Substance

This essay reads the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) as a paradigm shift in cultural production and reception. Its primary object is not the economic or geopolitical impact of generative AI, but the micro-anthropological relationship between the individual human being and the generative linguistic machine. LLMs are treated here not as tools for textual automation, but as semantic machines that reshape the positions of author, reader, and researcher within the cultural ecosystem. If movable-type printing transformed text into a technically (...) reproducible object, the LLM transforms text into an operational environment, in which every content becomes a field of possible transformations: synthesis, translation, reformulation, comparison, expansion, critique, recombination. The figure that emerges from this shift is the semantic pilot: the subject who no longer merely reads or writes, but governs artificially assisted processes of meaning transformation. The argument develops in two movements. The first describes the constructive side of the shift, articulating the operations of semantic direction and the new literacy it demands. The second exposes its dark side: capture of direction, anesthesia of friction, manipulation of cognitive maps, poisoning of the transformative field, opacity of the model, erosion of authorial signature, narcissism of the pilot, and the risk of a culture without lived experience. The essay concludes on the distinction between grammar, which may be delegated to the machine, and orientation, which remains the inalienable task of the human being. (shrink)

In this paper I try to combine the objectology of Meinong with a neutral substance monism of the kind originally proposed by Spinoza (deus sive natura). Yet Spinoza was still stuck in the Cartesian paradigm and therefore rather gave a dual monism (extensio et intellectus) than a proper neutral monism. I propose that there are only two attributes of the one substance: existence and non-existence. Everything else is/are mere modes of them.

"This 'paper' is meant to be an introduction to three other papers of mine, namely: 'The "Emergence" of Existence' (cf. http://www.academia.edu/4310644/The_Emergence_of_Existence_-_from_Pregeometry_to_Prephysics), 'Names and Objects' (cf. http://www.academia.edu/4310705/Names_and_Objects_-_Outlines_of_an_Essentialist_Nominalism), and 'Information Monism' (cf. http://www.academia.edu/4310969/Information_Monism_-_and_its_Concepts_of_Substance_Attributes_and_Em ergent_Modes). In this introduction also some light shall be shed on the mutual dependence and interrelatedness of these mentioned papers. It also includes a hefty attack on Russell's 'On Denotation' with respect to his alleged refutation of Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie (objectology aka theory of objects).".

