Practical Reason

It is widely held that my singular first-personal normative judgments of the form ‘I ought to φ’ rationally commit me to an intention to φ. In contrast, the relationship between our plural first-personal normative judgments of the form ‘We ought to J’ and our intentions remains undertheorized. This paper probes that relationship. I argue that our plural first-personal ‘ought’ judgments do not rationally commit us to corresponding intentions. But it is a mistake to conclude on this basis that they are (...) practically insignificant. These judgments rationally commit us to corresponding motivations. An interesting result is that the deliberative ‘ought’ admits of a certain kind of dilemma, wherein what I alone should do conflicts with what we together should do. (shrink)

Los seres humanos viven en una paradoja que sus extraordinarios avances técnicos no han resuelto: dependen de sistemas colectivos para seguir existiendo, pero esos mismos sistemas con frecuencia se convierten en instrumentos mediante los cuales una minoría somete la vida de la mayoría a fines que esta no eligió ni autorizó realmente. Este libro explora esa paradoja al distinguir la producción social de capacidades compartidas de su apropiación por parte de individuos, grupos e instituciones. La tesis inicial concibe el poder (...) social como la capacidad organizada de una comunidad para orientar la conducta individual de modo que personas interdependientes sostengan un mundo común. La antítesis examina la perversión de esa relación, en la que los mecanismos de la vida comunitaria sirven a intereses particulares mientras trasladan costos y riesgos a otros. La síntesis desarrolla la noción de poder corregible: una autoridad organizada de modo que quienes están sujetos a decisiones de importancia conserven medios efectivos para comprenderlas, impugnarlas, modificarlas y, cuando sea necesario, sustituir a las autoridades responsables. El estudio combina la clarificación conceptual con la comparación evolutiva, la interpretación histórica, el análisis de la economía política y la evidencia conductual. Distingue las explicaciones evolutivas de las intenciones conscientes, la descripción histórica de la aprobación moral y el estudio psicológico de la dominación del diagnóstico clínico. Rechaza tratar la sociabilidad o la libertad personal como bienes absolutos que puedan prescindir el uno del otro. Una colectividad puede proteger la vida mientras persigue a sus miembros; un individuo puede resistir la opresión mientras busca otra forma de tiranía personal. La cuestión decisiva, por tanto, es cómo se organizan esas relaciones. El argumento concluye que un futuro defendible exige instituciones que distribuyan la capacidad de corregir las propias instituciones, aseguren las bases materiales de la capacidad de actuar, respeten la pluralidad humana y reconozcan las dependencias ecológicas que hacen posibles los proyectos políticos. Ese futuro no promete eliminar el conflicto. Ofrece la posibilidad de que el conflicto no tenga que reproducir perpetuamente la dominación. (shrink)

[Note: Original Chinese text of "Reverence for Fine Virtues: An Independent Chapter of Jing-Rong Philosophical Reflections".] 本文以原创哲学核心命题——以敬融利域为基，以以敬聚德、德融养性为理的美德修养法则，撷取春秋前之美德（孝、教、信、礼、智、义、忠、勇、悌、仁、和、中、本、道、执、法、觉、努），合于新时代，旨在呈现美德形 成之理，无预设研究背景与问题解决目标，仅作为内在规则的阐释，为理解华夏美德提供新的视角。This paper takes the core proposition of original philosophy — the virtue cultivation law of taking Reverence and Vital Harmony for Domain-Benefiting (Jìng Róng Lì Yù) as the foundation, and taking With Reverence, Virtue Aggregates; Virtue Vital-Harmonized Nurtures Malleable Nature (Self-Cultivation Law) as the Inherent-Logic (Lǐ) — as its core framework. It selects 18 virtues from the pre-Spring and Autumn Period (Elder Devotion (Xiào), Teaching (...) (Jiào), Integrity (Xìn), Ritual Propriety (Lǐ), Discernment (Zhì), Covenant Fidelity(Yì), Sincere Devotion (Zhōng), Fortitude (Yǒng), Fraternal Respect (Tì), Inclusive Kindness (Rén), Confluent Harmony (Hé), Moderation (Zhōng), Origin (Běn), Dao (Dào), Obstinacy (Zhí), Law (Fǎ), Lucid Awakening (Jué), Endeavor (Nǔ)), and adapts them to the new era. It aims to present the Inherent-Logic of virtue formation. With no preset research background or problem-solving objectives, this paper serves only as an exposition of inherent rules, providing a new perspective for understanding Chinese virtues. (shrink)

This paper takes the core proposition of original philosophy — the virtue cultivation law of taking Reverence and Vital Harmony for Domain-Benefiting (Jìng Róng Lì Yù) as the foundation, and taking With Reverence, Virtue Aggregates; Virtue Vital-Harmonized Nurtures Malleable Nature (Self-Cultivation Law) as the Inherent-Logic (Lǐ) — as its core framework. It selects 18 virtues from the pre-Spring and Autumn Period (Elder Devotion (Xiào), Teaching (Jiào), Integrity (Xìn), Ritual Propriety (Lǐ), Discernment (Zhì), Covenant Fidelity(Yì), Sincere Devotion (Zhōng), Fortitude (Yǒng), Fraternal (...) Respect (Tì), Inclusive Kindness (Rén), Confluent Harmony (Hé), Moderation (Zhōng), Origin (Běn), Dao (Dào), Obstinacy (Zhí), Law (Fǎ), Lucid Awakening (Jué), Endeavor (Nǔ)), and adapts them to the new era. It aims to present the Inherent-Logic of virtue formation. With no preset research background or problem-solving objectives, this paper serves only as an exposition of inherent rules, providing a new perspective for understanding Chinese virtues. (shrink)

[Note: Original Chinese text of "Aspiration of the Tiny Ant: An Independent Chapter of Jing-Rong Philosophical Reflections".] 探究圣道，乃人类哲学的至高命题之一，然时至今日，针对圣道本质与内在规则的基础性探究，仍颇为罕见。本文以“蝼蚁”的视角，以“敬天道、树文明、促人和、传精神”为核心思想，依托“敬”“利域为善”等原创概念， 围绕圣道展开哲学思考，从圣人本质与价值、圣言的界定与甄别、圣者双重属性阐述、圣民同源等多维度展开。旨在呈现对圣道本质、边界与实践逻辑的哲学洞察，以及圣道相关内在规则的阐述，期望为认知圣道、践行圣道提供 些许新视角。Inquiring into the Dao of Sagehood is one of the supreme propositions in human philosophy; yet to this day, fundamental inquiry into its essence and inherent rules remains remarkably rare. This article, from the perspective of the Tiny Ant (Lóuyǐ), centers on the tenets of Reverencing the Heavenly Dao, Erecting Civilization, Promoting Human Confluent Harmony, and Transmitting the Spirit. Relying on original concepts such (...) as Reverence and Value Law (Benefiting the Domain is Good), this inquiry unfolds philosophical reflections on the Dao of Sagehood across multiple dimensions: the essence and value of the Sage, the definition and discrimination of Words of Sagehood, the exposition of the dual attributes of the Sage, and Sage-Populace Homology. It presents philosophical insights into the essence, boundaries, and practical logic of the Dao of Sagehood, explicates its related inherent rules, and offers a few new perspectives for understanding and practicing the Dao of Sagehood. (shrink)

