People can find their true selves outside moral pursuits

Pursuing a life of moral excellence is often seen as allowing a person not only to live by good and just principles but also to live an authentic life that brings them closest to their true self. This view is taken to reflect the priority that people should place on moral pursuits or “moral primacy.” The results of four preregistered studies (N = 2,911) suggest that people do not always hold this view and highlight a tension within it: how can morality both constrain human behavior and afford the freedom to be one’s truest self? We find that people resolve this conflict with ‘value pluralism,’ preferring a balance of life pursuits across several value domains, where aesthetic pursuits are viewed as affording freedom from convention. We then adapt a personal change paradigm from prior work and develop a novel paradigm to examine whether people’s intuitions about the true self also reveal that a broader set of values—not just moral ones—inform judgments of the true self. We find no differences in true self judgments following the loss of an aesthetic versus moral quality. However, when directly comparing life paths, the pursuit of aesthetic excellence is sometimes viewed as offering greater access to one’s true self compared with moral excellence, in part because aesthetic pursuits are seen as less rule bound. These findings offer insights into the myriad paths a person can take in life while pursuing autonomy, authenticity, and closeness to their true self

上帝公式：以常识与黑洞为核心的哲学统一模型

本文提出一种以“常识方程”为基础的哲学模型，被作者称为“上帝公式”。该公式以四个基本概念——存在、真理、虚无、循环——为逻辑原点，分别代表自然与人类认知的两个维度。通过逻辑合成： 存在 + 真理 = 常识 虚无 + 循环 = 黑洞 常识 + 黑洞 = 一切 作者在此基础上提出“上帝公式”这一哲学统一结构，认为一切事物皆可由常识（人类的认知实相）与黑洞（自然的虚无循环）相互作用得出。该公式不仅为哲学提供了结构化、可运算的解释框架，也尝试建立一种“哲学三维坐标系”，将宏观宇宙与人类思维的微观规律统一于同一系统中。 论文同时论证了：真理与虚无属于人类本位，循环与存在属于自然本位，而“常识”与“黑洞”是连接两者的桥梁。作者认为，该模型揭示了哲学的最终任务——在有限的存在中洞察无限的循环

Temporal Discounting and Climate Change

Temporal discounting is a technical operation in climate change economics. When discount rates are positive, economic evaluation treats future benefits as less important than equivalent present benefits. This chapter explains and critically evaluates four different reasons economists have given for tying discount rates to the interest rates we observe in real-world markets. I suggest that while philosophers have correctly criticized three of these reasons, their criticisms of the fourth miss the mark. This is because philosophers have not taken heed of the distinct analytical framework in which the fourth reason arises

Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension

In much recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science, repulsive adaptation effects are considered a litmus test — a crucial marker, that distinguishes what is perceived from what is judged at the level of post-perceptual thought or cognition. Here, we provide evidence for a form of adaptation that challenges this contention. Across four experiments, we found consistent evidence of adaptation to a seemingly imperceptible dimension: arbitrarily assigned value. We show that this adaptation occurs across stimulus formats, is spatially indexed (i.e., spatiotopic) and otherwise analogous to putative cases of high-level visual adaptation in relevant respects. Combined, we suggest that our results force one of two conclusions: Either repulsive perceptual adaptation can be obtained for seemingly imperceptible dimensions, or — as we proceed to argue — adaptation fails to reliably demarcate perceptual content

Refounding the Starting Point of Philosophy: From the Question of Manifestation to the Concept of Pure Suchness哲学起点的重新奠基：从“显现”问题到“纯质”理念

