The paper addresses the variety of human types and attitudes facing the unknown and their philosophical implications and connections with philosophy of knowledge and philosophy of conscience and consciousness. Philosophically, the human attitude in front of the unknown dwells at the boundary between the known and the unknown. This boundary could be the equivalent of the horizon of mystery in the philosophy of Lucian Blaga, a boundary that differs greatly from one human type to another. In order to more clearly differentiate the various human types, a scheme is proposed based on different attitudes related to three tendencies to know, respectively to accept reality, as it is perceived by each. The three so-called axes are: Positivism/Negativism, Curiosity/Fear, Openness/Isolation. It results in 12 types of philosophical attitudes against the unknown that are presented and analysed. This representation is interpreted in correlation to Blaga’s imaginative exercise of conceiving philosophical consciousness as a prism inscribed in a sphere representing the totality of everything (the totality of existence, the universe). Other aspects pertaining the correlations between this description of the 12 types of philosophical attitudes against the unknown and the philosophy of man in Lucian Blaga are emphasized, too.

In this paper, I propose an interpretation for the semantics of intentionality, that Graham Priest uses in constructing his modal meinongianism, in “Towards Non-Being”. More precisely, I will take into account only the issue of existence, as a metaphysical notion. In this regard, my claim is that the monadic predicate of existence is not capable of constructing a full-fledged metaphysical notion of existence, or, differently said, it is not well equipped to account for all the modes of being that modal meinongianism implies. In trying to support my claim, I will use a strategy of reasoning, which employs a hierarchical conceptual structure, meaning that there are some first concepts, which determine the meaning for all the others. In this case, noneism is the primary notion, which imposes how other notions, such as modality and existence, will be defined. By using this way of reasoning, I will conclude that existence can be interpretated as world-dependable, meaning that the ontological nature of a world decides the ontological nature of the objects of its domain. In the pursuit of an argument for my thesis, I will begin with a short presentation of the core ideas of modal meinongianism. Afterwards, I will clarify the specific problems I am interested in and justify their necessity for being discussed. Lastly, I will formulate my argument, show its limits, and suggest a case of further research.

This paper explores the concepts of nation and nationalism in Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, with a particular focus on the introduction of plurinationalism. While Machiavelli’s final chapter, An exhortation to liberate Italy from the Barbarians, has traditionally been the focal point for discussions on his nationalist views, this study shifts the lens to examine how Machiavelli’s strategies for maintaining control over diverse territories reveal implicit notions of nation and nationalism. By analysing the third chapter, Concerning mixed principalities, this paper highlights Machiavelli’s understanding of the challenges posed by ruling over territories with different languages, customs and laws. The strategies of residing in newly acquired territories and establishing colonies are presented as methods for fostering loyalty and integration, thereby addressing the complexities of a plurinational principality. This study not only expands the traditional interpretations of Machiavelli’s nationalism but also emphasises the relevance of his insights in contemporary discussions on governance and statecraft in a multicultural and multiethnic context. Through this perspective, The Prince is reaffirmed as a timeless guide on the pragmatic exercise of power.

The paper is an expository essay in which I run an assessment of compositionality from the vantage point of Kit Fine’s semantic relationist approach to meaning. This relationist view is deepening our conception about how the meanings of propositions depend not only on the semantic features and roles of each separate meaningful unit in a complex, but also on the relations that those units hold to each other. The telling feature of the formal apparatus of this Finean relationist syntax and semantics, viz. the coordination scheme, has some unexpected consequences that will emerge against the background of an analogy with the counterpart theoretic semantics for modal languages. In the evaluation of a de re modal formula at a world in a counterpart theoretic model, as opposed to the evaluation in a possible world semantic model, one may choose different possible objects as referents or semantic values of two tokens of a single type individual constant or individual variable. Likewise, in the relationist semantics for variables or individual constants (proper names), within a coordination schema one may choose different objects if the variables or the constants are not strictly coordinated. I shall leave the working out of this comparison for a future paper. The program defends ‘referentialism’ in philosophy of language; Fine holds that semantic relations that have to be added to the assigned intrinsic values in our semantic theory, especially the relation which he calls ‘coordination’, can do much of the work of (Fregean) sense. A relationist referentialism has certain important explanatory virtues which it shares with the Fregean position, but the former is better off ontologically than the latter, since it is not committed to the existence of sense.