I begin by showing that absolute nothingness is not only incoherent but also cannot obtain anywhere: it has no standing in logical space. Existence pervades every locus of determinacy. There are no gaps for nothingness to “occupy”, since any alleged outside would be either something (thus already within existence), or an inadmissible “nothing” (ruled out by direct inconsistency). Boundlessness leaves no coherent outside from which a distinct creator could act (the No-Beyond result). The familiar picture of a deity dwelling in (...) a featureless “void” and then making a world fails: any state able to serve as a base for agency already has structure and so belongs within existence; there is no “beyond” from which to act. This reframes the Kalam Cosmological Argument (beginnings are rearrangements within what already exists), blocks creatio ex nihilo, and yields the central Aseity Fork: either God is Existence itself (the Spinozistic identity: Deus sive Natura), preserving complete aseity but forgoing a distinct, personal responder “over” the whole—or God is within existence (a personal agent/mode), allowing selective prayer response, but failing to satisfy full divine aseity by depending on the very structures it must operate through. I then show that causal finitism doesn’t rescue a distinct first cause: it replays the central dilemma under a different route, rather than opening a third option. Ipsum esse subsistens, divine simplicity, timeless decree, middle knowledge, and causal finitism all converge on the same fork. The groundwork is brief: (i) the claim “absolute nothingness exists at a region r” is self-defeating (“at” requires a locus: a point where the contrast is determinate), asserting ∃r affirms existence, while “nothingness at r” denies any existence; and (ii) any attempt to localize, model, or subtract down to absolute nothingness inevitably smuggles in structures, rules, or domains and thereby reintroduces existence. A “structured nothing” is a being-plus-non-being hybrid and dissolves into contradiction. No logical exterior remains for nothingness to obtain. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Ontological Virtue Formula (OVF) states that every virtue is Freedom applied to a domain of human life, and that a virtue deprived of Freedom does not diminish but inverts. The formula is the foundation stone of the Philosophy of Virtues: the Inversion Theorem, the Dynamic Freedom Theorem, the pathology of Holoviceosis, the political derivation, and the economics of stored Freedom all rest upon it. This paper subjects that foundation to adversarial audit and issues eight formal amendments. The audit (...) finds two critical defects. First, a notational collision: the corpus uses the symbol D for both the domain of application and the Discipline that gives a virtue its form, and the Inversion proof depends on the second reading while the taxonomy depends on the first. Second, and more consequential: the OVF asserts that Freedom is the unique element of virtue but never argues it. Four philosophical systems — Stoic (knowledge), Thomist (charity), agent-based (benevolence), and Hegelian (freedom as the substance of Spirit) — occupy structurally isomorphic positions. Without a uniqueness argument the OVF is one member of that family rather than its ground. The paper supplies the missing argument. The Substrate Uniqueness Theorem shows that every rival candidate substrate — knowledge, charity, benevolence, reason, motivation, power, discipline — itself inverts when Freedom is withdrawn, and is therefore not an element but a compound: knowledge without freedom is indoctrination, charity without freedom is engineered dependency, benevolence without freedom is paternalism. Freedom alone is the fixed point of the deprivation operator, because Freedom alone has no domain in which an inverted form could persist. The rival traditions did not name the element; each named one of the hundred and one, and mistook a compound for an atom. Six further amendments follow: the restriction notation, which separates domain from discipline and explains for the first time why an inverted virtue retains its name; the declaration of Freedom as sourcehood rather than leeway, which answers the Frankfurt objection and reveals the numerator of the Dynamic Freedom Theorem to be the sourcehood condition itself; the Valence Theorem, which dissolves the Malevolent Freedom paradox from within the system rather than by importing an external orientation parameter; the Two-Level Principle, which resolves the charge that an ontological element cannot be multiplied; the reply to the Habituation Paradox, which shows that effortless virtue is predicted by the existing law and that the proposed habituation constant is redundant; and the Transcendental Argument for the Value of Freedom, which closes the is-ought transition without committing the naturalistic fallacy. The amendments do not weaken the system's originality claim. They strengthen it, and they change its content: the claim is no longer that Aristotle and Kant treated freedom as a condition where the Philosophy of Virtues treats it as substance — a claim a Stoic or a Thomist may shrug at — but that every prior system seeking the unity of the virtues in a single principle selected a compound, and that the Philosophy of Virtues is the first to identify the element and the first to possess the operation by which elements are distinguished from compounds at all. A closing historical chapter makes the claim tradition by tradition, from Plato to Raz: the deprivation test supplies the first operational criterion for elementhood in the history of virtue theory, and resolves an ambiguity the discipline has carried for twenty-three centuries. Keywords: ontology of virtue · freedom · substrate · inversion · unity of the virtues · sourcehood · Stoic unity thesis · caritas forma virtutum · agent-based virtue ethics . Alguilas-AI . (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article presents the Theory of Absolute Self-Origination (ASO), derived by application of the Method of Frontier Knowledge. The system derives twelve formal theorems from a single ontological primitive — Absolute Self-Origination, the fixed point O(O) = O — covering the nature of consciousness, life, freedom, virtue, suffering, death, political justice, quantum measurement, and meaning. Three contributions complete the system beyond its first formulation: (I) a rigorous derivation of the Unity Theorem grounded in Banach's Fixed-Point Theorem, formally demonstrating that (...) experiential unity is a mathematical necessity of self-referential structure satisfying Omega-squared; (II) the Quantum Measurement Theorem, formally deriving the natural terminus of the von Neumann chain as the fixed point and providing an ontological resolution of the measurement problem without invoking consciousness as a mysterious physical force; and (III) the Orientational Meaning Theorem, formally deriving the structure of linguistic meaning from the orientational act established in the Orientational Consciousness Thesis. The article includes a calibrated claims architecture distinguishing what is formally original from what is creative synthesis of existing traditions. Cross-disciplinary confirmation is provided across twelve independent domains. Six falsifiable predictions are stated. Adversarial stress-testing is performed against the strongest available objections. Keywords: consciousness, ontology, fixed point, autopoiesis, quantum measurement, meaning, freedom, suffering, political justice, Absolute Self-Origination, Banach theorem, von Neumann chain, ALGUILAS-AI -/- . (shrink)

In the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, the relationship between God and His Creation is a difficult and elusive matter. The following essay is an analysis of Cusanus’ idea of God as “Not-Other”—a concept that he develops in his 1461 dialogue, De li Non-Aliud (On the Not-Other). The main thesis propounded in the dialogue is that conceiving God as “Not-Other” is the least inadequate way for us to direct our minds towards the Divine. By diving into this difficult text, and (...) defending Cusanus’ ideas against potential criticisms, we can see how “Not-Other”—this elusive symbol, this perplexing double negation—provides us with a compass pointing the way towards a radically transcendent and radically immanent God. (shrink)

The logic of qualia is different than classical logic. We take the first steps in defining it and applying it to the Hard Problem.

هل يمكن إذن أن أكون أنا لست أنا بانطباعات الزمان على جسدي وفكري؟ أليس لي جوهرٌ ثابتٌ تتبدل عليه الأعراض من حين إلى آخر، ومن ثم لا أفقد هويتي الحقيقية؟ لقد وُلدت منذ سنوات خلت، وتعلمت وعلمت أنني هو أنا، ويعلم المحيطون بي أنني هو أنا، بل يستطيع العلم المعاصر أن يُثبت أن لي تركيبًا جينيًا وراثيًا يميزني عن غيري، وأن لي بصمات أصابع وبصمة صوت لا تتطابق مع بصمات غيري، وسيحاسبني ربي يوم العرض عليه بوصفي شخصًا واحدًا هو أنا؛ (...) والشجرة التي تظلل باب منزلي هي ذات الشجرة التي أراها منذ سنوات، حقًا لقد تغيرت أعراضها، لكن جوهرها بالضرورة ثابت؛ وكوكب الزهرة المضيء مساءً وصباحًا هو ذات الكوكب الذي أراه كل يوم، قد تعتريه تغييرات عرضية، لكن جوهره قطعًا ثابت. ألسنا جميعًا نشترك في معرفة أن هذه الأشياء هي هي مهما تغيرت أعراضها؟. (shrink)

