Theory of Knowledge

This essay examines the structure of inquiry when questions of grounding are pursued through recursive justification. It argues that regress is not merely an extension of explanation but also a process of compression through which explanatory possibilities are progressively eliminated. As inquiry advances, multiplicity converges toward unity, unity gives rise to the problem of origin, and the search for origin brings agency into view as a distinct explanatory possibility. The argument does not seek to establish the truth of any particular theological or metaphysical system. Instead, it investigates whether concepts traditionally associated with divinity emerge as structural consequences of inquiry itself. By tracing the limits of linguistic explanation and the convergence of recursive grounding, the essay explores the possibility that a singular, originating agency appears not as an imported theological assumption but as a recurring outcome of the structure of human inquiry.

This paper addresses a philosophical lacuna in Kantian practical philosophy: the obscure status of the “subject of action.” I argue that practical apperception, manifested as the “I will,” serves as the foundation of Kantian agency. Just as the theoretical “I think” renders cognition possible by synthesizing the manifold of intuition, the “I will” “functions as the original spontaneity that unifies the manifold of desires, thereby ascribing them to a single individual. By reconstructing this concept, the inquiry offers a solution to the impasse between Henry Allison’s Incorporation Thesis and Richard McCarty’s hydraulic model. Ultimately, this inquiry reveals that Kantian ethics is grounded in a metaphysics of the transcendental self, establishing the “subject as a person” capable of moral imputation.

Konseptuelt grunnlag og modellintern teoriutvikling 7. juni 2026 CMT&R-Gilde-Modellen-Multimodal kognitiv arkitektur Sammendrag Denne artikkelen undersøker hvordan visuelle systeminstruksjoner kan fungere som kognitive forsterkningsstrukturer for store språkmodeller. Utgangspunktet er en serie diagrammatiske, høystrukturerte bilder som fremstiller en systeminstruksjon for transformasjon fra ordinaer LLM-adferd til mer selvrefleksiv, validerende og handlingsorientert KI-adferd. Bildene organiserer instrukser gjennom aksiomer, tidsbehandling, usikkerhetskontroll, metarefleksjon, adversariell selvkritikk, ressursbevissthet, sannhetsregimer, topologisk kondensering og telemetri. Artikkelen argumenterer for at slike bilder ikke bare fungerer som illustrasjoner, men som eksterne kognitive rammer: de stabiliserer oppmerksomhet, reduserer semantisk entropi, aktiverer flerkanals representasjon og gir språkmodellen en strukturell arbeidsflate for mer presis resonnering. Innenfor Gilde-Modellen kan dette forstås som en overgang fra lineaer tekstinstruksjon til relasjonell instruksjonsgeometri, der KI-responsen formes av et samspill mellom distinksjon, relasjon, struktur, tetthet og handling. Det understrekes samtidig at bildene ikke gjør en språkmodell bokstavelig selvbevisst eller faktisk superintelligent. Derimot kan de fungere som en operativ promptarkitektur som øker konsistens, sporbarhet og kognitiv disiplin i en gitt samtalekontekst.

This paper defends warranted uncertainty as a central component of rational credencing. Against cultures of forced decisiveness, debate confidence, institutional overstatement, and binary knowledge-talk, it argues that uncertainty can be an epistemic achievement: the successful refusal to assign more confidence than the evidence supports. The paper extends the Credencing framework by giving a more precise treatment of Theta, the warranted uncertainty interval, and by distinguishing raw disagreement between perceived evidence and assigned credence from excess Core Irrationality after appropriate slack has been considered. The result is a calibration-first account of "not knowing." An agent may rationally withhold sharp credence when evidence is incomplete, noisy, ambiguous, or model-dependent; may act decisively under uncertainty without pretending to know; and may honestly say "I do not know" as a high-resolution report about the current evidential situation. The paper also distinguishes honest uncertainty from evasive uncertainty. Honest uncertainty names what is unknown, identifies live alternatives, assigns credence bands, and states update conditions. Evasive uncertainty uses complexity, missing certainty, or indefinite skepticism to protect assigned credence from perceived evidence. By formalizing confidence caps, warranted slack, excess Core Irrationality, and update conditions, this paper protects the Credencing model from becoming an overconfident diagnostic instrument. Rationality is not the habit of always knowing. It is the discipline of keeping confidence answerable to evidence, including when the evidence demands restraint.

