the chatbot, and that extensive use leads to (reported) reduced interest in physical relationships. We speculate whether extensive use of social chatbots can lead to empathy blindness and apathy over time.

This article explores the potential of using large language model (LLM) technology in the development of robots to enhance their sociability and sensuality, while also addressing a number of general issues related to human–machine interaction. Based on a philosophical delineation of the foundations of sensuality, the study defines four fundamental characteristics necessary for robots to convincingly simulate social, emotional, and sensory interactions. The text provides an overview of recent advances in social robots and briefly describes LLM technology from both technical and philosophical perspectives. The article highlights the transformative role of LLM in enabling communication, giving an overview of the eight characteristics in which the deployment of this technology represents an advance in human–robot interaction. Robots equipped with LLM technology offer more intuitive and personalized interaction, building on previous communication history, can flexibly adapt to changes in the conversational situation, and understand the subtle nuances of language. They are able to interact emotionally, intimately, and sensually without being judgmental or rejecting users, achieving an emotional connection to the user that robots using traditional technologies have not been able to. At the same time, these new robots have a vast amount of knowledge at their disposal that they are able to use very quickly in communication.

We explore the potential and limitations of using artificial intelligence to quantify philosophical health. Philosophical health is an approach to well-being defined as the dynamic coherence between thoughts, values, and actions in harmony with the world. As both AI and philosophical practice gain prominence in contemporary life, their intersection raises fundamental questions about measurement, meaning, and human flourishing. To substantiate our analysis, we present the Philosophical Health Compass (PHC), a quantitative instrument designed to assess six dimensions of philosophical wellbeing: bodily sense, sense of self, sense of belonging, sense of the possible, sense of purpose, and philosophical sense. Through analysis of this instrument, we investigate whether philosophical health – traditionally approached through qualitative exploration and dialogue – could meaningfully benefit from AI-assisted quantification. We introduce the C.I.P.H.E.R. Model (Crealectic Intelligence and Philosophical Health for Enriched Realities) as a human-in-the-loop framework for responsible integration of AI in philosophical practice. The article argues that while quantification offers valuable research opportunities, philosophical health assessment must preserve human sovereignty and philosophical pluralism. We conclude that AI can conditionally enhance philosophical health evaluation if implemented within boundaries that maintain the essentially human character of philosophical reflection, suggesting a complementary rather than substitutive relationship between quantitative tools and qualitative dialogue.

In this article, I show how two modes of predication and quantification in a modal context allow one to (a) define what it is for an individual or relation to exist, (b) define identity conditions for properties and relations conceived hyperintensionally, (c) define identity conditions for individuals and prove the necessity of identity for both individuals and relations, (d) derive the central definition of free logic as a theorem, (e) define the essential properties of abstract objects and provide a framework for defining the essential properties of ordinary objects, and (f) derive a theory of truth. I also describe my indebtedness to the work of Terence Parsons and take the opportunity to advance the discussion in connection with an objection raised to the theory of essential properties.

The purpose of this study is to suggest and explain an engaging approach to three distinct types of (alleged or genuine) semantic paradoxes, the White-Horse-Not-Horse Paradox, the Ultimate-Unspeakable Paradox, and the Liar Paradox, in a unifying way that is sensitive to distinct features of them. Although the three types of semantic paradoxes address distinct types of objects, and although their seemingly paradoxical features are different (alleged or genuine), their distinct structures and contents can be understood and treated on the same common ground, which is jointly conceived in people’s pretheoretic understandings of truth and of the double-reference feature of people’s basic employment of language (saying something about an object), and from the unifying vantage point of a double-reference approach.