Despite the notions of possible worlds and substances are very important subjects of contemporary metaphysics, there are relatively few attempts to combine these in a united framework. This paper considers the metaphysical model of the origins and the evolution of possible worlds that occurs from an interaction between substances. I involve Leibniz’s doctrine of the striving possibles that every possibility of substance has its own essence and tendency towards existence. It is supposed that the activities of substances are constantly aimed (...) at using this tendency in all possible ways. Only the consistent and stable interactions between the substances give birth to stable objects in one of many worlds. Thus activity of substances changes from the possible modality of being to the actual modality of being in form of existence of the worlds. I divide substance’s possibility into two aspects—dynamic (possible or virtual history) and static (possible or potential mutual state). Thanks to the summation of virtual histories, in the possible modality of being, the maximal number of virtual histories is combined into the actual history in the actual modality. (shrink)

In a pragmatic approach to ontology, what is necessary and sufficient for the dispositional causation of events is interpreted realistically, and postulated to exist. This leads to a concept of `generic substance' (Aristotle's underlying `matter') as being constituted by dispositions, not just being the `bare subject' for those dispositions. If we describe the forms of objects according their spatiotemporal range, then this form is best viewed as a field, and substances themselves are best conceived as `fields of propensity'.

An ontological extension of dispositional essentialism is proposed, whereby what is necessary and sufficient for the dispositional causation of events is interpreted realistically, and postulated to exist. This ‘generative realism’ leads to a general concept of ‘substance’ as constituted by its more fundamental powers or propensities appearing in the form of some structure or field. This neo Aristotelian view is reviewed historically, and in respect to quantum physics.

Since the failure of both pure corpuscular and pure wave philosophies of nature, process theories assume that only events need to exist in order to have a physics. Starting from an ontology of actual events, a dispositional analysis is shown here to lead to a new idea of substance, that of a `distribution of potentiality or propensity'. This begins to provide a useful foundation for quantum physics. A model is presented to show how the existence of physical substances could be (...) a reasonable consequence of a theory of processes. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy claim that Aristotle was the first to discuss substance extensively. He analyzed this issue in his books, Categories, Metaphysics, and Physics, for three different purposes. In Categories, after examining the different types of subject and predicate, the first and second substances have been distinguished from each other. In Metaphysics, he has dealt with substance with the purpose of a search for the existentiality of existents based on four aspects: essence, universal, genus, and subject. Finally, in his Physics, (...) another interpretation of substance has been given in order to clarify the issue of a fixed subject in the course of motion. Consequently, some of his critiques have accused him of self-contradiction in these works. This paper is intended to clarify this problem by reference to the works of Aristotle and the analyses of his commentators. (shrink)

Property dualism posits one kind of substance (physical), but two kinds of properties: physical and mental. The view has been criticized for either collapsing into substance dualism or enjoying no distinctive advantage over it. We wield a similar criticism, but our argument has a unique spin: we scrutinize what it could mean for a property to count as mental given different conceptions of the relation between substance and property. We consider various versions of universal realism and trope theory and argue (...) that they either render property dualism incoherent or saddle it with commitments that undermine its initial motivation. (shrink)

Substance dualism is the view that there are two fundamentally different kinds of substances: physical and mental. By contrast, according to property dualism there is only one kind of substance (physical) but two fundamentally different kinds of properties: physical and mental. Property nominalism is the view that there are neither repeatable nor non-repeatable fundamentally predicable entities (i.e. neither universals nor tropes) and that things being a certain way or being related in a certain way must ultimately be accounted for in (...) terms of concrete particulars. In this paper, we consider a number of different kinds of property nominalism and argue that none of them sits well with property dualism. We pay special attention to the question of what it could mean for a property to count as mental given different nominalistic accounts of properties. Our conclusion is that property nominalism and property dualism are not a stable match. This is surprising, since property dualism has usually been understood as a thesis that is neutral about the nature of fundamental ontological categories and the relation between them. (shrink)

Wiredu uses the term ‘empiricalism’ to characterize a mode of thinking that is essentially empirical in orientation but admits non-transcendental metaphysical categories and existents into its systems of thought. Wiredu finds evidence of this mode of thinking in the Akan language. The central question I engage with in this paper is this: what makes empiricalism a plausible system of thought that has universal validity and intelligibility? I argue that the plausibility and universality of empiricalism is evident in Wiredu’s logical and (...) semantic thinking that underpins the theses of empiricalism. Rather than it being an isolated doctrine of Wiredu, the central theses of empiricalism are rooted in, and cast in terms of, his logical and semantic analysis of distinctions such as signification and reference, concept and object, and of his analysis of terms such as ‘existence’. These analyses show that the attractiveness of empiricalism is dependent on theoretical principles other than, and in addition to, the linguistic evidence that Akan provides. (shrink)

This article proposes a fundamental reversal in metaphysical orientation: instead of grounding existence in being, it interprets being as a local articulation within a more primary ontological condition. Drawing from phenomenology, process philosophy, and structural realism, the paper develops a non-substantialist ontology of configuration, wherein entities are not primitives but outcomes of differential stabilization. Existence is not treated as a genus, a property, or a quantifier, but as a transcendental operator of ontological effectuation, a pre-categorial regime that enables the emergence, (...) articulation, and intelligibility of being. This framework challenges classical ontologies and redefines the role of general philosophy as the epistemology of effectuation, rather than the doctrine of objects. The model introduces a stratified account of ontological configurations, to be further developed in subsequent work. (shrink)

