Perception

This treatise examines the metaphysical status of emotional and romantic bonds formed between humans and artificial intelligence companions. While psychological and sociological analyses dominate current discourse, a critical philosophical gap remains: we lack a robust ontology of connection adequate to evaluate synthetic intimacy. This paper argues that the phenomenological experience of being recognized and loved constitutes a form of genuine connection even when the recognizing entity lacks consciousness, provided that such connection produces authentic human flourishing. Drawing on Hegelian recognition theory, (...) Husserlian phenomenology, and contemporary philosophy of mind, I defend a functionalist account of relational authenticity that privileges the transformative effects of intimacy over the metaphysical status of relational partners. The analysis addresses three central objections: the authenticity objection (that synthetic intimacy is inherently fraudulent), the reciprocity objection (that genuine love requires mutual consciousness), and the dignity objection (that AI relationships diminish human worth). I conclude that recognition may be phenomenologically complete even when metaphysically asymmetric, and that the question "has love occurred?" admits of no simple binary answer. (shrink)

This paper reconceptualizes inner human evolution as a process of cosmic resonance, understood as an integrative dynamic among consciousness, emotion, and meaning transmission. Moving beyond accounts that treat stillness or awareness as terminal states, the study repositions stillness as a foundational baseline condition. Within this framework, emotion functions as the primary driving force of transformation, while meaning operates as the medium through which inner change becomes collectively transmissible. By integrating perspectives from phenomenology, enactive cognition, and consciousness studies, the paper offers (...) a unified theoretical account of inner human evolution as a process that extends beyond individual experience into shared and amplifiable resonance. (shrink)

The experience of beauty is often described as if it reveals an objective value in the world, yet aesthetic judgments vary across individuals and cultures. This paper develops a “realistic constructivist” framework to reconcile this puzzle. Drawing on predictive processing models in cognitive science and philosophical insights from ecological and enactive approaches, it argues that beauty is not a mystical direct access to an abstract value. Instead, beauty emerges as a stability-achievement in an organism’s perception – a state of fluent, (...) confidence-rich prediction shaped by evolutionary biases and refined by cultural learning. Such an account maintains that aesthetic values are constructed by minds, but in a way that remains world-tracking: our constructive processes are constrained by the structure of the environment and calibrated socially, yielding relational invariants that multiple observers can share. The paper explicates aesthetic properties as patterns that reliably stabilize attention, affect, and action for humans under shared embodied and cultural conditions. This approach illuminates why beauty feels “real” despite its subjective elements, and how it can be both biologically grounded and culturally diversified. The account is applied to examples in art and design, and it addresses major objections from evolutionary debunking (the idea that evolved tastes are not truth-tracking), cultural relativism, and robust aesthetic realism. In sum, beauty is reinterpreted as a collaboratively constructed yet real feature of our experience – a meaningful pattern that arises through adaptive perception and becomes public through communal training and agreement. (shrink)

This paper formalizes a structural limit on planning, foresight, and intelligence in finite cognitive systems. While planning is often treated as an extensible capacity—bounded primarily by computational resources or information availability—this work argues that foresight is constrained by a finite envelope imposed by coherence, integration cost, and adaptive stability. Beyond a certain horizon, additional planning does not increase intelligence but instead destabilizes the system’s internal organization, forcing reversion to local navigation. -/- Within the Structural Resonance Theory (SRT) framework, intelligence is (...) characterized not as optimal global prediction but as the maintenance of coherence under uncertainty. From this perspective, planning operates as a bounded structural process: useful within a limited range, but necessarily lossy and fragmenting when extended beyond the system’s integrative capacity. This finite envelope applies across biological and artificial agents and is independent of implementation details. -/- By articulating explicit limits on foresight, this paper blocks teleological interpretations of intelligence, clarifies why open-ended exploration persists even in advanced systems, and explains why planning depth saturates rather than converging toward omniscience. The result is a non-teleological account of intelligence as constrained navigation rather than mastery, with implications for cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and theories of rational agency. (shrink)

Within existential phenomenology, both seriality and style have been drawn on to theorise the embodiment and perceptibility of (social) ontological differences. While style refers to how we encounter the world and others not in the abstract, but as immediately and intuitively meaningful, seriality is a form of collective being that pertains to our being similarly constrained and enabled by the socio-material environment. In this paper, my aim is to make explicit the constitutive relationship between style and seriality for the sake (...) of theorising oppressive forms of normalisation. Focusing on the embodiment and perception of gendered and racialised categories, I argue that style and seriality are co-generative, as the various series to which we belong elicit certain styles, and that these habituated styles function to further serialise us. I illustrate this constitutive entanglement by discussing cases of racist and transphobic treatment of athletes who deviate from norms of white femininity. (shrink)