This article examines the usage of zhou 周 in the Book of Mozi 墨子 and its interpretations in Classical Chinese, arguing that zhou functions as a universal quantifier when placed before verb–object constructions. We contend that the concluding statement “ yi zhou er yi bu zhou ” 一周而一不周 clarifies the validity of the case “ shi er ran ” 是而然 and the invalidity of “ shi er bu ran ” 是而不然 by using zhou as a summary term referring to previous discussions. Our analysis of zhou as a universal quantifier and you 有 as an existential quantifier provides a foundation for employing the monotonicity reasoning approach to study mou 侔 reasoning. This insight may shed light on other reasoning patterns in Mohist logic and beyond.

Most nominalist logicians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries believed that we could conceive of and refer to impossible objects. The articulation of the semantics of impossibility that underlined this view is much less known than that of their fourteenth-century predecessors, and it may at first seem to conflict with that tradition’s core principle of theoretical parsimony. Here, I propose a first analysis of John Mair’s case and argue that a central part of that development concerns the theory of signification itself. I will examine his views on empty reference and imaginable impossibilities in relation to John Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, and John Dorp of Leiden, as well as an anonymous work known as the Hagenau commentary. By doing so, I intend to show that his approach to empty reference is closely connected to issues of conceptual representation.

Modern logicians hold that traditional logic makes a serious error by accepting the subalternation thesis , the thesis that universal affirmatives imply matching particular affirmatives. But some traditional logicians (e.g., Al-Fārābī, Abelard, Ockham) presented doctrines of existential import of categorical propositions that include subalternation, and some modern studies of Aristotle’s logic take him to assume one of the doctrines. This article argues that such interpretations have serious problems and proposes a radically different interpretation. On the new interpretation, called the no-import interpretation , Aristotle takes both singular and general categorical propositions (including singular and particular affirmatives) not to have existential import. In proposing and defending this interpretation, the article gives a close examination of two influential interpretations of his views on existential import: (a) the affirmative–negative interpretation , which takes him to hold that affirmative categorical propositions have existential import while negative ones do not, and (b) the non-vacuity interpretation , which takes his system of logic to presuppose or require that empty terms do not figure in general categorical propositions the system deals with. The article argues that Aristotle holds theses about singular and general categorical propositions that conflict with these interpretations, and that examination of the theses leads to the no-import interpretation.

My general concern is how to translate modern formal semantics into medieval metaphysics, itself a theory about objects. I shall use the formal model in Nonexistent Objects by Terence Parsons as a test case for the modern formal system, and the philosophy of Avicenna as one for medieval metaphysics. My investigation has four parts: 1) a summary of Avicenna’s general metaphysical scheme, the threefold distinction of quiddity; 2) translating Parsons’s theory into medieval terms; 3) the location of nonexistent objects of various sorts in Avicenna’s theory; and 4) comparing the theories of Parsons, and c oncluding that the theories of Parsons and Avicenna are not incommensurate paradigms as Parsons suggests. Rather, they are different theories but under the same research tradition.

As is evident from the observations of Ian Bogost and Thomas J. Spiegel, video games can be philosophical qua video games: they can express philosophical insights not only through verbal rhetoric, but also through the “procedural rhetoric” of the interactive processes defined by their programmed rules. However, prior work has not adequately explored what it is about some video games which make them particularly philosophically valuable. After reviewing previous literature and some relevant examples of procedural rhetoric, this article looks to Plato’s Phaedrus for an account of what distinguishes true philosophy from mere un-philosophical sophistry. Ultimately, this article suggests that if expressive artifacts (including video games) are to be evaluated qua works of philosophy, then they should be evaluated with reference to their usefulness in a broader context of dialectical exchange, rather than evaluated solely as standalone products.