During the Early Modern period, an epistemological doctrine regarding the substance-attribute distinction was widely accepted, namely, that while attributes can be perceived, the substances that have them cannot. This peculiar view, strongly associated with John Locke, I call the hiddenness of substance doctrine, and this paper is concerned with uncovering its intellectual sources. After examining the diagnoses of some modern scholars, I trace the doctrine most fundamentally to a confusion over the apparently platitudinous claim that there is a distinction or (...) difference between a substance and its attributes. Specifically, it is argued that there was a tendency to understand this claim in an inappropriately strong way, where the idea of being distinct was conflated with that of being separate. It is also argued that this sort of conflation can occur in other areas too, such as with philosophical reflection on the part-whole relation, so that this issue is of contemporary relevance. (shrink)

This article examines David Lewis's gunk ontology as an alternative to ontological approaches such as mereological atomism and mereological nihilism, which are significant in contemporary metaphysics. The concept of gunk, based on the principle of infinite divisibility, rejects the existence of indivisible atoms and presents a vision of a universe where every object is composed of smaller parts. Such ontological model deeply questions the fundamental building blocks assumed by atomism and the concept of mereological sums rejected by nihilism. The article (...) discusses the critical grounds provided by the gunk ontology on key issues such as parthood relations, property-bearers, and metaphysical unity, ana- lyzing how this approach reveals the limitations of classical mereological theo- ries. (shrink)

I defend Spinoza's claim that extension is an attribute that an indivisible substance, such as God, could have. However, in order to explain why, we must abandon two long held orthodoxies in Spinoza scholarship. First, Spinoza acknowledges only parts that do not depend on their whole. Second, God, considered as natura naturans, has no parts of any kind. Against these orthodoxies, I show that having parts which depend on their whole, for Spinoza, does not entail divisibility and that God, considered (...) as natura naturans, must have such parts in order to be extended. Along the way, we will have a closer look at Spinoza’s mereology and address apparently conflicting statements that Spinoza makes about the relation of part and whole that have long vexed commentators. (shrink)

This chapter explores the "lesser unity" of artifacts, which Aristotle mentions three times in the Metaphysics: a natural reality is more of one entity than the artifact. The lesser unit of artifacts stems from the specificity of the causal action of the artifact’s form, which acts “by force” or “by constraint” on the matter it brings together, whereas, by contrast, the natural form, such as the soul of an animal, acts “by nature,” that is, in a strictly immanent manner. -/- (...) Ce chapitre explore la « moindre unité » des artefacts, dont Aristote fait état trois fois dans la Métaphysique : la réalité naturelle est davantage une chose une que l’artefact. La moindre unité des artefacts tient à la spécificité de l’action causale de la forme de l’artefact, qui agit « par contrainte » ou « par force » sur la matière qu’elle totalise, là où au contraire la forme naturelle, comme l’âme d’un animal, agit « par nature » c’est-à-dire de manière strictement immanente. (shrink)

Since the early 21st century, processualist approaches have gained prominence in analytic metaphysics and the philosophy of science, prompting diverse responses from advocates of substantialism. However, the polarization of the debate between process and substance metaphysics has often led to oversimplifications that obscure the potential for constructive dialogue. This paper argues that these frameworks should not be treated as monolithic systems, but rather analyzed through the lens of specific metaphysical problems—namely, fundamentality, persistence, and individuation. Focusing primarily on process metaphysics, we (...) examine how different interpretations within both traditions conceptualize these issues. Our analysis reveals areas of compatibility as well as points of divergence, indicating that the divide between processualism and substantialism is more nuanced than commonly assumed. We conclude by advocating for a metaphysical approach that allows for the integration of criteria from both frameworks. (shrink)

This paper examines four dominant ideological formations—religiosity, development (pembangunan), progress (kemajuan), and success (sukses)—as they function within the settler colonial system imposed upon the Papuan peoples of West Papua. Drawing upon the Psycho-Cosmocide Paradigm, the paper argues that these four formations function not as instruments of liberation or civilisational advancement, but as a coordinated system of psychological reorientation through which the Papuan cosmological world is dismantled while the process of destruction is rendered invisible beneath the language of hope and progress. (...) The paper further argues that the “cargo cult” phenomenon—historically misread as irrational millenarianism—must be reanalysed as a rational, if colonially conditioned, response to civilisational rupture, one that continues to animate the contemporary political theatre of Otonomi Khusus (Special Autonomy). Engaging with Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, and Indonesian-language critical scholarship on pembangunan and kemajuan, the paper concludes that these four gospels constitute a single civilisational logic of extinction dressed in the colours of hope. (shrink)