Within the framework of individuation, Simondon insists that the human subject cannot experience its own genesis. The subject can't be anterior to itself. But the individuated subject, or the subject of ontogenesis, would seem to be in a position of regeneration or reconstruction. The question remains if Simondon's second genesis, of the collective phasic being, offers a solution to the main absence posed by Heidegger's being-towards-
death. The question is, can there be a being-before-birth, and does Simondon's ontogenesis provide the philosophical and ontological framework to describe this metaphysical and phenomenological space that we also cannot experience?

Rotating powers were explored within the context of fractional numbers, leading tothe discovery of other conditions for rotating powers and the prospect of theiralternation. It seems that an irrational number (limit ℰ) in mathematical analysis is thetendency towards convergence among all rotating powers.

Today, an immense amount is being written about artificial intelligence—and specifically about ChatGPT—by a wide variety of people holding opinions that span the entire spectrum: from sheer rapture and delight to extreme pessimism, extending even to fears that humanity faces destruction at the hands of AI. This article originated from an attempt to determine whether ChatGPT is aware of my "Unified Method of Justification" and what its opinion on the subject might be. The results proved impressive in two opposed respects. On the one hand, in ChatGPT, I encountered a conversational partner who appeared intelligent, quick to grasp the essence of things, and capable of asking the right questions; as a result, my assessment of the product’s potential utility for applied purposes—in business, entertainment, and even scientific research—has risen significantly. On the other hand, this dialogue sheds light on certain dangers posed by AI—dangers of which no one has written until now. Furthermore, this conversation will help the reader gain a quicker, deeper understanding of the Unified Method of Justification and how this method can safeguard humanity against the threat of its own destruction (at the hands of AI), increase the efficiency and usefulness of AI itself, and resolve numerous other problems.
What is particularly surprising is not that ordinary people—far removed from both science and politics, living in a world threatened by wars that endanger the very survival of humanity- are generally unable to analyze the Unified Method of Justification. What is really surprising is that they are witnesses to the inability of opposing sides to reach peaceful settlements based on justice, an inability rooted in the absence of agreement on what justice means in specific situations and yet it rarely occurs to them that precisely because there is no accepted unified method of justification, it is impossible to reach agreement not only on justice but on any other fundamentally disputed issue. Why do these ordinary citizens not ask their scientific and political leaders why there has been no serious public discussion of the Method aimed at either accepting it or rejecting it on rational grounds?

This preprint explores the structural and epistemological challenges inherent in the study of ignorance (agnotology). It argues that the difficulty of investigating ignorance is neither accidental nor temporary, but rooted in a fundamental paradox: the instrument of knowledge and its object are one and the same. Unlike analogous concepts like consciousness or language, ignorance actively conceals itself from the knower, reproducing this paradox across three distinct domains: within the human knower (biological, psychological, and evolutionary constraints), within the concept itself (as an indefinable absence resisting measurement), and within the social context (where relations of power and culture dictate what counts as ignorance). Tracing these complexities through to the digital age (addressing the impact of filter bubbles, echo chambers, and large language models on human common sense) the paper examines the intricately entangled network of forces that obscure our epistemic limits. Ultimately, it proposes a multi-dimensional, interdisciplinary path forward that embraces reflexive awareness, critical objectivity, and provisional working definitions, framing the study of ignorance not as a project with a definitive endpoint, but as one of the most deeply human inquiries we can pursue. Keywords: ignorance, epistemology, reflexivity paradox, agnotology, essentially contested concepts, identity of knower and object, social epistemology, sociology of knowledge, epistemic injustice, hermeneutics.

Об искусственном интеллекте и в частности о Chat GPT пишут сегодня чрезвычайно много, очень разные люди и с диапазоном мнений от упоения и восторга, до крайнего пессимизма, вплоть до опасения уничтожения человечества от рук ИИ. Эта статья возникла из попытки выяснить, знает ли Chat GPT о моем едином методе обоснования и каково его мнение о нем. Результат получился впечатляющим в двух противоположных отношениях. С одной стороны, в «лице» Chat GPT я нашел по видимости умного, быстро схватывающего суть и умеющего задавать правильные вопросы собеседника, в результате чего выросла моя оценка возможности полезного использования этого продукта в прикладных целях: в бизнесе, для развлечений и даже в науке. С другой стороны, эта беседа проливает свет на такие опасности, исходящие от ИИ, о которых до сих пор никто не писал. Также она поможет читателю быстрее и лучше разобраться в едином методе обоснования и в том, как с помощью этого метода можно обезопасить человечество от угрозы его уничтожения (от рук ИИ), увеличить эффективность и полезность самого ИИ и решить многие другие проблемы.
Удивляет, что людям простым, далеким и от науки, и от политики и неспособным разобраться в едином методе обоснования, но живущим в современном мире с войнами, угрожающими самому существованию человечества, при неспособности сторон договориться о мирном их завершении на основе справедливости,  не приходит в голову, что именно из-за отсутствия принятого единого метода обоснования – невозможно договориться ни о справедливости, ни по каким другим спорным вопросам. И почему эти простые люди не обращаются к властям научным и политическим с вопросом, почему не происходит обсуждения метода с тем, чтобы его принять или отвергнуть как неверный?