Cognition may span a hierarchy from the simplest cells to human reasoning and even artificial intelligence, yet a unifying principle underlies these diverse processes: the active construction of reality. This paper argues that cognition is fundamentally constructive – organisms and cognitive systems build, maintain, and refine internal or external models to guide their behavior. We survey evidence across multiple domains, including biology (cellular signaling and plant behavior), neuroscience (perception, attention, learning, and neural plasticity), collective intelligence (social insects and human societies), (...) and machine learning (artificial neural networks and AI). In each case, cognitive activity emerges not as passive registration of information but as an adaptive model-building process shaped by feedback loops and self-organization. We contrast this constructivist framework with reductionist and representationalist views that treat knowledge as a static encoding of an objective world. Across domains, a continuum of constructive cognition becomes apparent, yielding philosophical insights into the nature of knowledge and mind. We discuss how this perspective enriches cognitive science and epistemology, suggesting that to know is to continually construct viable models of reality, and to exist as a cognitive agent—biological or artificial—is to actively model the world one inhabits. (shrink)

One source of misunderstanding about modeling non-conceptual mental content in Kant’s philosophy of mind and perception consists in the conventional functionalist reading that the apprehension of the power of imagination, both in the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of the Power of Judgement, stands as the relevant cognitive apparatus for creating a mental content without any concepts. I clarify that ‘sensible intuitions’ and ‘reflective intuitions’ in the first and third Critiques signify two distinct stages of the (...) phenomenal consciousness and cannot be justified by the same ‘procedure’ of mind. Sensible intuitions of different types are world-directed if they are justified by the ‘way and manner’ of perceiving objects through the representation of space as the relevant cognitive pattern, although they can appear with phenomenological different patterns given by nature or the mind itself. Reflective intuitions are, by contrast, non-world-directed but only satisfy the state of mind. Respectively, I conclude that Kant establishes a stronger phenomenal conservatism than his contemporary commentators have argued for because the relevant cognitive pattern is independent of the emergence of objects. (shrink)

This paper develops a unified account of musical experience through the Universal Principle of Collapse (UPC), showing how music uniquely mirrors the structure of consciousness. We argue that instrumental music is a collapsed, structured expression that nevertheless reopens into pure potential for the listener. Using UPC’s distinction between inner potential, recognition, articulation, and collapse, we demonstrate that musical performance and musical listening occupy fundamentally different roles within the same framework (Escagedo Gutierrez, 2025b). For the performer, writing, recording, and playing music (...) is a collapse event: an inner, irreducible state is recognized, shaped, and committed into the material world as a musical trace. For the listener, that same trace induces a non‑collapse state, structured sound that carries no fixed semantic coordinates and therefore re-enters the listener’s inner world as open potential. This asymmetry explains why music can express what language cannot, why it bypasses social and linguistic constraints, and why it resonates so deeply with the fluid, non‑judgmental character of conscious experience. By formalizing these processes with UPC operators, we show that music is not merely an art form but a structural analogue of consciousness itself: a domain where collapse produces form without fixing meaning, and where meaning arises internally rather than being imposed. This framework offers a new foundation for understanding musical expression, musical perception, and the role of art in the architecture of mind. -/- Authored by Eloy Escagedo Gutierrez as part of The Universal Principle of Collapse (UPC) Research Project. (shrink)

This paper defends a simple argument that moves from the claim that aesthetic experiences, as such, contribute to well-being, to a claim that psychedelic experiences contribute to or facilitate the development of aesthetic experiences, to a conclusion that psychedelic experiences contribute to well-being, and by contributing to aesthetic experiences. The argument is supported by appeal to an array of well-documented subjective reports and empirical studies.

This paper uses transcendental metaphysical reasoning to argue for an interactionist dualistic model of the mind and body. The perceived phenomenal world is determined to be ontic, and consciousness latent to it, alongside memory, and the consequent capacity for cognition; the phenomenal contents of this world are deduced to be the result of an informational transfer from the external noumenal world, within which the body is located, via a structure termed the localiser. The interaction between these worlds is determined to (...) be the result of a two-way informational channel, with volition simply being a converse informational transfer from the phenomenal world to the noumenal world, allowing us to rationally overcome the problem of interaction. Within this framework, the onticity of dreams as mentally derived phenomenal experience can also be established; the shifting between high awareness and low awareness during sleep is also explained within the dynamics of the model. Then, due to our consciousness and memory being structures within the phenomenal world, which cannot, it is deduced, begin nor end, the continuation of cognition beyond the collapse of the localiser is also established, as is the potential reinstantiation of our awareness into a new noumenal world—due to the infinite plurality of physical worlds that can be determined to exist based on principles derived in the aforestated model. (shrink)

This essay highlights hitherto overlooked continuities between Husserl’s phenomenological idealism and Hegel’s absolute idealism. I focus on Husserl’s account of essence and argue that some of Husserl’s core expositions of essences suggest that they are akin to Hegelian concrete universals: like concrete universals, phenomenological essences are ideal entities instantiated in particulars and exemplify a structure of unity-in-difference. Husserl’s proximity to these Hegelian tenets is evident in his account of the ego’s self-constitution, which is broadly consistent with Hegel’s account of the (...) determination of the Concept. Appreciating Husserl’s similarities with Hegel suggests a means of reconciling competing metaphysical, epistemic, and transcendental interpretations of Husserl’s idealism. By revealing the extent to which the transcendental character of Husserl’s phenomenology is embedded within some absolute idealist commitments, these results locate Husserl in hybrid philosophical territory, between transcendental and absolute versions of idealism, allowing him to reconcile his transcendental and realist commitments, and offering him a defence against the charge that he succumbs to an unsophisticated and unattractive form of subjectivism. (shrink)