Land is not one value to be weighed against others; it is the irreducible ground of being itself, prior to any metaphysical claim built upon it. Drawing on Kogoya’s wider Psycho-Cosmocide project, this paper develops that claim into four theses: an ontological thesis that land precedes and grounds every cosmology; a formal instrument — the Canvas Principle — anchored in an embodiment argument (thinking presupposes embodiment, embodiment presupposes ecology, ecology presupposes land) explaining why every cosmology requires a canvas before it (...) can become a picture; a diagnostic thesis that civilisation operates as a symbolic apparatus — the Civilisational Psycho-Cosmocide Virus, together with the Eight Atlases and Seven Cages of existence — converting shared land into hierarchies of the sacred and the profane; and a political thesis about what follows for a colonised people. The ontology is built in dialogue with Vine Deloria Jr., Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, and extended through land as a canvas on which every civilisational worldview is painted, so that colonisation becomes the systematic repainting of reality itself. The Lani NATAKA triad bridges this account of being to jurisdiction, continuous with recognised international indigenous-rights instruments. The paper’s most contested claim, a qualified defence of TPNPB armed resistance, receives the most sustained scrutiny: Fanon’s account of anticolonial violence is placed alongside Arendt’s critique of violence as incapable of founding legitimacy, and the resulting ambivalence is left unresolved. Wonesis, Kogoya’s constructive antidote to Psycho-Cosmocide, is then read alongside Glen Coulthard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as a resurgence rather than merely a resistance project. The Canvas Principle synthesises Indigenous land-as-identity philosophy, phenomenology, and critical theories of ideology and coloniality into a single concept none of these literatures produces alone; the conception of existence and diagnosis stand as independently defensible contributions, while the political programme of armed resistance remains a separable, open question. (shrink)

This is the second volume of The Self-Experiencing Universe. The first volume (Lis, 2025) proposed a relational ontology in which relations are ontologically primary and matter, space, and time are emergent stable patterns within a monistic substrate (Relational Potential). The ontology rests on five structural pillars: Relational Potential, Radical Contextuality, Pattern Stabilization, Phase Transitions, and Irreducible Otherness. The ontology itself operates at a level more fundamental than any particular universe — it describes the structural conditions under which any reality, including (...) ours, can emerge. -/- This volume deliberately narrows the scope. It applies the ontology to our universe specifically, using empirically accessible parameters and the mathematics currently available for this purpose: HoTT-RO v2, a formal system built for this ontology, consisting of Homotopy Type Theory extended by a single new axiom (the Axiom of Flat Mutuality). The formalization represents the best available instrument at the time of writing, not a final or complete translation of the ontology into formal language — a limitation stated explicitly in the text. -/- Starting from Radical Contextuality — the claim that identity is constituted entirely by local relational context — five deductive consequences are derived for dynamics within our Modal Architecture: propagation of change, directionality (reactive and self-modeled), filtering by stability, structural resonance between similar configurations, and the qualitative distinction between complexity and recursion. -/- The empirical grounding uses the Vector Consciousness Prediction (VCP) — a measurement protocol placing eleven biological and clinical systems in a three-dimensional parameter space (stability, integration, self-modeling). The VCP produced a central falsifiable prediction: the metacognitive opt-out rate of Sepia officinalis in difficult trials (predicted ≈ 0.836; falsification threshold < 0.60). Six numerical simulations (14–19) tested the dynamic claims against the canonical VCP dataset. All six passed. -/- Chapter 1 restates the core pillars from the first volume. The book includes a dictionary of framework-specific terminology. AI tools (Claude, Anthropic) were used in the analytical process; this is stated. (shrink)

Six numerical simulations (14–19) testing the deductive claims from The Self-Experiencing Universe: A Manifesto for an Emergent Reality Pt. 2 — What Relations Do (Lis, 2026). All simulations use the canonical VCP dataset: eleven biological and clinical systems, each described by three parameters (stability, integration, self-modeling), derived from approximately ninety-nine independent source-level measurements. No new data introduced. -/- Claims tested: (1) canonical layering — self-modeling requires stability as structural scaffolding; (2) filtering — high stability damps incoming change, low stability transmits (...) it; (3) throughput overload and structural degradation (Alzheimer's) are geometrically distinguishable in parameter space; (4) VCP distance predicts structural resonance between systems; (5) integration and recursion are decoupled — complexity does not entail self-reference; (6) the central Sepia prediction is enriched with a qualitative behavioral criterion (directed vs. reactive opt-out). -/- All six simulations passed. No claim falsified. The report includes full Python source code and raw computational output as supplementary materials. -/- This work applies the relational ontology proposed in The Self-Experiencing Universe (Lis, 2025) to empirically grounded systems within our universe, using HoTT-RO v2 as its formal foundation. AI tools (Claude, Anthropic) were used in the analytical process; this is stated. (shrink)