This chapter analyzes the philosophical aspects of the notions of ‘consciousness’ and ‘thought’ in their interaction with the social notions of power and progress. Preliminarily, each of them is derived from words and terms to the conceptual level.  The formulations of the named notions differ from the generally accepted definitions. On their basis, a number of laws are formulated, in particular, the law of progress.

The dominance and shifting of "discourses" in the natural and applied sciences can be explained, firstly, by the existence of a universal (albeit always "incomplete") system of axioms in each field of knowledge and, secondly, by the regular (albeit relatively rare) discovery of new empirically and intersubjectively verifiable facts about reality that can change the direction or even refute any dominant "discourse" of any empirical or applied science.
In the casual study of reality in most formal humanities and social sciences in general and in philosophy in particular, “consensus” pseudo-axiomatic (since these sciences lack a system of axioms) interpretations of certain already known or “invented” speculative synthetic pseudo-concepts by the authors of doctrines dominate. Debates about the presence/absence of "god," about "soul and body," about "matter and consciousness" (etc.), ignoring evolutionary biology and genetics, can continue forever without adding a grain to the treasury of human knowledge. The idiotic formulation of “justified belief” when applied to synthetic speculative concepts has opened the way to countless “discourses” of reality, the viability and plausibility of which depend not on scientific rigor and plausibility, but on the number of supporters of one or another “epistemic disposition.”
This is pure esotericism, essentially identical to cargo cults among pre-civilized tribes. Theologians, naturalists, rationalists, inductivists, deductivists, phenomenologists, evolutionists and anti-evolutionists, existentialists, lingua-mathematicians, and who knows what other "-ists"—each recognizes only their own and (with reservations) those of their like-minded ("co-discoursers") rules of "logic, conceptual analysis, and structural reasoning and inference." What's even more tragic (or amusing, depending on the context) is that the proponents of each of these contradictory "discourses" concerning the same scientific problem engage in a "parallel" coexistence, simply ignoring each other and the entire past of their respective fields of knowledge.
This is how science isn't made, but destroyed.

This paper aims to highlight Johann Georg Sulzer's influence on the Kantian conception of unconscious representations. The Kant-Forschung, so far, has focused on Baumgarten and Meier as Kant's main references on the issue. Through a careful analysis of the development of Sulzer's position and his critique of earlier analyses of the fundus animae, we want to show the way in which that critique was important for Kant, especially in relation to overcoming the theories of Baumgarten and Meier themselves.

This paper argues that the minimal semantic token "apple" exposes a foundational structural instability in recursive language systems: semantic drift under unbounded admissibility. Large language models (LLMs) and large reasoning models (LRMs) operate through recursive continuation. Under admissible conditions, recursive continuation performs structural work through:

[...]
Aspectos dos ciclos culturais
Mário Ferreira dos Santos – Palestra no Centro Convivium, 1967
Estudando as chamadas fases cráticas na História verificamos que o kratos
político, como força de coesão social e como força super individual que paira acima dos
grupos sociais, é sempre ambicionado não só pelos indivíduos como pelos próprios
grupos.
O kratos social é propriamente o poder político que se estrutura nos ciclos
culturais superiores, naquilo que constitui o "estado" e que dá uma certa coerência a
sociedade, mas uma coerência fundada na lei política e, sobretudo, na violência
organizada.[...]

Knowing God: Doing Justice analyzes the current crisis of values and argues that radical relativism makes it impossible to mount a credible argument against capitalism or any other unjust system without a coherent way to ground ethical judgments. It the regrounds but also radically historicizes natural law ethics and draws out the implications for questions of right, virtue, and justice.