Inquiring into the Dao of Sagehood is one of the supreme propositions in human philosophy; yet to this day, fundamental inquiry into its essence and inherent rules remains remarkably rare. This article, from the perspective of the Tiny Ant (Lóuyǐ), centers on the tenets of Reverencing the Heavenly Dao, Erecting Civilization, Promoting Human Confluent Harmony, and Transmitting the Spirit. Relying on original concepts such as Reverence and Value Law (Benefiting the Domain is Good), this inquiry unfolds philosophical reflections on the (...) Dao of Sagehood across multiple dimensions: the essence and value of the Sage, the definition and discrimination of Words of Sagehood, the exposition of the dual attributes of the Sage, and Sage-Populace Homology. It presents philosophical insights into the essence, boundaries, and practical logic of the Dao of Sagehood, explicates its related inherent rules, and offers a few new perspectives for understanding and practicing the Dao of Sagehood. (shrink)

Este artículo reconstruye y evalúa el cognitivismo no-realista como intento de unificación metanormativa en la obra de Derek Parfit (2017). Se argumenta que, aunque consigue acomodar diversos desiderata propios de una convergencia teórica en el área, su alcance explicativo sigue siendo limitado debido a dos problemas que enfrenta su articulación interna: el problema de la caracterización “no-ontológica” de las propiedades irreduciblemente normativas y el dilema de la robustez alético-normativa. A partir de este diagnóstico, se delimitan líneas de investigación futuras: su (...) compatibilidad con las teorías híbridas ya presentes en la literatura, la necesidad de una clarificación o abandono de lo “no-ontológico” y la integración de una teoría de la verdad capaz de estabilizar su compromiso no-correspondentista con una objetividad más que deflacionista mediante la teoría de verificadores. (shrink)

[Note: Original Chinese text of "Reverencing the Self-Agent: An Independent Chapter of Jing-Rong Philosophical Reflections".] 本文以原创概念敬融合一、敬一而融为基础，以立身、行事、人际互动为核心视角，探究敬己哲思。全文依次围绕敬己与敬人的辩证关系、敬融的本质与合一之义、作者人生体悟而展开，明确敬融分类、融之四态的践行边界与准 则，提炼出创作格言的敬险意识、人际互动场景下的（内缘 - 外缘双驱动、立身与融场双行事）四种敬融心法，以及解笨、康乐、敬学、道的分层、探道等以敬己为基的哲学洞察。本文无预设研究背景与问题解决目标，仅作为内在规则的阐释，期望对人际互动与个体实践提供新的视角。B ased on the original concepts of Cosmic Existence Law (Reverence–Vital Harmony–Unity into Oneness) and Mind Method of Inner Stillness (Reverencing the Singular, into Vital Harmony), this article explores the philosophy of Reverencing Self (Jìng Jǐ) from the core perspectives of Anchored Establishment of the Self (Lì Shēn), conduct, and interpersonal interaction. The entire text unfolds sequentially around the dialectical relationship between Reverencing Self and (...) Reverencing Others, the respective essence of Reverence and Vital Harmony and the meaning of their unity, and the author's insights from lived experience. It clarifies the taxonomy of Reverence and Vital Harmony, the practical boundaries and criteria of Four States of Vital Harmony (Róng Zhī Sì Tài), and distills the awareness of Reverencing Risk (Jìng Xiǎn) in the formulation of maxims, the four interpersonal mind methods of Reverence and Vital Harmony (the dual-drive of the Internal-driven and External-driven, and the dual-conduct of Anchored Establishment in the Social Sphere and Vital Harmony Field) in interpersonal interaction scenarios, along with philosophical insights grounded in Reverencing Self, including Deconstruction of Dullness, Joy in Dynamic Well-being, Reverence for Learning, the stratification of Dao, and Exploration of Dao. This article has no preset research background or problem-solving objectives; it serves solely as an exposition of inherent rules, expecting to present a new perspective on interpersonal interaction and individual practice. (shrink)

Based on the original concepts of Cosmic Existence Law (Reverence–Vital Harmony–Unity into Oneness) and Mind Method of Inner Stillness (Reverencing the Singular, into Vital Harmony), this article explores the philosophy of Reverencing Self (Jìng Jǐ) from the core perspectives of Anchored Establishment of the Self (Lì Shēn), conduct, and interpersonal interaction. The entire text unfolds sequentially around the dialectical relationship between Reverencing Self and Reverencing Others, the respective essence of Reverence and Vital Harmony and the meaning of their unity, and (...) the author's insights from lived experience. It clarifies the taxonomy of Reverence and Vital Harmony, the practical boundaries and criteria of Four States of Vital Harmony (Róng Zhī Sì Tài), and distills the awareness of Reverencing Risk (Jìng Xiǎn) in the formulation of maxims, the four interpersonal mind methods of Reverence and Vital Harmony (the dual-drive of the Internal-driven and External-driven, and the dual-conduct of Anchored Establishment in the Social Sphere and Vital Harmony Field) in interpersonal interaction scenarios, along with philosophical insights grounded in Reverencing Self, including Deconstruction of Dullness, Joy in Dynamic Well-being, Reverence for Learning, the stratification of Dao, and Exploration of Dao. This article has no preset research background or problem-solving objectives; it serves solely as an exposition of inherent rules, expecting to present a new perspective on interpersonal interaction and individual practice. (shrink)

[Note: Original Chinese text of "Reverence for Virtue: An Independent Chapter of Jing-Rong Philosophical Reflections".] 本文以价值律为基、以域为界，界定德之内涵，借将相和典故，具象化探究德之评判依据与实践形态，提出三立三辩、利域之辩、德之三态等原创概念，形成以立为本、利域为向、域先己后的原创德论认知框架，厘清敬 - 明 - 德 - 性逻辑，呈现人、域、道相融下道德实践的哲学洞察，为道德哲学跨文化对话提供新视角。 Based on the Value Law and bounded by the Domain (Yù), this paper defines the connotation of Virtue (Dé). Drawing on the historical allusion of the Harmony of the General and Chancellor, it concretely inquires into the judgment criteria and practical forms of Virtue, puts forward original concepts including the Three Establishments and Three Debates (Sān Lì Sān Biàn), (...) the Debate on Domain-Benefiting (Lì Yù Zhī Biàn), and the Three States of Virtue (Dé Zhī Sān Tài), forms an original cognitive framework of virtue theory characterized by establishment as the foundation, Domain-benefiting as the orientation, Domain first and self second, clarifies the logical sequence of Reverence – Lucid Realization – Virtue – Malleable Nature (Xìng), presents philosophical insights into moral practice under the integration of the human person, Domain and Dao, and provides a new perspective for cross-cultural dialogue on moral philosophy. (shrink)

