A contextual perspective on mental health is critical in developing a comprehensive understanding of wellbeing in line with the precepts of Geopsychiatry. A review of the literature indicates a limited understanding of how people deal with the global climate crisis using a geo-psychiatry perspective. The experience of awakening to the climate crisis has been described using the term “eco-anxiety”. A lack of in-depth exploration of this subjective experience has meant a fragmented theory. To contribute to our understanding of eco-anxiety, the current study explores qualitative aspects of this experience, looking at the reports of eco-anxiety experienced by people who self-reported attending a group psycho-ecological intervention for facing the climate crisis. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, critical realist ontology and moderate social constructionist epistemology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 adults who self-identified as experiencing “eco-anxiety” and had attended an ecopsychology support group. Two core categories of theory emerged: “the psychosocial processes of eco-anxiety” and “the psychosocial processes of regeneratively sustained eco-anxiety”. The results are explored through figures that analogise the seasons, demonstrating the participants' reported process of psychosocial adaptation: the growth and expansion of the self in the face of eco-anxiety, reflecting the integration of experiences. This metaphor does not suggest a linear process. Participants described moving bidirectionally. Despite the challenges, group participants report that the process of awareness can lead to a more connected way of life and ultimately the development of psychosocial resilience, which is essential for navigating sustained mutual care in the face of global environmental instability.

This paper advances Afropessimism as a necessary philosophical and ontological framework for leisure and recreation studies, arguing that anti-Blackness is not a remediable flaw but a foundational condition of the social order that positions Blackness outside the category of the Human. Grounded in social death theory, it theorizes Blackness through natal alienation, gratuitous violence, and social dishonor, and contends that leisure spaces, often framed as sites of freedom and restoration, can instead reproduce anti-Black logics through control, spectacle, and commodification, revealing leisure as an ambivalent terrain rather than a purely liberatory one. In response, the paper reimagines the field by centering Black ontological realities in how leisure is theorized, studied, and practiced, calling for a fundamental interrogation of the assumptions, structures, and practices that shape leisure systems. Rather than prioritizing access or inclusion alone, this approach pushes the field toward deeper structural critique, rethinking how belonging, humanity, and care are defined and opening space for new frameworks that confront, rather than obscure, the realities of anti-Blackness.

The main goal of the scientific-philosophical article is to understand the text as a thing for the initial confrontation and reflection of certain constants and variables in the digital space. This is another ontological reality of the informational society, where traditional boundaries between the author, the text, and the reader are blurred, and vitality manifests through multiple meaningful interactive hypernetwork structures of communication. The virtual environment, as an information-communication space, mirrors the existence of real objects and affairs. However, and importantly, in this environment, the processes of digitalization imply the dominance of creative, inventive, and intuitive beginnings; expanding the subject's capabilities through the use of imagination and hypothetical modeling activity, employing techniques that are not only reflective but also interpretative and constitutive in nature. The text as an ontological space integrates subjectivity, giving rise to new communicative structures. This study sets forth two key tasks. First, to trace the historical evolution of the concepts of textual vitality from antiquity to the present as a sequence of paradigmatic turns. Second, to analyze the specificity of this vitality's manifestation in the digital space as a new form of ontological existence of the text. The main result of this article is the discovery of a pattern in the long historical development of the complexity of each text and the dialectical transition into each new state with the acquisition of new components of "vitality." The authors assert that the evolution of textual ontology from the ancient cosmos to the digital rhizome demonstrates not the extinguishing but the sequential transformation and intensification of the text's "vitality," with each paradigmatic turn—from contra to contra post and then to contra punkt—becoming a process unfolding in time, producing a digital mode of being for humanity. The linearity, volume, and finally the complex dynamics of the modern textual space provide grounds for further detailed study of the structure of subjective communication as a complex, generating new meanings mode of digital existence.