The text discusses under which conditions video games can philosophize by outlining a “Critique of Videogame Reason.” Section 1 introduces the idea that academic research, especially in philosophy, uncritically assumes that writing is the most effective way of expressing and communicating ideas. Section 2 (“Transcendental Aesthetic”) discusses the representational status of video games, claiming that they amplify and stimulate a sensorimotor way of “seeing.” Section 3 (“Transcendental Analytic”) argues that for a videogame knowledge and thinking to be possible, there must be a “gamish” mindset in which writing and reading are not just confined to the act of putting words in lines, but also entail the design of sets of actions. Section 4 (“Transcendental Dialectic”) advocates for a medial progressivist approach revolving around an expansive view of philosophical practice, claiming that a videogame philosophy must be able to provide at least three sui generis performances: enlightening the multi-modal, sensorimotor dimension that also characterizes the most amodal, linguistic concepts; building and supporting “emersive” experiences capable of taking specific advantage of the power of immersivity; and taking part in and fostering an explicitly dialogical interchange among scholars and researchers. Section 5 (Conclusion) envisages a more liberal and inclusive future for philosophical practice.

Gamification has been touted as a revolutionary technique for promoting education, fitness, work, and more, but has also been argued to harm the very areas it claims to improve. Thus, the importance of reflection on gamification in different contexts is clear; in this article, I examine gamification within games themselves . While it may be thought that gamifying a game is either impossible or trivial, articulating its possibility allows us to uncover its impacts. I first explore some definitions of gamification within the literature (Section 1). After introducing the prospect that a game might be gamified despite this being either impossible or trivial on existing definitions, I then redefine gamification such that gamifying games is meaningfully possible (Section 2). I next distinguish kinds of gameplay, building on Thi Nguyen’s achievement play and striving play to defend two additional kinds: roleplay and authorial play (Section 3). Finally, I combine the preceding strands to identify a potential harm of the gamification of games: a gamified game encourages certain kinds of gameplay over others, producing play under constraints , whereas gamification as a trend across gaming culture creates an impoverished play environment by establishing game design norms that prevent players from deciding how they play, producing inhibited play (Section 4).

The aim of this article is to explore the benefits of a genealogical approach of gamification in our understanding of government and its history. Since gamification is as much a discourse on the game as a project of governmentality, to make its genealogy in the field of the history of ideas is about understanding to which problems such discourses are aimed to answer and how. To point out the value of this historicization, the first part will expose some difficulties that appear from the confrontation of the idea of gamification and “traditional” definitions of game that insist on its “separate” feature. This presentation shows how problems associated with gamification are generally understood according to a psychologizing understanding of the game. In the face of this psychological reification, the second part will show the relevance of the game’s discourses inscription within a governmental genealogy. To do that, it exposes a global understanding of the rupture in Western culture with the Aristotelian concept of game. The last part, built on the Foucauldian analysis of neoliberalism, explores the reelaboration within neoliberalism of the “game rule” notion through this genealogical approach in order to show in which historical transformation of the game concept gamification is inscribed.

In the face of what is called “Existential risks/threats” or “polycrisis” – where digitalization, biomedicalization, and environmental degradation intertwine as existential threats – this article argues for a critical philosophy of technology as a necessary framework for ethical engagement. To address this polycrisis, we elaborate on an approach that integrates ethics and technology through serious gaming. Specifically, we introduce Tethics , a board game designed to engage players in ethical reflection on technological governance. By embedding critical philosophical insights into interactive gameplay, Tethics fosters a dynamic, experiential understanding of ethical dilemmas. Drawing on Andrew Feenberg’s critical theory of technology, we outline how game design can serve as a method for both refining philosophical inquiry and fostering public engagement. We argue that serious games may offer a unique means of interrogating and reconfiguring our relationship with technology, or can successfully act as educational tools for the ethics of technology today. Finally, we argue that Tethics performs a philosophically therapeutic function, debunking the metaphysical underpinnings of an instrumentalist and determinist viewpoint that dominates the current understanding of technology.

This article offers a new theoretical method of Comparative Ludology , aiming for an interdisciplinary exploration of Play&Games, analyzing their philosophical, theoretical, and architectural dimensions, along with aspects of their political history, from war-games to the war-of-games. As a general conclusion, it introduces the hypothesis of the “Immanence of Play”: the notion that everything may be viewed as a form of play/game, shifting focus from essentialist definitions to dynamic processes. The article ends up focusing on “Serious” Games for Environmental “Edutainment,” outlining a new game-design and gamification strategy, grounded in political ecology and the triadic concept of “ecosophy.”