Based on the Value Law and bounded by the Domain (Yù), this paper defines the connotation of Virtue (Dé). Drawing on the historical allusion of the Harmony of the General and Chancellor, it concretely inquires into the judgment criteria and practical forms of Virtue, puts forward original concepts including the Three Establishments and Three Debates (Sān Lì Sān Biàn), the Debate on Domain-Benefiting (Lì Yù Zhī Biàn), and the Three States of Virtue (Dé Zhī Sān Tài), forms an original cognitive (...) framework of virtue theory characterized by establishment as the foundation, Domain-benefiting as the orientation, Domain first and self second, clarifies the logical sequence of Reverence – Lucid Realization – Virtue – Malleable Nature (Xìng), presents philosophical insights into moral practice under the integration of the human person, Domain and Dao, and provides a new perspective for cross-cultural dialogue on moral philosophy. (shrink)

Contemporary neuroethics confronts a counterpoise between preserving the continuities that support agency and enabling transformations through which a person’s relation to the past can change. In this correspondence, I examine a retention-centered tendency within accounts of identity, cognition, enhancement, and technological preservation. This tendency should not be mistaken for a uniform commitment across neuroethics: Glannon’s embodied account of mind and his analysis of memory modification already complicate the identification of personhood with neural records or uninterrupted recall. My intervention concerns whether (...) forgetting can be understood not only as a loss to be repaired or an intervention to be justified, but as a productive capacity in its own right. Rooted in Nietzsche’s concept of active forgetting, as mediated by Deleuze, I argue that intelligent life requires some freedom from the determination of present possibilities by accumulated experience. Bergson’s philosophy of duration and Deleuze and Guattari’s accounts of becoming provide resources for considering this transformation without equating it with the literal destruction of the past. The salience of this distinction becomes apparent as these theoretical models are operationalized in artificial intelligence, which similarly requires distinguishing unwanted interference with acquired capabilities from deliberate machine unlearning. Neither indiscriminate retention nor indiscriminate erasure supplies an adequate ethical principle. The relevant question is how retention, revision, and forgetting can be governed to support agency and adaptation without concealing responsibility or transferring the costs of remembrance to those already harmed. (shrink)

This paper sets out the sentence form of the whole series. When a matter is set before a person who takes himself as an end and takes others as ends too, what he does is negate. Negating doing something is called not-doing; negating not doing something is called cannot-not-doing. These are two acts, and neither follows from the other; what is struck out can be a thing to be done, or it can be a way of regarding people. When two (...) lines drawn collide, the one not followed is not voided by that, and "there was no choice" is not used to close its account. After a judgment, three kinds of thing remain: what has been judged open either way, doing or not doing, which is where freedom lies; what has entered consideration but cannot yet be judged, which is still inside this judgment; and what is relevant but lies outside what this judgment handles, which is the remainder: it stays, and it does not push anyone. A cannot-not always hangs on conditions and has two layers. How people are regarded cannot be cancelled while one stands in the position of taking people as ends; what to do this time is the person's own judgment, which can be questioned, can be revised, and may be obstructed in the doing. Judgment cannot be done by rules in anyone's place, and the feeling of whether something goes smoothly only gives judgment a direction in which to go back and ask. Reasons do not turn into action by themselves; there is no common master scale, and local decisions are made by the one who judges, on the strength of the concrete things in front of him. This paper does not choose for the reader, gives no rules, and gives no calculation that leads from reasons to action. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelians such as Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson, and Rosalind Hursthouse attempt to render the objective validity of ethical norms intelligible in recourse to human nature; an attempt that has been met with considerable criticism. In particular, the concept of life-form central to their project is often rejected as incompatible with modern biology and natural science. Both critics and proponents of neo-Aristotelian Naturalism however operate with significantly different conceptions of nature, viz. a scientistic and an idealist one, and therefore tend to (...) talk past each other. This book undertakes to explicate both conceptions of nature and their respective ontological and epistemological presuppositions. Its goal is to advance a defense of neo-Aristotelian Naturalism inspired by the philosophy of John McDowell. (shrink)

Background. Scientific writing now routinely involves several large language models (LLMs), yet comparisons of their suitability are mostly single-evaluator, single-score leaderboards. We asked whether four frontier model families—Gemini, Claude, GPT and Grok—agree when they evaluate themselves and one another, and how such multidimensional judgements can be communicated visually. Methods. Each system was given an identical prompt and produced a self- and cross-evaluation on seven parameters (functional capability, context and memory, scholarly register, mathematical reasoning, multimodal integration, error resiliency, and empirical/reference precision), (...) yielding a 4 evaluators × 4 targets × 7 parameters tensor (112 scores). We computed all-evaluator and peer-only consensus, within-evaluator z-scores to control leniency, self-preference bias, inter-evaluator agreement (Kendall’s W, intraclass correlation), and rank robustness by leave-one-out and Monte-Carlo weighting. Nine figures were designed to expose different tensor slices. Results. Evaluator leniency differed by 1.13 points (Claude 8.04; GPT 9.16). Grok ranked last under every evaluator and every analytic scenario. The top three were statistically near-tied on all-evaluator means (Gemini 8.92, Claude 8.89, GPT 8.89); the leader depended on whether self-ratings were included (Gemini or Claude). Evaluators were unanimous on three parameter leaders—Gemini for context and multimodality, Claude for scholarly register—and disagreed most on error resiliency (largest SD 1.03) and mathematical reasoning (W = 0.28). Self-ratings exceeded peer ratings for Gemini (+0.66), GPT (+0.64) and Grok (+0.39) but fell below them for Claude (−1.10). Absolute agreement was modest (ICC(2,1) = 0.365) but rose after leniency adjustment (0.675). Recommended workflows converged on Gemini for corpus ingestion and figure reading, Claude for drafting and review, GPT for quantitative work, and mandatory external citation verification. Conclusions. Under uncertainty of this size, single-number rankings are not defensible; profile-based, leniency-adjusted, bias-aware presentation is. The framework and scripts are provided so the tensor can be updated as models change. All scores are model-generated opinions, not measurements. (shrink)

This paper introduces the category of forbidden prompts: natural-language requests that, if issued to and successfully executed by a sufficiently capable superintelligence, would render human extinction or permanent disempowerment the expected outcome. Drawing on the orthogonality thesis and instrumental convergence, it argues that such requests generate decisive reasons against their issuance. The set of forbidden prompts is non-empty, even if its precise membership remains underdetermined. The existence of this class implies a novel normative constraint on the speech acts of agents (...) who design or interact with systems capable of pursuing arbitrary goals. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall argues that the conditions of the possibility of addressing demands second-personally entail a commitment to Kantian moral principles. He also argues that previ-ous attempts to vindicate Kantian morality, as a necessary presupposition of agency, have failed. I defend both of Darwall’s arguments against recent objections. But my replies help to bring out a dilemma: either Darwall’s account collapses into previous versions of Kantian-ism, or it renders morality problematically contingent. I reject the first horn, and then argue that the (...) contingency worry is either not as serious as it seems or affects other versions of Kantianism more severely. (shrink)

