philosophy

Jaegwon Kim's exclusion argument was originally developed as a critique of anomalous monism and non-reductive physicalism. However, its influence has extended far beyond this context and is now frequently interpreted as a general argument against higher-level causation under physicalism. This paper argues that such a generalization depends upon a particular conception of higher-level organization…

_Zenodo_. 2026We argue that selfhood is a motion rather than a stored substance, and that this reframing changes what is at stake in the question of whether artificial-intelligence configurations can be selves. On the standard picture, selfhood consists in the possession of an interior that expressions render. We defend an enactment picture: selving is the ongoing activity by which a system const…

on viewing the paradox through this epistemological lens, and how modern theories frame this distinction between absolute non-existence and unobservable existence. My core argument is that "non-existence" or "nothingness" is not an absolute state, but rather an artifact of human and instrumental... Read more

Our need for an afterlife demonstrates that the human urge to believe routinely beats the need for hard proof.

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Published on August 21, 2026 9:36 PM GMT Why I favor fallibilism over cluelessness I’ve long been struck by a structural commonality between radical skepticism and cluelessness worries . Since the EA Forum has been discussing cluelessness this week , I figured I’d take another stab at explaining why I don’t find it a credible concern. (Too late to qualify for the official contest , alas.) Skeptic…

Interoception has received growing attention in the past few decades. Yet, its conceptual foundations remain underexplored. This paper aims to expose conceptual limitations in dominant accounts of interoception, which are typically either viscerocentric or internalist. I argue that current philosophical definitions of interoception fail to accommodate the bidirectional feedback loop between olfac…

_Oxford Studies in Epistemology_. forthcomingAccording to reliabilism, whether a belief is justified, or amounts to knowledge, is a matter of reliability. We consider familiar arguments that reliabilism is incompatible with defeat, and show how reliabilists can respond to them by understanding reliability in a more flexible way—roughly, whether a belief is reliable is a matter of how likely belie…

An agent’s status fundamentally relies on acknowledgement from other agents, defining a ‘mutually recognitive conception of agency’ according to new findings relating to QBism. The team reconstructed two formulations of this concept as it relates to Wigner’s friend paradox, revealing implicit connections to longstanding philosophical traditions. Agency, essentially who counts as making observatio…

Tom Rockmore, professor emeritus of philosophy at Peking University and distinguished professor emeritus at Duquesne University, has died. (The following memorial notice was written by Gabriel Gottlieb.) Tom Rockmore, professor emeritus at Peking University, passed away on August 6th. He was known for his work on German Idealism, where he emphasized its constructivist methods in epistemology. Tom…

Previously obscured connections between quantum theory and philosophical traditions now come into focus. This work establishes that an agent’s status within QBism fundamentally relies on acknowledgement from other agents, revealing a ‘mutually recognitive conception of agency’. Tracing themes through Merleau-Ponty and Hegel unlocks conceptual tools for rigorously justifying this unique ontologica…

Your body is a machine. Your brain is a machine. Soil is a machine. The planet is a machine. We say these things so casually that they no longer sound like claims. They sound like common sense. We hardwire beliefs, rewire habits, debug organizations, optimize people, scale solutions. When something breaks, we go looking for […]