This article develops a conception of meaning in the sense of “meaning as interbeing,” i.e., meaning as an emerging property in the intersection between proto-meaning and epistemic frames. The foundational basis of this argument is built on two streams of thought, Deguchi’s relational ontology of the WE-turn and the meta-ontological perspective of what is discussed in this article as Meta-Science. The article first discusses the problem of the emergence of meaning based on the limitations of subjectivist and materialist conceptions of meaning. It then builds upon the WE-turn’s incapability theses to define ontologies and their limitations, specifically their propositional incompleteness. Finally, it develops the concept of proto-meaning, i.e., the non-epistemic relational structures that underlie experiences and explain how the non-epistemic and the epistemic are bridged through interbeing to form meaning proper. The argument presented here, thereby, reframes meaning as emergent from irreducible interdependencies between objects (both epistemic and non-epistemic) and the recognition of their semblance to non-epistemic archetypal structures that are engraved in all relationships as proto-meaning. Meaning is, thus, conceived as interbeing: a layered, relational emergence grounded in archetypal patterns and conditioned and filtered by ontological premises.

The article addresses the two central tenets of Yasuo Deguchi’s “WE-turn,” namely his rejection of single-sourced agency on the one hand and his requirement for the presence of a deliberative, rational (human) actor in any multi-agentic system on the other. These views are discussed first in comparison to Raimo Tuomela’s system of social ontology and then set against the “panagentic” theories of Jane Bennett and Mercedes Valmisa. The first section concludes that Tuomela’s arguments, though limited to an anthropocentric paradigm, can usefully complement Deguchi’s views and can indeed provide a grounding for the inclusion of some, but not all, of the presences in a situation as components of an agentic system. The second section argues that while Deguchi’s requirement of human presence increases the explanatory power of his theory on the local level and for the human perspective, it loses out to the more radical position of Bennett and Valmisa on the more general level and Deguchi’s theory could therefore gain from the adoption of a more pronouncedly processual ontology as well as the inclusion of a temporal axis into its basic set of terms.

Deguchi’s Self-as-We aims to vindicate a holistic conception of self by working out the implications of what it is to be an agent in light of the East Asian tradition. This is reminiscent of the late Nishida’s philosophy, which also presented a holistic notion of self by way of explicating the logical structure of the world in which subjects are fundamentally agents. Despite these basic resemblances, however, their overall outlooks are markedly different. What are the essential differences? We shall identify them as rooted in the metaphilosophical dimension and suggest that these can best be captured in terms of the role of contradiction . Deguchi’s approach is constructive and parsimonious in that he starts with his thesis of fundamental incapability and builds up his system by adding only those theses strictly necessary to propound his system. For this reason, Deguchi remains silent as to whether reality itself is contradictory. By contrast, Nishida’s attempt is foundational because its concern is the logical form of poietic reality, which, according to Nishida, is contradictory. Notwithstanding the virtue of metaphysical parsimony, we suggest that Deguchi might benefit from revisiting Nishida’s approach – particularly the role of contradiction therein – to lend greater cogency to his axiological proposals.

In recent years, increasing philosophical attention has been given to an approach that does not begin with self and other as separated individuals, but rather takes relationality as the starting point for thinking about self and other. However, this shift in thinking is not as straightforward as it might initially appear. Various pitfalls lie hidden in the attempt to conceptualize the self and other relationally. Without carefully identifying and relativizing these pitfalls, theories of relational selfhood may easily fall into another form of extremity, distinct from the substantialization of the individual. This article examines several characteristic modes of argument employed by philosophers who explore relational selfhood and alterity. Particular attention is given to the rhetorical use of the expression neither–nor as a strategy for rejecting both poles of a binary opposition and for dislocating fixed dichotomies. I then consider how such a dismantling of oppositional schemas can function as a procedure for exposing lived experiences obscured by those very schemas. Finally, I argue that the task is not to erase such oppositional structures entirely, but rather to stand within the very site of their generation – still utilizing them, while at the same time becoming free from them.