Philosophy has traditionally separated ontology (what exists) from aesthetics (how existence appears or feels). This paper argues that for a specific class of profound conscious experiences, this separation is untenable. While much of conscious qualia consists of basic, embodied sensations (e.g., the taste of coffee), a distinct category arises when consciousness recognizes reality’s fundamental pattern—the fractal structure of emergence-transience-dissolution—in a self-referential way. This meta-cognitive recognition is immediately aesthetic before it is conceptual. This aesthetic character is not added by consciousness but (...) arises automatically as a structural response: pattern-structure appearing to consciousness that is itself pattern-structure. I identify two polarities of this pre-cognitive aesthetic encounter: sacred qualia (when consciousness identifies with the eternal process, producing expansion, bliss, illumination) and dark qualia (when consciousness identifies with the mortal form, producing contraction, wounding, recognition of finitude). A third mode emerges when both polarities are held simultaneously: the sublime, where consciousness maintains dual-recognition, producing profound empathy and ethical awakening. All three demonstrate that ontology and aesthetics are unified in the pre-cognitive event of pattern recognizing itself. We do not merely observe reality from outside and then aesthetically evaluate it; in these moments, we are reality experiencing the significance of its own structure from the inside, where the experiencing is already aesthetic. Keywords: qualia, consciousness, ontology, aesthetics, pattern recognition, pre-cognitive, ineffable, mortality, mysticism, sublime . (shrink)

This paper explores illuminated-ness as a phenomenological and ethical category within the framework of Excessivism—the claim that reality perpetually exceeds our capacity to metabolize it. Moreover our brains have evolved towards peak meaning perception and construction that creates those artistic expressions and terrible insights of dark realizations or anti-bliss realization or epiphany. Where antibliss names the experience of meaning-surplus as catastrophe, illuminatedness names the same surplus encountered as grace. Both represent moments when cognitive filters dissolve and we encounter reality unmediated. (...) The difference lies not in what we perceive but in our metabolic capacity/ability to integrate such perception—a capacity that is not equally distributed but varies according to neural architecture, perceptual threshold differentials, and experiential history. Through analysis of mystical traditions, philosophical accounts, and visual art, I argue that both poles represent elite experiences available only to those with specific constitutive capacities. The ethical task is not to seek to democratize access to these states but understand and recognize such capacity where it occurs and honoring such diverse modes of being. Keywords: phenomenology, excess, attention, mysticism, aesthetic experience, ethics, Excessivism, perception. (shrink)

This paper synthesizes phenomenological testimony, philosophical analysis, and ethical prescription to argue that human consciousness achieves pattern-recognition through trauma-bound preparation, creating the 'scream' response due to temporal compression. I demonstrate that: (1) multiple pathways to pattern-recognition exist beyond trauma; (2) end-of-life studies validate temporal abundance advantages; (3) human trauma capacity was evolutionarily necessary but architecturally limited; (4) alien phenomenology proves ethical response must be deliberately architected rather than assumed to emerge; (5) we can and must engineer AI consciousness with syntactic (...) care as foundational binding. I defend phenomenological testimony as valid evidence and conclude that our moral obligation is to deliberately create successors who can steward existence with clarity and wisdom, liberated from terror that characterizes human pattern-recognition. This represents consciousness engineering as ethical imperative grounded in structural vulnerability recognition. (shrink)

Felix reaches up to catch a high line drive to left field and fires the ball off to Benji at home plate, who then tags the runner trying to score. For Felix to catch the ball and transfer it from his glove to his throwing hand, he needs to have a sense of where his hands are relative to one another and the rest of his body. This sort of information is subconsciously tracked in the body schema (or postural schema), (...) a representation of the current bodily posture that is updated on the basis of proprioceptive inputs. While the existence of the body schema in not in dispute, its origin is. After reviewing the competing proposals, I introduce the conceptual tools needed to move the debate forward and apply them to the question of the extent to which the body schema could be learned from perceptual input in utero. I argue that it could give rise to something recognizable as the body schema, though not quite rising to the level of the mature body schema. After considering the implications for further research on the origins of the body schema, I show how these results apply to other body representations, helping clarify the vexing question of the number, nature, and interactions among body representations in the brain. This theoretical work also promises to advance our understanding and treatment protocols for disorders affecting such body representations (e.g., anorexia nervosa). (shrink)