Statement of the problem. From the perspective of the conceptualization of space in music, the creative activity of a conductor is unique: it is precisely the conductor’s volitional action that generates the sonic continuum of a choral work. The phenomenological unity of thought and bodily action inherent in the conducting gesture may be interpreted as a coincidence of the spiritual and the corporeal existential parameters, Conducting gesture represents a form of synchronization of intellectual, psychological, and motor processes that ensure the performance existence of a musical composition. Recent research and publications. In philosophical discourse, the problem of space is addressed through the concept of ‘Dasein’ developed by Martin Heidegger, according to which being and understanding constitute an inseparable unity. The identity between the musical system and the structure of the universe is explored in the works of Ernest Ansermet. The philosopher Stefan Beyst interprets musical space through the movement of sound complexes perceived by consciousness as voices or sonic “characters”. In Ukrainian choral scholarship, however, the problem of the conceptualization of space in the conductor’s creative activity has not yet acquired an independent research status. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the article is to examine the role of space in a choral conductor’s creative practice as a conceptual factor in shaping musical interpretation. The methodological basis or the study presumes the interaction between philosophical and musicological approaches to the musical work. The philosophical dimension draws on the ontology of artistic creativity. The musicological perspective combines several approaches: the semantic-communicative approach, which defines the sign nature of the musical text; the interpretative approach, which focuses on the conductor’s personality and cognitive activity; and choral studies, which take into account the specific features of musical thinking in the context of choral means. The novelty of the obtained results lies in substantiating the role of spatiality in the conductor’s work. Research results. The article examines lateral and divergent types of the conductor’s thinking. Both involve the activation of a form of space that is not verbalized but structures the subjective experience arising in the process of musical performance. Conducting interpretation is understood as a spatial-continual phenomenon represented by a coordinated set of choral parts forming a unified ontological reality. The conductor’s thinking shapes not only the general experience of the work’s being but also a specific experience of aesthetic reinterpretation of the original composition. The nonverbal nature of this experience is inseparable from the conductor’s practical actions and from the fundamental impossibility of translating it fully into verbal form. The conducting gesture precedes the sounding result, ensuring the instantaneous coordination of subsequent sonic events. In this sense, the conductor appears as the subject of a new ontology – the performance mode of musical being within the symbolic space of the work’s sonic continuum. Conclusion. In choral art, the conceptualization of space is realized by the conductor through the organization of sounding time within a continuum. Conducting creativity emerges as a dynamic process of productive thinking that integrates sensory, spiritual, and logical-functional components and becomes effective through the unity of textural-timbre, metric-rhythmic, and form-generating parameters of sound. It is not merely a sum of individual performance actions but rather the essence of the conductor’s personal self-realization directed toward the actualized being of the musical work. Consequently, for the conductor the sonic continuum is not simply an acoustic parameter but a cognitive-sensory reality and an aesthetic quality representing a mode of existence experienced “here and now”.

Psychologists in Aotearoa are increasingly encountering rongoā Māori, including mirimiri, in therapeutic contexts, yet little is known about how they engage with these practices in ways that are culturally safe, ethically sound, and clinically responsive. This study explores how Māori and non-Māori psychologists in Aotearoa navigate the integration of mirimiri, a spiritually grounded form of rongoā Māori, into ACC-funded and broader psychological practice. It examines how practitioners engage with cultural, clinical, and ethical tensions that arise when client-led or collaborative encounters with mirimiri occur. Rather than seeking to clinically validate mirimiri, the research affirms its ontological reality and cultural integrity, approaching healing as real, if only partially knowable, shaped by whakapapa, wairua, and relationship. The study is underpinned by a critical realist ontology and a constructionist epistemology, informed by post-structuralist insight. It recognises the partiality of knowledge and the discursive forces that shape therapeutic possibility. Guided by Interpretive Description, informed by kaupapa Māori values and the metaphor of he awa whiria, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with 6–8 registered psychologists who have encountered mirimiri in mental health contexts. Data will be analysed through Reflexive Thematic Analysis, supported by cultural supervision, wānanga, and reflexivity to ensure relational rigour and cultural accountability. In this presentation, I will present interpretive insights developed through analysis of interviews with psychologists who have referred clients to mirimiri, focusing on how they navigate cultural and clinical boundaries, ethical tensions, and spiritual dimensions of healing. This research contributes to culturally responsive practice by illuminating how power, positionality, and ethics shape engagements across Indigenous and Western therapeutic paradigms in Aotearoa.