The concept of the collective “we” has recently gained renewed attention through philosophy’s we-turn , as proposed by Yasuo Deguchi, raising new questions about the nature of intersubjectivity and shared experience. This article revisits Edmund Husserl’s late notion of the Ur-Ich (primordial I) through Shigeru Taguchi’s interpretations to illuminate a fundamental paradox of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. The Ur-Ich represents a level of selfhood that is neither a solitary metaphysical ego nor simply one among many egos, but a pre-subjective condition for the constitution of any “we.” In dialogue with this, I develop the idea of the pre-subjective self – “ we as self ” – as the primordial relationality underlying individual self-awareness. The paradox emerges that the self is both one (a singular “I”) and many (a plural “we”), a contradiction only in formal terms. To address this, the article introduces a topological approach using Louis Kauffman’s knot theory. By modeling the Ur-Ich and the pre-subjective “we” through the knot set theory (including self-referential loops, the trefoil knot, and Borromean rings), we find a structural way to understand how the self can be both unique and inherently relational. This topological analysis offers a novel framework for conceiving the “we” as a primordial intertwining of self and other.

Deguchi’s “WE-turn” adds to a smorgasbord of recent theories privileging immanent metaphysics over dualistic, or reductivist, philosophies. This contribution situates the WE-turn alongside biosemiotic, ecosemiotic, and expanded versions of cognitive science approaches to agency, which emphasize distributed, mutualist, and contingent relationality. Focusing on tensions in Deguchi’s ontological pluralism – grounded in our inevitable epistemic limitations – I draw on biosemiotics’ relational ontologies and Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory to show that any attempt to enumerate the contributors to a single act of agency will necessarily over- or underdetermine the actual actors involved. Building on a threefold agenda, this article first reconstructs Deguchi’s meta-scientific challenge to autonomy and then explores (1) the ecological resonances and dissonances between the WE-turn and J. J. Gibson’s affordance theory alongside 5EA (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, ecological, and affective) cognitive science; (2) the epistemic vagueness that renders responsibility inherently indeterminate even under ideal knowability; and (3) the ethics of niche construction, contrasting living systems’ fluid, feedback-sensitive world-making with the rigid, algorithmic shaping of nonliving artifacts. In so doing, I argue that a truly nondual, biologically grounded WE-philosophy must embrace both the excess and opacity of agency while charting normative pathways toward collective flourishing.

This study explores the concept of multi-layered values and reconsiders the formation of the self (“I”) as fundamentally relational and dynamic (“i-ing”). It discusses how AI and animals can be seen as “allocated i” and critiques the moral imperatives imposed by the totalitarian “WE” referred to by Yasuo Deguchi. Drawing on Daoist thought, it proposes the “daoing” of technology – not its moralization – as a way to support better ways of living. Emphasizing gender, sociality, and more-than-human relationships, the study envisions a post-anthropocentric future in which technology, like AI, co-evolves with humans, animals, and the environment in pursuit of a shared Dao.

This response to Yasuo Deguchi’s manifesto “The WE-turn” seeks to unpack two issues. First, we need to finesse our understanding of the Self by reconsidering the relationship between Doer-Internalism and Doer-Externalism as requiring both hierarchical and meshed cognitive processes that are internally multiple as well as externally embedded. In doing so, we will confront, second, the limits of analytic approaches to defining a subject acting in the world, by shifting focus from what the WE is , to what the WE does ; or better yet, how the WE happens . Deguchi’s accomplishment here is transformative: abandoning the single autonomous subject as the center of agency has been warranted for myriad reasons, but never has the logic for the case been made more elegantly on ontological and epistemological grounds, nor the implications for ethics more visible. Yet, asserting the WE-turn as a relational ontology by establishing its logical consistency does not provide an experientially grounded way to supplant the single autonomous subject, with its epistemological and ethical baggage. In other words, “saying it ain’t so” does not mean that the autonomous “I” will surrender of its own accord. “We” requires from the Doer more than an intentional stance. It requires a cognitive neurological transformation from ancient cultural conditioning, especially in the West.