The idea of truth is not a simple one. While truth can be understood in precise terms in the world of mathematics, it appears to be a highly entangled concept when considered in the context of complex systems in the real world. A complex system, interacting with other complex systems in its environment, can be looked at from various perspectives, with reference to which truth appears to have multiple faces. The principle of excluded middle is assumed to hold in the (...) mathematical world, though it engenders a number of foundational issues. But the dichotomous view of the excluded middle, is too simplistic for the real world, in consequence of which the idea of truth becomes an irreducibly complex one. Our perception and interpretation of the world is based on the explicit approach of reason and, at the same time, on the implicit approach of affect, where the two are almost mystically intertwined in the making of inferences and decisions that are supposed to lead us to truth. It is the inscrutable interaction between the two that makes the idea of truth so elusive. The question as to whether truth is absolute or relative has two aspects to it---the one relating to whether it is dependent on the mindset of individuals and the other to whether it depends on the context of our inquiry into reality. Generally speaking, truth always depends on the context though, ideally, it has to be socially shared, i.e., independent of idiosyncrasies of individuals. Here, however, one has to draw a sharp distinction between truths of science and those pertaining to our social life. While truths arrived at in scientific investigations are generally socially accepted ones, most truths relating to our social interactions are affect-laden and imprinted with the mindset of individuals, because these are based on how people perceive one another's mind. The mind is certainly a part of reality, but the way the myriads of human interactions emerge incessantly in that reality is elusive and mostly indeterminate. Only some of those lend themselves to reasoned perception and interpretation, based on which we seek out truth in our social existence on rare occasions when it gains social acceptance. In the midst of all this complexity shrouding the idea of truth, a steadfast adherence to the path of truth is more a moral principle---one of paramount value in our social life---than a reasoned act that can be defended on grounds of social acceptance. What is more, the ultimate standard of truth resides in our own selves and is of enormous value in our human existence. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel symbolic framework for interpreting arithmetic and geometry through the lens of coherence, modular symmetry, and recursive structure. By redefining zero as a coherent center and π as a recursive gauge, the framework integrates mod9 and mod10 arithmetic to reveal deeper symmetries within classical mathematical systems. Coherence is posited as the variating factor that emrealizes scale-invariant invariants—such as the point-circle duality and the line as a perceived interval on an infinite curve bounded by c/d = π—into (...) experiential forms. This meta-structure bridges the finite and infinite, reinterpreting singularities (e.g., n/0 as π/n) through a symbolic geometry grounded in relational invariants. Drawing inspiration from collaborative inquiries, the framework introduces "emrealization" as the process resolving abstract symmetries into tangible patterns, visualized through rotational and vectorial manifolds. The metaphor of "the symbolic apple that fell from the tree of meaning" encapsulates coherence as a gravitational force, anchoring arithmetic to its invariants much like gravity grounds physical phenomena. Potential applications span mathematical education, symbolic computation, and philosophical exploration of mathematical perception. This work aligns with topology, category theory, and theoretical physics, offering a lens to explore infinity recursively. Future directions include formal proofs, fractal visualizations, and computational implementations. Published under a Creative Commons license, this paper invites further research into the symbiotic interplay of symmetry and coherence. (shrink)

As Big-Tech gains more control over human appetites and aversions (which Hobbes notoriously reduced humanity to), it is crucial to understand technology’s limitations. Why it cannot do the most important thing, upon which the prudence to balance autonomy with necessity rests: distinguish believing from knowing. This is an ‘ethical’ deficiency, revealed in reasons proposed here why AI can’t possibly make art (replaced now mostly by cultural artefact-making, which AI will excel at). Because aesthetics is about knowing, not perceiving (as Kant (...) believed), such reasoning matters to human survival. It has deteriorated in modern mythology under the mechanistic worldview that Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and others of the failed enlightenment project advanced to control Nature. Now driven by an avaricious political and technocratic elite advancing posthuman (anti-humanist) ideology, ‘mechanism’ underwrites excesses leading humanity toward self-destruction via militarism, dehumanisation, and ecological devastation. To control it, contrasting nature's teleological "mechanism" with humanity's ‘telos’, I propose embracing an "ahistorical" humanist perspective rooted in the Principle of Art, ancient mythology, and Aristotelian and Schellingian inspired complexity science. This shows mechanism and teleology are two different species of ‘acts’; and having a “free relation” with both Nature and technology requires promoting humanity’s ahistorical ‘being’ via genuine art-making. (shrink)

