epistemology

_Studia Semiotyczne_ 39 (1):173–195. 2026Reply to commentators in Semiotic Studies special issue on Unreal Beliefs. I defend the position developed in this book, i.e., minimal non-realism, against various charges. First, I defend the way I reconstructed folk commitments to realism about beliefs. Second, I deal with the arbitrariness charge against my definition of belief realism. Third, I critica…

This treatise presents a provisional interdisciplinary framework that synthesizes established findings from physics, neuroscience, and information theory to address questions that orthodox disciplines have addressed only in isolation. The argument unfolds in layers, each building on the last, and asks the reader to hold conclusions provisionally until the full architecture is visible. The central…

Nomenclature: In the following I'll call a proof theory finitistic if it only allows proofs of finite length and infinitistic if it allows proofs of infinite length, i.e. ones with infinite branches ...

Modern epistemology frequently begins too late. Debates concerning truth, falsity, evidence, justification, belief, rationality, and knowledge often assume the existence of cognitive machinery that has not itself been adequately examined. This paper introduces the concept of Pre-Truth. Pre-Truth refers to the infrastructure required before truth evaluation becomes operationally meaningful. The ce…

The millennial inquiry into the ultimate "One" in ontology has long been trapped in the dilemma of apex-style substantive assertions. Different theoretical positions are mutually exclusive, making it difficult to form a neutral and compatible cognitive foundation. This paper argues that the various concrete ultimate "One" in the history of philosophy and the purely formal ultimate "One" construct…

This paper introduces a multi-layered mathematical model designed to quantify the epistemic validity of competing theoretical frameworks. Unlike traditional qualitative heuristics, this framework operationalizes a theory’s overall value by balancing its raw explanatory power against its structural complexity and the psychological bias of the evaluating agent. By combining the linear summation of …

_Zenodo_. 2026The notion of truth as a relation between what is affirmed and what is has remained a persistent foundation of philosophical inquiry. This paper examines the minimal structure required for such a relation, understood as minimal ontological adequacy, without relying on complex epistemological theories or extensive metaphysical commitments. It argues that truth presupposes, at the ver…

_Epistemology and Philosophy of Science_ 56 (3):138-152. 2019Cognitive research can contribute to the formal epistemological study of knowledge representation inasmuch as, firstly, it may be regarded as a descriptive science of the very same subject as that, of which formal epistemology is a normative one. And, secondly, the notion of representation plays a constitutive role in both disciplines, …

Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) contends that the conjunction of naturalism and evolutionary theory generates a “defeater” for the reliability of our cognitive faculties, and thereby for all our beliefs, including naturalism itself. This paper argues that the EAAN fails because it presupposes an epistemological standard—Justified True Belief (JTB)—that is structu…

Revising what an agent knows in response to new information is a central problem in formal epistemology. In doxastic logics such as KD45, belief revision proceeds by reordering plausibility: the agent simply re-ranks which worlds it considers most credible. This strategy fails for S5 knowledge. Because knowledge is factive ( K φ → φ), an agent cannot come to know phi merely by finding φ-worlds mo…

中文摘要 本文以作者原创的“好奇本源”理论体系为参照，系统对比该体系与康德哲学在底层结构上的深层共振与根本差异。好奇本源理论建立在两大并列独立的底层边界之上：第一边界为“无限不循环决定论”——宇宙的底层秩序是一套无限、不循环、全域锁定的数理规则，它是逻辑排异的必然结果；第二边界为“我存在”——体系认知成立的主观先验前提。二者互不推导、互不包含，共同构成理论不可剥离的双根基。在此基础上，二者共同触及了思想体系的终极边界，共同承认理性追问的永恒性，共同尝试将道德准则从外部权威中剥离并锚定于逻辑必然性。二者的根本差异在于：康德的“物自体”是完全不可知的，而好奇本源理论用“无限不循环决定论”承接康德物自体所指代的终极秩序位置，该边界本体可被逻辑定性，只是全域细节无法穷尽；康德以“现象界/物自体”二元划分解决二律背反，好奇本源理论将二律背反重新解释为演化阶段的未知；康德的道德律是理性为自身立法的“…

Since Edmund Gettier’s (1963) challenge to the justified true belief analysis of knowledge, epistemology has exhibited a persistent and systematically regenerative pattern: the continual production of counterexamples and the apparent failure of competing analyses to converge. Standard responses treat Gettier cases as failures within epistemic evaluation and attempt to stabilize evaluation through…

Presuppositional apologetics often claims that everyone begins from presuppositions, so Christian commitment is not uniquely dogmatic but merely one unavoidable starting point among others. This paper argues that the claim depends on a flattening of epistemic categories. Background commitments, defeasible assumptions, methodological starting points, and immune doctrinal presuppositions are not th…

_Canadian Journal of Philosophy_. forthcomingConciliationism holds that it is rational to modify one's beliefs in the face of disagreement. But extant conciliatory norms yield incorrect results in cases involving excessive confidence--cases in which one's interlocutors are sure, or almost sure, that their opinions are correct. After explaining the problem of excessive confidence, I show that a Ba…

Both ancient philosophy and modern physics help us solve the mystery of existence.

This paper is the twelfth core treatise of the Evolutionary Manifestation and Ontological Retrieval (hereinafter referred to as EMOR) Philosophy series. It inherits the ultimate conclusion of the eleventh treatise The Ontological Distinction Between Truth and Truth-value: the local closure of truth-value is the endogenous root of the generation of logical contradictions and paradoxes. Based on th…

This article argues that the difficulty of studying ignorance is neither accidental nor temporary, but rooted in the very nature of the subject. The central argument turns on a fundamental paradox: in the study of ignorance, the instrument of knowledge and its object are one and the same. Unlike analogous concepts such as consciousness or language, ignorance actively conceals itself from the know…

_Mind_. forthcomingIt’s plausible that you cannot know, or be justified in believing that your lottery ticket is a loser solely on the basis of the odds involved. I argue that extant views which deliver this result fall prey to a revenge problem. They entail that if you believe that your ticket is a winner on the basis of the astronomically low odds of it being a winner, your belief would be just…

VERITAS CONFIRMATA : The Logos-Centred Epistemolog. This second volume unfolds as a sustained exploration of the soul’s disordered state, its restoration through reorientation to the Logos, and its final consummation in union beyond the veil of flesh. It is not merely a theological treatise, but a metaphysical anthropology in which ontology, epistemology, and soteriology converge around the Perso…

_Journal of Philosophical Research_ 24:169-191. 1999This essay identifies foundational questions, all metaphysical in character, which must be answered before the enterprise of epistemology proper can begin to prosper, and in the process draws attention to fundamental conflicts between the demands of epistemology and the demands of prudence. It concludes that knowledge is not, as such, a directiv…