This article reconstructs Yasuo Deguchi’s We-Turn framework through the lens of conditionalism , the view that events – including actions – are wholes composed of interconnected necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. This approach raises crucial questions about the individuation of such wholes, particularly in avoiding infinite regress and arbitrary system boundaries. I compare Deguchi’s analysis to a parallel strategy in the philosophy of mind, where conditionalism dissolves traditional versions of the mind-body problem by treating mental activity as an integrated whole in which mental and non-mental elements are co-constitutive. In this holistic view, there is no need to postulate a dualistic explanatory gap between the mental and the physical; instead, both are parts of a larger systemic unity. Within this context, I further explore the role of the subject – the “I” – in Deguchi’s framework, arguing that the We-Turn provides a promising path toward reconceiving subjectivity without relying on a metaphysically isolated or self-positing individual. Finally, I suggest that conditionalist holism and the We-Turn offer important resources for advancing contemporary debates at the intersection of the philosophy of mind, social ontology, and epistemology.

Heidegger claims that “the Being of beings ‘is’ not itself a being.” While he does not seem to argue for this claim (usually referred to as the “ontological difference”), there is now a very substantial literature that fills this gap. In this article, I subject this literature to philosophical scrutiny. My conclusion is that none of the extant arguments for the ontological difference is sound. Since, by contrast, we have at least two good reasons to think that Being is a being, this suggests that Being is a being, after all.

In this article, I show that, when denialists attempt to deny a certainty in Wittgenstein’s sense, they do not even deny anything at all because they are articulating mere nonsense. To clarify this point, I start by providing a brief introduction to Wittgenstein’s conception of “certainty,” paying particular attention not only to the distinction between seeming and genuine doubt, but also to the nonsense generated when violating a certainty. Then, I analyze why we cannot even understand denialists when they try to deny certainties about the existence of the Holocaust and the sphericity of Earth. To this end, I consider the consequences of delegitimizing research procedures, regarding the case of doubt as the normal case, and formulating the denialist doubt through words whose use is incompatible with such doubt. Subsequently, I describe the main tactics used by denialists to try to substitute scientific certainties with alternative ones. Lastly, although denialism concerning certainties cannot even be refuted because it is nonsense, I propose to make deniers as well as the general public aware of such nonsense by asking questions that revolve around incongruences such as those I have previously noted concerning Holocaust denialism and the flat-Earth “theory.”

This article draws on relational psychoanalysis to reinterpret Ovid’s version of Narcissus and Echo as a means to reflect on the dynamics of how subjects connect to others and themselves through listening. Attuning to a long tradition of scholarship, we understand Ovid’s tale as a rich template for contemplating the difficulties of becoming social. We underline how both protagonists take on essential roles in each other’s transformations. While acknowledging how each actor’s unique biography creates an intrapsychic vector, we highlight the effect of their encounters in their mutual becoming. We illustrate how the relational space between them plays an essential role in their development as they overcome their unique difficulties in connecting to each other. Our relational-psychoanalytic analysis offers a surprising interpretation, namely, that Narcissus and Echo can ultimately overcome their isolation and connect through their transformation. This illustrates the potential of relational psychoanalysis as an interpretative tool that allows us to understand social dynamics as a product of a relational space in which intra-psychic representations encounter and transform each other, thus contributing to ongoing discussions on the concept of relational subjectivity.