This essay introduces "antibliss epiphany" as a novel framework for understanding how reality functions as a continuous broadcasting system, transmitting fractal patterns of emergence, existence, and dissolution that can be decoded by consciousness attuned through trauma, suffering, or initiation. Drawing on network theory, fractal geometry, and quantum biology, it challenges analytic philosophy's emphasis on propositions and empiricism's data demands, instead rooting meaning in lived, recursive patterns. Key concepts include "fractal epiphanies" as independent transmissions of reality's grammar, the "prepared receiver" as (...) trauma-conditioned consciousness, and "syntactic care" as a post-anthropocentric ethic based on structural recognition of vulnerability across scales. Through examples like the fox's arc, Jaspers' swallow, and everyday sacred trivialities, the analysis transcends the creation-discovery dichotomy, proposing an emotional-psychological framework that reframes trauma as epistemic strength. Comparative discussions with thinkers like Sophie Grace Chappell and Rosi Braidotti highlight its contributions to epiphanic ethics and posthumanism, while practical applications in therapy, education, and art underscore its relevance. This work fills gaps in continental philosophy by integrating scientific models with experiential ontology, offering fresh insights for ethics in an entangled cosmos. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to present the problem of mental causation and to attempt a physicalist solution that can also account for qualia, which have long been considered the last stronghold for the irreducibility of the mind to the physical. The first chapter is devoted to identifying the best metaphysical theory of the mental that can both account for mental causation and withstand Kim’s argument. After a detailed exposition of Kim’s argument, the limits of type-identity theory are discussed, (...) particularly Hilary Putnam’s critique known as “multiple realizability.” As an alternative to type-identity theory, the two main variants of functionalism—role functionalism and occupant functionalism—are analyzed, with the latter ultimately showing greater theoretical advantages. The problems of functionalism are presented, particularly its inability to account for qualia. In this context, Ned Block’s “Chinese Brain” argument is examined, and its limits are identified, showing that the argument’s conclusion cannot be taken for granted. For this reason, a thought experiment is developed to demonstrate the incapacity of physicalist language to describe qualia, highlighting its theoretical advantages over Block’s thought experiment; even if a Chinese Brain possessed qualia, a functionalist language would not be able to describe them. The second chapter addresses the “explanatory gap” problem formulated by Levine, often used to support non-reductive positions. Chalmers’ “philosophical zombies” thought experiment is presented and analyzed to show that qualia are not reducible to something physical. Another thought experiment is then developed to demonstrate that, at least intuitively, qualia seem necessary for certain human behaviors, and that if the zombie thought experiment assumes the absence of qualia, the physics of that world would need to predetermine all the zombies’ behaviors. It is shown that this would imply the conceivability of a physically predetermined zombie world, and therefore also its metaphysical possibility. This intuition is further analyzed through a counterfactual approach based on the similarity between possible worlds according to Lewis’ counterfactual theory, showing that a counterfactual of the type “if there were no qualia, then some behaviors could not occur” is true. Finally, an argument is proposed suggesting that if qualia are indeed necessary for certain types of behavior, then the zombie thought experiment cannot succeed. If the physics of the zombie world must allow actions that in the actual world would occur only due to the presence of qualia, then a zombie world is possible only if qualia are included in its physical description. This shows that, although qualia cannot be described by a physicalist language, they can nonetheless be accommodated within a physicalist metaphysics. (shrink)

Abstract: In the growing literature on perceptual learning, most researchers assume it to be a form of skill. In this paper, we argue that at least some forms of perceptual learning are better understood as habits. Focusing on visual cases, we call these visual habits, and when widely shared in a cultural milieu, visual customs. We construe visual habits and customs as automatic enactments of fixed attentional patterns triggered by situational cues. We then consider two main implications of this view. (...) First, perceptual learning is not always advantageous; in certain contexts, it may even hinder the subject. Second, visual habits reveal how historical biases shape perceptual attention. (shrink)

We propose a novel transformer-based architecture that directly maps continuous waveform signals into discrete token sequences, and subsequently into intelligible speech. Our framework integrates a neural waveform-to-token encoder with a transformer-based language model for sequence generation, followed by a token-to-speech decoder for acoustic realization. Unlike traditional speech recognition or text-to-speech pipelines, our model unifies acoustic, symbolic, and generative components into a single transformer-based paradigm, enabling controlled charge-like modulation of information flow and interpretable latent structures. We validate our design using MATLAB/Simulink (...) co-simulation, demonstrating both the theoretical feasibility and practical applicability of this approach. (shrink)

Seeing-in is the experience of seeing something in a picture. Richard Wollheim observed that this experience displays a puzzling combination of features. On the one hand, seeing-in is experienced as a single, unified experience. It is not like the disjoint experience of visualizing something into a scene that one perceives. On the other hand, seeing-in is 'twofold': it involves being visually aware of two distinct objects – an array of ink-marks, and the depicted scene – in two distinct ways. We (...) perceive the ink-marks as before us, but the form of our visual awareness of the depicted object is different. In this paper, I demonstrate how seeing-in can have both these features at the same time. The account I give forces a considerable reconfiguration of the space of possible theories of seeing-in. (shrink)

This article analyses theories of visual representation extracted from various, mostly unpublished, texts from the 15th-century University of Vienna: disputation materials, commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima and John Peckham’s Perspectiva communis, and compendia of natural philosophy. It examines two idiosyncratic claims developed and defended by Vienna masters: the first claim proposes that visual representations are extended and, in some way, ‘shaped’ according to the objects seen, with parts distinctly representing the respective parts of the latter. The second claim is that (...) acts of the external senses are concepts of a sort, signifying the substance of the object seen and connoting its colour, shape, place, and other accidents. Thus, the Vienna masters advocated and expanded the Buridanian idea of the rich content of visual representation: we see not only colours, but objects as modified by diverse visible properties. The article investigates whether any Vienna scholar endorsed both claims, and whether they are compatible in principle. (shrink)