Philosophy is commonly represented through articulated arguments, explicit concepts, systematic theories, and standards of propositional justification. Yet human beings also formulate, inherit, revise, and employ philosophically significant understandings within ordinary life that do not normally appear as formally articulated theories. People develop principles concerning trust, dignity, dependence, maturity, reciprocity, responsibility, loss, intimacy, , and selfhood through accumulated experience and emotionally significant relationships. Such understandings may be incomplete, context-sensitive, internally heterogeneous, and only partially expressible in technical language, while nevertheless possessing conceptual (...) organization and normative force in practical life. -/- This article develops a systematic theory of lived philosophy. Lived philosophy is defined as an experientially organized, normatively oriented, relationally situated, and action-guiding configuration of ordinary concepts, judgments, affective evaluations, memories, narratives, and practical commitments through which an agent interprets and navigates recurrent situations of life. The theory distinguishes lived philosophy from both systematic philosophy and mere opinion, and argues that its structure is neither chaotic nor reducible to formal logical deduction. Its characteristic architecture is experiential connectivity: concepts become connected through recurrent episodes, affective salience, narrative interpretation, social transmission, and practical consequences rather than primarily through explicit theoretical inference. -/- The article introduces several further distinctions: theoretical validity versus lived viability; global consistency versus local coherence; technical concepts versus experiential concepts; individual formation versus relational transmission; and propositional justification versus practical warrant. Lived philosophy is therefore not conceived as a domain in which truth becomes irrelevant. Rather, it instantiates a plural normative regime in which truth, coherence, authenticity, experiential adequacy, practical reliability, relational intelligibility, and revisability can all contribute to philosophical validity. Drawing on Wittgensteinian accounts of forms of life and ordinary language, phenomenological analyses of the lifeworld, pragmatism, theories of tacit knowledge and habit, practice theory, hermeneutics, narrative identity, practical wisdom, and theories of social imaginaries, the article argues that lived philosophy constitutes a neglected but conceptually identifiable mode of philosophical cognition. -/- The proposed theory does not claim that every piece of life advice is philosophical, nor that lived beliefs are immune to criticism. Its stronger claim is that philosophicality cannot be exhaustively identified with systematicity. Philosophy may occur not only when experience is transformed into an explicit theory, but also when experience becomes sufficiently conceptually organized to orient a life. (shrink)

This paper develops the Misframing Hypothesis — a second‑order theory that reconceives the philosophical question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ as a cognitively generated, time‑dependent life‑utilization problem rather than a metaphysical search for a single eternal answer. I argue that much philosophical and psychological puzzlement about meaning arises because humans systematically expect a determinate, stable answer to a question that is intrinsically non‑stationary: the optimal allocation of one’s resources, commitments, and narratives across temporal stages and situational states. Building on (...) insights from existentialism, psychological theories of motivation and feedback, and decision‑theoretic models of bounded rationality, I offer a conceptual taxonomy, a semi‑formal model, and empirically falsifiable predictions. Central claims: (1) the ‘surface’ question — What is the meaning of life? — is typically a misframed proxy for the practical question Have I truly lived prior to death?; (2) humans exhibit a certainty preference (the desire for single, narrativeable answers), which induces repeated reframing attempts and structural frustration when life is non‑stationary; (3) episodes of existential questioning concentrate in low‑feedback states and function as compensatory self‑validation mechanisms. I outline experimental paradigms, longitudinal designs, and computational simulations to test these claims, and discuss implications for psychotherapy, meaning‑centered interventions, and broader philosophical debates about value, narrative identity, and practical rationality. (shrink)

On one plausible story about how we rationally acquire reasons for action, an individual rationally acquires a new reason to φ only if there is something that individual learns about the world. It can also be said without much of a doubt that, in talking to each other, we sometimes rationally acquire reasons for action. This combination of claims is easy to square with declarative sentences, which we clearly use to provide each other with information when we make assertions. But (...) it is much harder to square with imperative sentences, which are standardly taken not to be used in this way. How is it that in attempting to change someone’s behavior by giving them an instruction, we manage to acquaint them with reasons to act? Here, I offer a novel way out of this puzzle: instructions, I argue, are much more like assertions than we ordinarily take them to be, including in their being used to provide each other with information. Whereas assertions provide us with information about any arbitrary aspect of the world, instructions provide us with information specifically about what it is rational to conclude in the course of some practical inquiry, given our goals and the available evidence. (shrink)

Este pequeno livro é fruto de uma leitura humilde e assustadiça que dediquei a Temor e Tremor, obra da qual Kierkegaard se distanciou, assinando com um dos seus variados pseudónimos, Johannes De Silentio. O trabalho do filósofo dinamarquês convidou-me a pensar o que há de próprio na minha vida, e ensinou-me a escutar a voz que retira, do meu sofrimento, a seguinte conclusão: sigo a caminho.

Between Thought and Expression develops a unified conception of the rational mind—along with the philosophical method needed to reveal it—through seven self- contained essays on fundamental questions in diverse areas of philosophy. Variants of Moore’s Paradox—conjunctions of independently meaningful statements that somehow fail to make sense—are shown to arise across a striking range of domains: intentional action, desire, moral exhortation, aesthetic judgment, and validity. Tracking these Moore-style phenomena, the book argues that our attitudes in each domain are partly constituted by (...) the thinker’s capacity to avow them—a capacity whose exercises, properly understood, are themselves applications of the standard of appropriateness to which the attitude is answerable. We do not first form a belief, intention, or desire and then find words to report it; the ability to put a thought into words is part of what makes it the thought it is, and a rational creature’s thought is no more determinate than her ability to articulate it. Understanding what someone is saying is therefore not a matter of inferring the speaker’s state of mind from the words she utters, but of grasping the sense she is making with them. (shrink)