Mikhail Bakunin e Piotr Kropotkin foram os autores mais influentes da ideologia anarquista e ambos debateram sobre a ciência e sua relação com as lutas sociais em seus textos. Por isso, este artigo realiza uma análise comparativa entre a visão dos dois autores, identificando similaridades e diferenças no seu tratamento em relação à ciência. Um conjunto das principais obras dos dois autores em relação a essa temática foi elaborada e analisada. Ao final, é sintetizada uma lista das principais características das concepções epistemológicas dos autores, onde se identifica que a afinidade prevalece sobre algumas divergências encontradas.

This article explores the contrast between Christ as the Light of the World and humanity's persistent state of spiritual darkness. Drawing primarily from John 9, the study examines the encounter between Jesus and the man born blind as a paradigm for understanding human limitation, epistemic hubris, and the necessity of divine illumination. It critiques the overconfidence of autonomous reason, particularly as expressed in certain strands of modern academia, and argues that true knowledge is derivative, dependent upon God's self-revelation in Scripture and in Christ. The paper integrates biblical exegesis with insights from presuppositional apologetics to demonstrate that spiritual truths are spiritually discerned and that genuine enlightenment occurs only through submission to the Light of Christ. The persistent blindness in both natural knowledge and religion underscores humanity's need to acknowledge its finitude and embrace Christ, the ultimate source of light and meaning.

Este artículo desarrolla la teoría composicionista de la verdad como eje gnoseológico del sistema. Frente a las concepciones clásicas —verdad como contemplación, correspondencia, coherencia o consenso— se propone entender la verdad como reconstrucción operatoria rigurosa de estructuras reales bajo la resistencia efectiva del mundo. Se argumenta que esta concepción permite superar tanto el idealismo como el relativismo, integrando ontología (symploké material), subjetividad (organización producida) y normatividad (consistencia objetiva). Asimismo, se analizan las implicaciones de esta propuesta para la ciencia, la dialéctica, la política y la crítica de la doxa.

Kajian ini satu percubaan untuk mentafsir penggunaan teori ilmu (epistemologi) dalam penulisan sejarah Miskawayh, seorang sejarawan zaman kerajaan Buwayh -'Abbasiyyah pada abad pertengahan Islam. Secara jujurnya pengkaji menzahirkan rasa penghargaan dan terima kasih kepada Miskawayh kerana menghasilkan penulisan Tajarib al-Umam. Judul dan struktur kandungan karya memberi asas kepada pengkaji untuk berfikir dan terus berfikir tentang kenapa beliau menulis Tajarib? Titik persoalan ini membolehkan pengkaji mempersoalkan kenapa dan bagaimana Miskawayh menulis Tajarib? Proses tersebut menyebabkan pengkaji membina satu rangkaian garis persoalan sebagai landasan menjawab tentang apa, kenapa dan bagaimana Miskawayh merangka penulisan Tajarib. Setinggi-tinggi penghargaan kepada Pengerusi Jawatankuasa Penyeliaan Profesor Madya Dr. Zaid Ahmad kerana dengan sabar selama bertahun menyantuni setiap kemusykilan dan kebuntuan pengkaji. Tidak dilupai bantuan, tunjuk ajar dan perkongsian idea bersama Profesor Madya Dr. Nurdeng Deuraseh dan Profesor Madya Dr. Kamaruzaman Yusoff. Penghargaan dan ingatan ikhlas buat Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam (JPA), Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi (KPT) dan Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) atas penajaan pengajian melalui Skim Latihan Akademik Bumiputera (SLAB). Pengkaji hanya mampu mentafsir, namun yang lebih mengetahui hanya Miskawayh kerana beliau ialah tuan empunya Tajarib dan pastinya Allah amat mengetahui segala-galanya.

Kajian ini membincangkan epistemologi Miskawayh dalam historiografinya Tajarib al-Umam. Objektif adalah untuk mentafsir tiga faktor dominan dalam historiografi Tajarib iaitu struktur kandungan, textual flow dan penekanan. Ketiga-tiga faktor tersebut dicerakinkan sebagai mewakili perbincangan tentang skop dan metode historiografi serta kerangka sejarah Miskawayh. Kajian ini menggunakan pendekatan kitaran hermeneutik dan analisis dokumen bagi menjelaskan kefahaman tentang struktur teks Tajarib merangkumi whole (menyeluruh) dan part (juzuk),pembahagian antara bahagian sejarah universal dengan kontemporari, etimologi judul ‘Tajarib al-Umam’, metode penyusunan teks, konsep pergerakan sejarah, kewujudan idea tajribah (pengalaman) dan epistemologinya. Hasil kajian mendapati wujud tiga aspek signifikan dalam Tajarib. Pertama Miskawayh menerapkan idea sejarah berunsur tajribah bagi membentuk kerangka keseluruhan penulisan Tajarib. Kedua terdapat empat peringkat metode penyusunan maklumat sej...