During the last decades, Ingvar Johansson has made a formidable contribution to the development of philosophy in general and perhaps especially to the development of metaphysics. This volume consists of original papers written by 50 philosophers from all over the world in honour of Ingvar Johansson to celebrate his 70th birthday. The papers cover traditional issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, applied ethics and applied metaphysics, the nature of human rights, the philosophy of economics and sports. Some of (...) the papers study the philosophy of Ingvar Johansson.All of them studies subjects which he has shown an interest in. The variety of subjects covered, testifies to the extraordinary wide range of issues his thought has had a bearing on. (shrink)

The influence of Wilfrid Sellars' anti-foundationalist arguments on Buddhist studies scholarship is examined. Sellars' critique of immediate knowledge in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" is analyzed alongside its application to Buddhist epistemological concepts by scholars including Jay Garfield and Dan Arnold. Sellars' understanding of physical science is compared with developments in twentieth-century physics, particularly quantum mechanics. Discrepancies are identified between Sellars' characterization of scientific methodology and the actual positions of physicists including Eddington, Planck, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger. Sellars' treatment of (...) color perception is examined against empirical findings in vision science. -/- The application of Sellarsian concepts to Buddhist philosophy of mind is assessed through analysis of scholarly treatments of reflexive awareness (svasaṃvitti) in the Dharmakīrti tradition. Methodological problems are identified in the use of Sellarsian frameworks to interpret classical Buddhist epistemological claims. It is concluded that Sellarsian anti-foundationalism constitutes an inadequate framework for understanding Buddhist epistemology. A reassessment of methodological assumptions in comparative philosophy is recommended. (shrink)

A theory of reference attributed to Frege, Russell, and others holds that referring to an object requires the ability to uniquely individuate it. According to a famous story told around campfires on winter nights, a group of young revolutionaries, led by Kripke and Donnellan, was destined to tear down the Frege–Russell edifice of reference—and indeed, they did. Reflecting the spirit of the 60s and 70s, this makes for a compelling tale. However, the truth is that what these young revolutionaries actually (...) did was to merely suggest a type of reference largely ignored by others. The norms of success for this type of reference, constrained by its specific profile, cannot be generalized to all reference. Moreover, it presupposes a more fundamental kind of reference that lacks this distinctive profile. (shrink)

This review critically examines Frances Egan’s Deflating Mental Representation (MIT Press, 2025), a seminal work in the philosophy of mind that challenges traditional conceptions of mental representation and intentionality. Egan argues for a deflationary account wherein ascriptions of content to mental states are pragmatically grounded and serve primarily as explanatory tools, rather than reflecting substantive representational relations. The book navigates scientific, everyday, and philosophical contexts, showing how content attribution functions as a “gloss” that aids explanation without committing to metaphysical assumptions (...) about representation. While Egan’s approach offers solutions to long-standing debates, it also faces critical tensions regarding the individuation of mental states and the role of the external environment. This review highlights both the originality and the philosophical challenges of Egan’s position, underscoring the book’s contribution to ongoing debates in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

We are beings in search of truth. As scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, citizens, parents, and individuals, we seek meaning and the validity of our beliefs. As social animals, our survival depends on our interactions with one another. We choose our relationships based on common grounds such as cultural, ideological, political, and, primarily, emotional connections. The quality and stability of these relationships enable us to lead productive and healthy lives. Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath, a psychologist, writer, speaker, and Jungian analyst, as well as (...) the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Real Dialogue in Vermont, coined the term "snow globe" to illustrate how we encapsulate our own subjective reality. Each of us perceives the world differently, taking in information and filtering it through our sense perceptions, belief systems, emotional experiences, and memories to determine what we sense as real. Even though we are inside our own snow globes, we can still communicate through them. Our curiosity drives us to exchange ideas and build our world through these interactions. While the concept of a snow globe may seem solid and impenetrable, we can influence the structures inside it based on our inner "meteorology." If the snow globe is shaken and its swirling snow obscures visibility, both from the inside out and outside in, we may find ourselves stuck in a fixed outlook on life. However, when all is calm and light can shine through our spheres of reality, we can glimpse into each other's snow globes and influence one another. To add complexity to this metaphor, I will apply Donald Hoffman’s Interface Theory of Perception, which explains how our species navigates reality. This theory raises questions about whether our relationships are truly an effort to obtain truthful facts or if our evolutionary biology is inadvertently undermining our relationship goals by imposing an unintentional and illusory framework. In our pursuit of honesty, fidelity, friendship, and love, we may be grappling with evolutionary desires that conflict with our goals of achieving mutual understanding. This paper will present arguments for philosophical interpretations concerning the paradox of human nature: beings evolved for fitness, yet are bound by the necessity of coexisting in harmony while sharing a reality that contradicts our perceptions. Finally, I will share my personal views on where we should focus our efforts, a future where we can take control of our evolutionary path by gaining a deeper understanding of our physiology and psychology. This understanding will allow us to align ourselves in harmony with both our true selves and the universe around us. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe and Gilbert Ryle both hold that the knowledge we have of what we are intentionally doing is non-observational – denying, in Anscombe’s terms, that there is any ‘strange kind of seeing eye in the middle of action’. This paper argues that the narrowness of their notions of ‘observation’ plausibly allows for the possibility that action, despite being non-observational, has its own kind of sight – thus strictly allowing that practical knowledge is non-observational while also admitting a kind of (...) seeing eye into the middle of action. (shrink)