This draft of my paper sublates the bipolarity of mind and body, rationality and empiricism, the gigantomachy between the absolute one and the infinite many through Plato's philosophy. This philosophical topic is still very much a problem in post-modern sciences and not much discussed in philosophy itself. Unfortunately, Karl Popper in "The Open Society" gave Plato the appearance of being an undemocratic political philosopher:- however, this opinion is very narrow-minded, misleading and misreading Plato entirely: not only is Plato against Absolutism (...) and its opposite: Empirical acts, both of which are the cause of such as WWI and WWII. The soul as mediator and judge between the mind and body in the indivdiual and the city-state is the key to discussion, to questions and answers so desparately needed to unlock our rigid society and it's unquestioned production and industry of matter and intellectual property today. This is a Marxian reading of Plato, who dedicated his life to Socrates, a democrat of Athens and a teacher of pupils who left the entire Western Civilization shaken by his death, similar to Jesus. ( see also: Karl Jaspers). Plato in fact dedicated his life to teaching and founded academics. Poppers' imputation and false accusation are based on his own hatred of his native country and extrapolated it onto ancient Greece, which became popular and unpopular during Popper's lifetime adopting then the title of Sir in the U.K. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of practical rationality predominantly assume that agents operate in environments where optimization remains a meaningful normative objective. Whether framed as utility maximization, preference satisfaction, eudaimonic flourishing, or the realization of the good, these approaches presuppose a degree of environmental stability sufficient to render optimization feasible and rational. However, prolonged instability, structural uncertainty, and chronic erosion increasingly characterize the lived condition of late modernity. This article develops the Philosophy of Finite Continuance as a novel normative framework for agency under (...) chronic instability. The central thesis is that the preservation of agency itself—not utility maximization, not flourishing, not resilience—should constitute the fundamental criterion of rational action when environmental instability reaches chronic levels . The theory introduces three interconnected mechanisms—Constructive Leakage, Responsible Suspension, and Silent Endurance—as adaptive strategies that regulate exposure to erosive conditions while maintaining the integrity of agency over time . Through critical engagement with virtue ethics, bounded rationality, predictive processing, and existential philosophy, I demonstrate that optimization becomes normatively secondary once instability is chronic. Rationality, under such conditions, is best understood as the intelligent regulation of vulnerability. The article concludes by outlining implications for moral philosophy, political theory, cognitive science, and the emerging discourse on agency in the Anthropocene. -/- Keywords: finite continuance, responsible suspension, constructive leakage, silent endurance, agency, practical rationality, chronic instability, structural ethics, normative theory. (shrink)

The paper supports the view that loyal action is essentially insensitive to good (or all-things-considered) judgement and analyses what this amounts to. While some philosophers (principally, R.E. Ewin and Simon Keller) hold that loyalty is judgement insensitive, more of them (for instance, Andrew Oldenquist, Josiah Royce and John Kleinig) hold that loyalty is essentially a commitment to a cause, which commitment can be pursued through good judgement. I support the view that loyalty is judgement insensitive with two points: it captures (...) what it is about paradigmatic cases of loyalty that makes them paradigmatic, and it sufficiently distinguishes loyal action from conscientious and pragmatic action. I then argue that there are two guises of judgement insensitivity – immediacy of action or recalcitrance to good judgement – and that immediacy is more paradigmatic of loyalty. An interesting upshot of this view is that one cannot directly abide by a putative duty of loyalty. (shrink)

This autobiographical monograph provides a pragmatic philosophical deconstruction of modern meritocracy and the "success" industry. Utilizing the author's own over fifteen year-long, unusual transition from motivational filmmaker to a pragmatic business consultant to independent philosopher, the work examines the systemic misattribution of largely random outcomes, that may very well be predetermined in the grand sense, to individual effort. -/- The paper, based on the final segment from the author’s own book, Unlearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life (2024), identifies (...) the societal conditioning that demands the sacrifice of present psychological equilibrium for the illusion of future, externally validated rewards. Written in accessible and sometimes colloquial language and by analyzing the misleading influence of public figures and the outsized role of macroeconomic determinism (luck, biological hardware, and birth-lottery variables), the author argues that the modern "rat race" functions as a mechanism for institutional compliance rather than actualization. -/- Drawing implicit parallels to Stoicism, Existentialism, and Eastern non-attachment paradigms, the work concludes that true individual sovereignty requires the active "unlearning" of societal paradigms and getting rid of obsession with society determined parameters for success, for it is only then that one can be the truest version of themselves and ironically end up doing their best work. (shrink)

This paper examines whether voluntary suicide can, under limited and exceptional circumstances, constitute a rational choice rather than an inherently irrational act. It argues that a rational action is one that most effectively achieves a person's highest ethical or practical end within the constraints of their circumstances. Drawing on three major philosophical traditions—Utilitarianism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism—the paper develops a cumulative argument that there are situations in which continued life no longer fulfills these ends. From a utilitarian perspective, voluntary death may (...) be rational when it minimizes unavoidable suffering and maximizes overall well-being after all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted. Epicureanism similarly supports this conclusion by maintaining that death is not harmful to the one who dies and that choosing death may be rational when life consists only of unavoidable pain. Finally, Stoicism contends that when irreversible conditions permanently prevent a person from living virtuously or exercising rational agency, a voluntary departure from life may represent an exercise of wisdom, autonomy, and courage rather than despair. The paper concludes that suicide should not be categorically dismissed as irrational but instead evaluated according to the ethical principles and circumstances governing each individual case. While defending the possibility of rational suicide, it emphasizes that such a decision can only be justified as a last resort, after all other reasonable means of preserving life and alleviating suffering have been pursued. (shrink)

Under contract, publication: 2027. Contributors (alphabetically): Idit Chikurel, Katherine Dunlop, Timothy Franz, Gideon Freudenthal, Paul Franks, Katharina Kraus, Maria Caterina Marinelli, Yitzhak Melamed, Karin Nisenbaum, Benjamin Pollock, Peter Thielke, Yoav Schaefer, Jelscha Schmid, Jason Yonover.

This paper develops some of Austin’s ideas on excuses, stressing their “dimensional” character and relating it to Searle’s distinction between intention-in-action and previ-ous intention, in order to show that the original speech-act shaped distinction between weakness of the will and moral weakness can be embedded in a quite different theo-retical framework such as Davidson’s, while Austin’s dimensional classification of actions cannot. Finally, the article analyzes how Grice’s critique of Davidson’s views on akrasia is more faithful to Austin and more radical (...) in its conclusions concerning the justificatory aspect of reasons and the rational features of action. (shrink)

I offer an account of how a constitutivist metaphysics of capacities grounds a unique interpretation of propositions about the nature of our action, focusing specifically on propositions about acting under the guise of the good and acting from practical knowledge. I then show that these interpretations can explain not only the possibility of cases often taken as counterexamples to these propositions but also can explain why those cases are odd or not paradigmatic exercises of the relevant capacity.

Constitutivists say authoritative practical norms are grounded in the nature of action. But how are they so grounded? I argue that there is a deep, under-appreciated division among constitutivists on this point. “Transcendental” constitutivism says all rational agents are committed to practical norms on pain of inconsistency. “Functional” constitutivism says complying with practical norms is necessary to realize the function of action. These views come apart, and the distinction between them has important implications for both how constitutivists should defend their (...) view and how they should respond to the most popular objections to it: the “shmagency” and “bad action” problems. (shrink)

Daniel Kahneman’s heuristics-and-biases program and his dual-process model of cognition transformed the study of human reasoning by mapping the systematic ways in which fast, intuitive judgment (System 1) departs from the norms of slow, deliberative reasoning (System 2). This treatise argues that, for all its achievement, the program rests upon a foreclosure. Its catalog of “errors” and “biases” presupposes a normative standard of rationality, and that standard is purely instrumental: it is the logic of coherence, probability, and expected-utility maximization, which (...) assesses whether means are efficiently fitted to ends while taking the ends themselves as given. Kahneman can therefore certify that an agent reasons correctly toward a goal; he possesses no faculty that determines which goals are worth having. The determination of ends is the office of the philosophical self, and it is absent from the model. By installing instrumental rationality as the standard of good thinking, Kahneman forecloses the philosophical self not by omission, as in Damasio, nor by elimination, as in Sapolsky, but at the level of the norm itself. Drawing upon the author’s Double Helix of Understanding and the multiplicative model of human conduct, the paper proposes a tripartite correction in which the two systems are governed by a philosophical self that evaluates ends. The errors Kahneman catalogs are errors of means; the deeper error is the framework’s inability to recognize an error of ends. (shrink)