What makes a prediction arbitrary? This article explores the possibility that one source of arbitrariness is asserting “P iff Q” when the justifications of P and Q are, in the relevant sense, independent. It uses this idea to draw a formal distinction between non-arbitrary and arbitrary predictions, even if they are also correct. It initially illustrates with Goodman’s New Riddle. There are, by now, so many different literature-prominent variants of grue, emerose or other odd-looking predicates that, surprisingly, the criterion handles them relatively straightforwardly. As the proposal is markedly distinct from existing resolution strategies centred on predicate projectability or counterfactual analysis, it sidesteps their well-known problems. The article makes the case that testing entailments for arbitrariness enjoys advantages over the currently dominant approach of directly putting conditions on when an F that is G should support “All F are G.” The article then surveys possible broader objections and offers two formal tools for identifying when and especially why a hypothesis makes good – that is, correct and non-arbitrary – predictions or not.

The rise of self-driving cars raises numerous ethical conundrums, none has attracted so much public attention as the question of how to programme AVs in crash scenarios. How does a car respond when difficult, life-and-death choices are to be made? The most popular approach to answering this question is to employ trolley problems (trolleyology). Trolleyology, employed within the context of AVs, pits one human life against another on the basis of their distinctive characteristics: old vs young, single vs group membership, innocent vs guilty, etc. Doing so attempts to create value hierarchies for human particularity. This article argues for the failure of this approach by considering the distinctive manner in which trolley problems are employed within crash scenarios involving AVs. The article argues for the evaluative error of establishing human value on human particularity through a process of abstract individualisation. Properly speaking, individual humans are valued not on the basis of their particularities, but on the basis of their innate unsubstitutability.

I offer a novel interpretation concerning Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotelian phronesis in terms of the shifting roles that arche plays in structuring the disclosive movements proper to Aristotelian and Heideggerian phronesis . Specifically, I show that an intriguing ambiguity present in how Aristotle understands arche , in the sense of its being both an originative source of and what grasps first principles, can be leveraged to explain changes in the mediating relation between nous and logos relevant to Heidegger’s appropriations of phronesis , which I then employ to explain two additional features thereof: how it differs from Aristotelian phronesis and how it changes subtly from its more explicit manifestations in the Sophist to its more implicit presence in Being and Time . One significant ramification of this arche -reading of Heideggerian phronesis I also explore is how an understanding of phronetic disclosure in terms of arche can inform an understanding of the temporality of the disclosure of Dasein’s Being in Being and Time .

This essay explores the decolonial potential of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) through Timothy Morton’s notion of hyperobjects and its recurring figure of the demonic. While Morton critiques anthropocentrism and invokes non-Western ideas, their reliance on science as the arbiter of reality creates an implicit hierarchy that confines the demonic to a residual role. The article argues for rethinking the demonic as a historical co-author rather than a metaphor or a belated effect of scientific excess. Reappraising Morton’s use of Derrida’s hauntology and engaging with postcolonial concepts of uneven development, this essay situates spectrality within layered temporalities where scientific and non-scientific epistemologies intersect. This theoretical move is illustrated through an ethnographic account of Islamic rituals in a Malaysian hospital, where traditional healers address ghosts inhabiting advanced medical technologies. These practices destabilize Western epistemological dominance and foreground coexistence across ontological differences. The essay proposes an object-oriented demonology attentive to historical unevenness and alternative modes of knowing beyond Western scientific universalism.