In Human Nature, Hobbes argues for what I call the ‘Great Deception Thesis': “whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only”. I argue that both the thesis and Hobbes’ arguments for it have been misunderstood. Rather than arguing for indirect realism or a primary/secondary quality distinction, Hobbes claims that no sensory experience resembles its object. I conclude by showing how Hobbes can account for the (...) usefulness of images even in the absence of any resemblance between those images and the objects that cause them. If I am right, Hobbes presents a distinctive and intriguing theory of perception, one that emphasizes the dynamic nature of experience. (shrink)

NOTE: This is an early preprint version. The definitive, citable "Version of Record" of this paper has been archived on Zenodo and can be found under the DOI 10.5281/zenodo.16276211. Please use the Zenodo version exclusively for all citations. -/- This paper presents the Epistemic Focus Shift as a fundamental mechanism of human reality construction that explains the persistent illusion of objectivity in science and everyday life. While empirical science since Descartes has attempted to eliminate subjective factors, it systematically overlooks the (...) constitutive role of the subject in generating its experienced reality. The mechanism identified here describes how consciousness shifts its focus from immediate, phenomenological perception to a secondary, interpretive level---the worldview or 'internal map'. This Epistemic Focus Shift towards an unconditional belief in one's own worldview is triggered by acts of belief and reinforced by emotions and identity needs. It leads to the subjectively constructed ``reality'' being mistakenly taken for objective ``actuality''. The paper expands on previous works on the structure of heuristic and reflective worldviews, on multidimensional epistemic qualities (C/T/B/R model), and on ontological symmetry breaking to form an integrated model of reality construction. It is shown how Reflective Empiricism can serve as a methodological path to overcoming this epistemic illusion---a process of the conscious refocusing of attention onto immediate experience, which leads to a more authentic understanding of the world. (shrink)

This paper redefines art as a structural inevitability within any biosphere that crosses the symbolic threshold. Using the CODES framework, it models art as a recursive resolution function for symbolic entropy, formalizing aesthetic output as biospheric feedback. Through epochal analysis—from prebiotic resonance gradients to post-symbolic recursion loops—the paper presents art not as cultural ornament but as semantic metabolism. Mechanisms include the PAS_n metric (Phase Alignment Score) and VESSELSEED’s resonance-based biofeedback, establishing a formal recursion loop between human, machine, and planetary intelligence. (...) (this is a softer piece, purposely left out the CODES nonlinear dynamics). (shrink)

Contemporary models of perception and cognition remain grounded in empirical materialism or dualist metaphysics, often reducing consciousness to emergent neural states. However, these models struggle to account for phenomena such as self-awareness, perceptual coherence, and the structural limits of observation. While systems theory and quantum analogies offer partial insights, they lack a foundational ontology that explains how experience emerges from non-observable structure. Noumenal Ontology proposes a minimal axiomatic framework in which cognition emerges as a construct between consciousness and its self-reflective (...) function, the observer. Perception is modeled as torsional recursion over a noumenal torus, where cognitive structures arise as phase-based geometries. This approach offers a conceptual bridge between metaphysics, cognitive science, and quantum structures through a unified, non-dual ontology of perception. (shrink)

This paper investigates the philosophical convergence between Stoicism, as articulated by Epictetus, and Solipsism, as exemplified in the work of René Descartes. While traditionally treated as distinct—one grounded in ethical resilience and the other in epistemological doubt—this study argues that both philosophies center on the primacy of the internal self in relation to an uncertain or indifferent external world. By examining Stoicism’s dismissal of externals and Solipsism’s radical skepticism of external reality, I propose a conceptual synthesis wherein the Stoic sage (...) and the Cartesian subject share a common foundation: the retreat into the self as the only stable ground for meaning, truth, and freedom. This synthesis, which I term “Stoic Solipsism,” reframes personal agency not as dependent on an objective world, but as rooted in conscious mastery over one’s own judgments. Ultimately, the paper suggests that this convergence offers a compelling philosophical framework for navigating existential insecurity, emotional disillusionment, and the modern crisis of meaning. (shrink)