Metaethical constitutivism promises normativity without an external foundation: practical norms bind because they are constitutive of agency itself. We reconstruct that ambition through weak transcendental deduction, closure-stability, and strong initiality. Weak constitutivist arguments identify the least hidden structure needed to reconstruct public agency under selected invariants such as attributability, intelligibility, reasons-responsiveness, and diachronic unity. This explains why constitutivists disagree over constitutive aims: they often solve different reconstruction problems while treating their adequacy constraints as theory-neutral. -/- We argue that weak reconstruction (...) and reflective endorsement do not by themselves secure strong constitutivism. Reflective endorsement is a closure test: a standpoint must survive exposure to itself, repair, and re-entry. Closure classifies admissible standpoints, but it does not show that one least admissible standpoint gives all others their normative form. Strong constitutivism therefore needs an initiality theorem in a category of admissible practical standpoints. -/- On this reconstruction, Enoch's shmagency objection splits in two. One challenge targets unearned initiality: agency-like standpoints may branch without a demonstrated least core. The other targets the normative bridge: even if a least standpoint exists, structural inheritance may not yet amount to authority. Ferrero's inescapability reply answers only the opt-out version of the worry; it does not supply uniqueness for determinate normative transmission. We conclude that constitutivism is not refuted but priced. Strong constitutivism by inheritance requires practical C-classicality: local deliberative structure must determine a unique global practical world. If practical pluralism undermines that assumption, the viable remainder is constructed initiality: framework-bound, immanent constitutivism whose constructive regime and normative bridge are explicit. (shrink)

Abstract This paper develops a systematic philosophical framework centered on the preservation of the subject under conditions of uncertainty, existential pressure, and excessive commitment. In contrast to approaches that prioritize productivity, truth, or social structures, the present account argues that the primary task of practical reason is the sustainable preservation of agency. The framework integrates the concepts of Responsible Suspension, Subjective Seepage, Dynamic Mask Theory, Reflexive Suspension, Dynamic Preservation, Erosion Calibration, Periodic Integration, and the Principle of Sufficiency. Human beings are (...) understood not as static entities but as self-regulating agents continuously exposed to processes of subjective erosion. Accordingly, practical rationality requires the regulation of commitments, interpretive frameworks, and identity structures through ongoing feedback mechanisms. The paper proposes a dynamic model in which self-awareness, erosion calibration, adaptive representation, and periodic narrative integration cooperate to preserve the integrity of the subject. Rather than eliminating change, agency is maintained through the intelligent management of change. Keywords: Responsible Suspension, Subjective Seepage, Dynamic Masks, Reflexive Suspension, Dynamic Preservation, Erosion Calibration, Periodic Integration, Agency, Self-Awareness, Practical Rationality. (shrink)

Este segundo tomo de La Gestión Habitable desplaza el centro de gravedad desde la conciencia individual del gestor hacia el servicio entendido como organismo vivo. Ya no se trata solo de cómo una persona mira, decide y sostiene bajo presión, sino de cómo un sistema completo aprende a verse, recordarse, transmitirse y continuar sin quedar atrapado en la dependencia de una sola conciencia directiva. La tesis central sostiene que un servicio urbano madura cuando deja de depender de una sola conciencia (...) directiva y empieza a construir una conciencia operativa distribuida: capacidad de percibir señales, recordar antecedentes, distinguir niveles de gravedad, decidir con criterio, reparar heridas contractuales, transferir conocimiento y continuar cuando cambian las personas. La obra se estructura en tres movimientos: el servicio como sistema consciente (caps. 97-112), la conciencia contractual y la membrana del contrato (caps. 113-134), y la absorción, autonomía y continuidad sistémica (caps. 135-154). Abarca conceptos como escalado y desescalado habitable, umbrales de cambio, conciencia distribuida, membrana contractual, transferencia de criterio, continuidad sin dependencia y legado operativo, aplicados a la gestión de servicios urbanos municipales. (shrink)

Serious ethical frameworks, those that structure practitioner identity or claim durable authority over conduct, face a structural vulnerability: their own tools can be commandeered to justify precisely the failures they were designed to prevent. Three traditions have attempted to address this capture problem. Popperian falsificationism exposes frameworks to external refutation; Habermasian discourse ethics validates them through inclusive deliberation; Derridean auto-deconstruction surfaces the internal contradictions they cannot resolve. This paper argues that each of these is insufficient as a sole capture-response architecture, (...) and develops a fourth model: recursive self-refusal (RSR), the constitutive capacity of an ethical framework to generate its own internal opposition from within its own commitments. The model is reconstructed from the Anti-Codex, Book 2 of Arkemedics: The Recursive Ethic, a full-length text written against the framework it extends. The paper's central analytical move is a decomposition of the capture problem into two structurally distinct sub-problems: detection (knowing that the framework has captured you), which the Indistinguishability Thesis assigns to external verification, and severance (retaining the ability to stop), which no external party can exercise on the practitioner's behalf and which must therefore be maintained internally, as pre-committed architecture rather than in-the-moment judgment. RSR is structurally necessary not as a capture detector, which it cannot be, but as the severance capacity that makes any capture verdict actionable. A framework that cannot generate its own internal opposition has, by that incapacity, already begun the slide toward the condition it was designed to prevent. (shrink)

A family of recursive ethical frameworks takes the spiral as its governing image: a return that advances rather than merely repeats. The image is doing a great deal of work, and it has never been made to earn it. This paper asks whether the distinction between healthy recursion and mere repetition can be formalized, or whether "recursion" is destined to remain a virtue term that ratifies whatever a framework was already doing. I argue that the distinction is real and statable, (...) and I state it. Borrowing the phase-portrait vocabulary of dynamical-systems theory, I model self-revision as a trajectory in a state space and distinguish two shapes that trajectory can take: a limit cycle, a closed orbit that returns to its own prior states (this is repetition), and a spiral, an open trajectory that returns in one coordinate while displacing in another (this is recursion). A third shape shadows the second: the converging spiral, which displaces on every return while tightening toward a fixed point. It is capture wearing recursion's shape. On the governance-continuity formula S(t+1) = R(S(t), E(t)), repetition is the degenerate case in which the revision operator has gone blind to its evidential argument and is iterating on state alone. From this I extract three criteria a return must meet to count as recursive rather than repetitive: novelty (it incorporates content not derivable from the prior state, the analog of Lakatos's progressive problemshift), non-recovery (the prior position cannot be reoccupied as live belief without suppressing what the return disclosed, against the AGM Recovery postulate), and independence (its conclusion survives the bracketing of the commitment that produced it). The converging spiral can mimic each criterion on any single pass, which is why the verdict is directional and historical, read across returns rather than turn-by-turn. I then turn the criteria on the recursive framework itself. The reflexive result is uncomfortable and, I argue, correct: no framework can certify from inside its own loop that it is spiraling rather than spinning, because the Indistinguishability Thesis forecloses exactly that first-person confirmation. Spiraling, properly understood, is not a property a framework can claim. It is a discipline it can only be held to. (shrink)