This paper examines Giambattista Vico’s Scienza Nuova as an epistemological alternative to the algorithmic rationality underlying artificial intelligence. Grounded in Vico’s
verum-factum principle that humans can only truly know what they have created, it
argues that data-driven models distort knowledge by detaching it from its historical
and creative origins. Through a comparative analysis of Baconian empiricism and Cartesian rationalism, the study demonstrates how Vico synthesises these traditions into
a  hermeneutic methodology centred on the mondo civile: the  human-made world of
meanings, laws and institutions. By uniting philologia (the domain of historical particulars) with philosophia (the pursuit of universal truths) within a dynamic interpretive
circle, Vico establishes the autonomy of the human sciences against technological reductionism. His concepts of sensus communis (communal understanding) and ingenium
(contextual judgment) reveal why algorithms can simulate but not comprehend meaning. The article concludes that Vico’s human-centred framework offers an indispensable foundation for preserving interpretive understanding in the digital age.
Keywords: Vico, verum-factum, mondo civile, algorithmic rationality, artificial intelligence, human sciences, epistemology, scientific reductionism

Este trabalho propõe articular, através da noção espinosana de desejo, duas dimensões da experiência da vida comum: a política e a afetividade. Sob as lentes de Espinosa consideramos que a sociedade comum ou a vida política não apenas tem origem afetiva como somente se sustenta e se metamorfoseia por meio de um complexo jogo e trama de afetos que lhe é intrínseca e que a perpassa em seus diversos níveis, instâncias e momentos, o que significa que tratar de política é tratar de uma movimentação de afetos. Por conseguinte, uma reflexão sobre política que desconsidere esse aspecto é fraca e até mesmo utópica e fora da realidade. Nesse horizonte, nosso objetivo é ponderar sobre o papel e a centralidade de um afeto, o desejo, definido por Espinosa como a essência mesma do ser humano. Para isso, embora tenhamos o aporte dos dois tratados políticos do autor (o TP e TTP), nos valeremos em boa medida da Ética, desfiando a trama dessa obra trataremos de aclarar o papel e o lugar do desejo no desenvolvimento das relações inter-humanas e, consequentemente para a instituição da vida comum.

Several philosophers have argued that the truth, or approximate truth, of theoretical science provides the best explanation for the success of applied science. I explore examples in which this claim does not hold up including cases where approximate truth leads to failure and cases in which in practical success is achieved without any theoretical basis. As a result I question whether philosophical reflection has any role to play in explaining scientific success.

Kant – ein Revoluzzer? Der Königsberger Philosoph, nach dem seine
Zeitgenossen angeblich die Uhr stellen konnten, gilt heute noch als pe-
dantischer, ordnungsliebender und sich jedem aufrührerischen Gedan-
ken widersetzender treuer Diener der Obrigkeit.
Kant war also vieles, aber bestimmt kein Revolutionär – sofern dieser
Begriff staatspolitisch gebraucht wird. In der Welt des Denkens war das
Werk Kants hingegen tatsächlich revolutionär, hat doch insbesondere
seine „Kritik der reinen Vernunft“ der abendländischen Philosophie ei-
nen Stoß versetzt, der viele bis dahin lieb gewonnene Denkgewohnhei-
ten in das Altglas der Philosophiegeschichte geworfen hat. Über diesen
revolutionären Akt berichtet Marcus Willaschek in seinem Buch „Kant.
Die Revolution des Denkens“.

This article examines the relationship between judgment as a logical category and sentence as a linguistic category within the framework of modern linguistics and logic. The study analyzes different theoretical approaches to the interpretation of judgment, its structural components, and its connection with grammatical subject and predicate. Special attention is given to the distinction and interaction between logical and grammatical categories, as well as to the role of language in shaping thought and communicative meaning. The paper discusses declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative sentence types, highlighting their relation to logical judgment. The research also addresses philosophical and psycholinguistic perspectives on the unity of language and thinking, supported by examples from Azerbaijani, Russian, and English languages. The article contributes to comparative and theoretical linguistics by exploring how linguistic structures reflect cognitive and logical processes.