ABSTRACT This paper compares conceptualizations of knowledge by critical and social realism on the one hand and the social realist school in the sociology of education on the other. Although both schools appeal to ontological realism and judgmental rationality to address a common concern – epistemic relativism – their understandings of these concepts are not well-aligned. Our concern in this paper is that this issue has been misunderstood in problematic ways in research in the field of higher education. First, we provide some evidence to illustrate this concern. Second, we outline how key scholars in both schools have conceptualized knowledge. Third, we highlight their differences around the usage of ontological realism and judgmental rationality. Fourth, we discuss what is at stake for educational research and practice. Finally, we urge caution by researchers when claiming that the social realist school’s approach is philosophically supported by Bhaskar’s critical realism and Archer’s social realism.

By retelling the story of porcelain, a material recently seized for its racialized and gendered cultural valences, this essay proposes a critical reorientation of Asian Americanist new materialisms around the concept of technique. Disturbing the racial and gendered ontological claims made on porcelain’s behalf through recourse to the history of its technical unfolding, this essay makes the case for studies in Asian Americanist new materialisms to pivot from the ontological realism of race to the technical evolution of race’s materiality, which reveals race, like porcelain, to “be” nothing except the retroactive form of historical scientific activities that render concepts contingent and unenclosed. Drawing on the ceaseless history of porcelain’s reinvention across early and industrial modernity, this essay remakes the telos of Asian Americanist critique: Activating the sociogenetic value of technical invention, it rereads Asian Americanist new materialisms as a theory of mediation attendant to the joint construction and deconstruction of race at the limit of the human’s constitutive negativity.

Despite growing levels of homelessness and increased policy attention to it across Britain, modelling to highlight individual risk factors alongside broader drivers has been hampered by the obvious fact that many people experiencing homelessness are not clearly in a household and hence not captured by mainstream household surveys. Framed within a critical realist ontology, a composite survey approach is developed, combining a specialized survey targeting people at risk of severe deprivation with a major national household panel dataset, to enable predictive models to be developed using data which includes significant representation of hard-to-reach and non-household populations. Models predicting homelessness and rough sleeping are derived and compared, highlighting the roles of key individual and structural factors, appropriately sequenced in time and able to interact. Vignettes are used to show how the risks vary dramatically between households in different situations, while the potential role of such models in micro-simulation or prediction of impacts of different scenarios is discussed.

Critical Synthetic Realism (CSR) is the comprehensive philosophical framework developed by Januarius Asongu to address the epistemic, ethical, educational, and institutional crises of contemporary global society. This article offers the first systematic, journal-length exposition of CSR as an integrated philosophy encompassing metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of science, philosophy of education, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Against the twin failures of epistemic absolutism and relativism, CSR affirms ontological realism, epistemic fallibilism, and moral realism while incorporating critical awareness of historical, social, and institutional mediation. Drawing primarily on The Splendor of Truth: A Critical Philosophy of Knowledge and Global Agency, this study reconstructs CSR as a truth-oriented yet corrigible philosophical system [1]. It argues that CSR represents a distinctive contribution to contemporary realism by grounding scientific inquiry, educational formation, ethical responsibility, and legitimate authority in a unified account of reality, knowledge, and human dignity.