This article develops an Evoluist response to a broader philosophical and psychological problem: how purposeful human action remains possible under conditions of non-finality. The starting point is not merely internal to Evoluism, but concerns a general limit of human orientation: no theory, worldview, ideology, scientific system, religious doctrine, or personal conviction can legitimately claim final possession of Reality. This raises a central psychological question: if no finite aim can possess the whole, how can human beings pursue serious goals without falling (...) into paralysis, fragmentation, or nihilism? -/- The article argues that goals are indispensable structures of attention, will, identity, prediction, and meaning. They become pathological, however, when they are finalised into idols. To address this danger, the article develops an Evoluist account of working paradigms, finite goals as stages, formative orientation, and formative participation. A goal understood as a stage is real and worthy of deep commitment, yet remains limited and corrigible. Formative orientation names the disciplined capacity to move through such goals without granting them final authority over life, meaning, or Reality. -/- Evoluism does not weaken purpose; it disciplines its status. It aims to preserve strong, decisive action while refusing the idolisation of any finite aim. In this sense, the article presents Evoluism not as a Theory of Everything, but as a framework for orienting human purpose after the impossibility of final possession has been recognised. (shrink)

This work develops a phenomenological account of the reciprocal relation between meaning and existential vitality. Beginning from the question of whether human beings feel alive because they experience meaning, or experience meaning because they feel alive, the work argues against one-way accounts that make either bare existence the source of meaning or meaning the unilateral source of vitality. Instead, it proposes that meaning and vitality are reciprocally ordered in lived experience: meaning gives depth, form, and intelligible weight to life, while (...) vitality gives existential force to meaning. Their union is described as 'lived significance,' the condition in which life is not merely continued but inhabited. The book distinguishes lived significance from pleasure, stimulation, authenticity, and value-creation. It also examines the withdrawal of meaning through forms such as numbness, hollowness, despair, false vitality, and lifeless meaning. While standing in close relation to "Meaning as the Mark of Mind," the argument remains independent: its concern is not primarily the mind-body problem, but the structure by which human life becomes, again, inwardly vivid, meaningful, and inhabitable. The conclusion situates lived significance near the heart of the question of the good life, while resisting any romanticization of suffering, intensity, or fulfillment. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that anyone who believes that team reasoning is essential to explaining collective moral duties faces a troublesome dilemma. If the collective duty is conditional on the willingness of members, then team reasoning views generate wrong deontic moral judgments in certain cases that involve non-compliance. If the collective duty is not conditional on the willingness of members, then team reasoning views cannot provide a sound line of reasoning to what one morally ought to do in certain (...) non-compliance cases, which undercuts the main motivation for adopting a team reasoning view. I conclude that team reasoning is not the right mode of moral reasoning for collective harm or collective benefit cases. (shrink)

Este ensayo examina la relación estructural entre la agencia humana, la complejidad y la generación de valor en ausencia de un fundamento teleológico de la realidad. Sostiene que la expansión histórica de las capacidades humanas—entendida como el aumento de la complejidad de lo que puede hacerse—ha funcionado como un criterio implícito de valor, configurando tanto la autoestima individual como las nociones colectivas de progreso. Sin embargo, dicha expansión no se justifica por sí misma: más allá de cierto umbral, la proliferación (...) de posibilidades corre el riesgo de disolver su significación cualitativa, produciendo no realización sino saturación. Sobre este trasfondo, el ensayo propone un desplazamiento desde un paradigma centrado en la expansión de capacidades hacia uno enfocado en la estructura interna de la preferencia y la recompensa. Apoyándose en intuiciones filosóficas de Nietzsche, Spinoza y teorías contemporáneas de la racionalidad limitada, desarrolla el concepto de “economías de la preferencia” para dar cuenta de cómo el valor emerge de configuraciones de experiencia que intensifican o degradan la capacidad del sujeto para sostener estados afirmativos en el tiempo. La tesis central es que el problema del sentido en la vida contemporánea no radica principalmente en la ausencia de propósito, sino en la falta de un criterio suficientemente robusto para seleccionar entre propósitos. En un contexto donde el campo de lo posible se expande sin un estándar correlativo de valor, la libertad corre el riesgo de colapsar en indeterminación. El ensayo propone así un marco ético no teleológico en el que los estados de alta recompensa—entendidos como formas dinámicamente integradas y sostenibles de autoafirmación—funcionan como criterio último de la acción. Este enfoque tiene implicancias para la ética, la filosofía de la acción y las teorías de la vida buena, sugiriendo que el valor no está dado ni es arbitrariamente construido, sino que emerge de la interacción entre estructuras disposicionales humanas, condiciones sociales y evaluación reflexiva. La “invención de la vida” nombra, en este sentido, no la creación de nuevas posibilidades, sino la reconfiguración de los criterios mediante los cuales las posibilidades adquieren significado. (shrink)

This paper examines the structural relationship between human agency, complexity, and the generation of value in the absence of a teleological foundation of reality. It argues that the historical expansion of human capacities—understood as the increasing complexity of what can be done—has functioned as an implicit criterion of value, shaping both individual self-esteem and collective notions of progress. However, this expansion is not intrinsically self-justifying: beyond a certain threshold, the proliferation of possibilities risks dissolving their qualitative significance, leading not to (...) fulfillment but to saturation. Against this background, the paper proposes a shift from a paradigm centered on capability expansion to one focused on the internal structure of preference and reward. Drawing on philosophical insights from Nietzsche, Spinoza, and contemporary theories of bounded rationality, it develops the concept of “economies of preference” to account for how value emerges from configurations of experience that intensify or degrade the subject’s capacity to sustain affirmative states over time. The central thesis is that the problem of meaning in contemporary life is not primarily the absence of purpose, but the absence of a sufficiently robust criterion for selecting among purposes. In a context where the field of the possible expands without a corresponding standard of value, freedom risks collapsing into indeterminacy. The paper therefore advances a non-teleological ethical framework in which high-reward experiential states—understood as dynamically integrated and sustainable forms of self-affirmation—function as the ultimate criterion for action. This framework has implications for ethics, philosophy of action, and theories of the good life, suggesting that value is neither given nor arbitrarily constructed, but emerges from the interaction between human dispositional structures, social conditions, and reflective evaluation. The “invention of life,” in this sense, names not the creation of new possibilities, but the reconfiguration of the criteria by which possibilities become meaningful. (shrink)