This paper explores the philosophical dimensions of ideological dictatorship, focusing on the dynamics that lead to the erosion of genuine belief systems within dictatorships. Drawing on historical examples, the paper examines the process by which the dictator’s men, initially ideologically aligned individuals, are marginalized and replaced by opportunists. The subsequent weakening of the regime’s ideological foundation has far-reaching consequences, affecting the stability of the dictatorship and its post-dictatorship transition. This paper aims to provide a philosophical framework for understanding the complex relationship between genuine belief, opportunism, and their long-term implications for political regimes.

The current paper, anchored in the discussions surrounding “Linda Problem”, “model-free” and “model-based” learning strategies along with Kahneman’s “two-system view” cognitive model, and Gross’s considerations on “salience processing” and “atypical attribution of salience”, aims to present a potential solution originating in Pre-Judicative Hermeneutics: Cernica’s “three-system view” model. Both Kahneman’s and Cernica’s models embrace Herbert Simon’s paradigm of “bounded rationality” and serve to broaden its reach. While Kahneman’s “System1” and “System2” model elaborates on the “perception” – “intuition” – “reasoning” cycle, Cernica’s model, founded upon and expending the “non-judicative” – “pre-judicative” – “judicative” cycle, is intended, I suggest, to augment and advance the former, from and with a phenomenological and hermeneutical perspective. Core concepts as “pre-judicative memory”, “de-constitution” “interpretation”, “pre-judicative circularity”, “act of pre-judging”, “non-judicative experience “and “existential judgment” are central to Cernica’s innovative approach. These ideas bring the “existential subject” (“operant subject”) in focus, establishing a framework to account for how the cognitive biases could be mitigated across a wide range of domains, thus enabling the elevation of our consciousness and existence through the fundamental attributes of “reality”, “identity”, “authenticity” and “veracity” supporting them. Furthermore, as reiterated in this paper and elaborated on in a more extensive discussion in a previous work, the enhancements proposed through Cernica’s “three-system view” model may also prove instrumental in emerging areas of AI development and the pursuit of AGI. These include Reinforcement Learning (RL) strategies, AI Safety and AI Alignment research. The model offers valuable contributions to a deeper understanding of debiasing processes, the development of more robust debiasing methods, and a more nuanced understanding and alignment of “deliberative human preferences” and “human value functions” within advanced AI models.

Does our inability to always self–attribute epistemic courage when we manifest it (a limited kind of reflective scepticism about epistemic courage) conflict with the virtue of integrity? I articulate this problem, and argue that it can be eschewed if we construe integrity along meliorist rather than perfectionist lines.

Human cognition functions best when it traces a path across the three Socratic transcendentals in the unfolding sequence of Beauty, then Goodness, then Truth. I therefore describe the ideal approach to knowledge as “Beauty-First.” By analogizing the epistemological progression underlying the classical Trivium, the Eastern Orthodox Philokalia, and the method that made science truly modern, and then noting that this structure seems to be corroborated by the neuroscience of Iain McGilchrist, we seem to confirm the hypothesis that Beauty, Goodness, and Truth must be appropriated in this sequence in a concentric unfolding of human attention.

Unprecedently in the entire human history, we live in a world of abundance of information, instantaneously accessible with a few clicks on our devices. What seemed to be in the past an exclusive privilege for a limited number of educated, is now taken for granted and open to everyone who has access to the Internet and programs of artificial intelligence.