This study examines the interpretation (Tafsir) of the Qur’an through the integration of the three main pillars of the philosophy of science—ontology, epistemology, and axiology—as a novel conceptual framework to achieve a more comprehensive and contextual understanding of Qur’anic interpretation. Conventional Tafsir studies have typically focused on textual methodologies such as Tafsir bi al-ma’tsur and Tafsir bi al-ra’yi, with less emphasis on the philosophical foundations concerning the nature of textual existence, the sources and justification of interpretive knowledge, and the embedded values relevant to contemporary issues. The philosophical approach positions Tafsir not merely as a textual interpretive practice, but as an epistemic endeavor that considers the ontological reality of revelation, the epistemological relationship between reason and revelation, and the axiological implications of hermeneutics within modern social contexts. Using a qualitative descriptive method based on critical literature analysis from primary and secondary sources in Tafsir and philosophy of science, the findings demonstrate that this integrative framework bridges classical Tafsir traditions with the interpretive demands of the present era and expands Tafsir into a multidisciplinary and socially relevant field. The study’s contribution lies particularly in emphasizing the axiological dimension as a crucial aspect of Tafsir studies that not only interprets the text but also directs its values toward practical implementation in the social life of both the Muslim community and broader society.

This article reinterprets Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida (2013) as a form of mediated religious communication rooted in the theological and cultural tradition of medieval realism. Drawing on the ideas of Aquinas, Anselm, and Pseudo-Dionysius, it suggests that the film embodies a contemplative mode where truth, goodness, and beauty are regarded as ontological realities rather than subjective ideas. Through silence, stillness, vertical framing, and temporal restraint, Ida conveys a Catholic cultural imaginary that operates beneath explicit doctrine, influencing perception, memory, and moral values. Its formal austerity echoes apophatic theology and monastic practices such as lectio divina, serving as a non-discursive form of Catholic values. By embedding Holocaust trauma within spaces of ritual silence and architectural simplicity, Ida presents memory not as a narrative endpoint but as a mediated act of endurance. The film depicts cinema as a cultural space where religious significance endures beyond institutions, showing how Catholic sensitivities persist through aesthetic and symbolic expressions in today’s post-secular culture.

Extreme health inequities are experienced by Inclusion Health groups (including people experiencing homelessness, problem substance use, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, vulnerable migrants, sex workers, people in contact with the justice system and victims of modern slavery). There is evidence that undergraduate medical education is failing to prepare students to work effectively with these socially excluded groups. This research explores challenges and opportunities in teaching Inclusion Health to medical students. Twenty-three educators involved in teaching Inclusion Health at medical schools in the United Kingdom and Ireland were recruited purposively through known contacts and snowball sampling. Semistructured interviews were conducted, and the interview transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. An inductive approach was taken, and the analysis was underpinned by a critical realist ontology. Five distinct themes were identified from the data: 'My goodness me, it's difficult to get that stuff in'; creating space for Inclusion Health in undergraduate curricula 'It's the human-to-human connection'; the importance of meaningful contact with people with lived experience The impact of the hidden curriculum 'Assessment is the biggest hurdle' Inclusion Health as a core competency for clinical practice CONCLUSION: Inclusion Health groups, who face intersecting forms of exclusion such as poverty, violence and trauma are at risk of being further excluded by undergraduate medical curricula. This paper enhances understanding of the challenges that are limiting Inclusion Health education. Most importantly, the paper presents solutions for how Inclusion Health can be incorporated into undergraduate medical teaching and assessment.

Based on theories of realist ontology, moderate social constructionism, and rethinking social movements, this article explores the interplay between institutions and communities within the contemporary social structuration perspective. We highlight the role of habits not just as constraint mechanisms but also as enablers of action and change. The central idea is that institutions originate in habits and patterned influences: institutions and agency shape each other, which challenges the conventional notion that institutions exist independently of agency and depend on centralized leadership and the state. Understanding institutions is more than just understanding how people interpret pre-existing normative frameworks: since institutions are formed by collective practice, they are not transcendental regarding communities. We also explore the idea that instead of providing a snapshot of individuals pressuring the state to adopt reforms, describing communitarian trajectories and collective efforts to promote differentiation processes is necessary to reach a nuanced comprehension of social movements. We contextualize that idea in recent debates in Latin America about mobilization and social struggles. Ultimately, we conclude that becoming different does not mean claiming state power or presenting oneself as a representative of the people. To understand reality change and a social movement’s role, one must consider renovated conceptual and methodological tools to avoid empirical simplification and causality reduction of contingent practices and communitarian compositions.