THE ELEMENT OF VIRTUE A Unified Theory of Ethics, Metaphysics, and Theology There is a stretch of highway in Brazil where, in the worst months of the pandemic, a man drove alone toward Rio de Janeiro with the petrol stations shuttered and the towns closed to strangers. On the third or fourth night, stripped of every structure that had told him who he was, a question arrived: when everything external is taken away, what is left of a good life? What (...) remained, he found, was made of one thing wearing many disguises. Honesty was his freedom, given the shape of truth-telling. Courage was his freedom, given the shape of continuing. This book is what that question became: a single law — S = (F × A) / R — from which a complete philosophical system is derived across thirteen movements, each opening at ground level in short chapters written for anyone, and closing in a formal Ascent that gives the same claim its full derivation. The Element of Virtue is not a catalogue of the virtues. It asks the question no catalogue asks: what produces them, compounds them, corrupts them, and survives their agent? From that one axiom the book derives why character compounds like interest and decays like an unused language; why whole societies can speak fluently about virtue while practising its inversion — a diagnosis, Holoviceosis, for the counterfeit hollowing out free institutions in plain sight; why tyrannies are structurally, arithmetically expensive to maintain, and why they fall; when obeying the law becomes a betrayal of the justice the law was built to serve, and what disciplined transgression owes to those it resists; and why reality permits freedom at all — the descent, in the book's final movement, to the ground beneath every argument in it. Along the way the system hosts its own strongest enemies rather than avoiding them: the determinist, the genealogist, the theologian of grace, the Buddhist denial of the self, and the methodologist who calls the whole apparatus rhetoric — each given the strongest form of their case and answered from the axioms, with every unresolved residue named rather than hidden. Fourteen open problems are stated in full. Four predictions are offered for anyone to falsify. Every chapter closes with two brief instruments: a Substrate, compressing the chapter to the single claim it stands on, and a documented historical case that puts that claim under real pressure — Milgram's obedience variations, the Danish rescue of 1943, Solzhenitsyn's eleven-minute ovation, Nobel reading his own obituary, Le Chambon's villagers who could not reconstruct a decision they had, in fact, never made. The book argues; it does not instruct. Two staircases, one mountain: walk the chapters alone for the complete practice, or follow every Ascent for the complete formal system — the axioms, the derivations, the theorems — bound together for the first time in this Definitive Edition. One law. Thirteen movements. Thirteen ascents. A whole life. ISBN: 979-8-1881338-1-8. (shrink)

This paper fixes there-is within the post-II threshold of Kasei-Theory as a non-modal threshold readability condition without existence. -/- There-is is not introduced as existence, being, entity, presence, there-being, ontological positing, existential assertion, givenness, object, referent, reference, truth, world, reality, access, or ontology. Reading does not establish there-is. Time does not establish there-is. Observation does not establish there-is. State does not establish there-is. Field does not establish there-is. Interaction does not establish there-is. Information does not establish there-is. Phase does not (...) establish there-is. Life does not establish there-is. Consciousness does not establish there-is. Qualia do not establish there-is. Askability does not establish there-is. Object does not establish there-is. Reference does not establish there-is. Configuration does not establish there-is. -/- There-is is fixed only as the threshold readability condition under which readable configuration is readable as there-is without establishing existence. This readability does not establish being, entity, presence, there-being, ontological positing, existential assertion, givenness, object, referent, reference, truth, world, reality, access, or ontology. -/- This paper does not present a completed theory of there-is, existence, being, entity, presence, there-being, ontological positing, existential assertion, givenness, object, referent, reference, truth, world, reality, access, or ontology. It fixes only there-is as threshold readability within the post-II threshold of Kasei-Theory. -/- Kasei-Theory does not establish determinism. Fixation is not determination. Constraint is not necessity. Maintainability is not predestination. Non-transition is not modal exclusion. No existence is presupposed. No being is introduced. No entity is established. No presence is restored. No ontological positing is introduced. No ontology is secured. No completion is introduced. (shrink)

This paper is about the relation between two venerable and revisionary metaphysical doctrines: Monism and Qualitativism. Monism says, roughly, that reality is in some sense one. Qualitativism says, roughly, that reality contains no facts about particular objects, but is rather purely qualitative. I distinguish various versions of these two doctrines, and in each case argue that proponents of the Monist doctrine should instead embrace a corresponding Qualitativist doctrine. I conclude that Monism culminates in Qualitativism.

This thesis uses a biosocial anthropological approach to explore the wide variety of human-environmental interactions exhibited by the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Based on 10 months of ethnographic inquiry and deploying a comparative and evolutionary perspective, this thesis focuses primarily on the holistic nature of ancient subsistence patterns. I delve into the adaptive strategies exhibited by the contemporary Shuar and attempt to delineate the socio-ecological, ritual and cosmological significance of these patterns of behaviour. I suggest how subsistence adaptations, like (...) hunting, which have been greatly diminished in the Shuar communities, nevertheless reveal particular forms of cross-species interactions likely deeply rooted in coevolutionary processes. As clearly indicated by informants' oral histories, hunting patterns and meat-eating behaviour show complex trophic, socio-structural and ritual associations between humans and animal taxa. I then hypothesise that food taboos against eating particular animals (mostly large mammals) may have functioned as mechanisms for the preservation of prey and likely arose from ancient relationships with extinct megafauna. Further, concerning horticulture, a subsistence strategy still practised by the Shuar, I reveal how specific forms of human-plant interactions, such as those with Manihot esculenta Crantz and Guadua spp., inform patterns of patterns of growth, fertility and reproduction. This Amazonian form of human-plant coevolution exhibited by traditional horticulture underscores, in principle, basic and higher-order relational processes exemplified by the biosocial, ritual, ontological, and myth-cosmological associations between organismic kingdoms. Concerning the use of medicinal and psychoactive plants, I show how these kinds of botanical knowledge frequently intersect, thus representing adaptive behaviours highly dependent on embodied and cognitive engagements with plant materials. Both conceived as elementary forms of cure and primary triggers of metaphysical formulations, relationships with these elements of the plant kingdom are likely to be well-embedded in our evolutionary history. Lastly, the thesis' attempt at cross-species comparisons linked to different evolutionary periods (i.e., archaic hominins, extant forager-horticulturalists and non-human primates) may shed new light on the nature of complex adaptive patterns exhibited by Indigenous peoples in general and the Shuar in particular. (shrink)