The text concerns the issue of subjective expression, which was so important throughout Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical oeuvre and considered by him, among others, in relation to the question of expressiveness (clarity). This category would characterise not only subjective acts of expression, but also a certain alleged objective state of affairs. The notion of expressiveness appears in writings on aesthetics and is associated with the category of individual artistic style, but it can also be regarded as an epistemological category. One might call it a category of everyday thinking and colloquial language, the meaning of which is not sufficiently clarified. The category of expressiveness serves to characterise various representations – cultural representations, utterances of individual subjects, as well as conveyed information – claiming the right to objectivity. It is precisely the combination of the subjective and the objective that would distinguish the category of expressiveness from the category of expression – the expression of subjectivity, which Merleau-Ponty considered in his works on style, sign and meaning, and the relationship between the visible and the invisible. It is easy to notice that the category of expressiveness is found in tradition in the form of the term “ expressis verbis ,” and this is the point of reference for the reflections presented in this article. However, the starting point for an analysis of expressiveness must be the issue of expression. A specific conception of expression was proposed by Merleau-Ponty, including gestural expression and verbal expression. Merleau-Ponty’s semiotic and aesthetic conceptions are very good examples of expression’s understanding, similar to the category of “expressiveness” – a category present in everyday thinking, but not problematised at the research level. Merleau-Ponty reformulated not only what is expressive, but also what is impressive – the issue of reception, which he comprehended as a certain creative and, as well as productive process (as a certain cognitive construction in accordance with phenomenology but also the Gestalt theory). In conclusion, it will be necessary to return to those complex relationships between subjective expression, expressiveness and impression (receptivity).

I present a visual and math-free solution to the Raven Paradox, which is a well-established problem in confirmation theory where formal reasoning leads to a counterintuitive conclusion about which observations count as evidence. In so doing, I aim to help readers develop strategies to utilize their intuition in research so that it enhances insights gained from inductive logic.

This article critically engages with Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics to reframe the environmental crisis as a political and ethical issue rooted in colonial violence, extractive capitalism, and global structures of power. Using a critical theoretical methodology and interdisciplinary interpretative approach, the study reads Mbembe’s major works, including On the Postcolony, Necropolitics, and The Earthly Community , to conceptualize environmental disruption as an extension of sovereign violence, where both human and non-human life are rendered disposable. Building on postcolonial political theory and environmental humanities, the article traces the historical entanglement between colonial extraction, ecological devastation, and global structures of power. It contends that contemporary landscapes of “slow violence,” such as the oil extraction, dispossession, and conflict in the Nigerian oil-rich Niger Delta, are concrete cases of the ongoing necropolitical logics. The article concludes by examining Mbembe’s shift toward an ethics of care, proposing a relational and decolonial ontological paradigm that challenges the logic of disposability. While sympathetic to Mbembe’s insights, the article critiques the determinism of his framework and argues for a multi-scalar understanding of environmental responsibility that includes institutional, communal, and individual agency. Ultimately, it calls for an earthly community founded not on sovereignty, but on interdependence, relationality, stewardship, and the radical affirmation of life. By shifting the focus from technocratic solutions to ethical and political transformation, this study contributes to the reimagining of environmental futures beyond necropower.

Drawing on arguments from Bruno Latour and Levi R. Bryant, this article defends the claim that materialism comes in two different forms (found respectively in the hard sciences and in cultural studies), and that despite their ostensibly opposite views both commit the same philosophical error. Essentially, both forms of materialism confuse our ways of knowing things with the constitution of things in their own right. In closing, an analogous critique is applied to Immanuel Kant’s reasons for rejecting the ontological proof for the existence of God from St. Anselm.

Recent streams of thought arising in the wake of Speculative Realism have premised the possibility of materialism on the autonomy of the idea and the resistance of matter to ideal capture, thus stressing the mutual irreducibility of matter and idea. This article aims to show how this twofold premise ultimately grounds the viability of materialism in what will be described as its “aperture” or formal inconclusiveness, and then seeks to elucidate the question this raises for materialism as a philosophical project. Methodologically, the paper focuses on Ray Brassier’s “materialist monism.” It begins discussing his engagement with conceptual normativity, and then brings this into dialogue with Georges Bataille’s “non-logical difference” to hypothesize that the aperture of materialism rests on the following claim: matter eludes full ideal formalization insofar as it can contain – yet not exhaust – the idea. The article develops this line of thought by linking the mutual irreducibility of matter and idea to their mutual indispensability, suggesting that the question for materialism is a question whose saying mirrors its doing: in asking how to conceive the idea as simultaneously immanent and transcendent to matter, it both states and performs an uprooting gesture.