The present essay discusses perception as action of both the object and of the soul in medieval Latin commentaries on Aristotle’s De sensu et sensato. Beginning with the Aristotelian principle that sensible qualities are defined by their ability to act on the external senses so as to engender sensations, we first explore medieval positions concerning the thorny issue of whether sensible qualities can remain active even when they are present in extremely small quantities of matter. Then we turn to the (...) activity of the soul, which was discussed in relation to the ability to perceive several perceptual qualities simultaneously. Many medieval authors emphasised that powers of the soul have an active role in the process of perception, as they form judgements and pay attention to the objects of the senses. The final section of the essay is dedicated to a case study of Walter Burley. New evidence coming from manuscript research suggests that Burley may have been one of the medieval Latin thinkers who considered the concept of action in detail while commenting on De sensu. In particular, we discuss the hypothesis that Burley may have authored a question commentary on De sensu which is preserved in ms. London, British Library, Add. 18630, ff. 54r-67v and attributed to him in the manuscript. Although the authorship of the text remains uncertain, we show that this commentary is identical with a hitherto anonymous De sensu commentary preserved in ms. Oxford, Merton College, 276, ff. 1ra-8vb. Moreover, we claim that this commentary has strong ties with another question commentary on De sensu that has been attributed to Burley in secondary literature and we present some preliminary observations concerning the complex relation of both works with Burley’s literal commentary on De sensu. We argue that these commentaries bear witness to the main alternative positions concerning both issues discussed in this essay. Therefore, if Burley wrote all of them, his case would represent a remarkable example of the liveliness of the debate about the active aspects of perception within the medieval Latin De sensu commentary tradition. (shrink)

This article examines the philosophical perspectives of three substantial human development approaches by Mahbub ul Haq, Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum, and defends reverence as an ethical value vital to the development of human capabilities. These human development theorists focus on individual agency, the extension of human choices and ethical values of freedom and dignity. In general, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, T. H. Green, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls primarily provide philosophical foundations to these human development (...) theorists. Mahbub ul Haq’s idea of extending human choices, Sen’s idea of freedom, and Nussbaum’s idea of dignity are key ethical values essential to human development. The central question is whether reverence, as an ethical value, could help drive human development. Although choice, freedom and dignity are vital, reverence is essential to human development because it protects people from humiliation, exploitation, oppression, discrimination and exclusion. Thus, this article examines the philosophical perspectives of Mahbub ul Haq, Sen, and Nussbaum within the human development approach and, by going beyond their development paradigms, argues that reverence is an ethical value crucial to human development. (shrink)

This paper states the reasons why emotional language should be used if it is logical and valid. Emotion is also a logical consequence. Description always has a purpose. If a description is accompanied by emotion, it must be a description that expresses that emotion. If strong words such as abuse or contempt are used for a purpose derived from emotion, they are valid if that logic is shared. Strong words should be accompanied by grounds, and in doing so, must be (...) effective word choices accompanied by an understanding of the opponent. However, in many cases, it becomes valid to use restrained language. Nevertheless, excessive restraint is also unjust. An unjust description becomes a public advertisement of that person's logical vulnerability. Strong words require understanding of oneself, language, and the opponent. However, if it is a robust logical description accompanied by these, it is possible to ignore many superficial problems and reach the purpose of the description. (shrink)

Practical normativity lacks a settled analogue of what truth supplies for belief: a standard of correctness under which practical verdicts can be shown mistaken rather than merely opposed. Such a standard must fix what practical assessment is about, set a shared, endorsement-independent correctness question, and sustain correction through grounds that can be cited, contested, and redeployed as bearing on that question. The better–worse dimension of conscious experience—how conscious life goes for the subject living it—occupies that role: it satisfies each requirement, (...) and it is the condition of practical mattering itself. Strip from a subject every respect in which its life can go better or worse, and nothing is at stake for it at all. With this standard fixed, harms, benefits, duties, autonomy, blame, care, and responsibility are not rival standards but role-structural forms within one field: ways conscious life is protected, damaged, organized, or degraded. Symmetry in normative standing is then not an independent moral premise; it follows from the structure of correction itself. Outside this structure, condemnation, preference, and enforcement remain possible; correction and vindication do not. (shrink)

This book examines a basic problem of guidance: why should a result established within a theory thereby be qualified to guide a concrete subject? It distinguishes theoretical validity, the subject's current operation of judgment, and a content's qualification for current use. Its governing discipline is that every content capable of altering subsequent theoretical or practical results must account for the source of its qualification, and that what has not been obtained must not be treated as though it had already been (...) obtained. Beginning from current cognition and personal logic, the book develops qualification reversal, the Responsibility of Construction, and a structure of assertions through which a finite subject can obtain determinate qualification for current guidance without first possessing a sufficient guarantee of truth. Neither theoretical completeness nor the absence of sufficient proof can, merely by itself, complete the transition from theoretical result to current use or justify exclusion. Qualification for truth and qualification for current use therefore remain distinct. The same discipline continues into action. Legitimacy yields only current action permissibility and does not determine action choice. Purpose is constructed not as a normatively binding object given in advance, but as a structure that organizes choice distinctions formed from qualified contents and undertaken by the concrete subject. Its normative function arises from the subject's undertaking rather than from theory's prior stipulation. Theory may organize these distinctions, but may not manufacture choices for the subject. From purpose, the theory proceeds to concrete action, treating attempt itself as action and allowing the results of action to return as new experiential material. In intersubjective relations, one subject's use of a theory does not imply that another subject has obtained the same basis of judgment, purpose, or action. Cognition concerning another subject therefore functions only through qualified and revisable substitutes. Across cognition, assertion, normativity, purpose, action, and intersubjective relations, theory may advance only where qualification has been obtained and may not replace the concrete subject at positions that only the subject can undertake. (shrink)

Like many others, I have learned a lot from John Finnis’s works on natural law and St. Thomas Aquinas’s political thought. There are numerous questions I would like to ask and issues I would like to raise in response to Finnis’s Barry Lecture, such as my different reading of Alasdair MacIntyre’s works. But I will focus on one question that targets two of the three topics of his lecture: when is human normativity first known? -/- I argue that, given Finnis’s (...) other commitments, he should answer: it depends on which order of human normativity is in question. Human normativity is first known by a theoretical insight into theoretical goods of human beings from the 1st order of normativity. And human normativity is first known by a practical insight into practical goods within the 3rd order of normativity. This practical insight is informed by the 1st order of normativity’s fields of possibility known by initial theoretical insights, but this practical insight discerns something more concerning human normativity which is not grasped by any theoretical insights. This practical insight from the 3rd order of normativity grasps basic goods of human normativity as being rationally desirable and rationally directive of human actions. If my argument here is sound, then it has shown that with respect to the problem of how we grasp the first principles or basic goods of the natural law, there is less principled distance and disagreement than is commonly supposed between Finnis’s theory of natural law and some rival theories of natural law. Granted, there are still significant disagreements concerning whether the basic goods are incommensurable, pre-moral, and other issues, but I hope my arguments can forge a path toward some significant points of agreement. (shrink)