Abstract This paper argues that, far from supporting, an oft-cited passage of the Phenomena and Noumena chapter (A247/B303) instead belies, Allison’s influential thesis that Kant’s transcendental idealism is not an ‘alternative ontology’ but a methodological or meta-epistemological ‘alternative to ontology’ that is devoid of specific metaphysical content. Following a programmatic sketch of Kant’s system of principles as a regional ontology of nature, it is argued that the precise wording and original punctuation of that passage suggest that the transcendentally realist ontologies of the past are to ‘give way’ to just such an immanent ontology of the world of outer experience.

ABSTRACT The philosophical dominance of social constructionism over the past 35 years, in many parts of the world, created space for important developments in narrative and other dialogical, language‐based forms of therapy. However, the downside was an ultimately limiting linguistic reductionism in which talking about the world was replaced with talking about talk about the world . Discursive epistemology flourished, whereas ontology—what the world beyond our ideas is like—was often left unsayable. Roy Bhaskar's (2016) critical realism retains the valuable insights of moderate versions of social constructionism but places them alongside a non‐naïve realist ontology. It offers a structured, stratified, multicausal, open‐system view of reality that exists relatively autonomously from our socially constructed knowledge, enabling us to evaluate competing knowledge claims through ‘judgemental rationality’. It is argued that we can, do and should make choices about which ideas to support and that keeping such decisions out of awareness disguises the exercise of our power. Critical realism is able to embrace the whole field of systemic psychotherapy and has the potential to end many of the dualisms that have dominated its development. By providing a metatheoretical scaffold for a wide plurality of theories, it enlarges the pool of conceptual resources that therapists can bring to co‐constructed therapeutic encounters. Positivist accounts of science are shown to work only in closed systems. Critical realism, by contrast, explains how underlying but variable causal tendencies operate in open systems, making science—including social science—fit for the real conditions of practice. Despite the strong focus on theory and causality in this paper, theoretical concerns are ultimately positioned as servants to the relational processes of psychotherapy, embedded in caregiving love in the pursuit of human flourishing.

Community-based adaptation (CBA) has become a credible remedy to climate change adaptation, emphasizing local participation and community-defined priorities. However, its transformative potential remains limited when structural root causes of vulnerability are insufficiently addressed. This article argues—via the methodology of problematization—that aligning CBA with the broader agenda of social-ecological transformation requires a stronger philosophical foundation. We propose critical realism as a suitable philosophy of science to translate CBA’s emancipatory ambitions into a robust analytical and methodological practice. Critical realism is a practically oriented philosophy facilitating causal analyses coherent with its realist ontology and relativistic epistemology. It illuminates the interplay between agency and structure, enhancing CBA to confront power imbalances and systemic injustices while supporting local agency. By conjoining insights from political ecology and political economy, we show how critical realism offers analytical coherence, methodological robustness, and normative orientation for transformative adaptation practice. We delineate nine key synergies between critical realism and CBA that together provide the conceptual scaffolding for a politically powerful, reflexive, and justice-oriented adaptation science. In doing so, the paper contributes to rethinking CBA as not merely a localized coping mechanism but as part of a structural response to the social-ecological crisis.

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) attempts to give explanations for decisions made by AI systems. Despite the fact that for knowledge-based systems this is perceived as inherently easier than for black-box AI systems based on Machine Learning, research is still required for computing satisfactory explanations of reasoning results. In this article, we focus on explaining non-entailments as a result of semantic matching in E L ⊥ ontologies. In the cases where the result of semantic matching is an entailment, the already established methods of justifications and proofs provide excellent results. On the other hand, the cases in which the result of semantic matching presents in the form of a non-entailment demand an alternative approach. Inspired by abductive reasoning techniques, we present a method for computing subtree isomorphisms between graphical representations of E L ⊥ concept descriptions, which are then used to construct solutions to abduction problems, that is, explanations, for semantic matching non-entailments in E L ⊥ ontologies. We improve existing results by generalizing our approach to be able to abduct complex concept expressions of all formats that also consist of role restrictions, rather than concepts alone, as well as the time needed to compute solutions to abduction problems in E L ⊥ ontologies. We then illustrate our method with an example scenario and perform synthetic experiments to stress the methods’ capabilities and experiments on realistic ontologies to show the practical performance of our method.