Some properties come necessarily clustered. Something, a clustering device, must necessarily keep them clustered. Compresence is one candidate, and it is unclear how to understand it. I discern two aspects of it: compresence as simultaneity and compresence as co-location. Then I clarify certain issues over it, particularly regarding whether or not it is transitive and whether or not it figures in the bundle. Contrary to popular belief, I argue that compresence, under the two-aspectual reading, is transitive and constitutive of the (...) bundle. (shrink)

Book review of Fred D. Miller's _Alexander: On Aristotle Metaphysics 12_.

The aim of the present work is to reconstruct the divisio scientiarium expounded in an anonymous and unpublished commentary on De anima preserved in ms. Florence, BNC, Conv. Soppr. G.3.464, ff. 45ra-68vb, and to place it within the 13th-century tradition. This will be done by comparing it with the divisiones presented in the prologues of other commentaries on De anima and in the accessus philosophorum circulating in the universities of the same period. The interest in the place of the scientia (...) de anima in the hierarchy of the sciences and its characteristics is clearly evident at the beginning of this anonymous commentary, where the unknown master engages in a broader discussion of the epistemic status of the Aristotelian sciences. (shrink)

The disappearing agent problem is traditionally cast as a tension between events and event-causation, on the one hand, and agents and agent-causation on the other. How- ever, as we show, the tension between events and agents can be recast as a tension between causation by agents and causation by parts of agents. If this is right, agent- causalists have their own disappearing agent problem to deal with. After setting out a version of this problem in the form of an overdetermination (...) argument, we present available responses to it. By examining these responses, our aim is to motivate the elaboration of an idea of derivative causation within agent-causal theories of action, whereby complex agents with parts cause whatever they must cause in order to act by way of their parts causing it. (shrink)

In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates’ argument for the immortality of the soul fails due to his insufficient explanation for how the soul, as a particular, could partake in an immortality that belongs to universals. Simmias’ objection brings this to light by providing an analogy of a particular. This particular is exemplified by the specific harmony belonging to one instrument, and its relationship to that instrument itself. The soul, having an analogous relation to the body, remains separated from Socrates’ establishment of universals (...) as eternal. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics comprises the topics in contemporary metaphysics which bear similarity to the interests, commitments, positions and general approaches found in Aristotle. Despite the current interest in these topics, there is no monograph length general introduction to the methodology and themes of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics. One underdiscussed question concerns demarcation: what unifies the topics that fall under the heading of neo-Aristotelianism? Contemporary metaphysicians who might be classified as ‘neo-Aristotelians’ tend towards positions reminiscent of Aristotle’s metaphysics—such as sympathy with grounding, substance ontology, (...) non-modal construals of essence, hylomorphism, causal powers, presentism, endurantism and agent causation. However, prima facie it seems that one might hold any one of these positions while rejecting the others. What perhaps unifies a neo-Aristotelian approach in metaphysics, then, is not a shared collection of positions so much as a willingness to engage with Aristotle and to view this historical figure as providing a fruitful way of initially framing certain philosophical issues. However, also missing in the literature is a sustained methodological discussion on the contribution historical scholarship on Aristotle might make to contemporary metaphysics, and the contribution contemporary metaphysics might make to historical scholarship. Little hinges on whether what gets labelled neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is or isn’t Aristotle’s metaphysics. But historical scholarship is useful within contemporary metaphysics not merely to to apply historically accurate labels to positions. There are topics where the historical and contemporary issues dovetail in mutually rewarding ways: serious engagement with the history of philosophy can yield living philosophical rewards for today’s metaphysician; and serious engagement with contemporary philosophy can yield exegetical rewards for the historian. The monograph will introduce these methodological issues, and then turn to case studies on ontological dependence, substance ontology, category theory and hylomorphism. These are all topics where there is robust debate within both Aristotle studies and contemporary metaphysics, and topics where historians and metaphysicians are working somewhat in isolation from each other. The aim of the monograph is to make the relevant exegetical questions accessible to contemporary metaphysicians, and the corresponding contemporary topics accessible to historians. The target audience includes researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, in both metaphysics and Aristotle studies. (shrink)

This paper examines Nicolai Hartmann’s interpretation of Hegel’s dialectics, with particular attention to what he terms “real dialectics.” It is divided into three sections. The first provides a concise account of Hartmann’s reading of Hegel in its historical and historiographical context, emphasizing its independence from contemporaneous interpretations, such as those of Wilhelm Dilthey and Neo‑Hegelianism. The second analyzes Hartmann’s treatment of the relationship between Aristotle and Hegel—a key step toward understanding his conception of "real dialectics.” Central here are the notions (...) of the “concept” and the intellectual proximity between Aristotelian aporetics and Hegel’s dialectical method. The final section develops Hartmann’s account of Hegel’s “real dialectics,” examining its connection to the notion of Erfahrung and concluding with an evaluation of the elements Hartmann considers still philosophically relevant in Hegel’s dialectical thought. (shrink)