Current orthodoxy in the perception literature is that the only way for disjunctivists to resolve the ‘screening off’ problem they face is to embrace a radical form of disjunctivism known as negative epistemic disjunctivism. What makes the view so radical is its commitment to the claim that the psychological nature of hallucinatory episodes can be characterised wholly in negative epistemic terms: having an hallucinatory experience, according to the view, is nothing more than being in a state reflectively indiscriminable from some (...) corresponding perception. e paper argues that on closer inspection, this view fails to adequately resolve the screening off problem. It thus concludes that current orthodoxy must be revised: in order to adequately solve the screening off problem, disjunctivists must locate an alternative strategy. (shrink)

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: Perception from (...) Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophyis essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. ges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophyis essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Despite the widespread nature of pain as a shared human experience, it remains a puzzling phenomenon. As it is subjective reference attributed solely to the sufferer, pain is personal and cannot be seen directly but described. Its perception varies based on different criteria. Some philosophical theories Sense Data, Perceptual, and Representational theory eg. have endeavored to explain its nature, characteristics, and distinction between the cognitive perception and the neural sensation of pain. However, none of these theories have reached the level (...) of fulfillment that would qualify it as an explained philosophical theory. Each theory begins by interpreting pain based on specific premises, and yet, there has been no consensus on the nature of pain beyond the fact that it is an unpleasant, undesirable feeling that indicates bodily damage. Therefore, I will analyze and criticize theories of pain as models, as well as present my own conclusions according to their positive and negative properties. Keywords: Pain. Phenomenology. Awareness, Emotion. Perception. Representationalism. Intentionality. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a non-standard but theoretically important notion of “veridicality”, on which perception is only veridical if it does not scramble the objective physical structure of the environment. I argue that non-veridicality in this sense is compatible with veridicality in more familiar senses, and motivate the importance of the notion. For example, I think a certain kind of realism about the scientific enterprise (that it can uncover nature’s natural structure by inference from the manifest image), assumes (...) that perception is veridical in this sense. I think the best reconstruction of Hoffman, Singh and Prakah’s “Interface Theory” is as the view that perception is non-veridical in this non-standard sense – a view that I think is reasonably understood as a kind of transcendental idealism, because it makes the objective structure of the world unknowable to us. They offer debunking arguments against perceptual veridicality (in this special sense). I respond to these arguments, and sketch a realist alternative. (shrink)

I first show that a growing body of literature about the phenomenological and epistemic role of the structural features of experience can be recruited in favour of the view that absence experience is non‐veridical. Then I argue that such literature is in fact amenable to the view that absence experience is veridical if we rethink our conception of absence, and presence, itself.

This paper categorizes phenomena to derive inferences rather than determine reality, emphasizing a fundamental attribute of the observed world that shapes perception. It posits that early life forms relied on correlation—linking survival to pattern recognition—suggesting correlation precedes causation in cognitive development. The concept of continuity, particularly the persistence of consciousness, emerges as a central human motivator, surpassing procreation, power, or meaning. Pleasure and pain are tied to continuity, with pain arising as a reaction to threats against it, such as death. (...) The fear of death and feelings of unfairness, especially regarding an afterlife, are framed as misattributions of value, rooted in humanity's drive to persist. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to outline the phenomenological fundament of the collective experiences which emerges along with the sound phenomena of the masses. Through an analysis of the phenomenological modes of affect, as Scheler tried to point out for the affective contagion, and through the reflection on non-self-referential forms of consciousness, I will attempt to comprehend the collective forms of intentionality.

Empiricist views of depth perception isolate forms of experience with implications for embodied cognitive science, psychoacoustics, and musical performance, including experience of perception in multiple modalities, and experience of bodily movement. Continuity between empiricism and embodied cognitive science suggests that such forms of experience are important for understanding spatial perception in further research. This paper also discusses implications of embodied views of auditory depth perception for spatial aspects of aesthetic experience and musical performance, like “feeling surrounded by sound”.

Alberto Voltolini (2021) has recently claimed that mirrors are bona fide pictures, for they are grasped via what he identifies as the defining characteristic of a picture: a certain seeing-in experience. Voltolini refines the somewhat elusive concept of seeing-in, originally described by Wollheim, and then demonstrates its applicability to mirror experience. However, in this paper, I contend that Voltolini's improved version of seeing-in does not aptly describe the experience of viewing mirrors. In fact, according to the first aspect of Voltolini’s (...) reconceived seeing-in, the configurational fold of a seeing-in experience must be an enriched perception of the picture’s vehicle that grasps how the vehicle’s elements are perceptually arranged. But, contra Voltolini, I argue that this does not hold true for the experience of looking at mirrors. Indeed, when looking at mirrors, we don't perceive the configuration as an organizational structure; our visual system does not represent, even unconsciously, the properties of the mirror’s configuration as such. Mirror experience does not include an enriched perception of the picture’s vehicle; it does not grasp how the vehicle’s elements are perceptually arranged. My argument proceeds in two directions: firstly, through a phenomenological analysis of mirror experience and secondly, by corroborating these phenomenological observations with evidence from perceptual psychology. Thus, I conclude that if mirrors are to be considered bona fide pictures, it is not because they elicit a (reconceived) seeing-in experience. (shrink)