This special issue explores both the metaphysical and theological significance of “middle-sized things” — everyday objects, persons, and sacraments — in light of developments in contemporary science and philosophy. Against prevailing neo-Humean and microphysicalist backdrops, where only microphysical entities are taken as fundamental, contributors interrogate the ontological reality and causal powers of the macroscopic domain through engagements with quantum physics, biology, the metaphysics of substance, and sacramental theology. Essays range from arguments for Aristotelian hylomorphism and critiques of reductionism to narrative theories of identity and teleological accounts of divine action. Together, they examine whether middle-sized entities can be causally efficacious, metaphysically basic, and theologically significant.

AimTo address the growing challenge of diabetes management in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations, this study explores healthcare professionals' (HCPs) knowledge, attitudes, and practices on providing culturally appropriate diabetes care to people with diabetes of CALD backgrounds. With diabetes disproportionately affecting CALD populations, understanding how care can be tailored to socio‐cultural context is critical for improving diabetes outcomes.MethodsA qualitative design was employed, using semi‐structured interviews with Australian HCPs involved in diabetes care. Eleven participants were purposively sampled to ensure diverse professional perspectives, including general practitioners, endocrinologists, nurses, pharmacists, dieticians, and a podiatrist. Data collection, conducted between April and October 2024, included face‐to‐face and virtual interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis, informed by critical realist ontology, was used to identify themes.ResultsThematic analysis identified four themes: (1) The Compassionate Carer, focusing on empathy and building trust to provide individualised care; (2) The Lifelong Learner, emphasising cultural humility and the importance of ongoing learning; (3) The Person‐Centred Provider, highlighting shared decision‐making and flexible, person‐driven approaches; and (4) The Culturally Attuned Provider, addressing the need for HCPs to understand the contexts of people with diabetes. HCPs demonstrated a commitment to continuous learning, adaptability, and respectful communication tailored to individuals' unique cultural contexts, with health technology supporting active engagement.ConclusionThis study highlights the critical role of compassion, cultural humility, and understanding in providing culturally responsive diabetes care. Supporting HCPs through ongoing learning and reflective practice, while fostering empathy and humility, is essential. Insights generated underscore the need for structural support, including organisational flexibility, interpreters, culturally tailored resources, and digital tools to improve access and communication. Aligning system‐level support alongside HCPs' commitment to person‐centred care is essential for providing equitable and sustainable diabetes care for CALD populations.

With the imminent threat of nuclear arms race acceleration, and in the context of ongoing colonial nuclear violences, this paper seeks to trace the biological consequences for lives altered by the atom bomb, through Karen Barad’s agential realist ontology. To do this, I first present the paradigmatic development in the field researching the effects of radiation exposure, from direct genetic mutagenesis to the contribution of epigenetic responsivity. Based on the congruence of the epigenetic model with agential realism, I forward a speculative yet scientifically informed interpretation of epigenetic mechanisms as materially manifesting multiple temporalities of entangled events. To give a felt sense of the implications of this interpretation, it is diffractively read through a profound semi-autobiographic literary moment in Kyōko Hayashi’s novella From Trinity to Trinity, a testimony of the transformative effect of recontexualizing memories through their entanglements, as told by a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. By introducing a different conceptualization of epigenetic function, I aim to share my deep appreciation of the richness of cellular biology, and to stir new imaginings congruent with the relational, entangled nature of epigenetic mechanisms. Thought through the processing of trauma, it may offer possibilities of living and dying otherwise.