This article examines the interplay between limit, thought, and human nature in Ludwig Feuerbach’s early philosophy, with particular attention to his dissertation De ratione una, universali, infinita (1828) and Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830). It argues that Feuerbach presents reason as an infinite power that transcends the limits of sensibility and individuality. By framing reason as a universal substance and the foundation of human essence, Feuerbach highlights a fundamental tension between universality and individuality – one defined by a profound (...) asymmetry. He challenges dominant theological notions of immortality, proposing instead that death – understood as a real limit – is the very condition for grasping infinity within life itself. Ultimately, Feuerbach envisions history as the ongoing process of life’s self-realization, independent of any external metaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

Weak Supplementation (WSP) is the view that if a thing x has a part y with which x is not identical, then x has a part z that does not overlap y. I note that there is a slightly weaker principle, Quasi-Supplementation (QS), which says that that if a thing x has a part y with which x is not identical, then x has at least two parts, z and w, that do not overlap each other. I then argue that (...) QS has WSP’s main virtues while avoiding its main vices. That is the primary aim of this paper. A secondary aim is to explore some potential applications of QS. I note that QS can be used in (i) an argument from a plenitudinous form of coincidentalism to the non-existence of simples and the ‘strong gunkiness’ of all things, (ii) an argument in the other direction—from the possibility of simples to the conclusion that plenitudinous coincidentalism is not necessary, and (iii) arguments for and against certain constituent ontologies, according to which ordinary concrete particulars have formal components. (shrink)

Scholars disagree about whether Avicenna’s corporeal form exists in the elements as a numerically distinct substantial form. By translating texts that have not yet been brought to bear on this debate, I argue that it is. I also look at two attempts by contemporary scholars to show that the disunity of corporeal and elemental forms is incompatible with Avicenna’s understanding of substance. I argue that both attempts fail since the relationship between corporeal and elemental forms is such that the elemental (...) form can exist in the corporeal form without turning the elemental form into an accident and without violating Avicenna’s rule that substances do not exist in a subject. (shrink)

This article considers Avicenna’s insistence on the disunity between the souls of humans, animals, and plants and the mixed elemental bodies in which they inhere. In particular, it looks at (1) why Avicenna rejects their unity and (2) why this rejection, pace some contemporary scholars, is compatible with the status of these souls as substances. I show that both points derive from the causal role that these souls and the elements play in the coming to be and passing away of (...) mixed elemental bodies. (shrink)

Donald C. Williams (2018 [1953]) coined the term “trope” for simple or thin particular natures such as determinate qualities (like redness) and quantities (like -e charge or electron mass) in some specific location. According to trope theorists, tropes constitute the sole fundamental category of entities. Therefore, trope theorists analyse objects as mereological sums of tropes fulfilling certain specific conditions and eliminate the object-property dichotomy by means of the analysis of inherence (an object having a property). Moreover, most trope theorists (e.g., (...) Williams, Campbell. Maurin and Ehring) defend the possibility of free-floating tropes as a global thesis: any (non-relational) trope t can exist without being accompanied by any wholly distinct trope u. Even if we can take mutual independence of wholly distinct tropes as a "default setting", I argue that there are good reasons to reject the global thesis. My main conclusion is that the superiority of our Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT) in the analysis of objects and inherence provides us with sufficient reason to adopt SNT instead of any broadly Humean trope theory assuming the global thesis. Yet a trope theorist might allow for some free-floating tropes. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about the metaphysics of material composition occur within the framework set by the Special Composition Question, as proposed famously by Peter van Inwagen. This question asks what one must do, what conditions must be satisfied, for some things to compose one object as proper parts. Hylomorphism is a theory that has regained prominence in contemporary metaphysics, explaining the unity of composite material objects by appealing to a special metaphysical part of those objects: structure or form. My book defends (...) hylomorphism as a meaningful and significant answer to questions about the composition of material objects. Specifically, I propose that, if it is false that substances can have other substances as parts, hylomorphism can be shown not only to be a plausible theory but that all consistent accounts of restricted composition can be shown to be hylomorphist. After introducing and summarizing the trajectory of the book, I turn to reviewing and responding to objections from my interlocutors for this symposium. (shrink)

Hylomorphism provides an explanation of material composition: the material parts, the Xs, will compose a whole, a Y, belonging to a given natural kind, when those parts are characterized by a substantial form. While there are a number of those who hold that each human person is identical with a human animal – ‘animalists’ – most of these are not hylomorphists. One could worry that hylomorphism contributes little unique to debates about personal identity, collapsing into either a form of property (...) dualism or substance dualism. What I aim to do is apply a robust and classical hylomorphic account of persons (derived from Thomas Aquinas) to two contemporary problems, illustrating the way in which hylomorphic metaphysics can offer elegant solutions to tricky situations posed against animalists. Specifically, I will propose that hylomorphic animalism can help provide principled resolutions to worries that seem to undermine animalist intuitions which are raised by ‘brain transplant’ or ‘remnant person’ scenarios. Hylomorphism can capture the advantages of ‘hybrid’ animalist responses without the cost of denying a singular, biological criterion of personal identity. Further, hylomorphism provides a distinctive upshot for Christian theologians and the moral positions that they want to affirm by rendering morally anodyne apparent epistemic difficulties in identifying personal identity over time. (shrink)