当代哲学面临理论日益精致化与思想实质停滞的深层困境，其根源在于哲学起点处存在一个未被充分审查的前提：无论是传统存在论对“世界”的预设，还是认识论对“主体”的依赖，都已事先默认了“显现”这一事实，而未对“显现本身如何可能”进行追问。本文旨在对此哲学起点实行一次彻底的再奠基。核心论点是：“显现本身如何可能”应取代“何物存在”与“如何认识”，成为第一哲学的根本问题。通过先验分析，本文论证显现作为一种“成就”必有其条件，并在系统排除一切显现者（存在者、空无、逻辑、主体）之后，必然确立一种非对象性的、自我呈现的“明性”作为最终根据。进而，本文将“明性”及其内在规定（自足性、非对象性、纯粹能动性、同一性）概念化为“纯质”理念。需明确，“纯质”并非另一形而上学实体，而是使显现得以可能的先验功能位格。本文的奠基工作，其目的不在于构建新的哲学体系，而在于为哲学确立一个不可再后退的源初出发点，并展望由此展开的未来研究路径。 Contemporary philosophy exhibits a structural tension: its theoretical instruments grow increasingly refined, yet its grounding question remains unsettled. The root of this impasse lies in an inherited but unexamined premise: both classical ontology and modern epistemology presuppose the fact of manifestation— the already-given openness in which subject, world, and meaning appear— without interrogating how manifestation itself is possible. This paper proposes a fundamental re-foundation of philosophy. The primary claim is that the question “How is manifestation possible?” must precede “What exists?” and “How do we know?”, for both existence and knowledge occur only within an already-manifest field. Through transcendental analysis, manifestation is shown to be an achievement rather than a brute fact, and therefore must possess enabling conditions. A systematic elimination of inadequate candidates— including entities, nothingness, logical form, and subjectivity— leads necessarily to a non-objective, self-present, self-grounding capacity to manifest, which this work terms luminosity. The inner determinations of luminosity (self-sufficiency, non-objectivity, pure activity, unity) are conceptually articulated as Pure Suchness. Crucially, Pure Suchness is not posited as a metaphysical entity, but as a transcendental functional ground that makes manifestation possible. The aim of this work is not to build a new speculative metaphysics, but to establish an irreversible point of origin for philosophy— a pre-theoretical, non-derivative ground from which ontological and epistemological discourse can subsequently unfold

Temporal experience and cognitive science

There are many questions we can ask about temporal experience upon which cognitive science may shed light. In this entry I focus on the question of whether the cognitive sciences can shed light on whether our temporal experiences are experiences as of robust passage, or instead have some other content

Varieties of Evidentialism

In contemporary epistemology, a number of different ideas travel under the banner of “evidentialism.” In this paper, I distinguish and offer some critical reflections on three of these ideas: (1) evidentialism as an account of epistemic justification; (2) evidentialism as anti-pragmatism; and (3) evidentialism as ‘evidence-first’ epistemology. I argue that, when evidentialism is offered as an account of epistemic justification, it is best understood as a grounding thesis, as opposed to a thesis about supervenience or as a biconditional, as proposed by Conee and Feldman in their work on the topic

Expert Judgment: Overlooked Epistemic Reasons

When experts make judgments that inform public policy, what kinds of reasons should they consider in order to provide informed and responsible recommendations? Extant discussions of this question typically focus on the role of non-epistemic values in the evaluation of scientific hypotheses. However, the kinds of epistemic reasons that should undergird such assessments have received comparatively little attention. This paper argues that evidence is not the only kind of epistemic reason important for guiding expert judgment. Experts must also be sensitive to two kinds of social epistemic reasons, which have so far been overlooked in discussions on expertise. First, experts must be sensitive to higher-order evidence about other experts' views, including about disagreements between experts. Second, they must also be sensitive to inquisitive reasons concerning, for example, the pursuitworthiness of various research programs in the field, or the distribution of labor across those research programs. The paper illustrates the fruitfulness of this account by showing the importance of these overlooked reasons for understanding examples of expert judgment from the history of science and contemporary scientific practice

An Islamic Foundation for Human Rights

Can the human rights we recognize today be derived from the central Muslim text, the Qur’an? I will argue that they can, but that this requires reconceptualising the believer’s relationship to revelation. On the standard view, the believer is bound by all prescriptions in the Qur’an. By contrast, I will argue that the Qur’an prescribes two distinct kinds of norms—thin norms and thick norms—and only the latter have normative force here and now. With this novel framework for understanding Qur’anic norms on the table, I address two barriers to grounding human rights in the Qur’an: the problem of omission, according to which there are rights that we want to recognize that are seemingly missing in the Qur’an, and the problem of rejection, according to which the Qur’an seems committed to rejecting some rights that we do want to recognize. I will argue that both problems can be overcome