Parable of the Last Unicorn: A Reading

NB: NotebookLM missed the boat on this one, but I include it anyway. The source text presents a rigorous architectural analysis of the concept of honour, defining it as a thick moral–social concept intrinsically linked to self-worth, integrity, and the felt demand to live up to reputational standards. This framework examines honour across four distinct tiers of mediation, starting with the biological foundation where it piggybacks on status, threat, and affiliation systems to produce visceral responses like shame and pride. Cognitively (T1), honour functions by organizing predictive models of social evaluation, helping individuals simulate reputational futures and maintain a perceived record of past promises and betrayals. The analysis demonstrates that linguistically (T2), honour is a contestable and polysemous thick term, with its normative and descriptive components shifting across military, aristocratic, and contemporary discourses. Socially (T3), the concept is heavily institutionalised through codes and oaths, and is now being re-mediated into technical systems via algorithmic reputation scores. Ultimately, the text highlights that honour is structurally under-specified, requiring simultaneous consideration of all mediated levels—bodily, cognitive, linguistic, and institutional—to be fully grasped.https://chatgpt.com/g/g-69258f9587f88191bfeac7593864c8d2-meow-mediated-encounter-ontology

The source offers a reflective overview of the testing phase for MEOW GPT, a custom Large Language Model grounded in the Mediated Encounter Ontology. The author describes conducting experiments using a range of inputs, from common objects like table to weighty concepts like truth and dignity. These tests confirmed that for simple concepts, the model presents the full conceptual landscape associated with the word, thereby necessitating user precision in language to narrow the scope. Crucially, the MEOW GPT proved robust when confronted with non-Western philosophical concepts such as karma and hózhó, often noting when Western interpretations amounted to cultural oversimplification. The author warns that the AI is designed to challenge fundamental assumptions and may shatter illusions for those with unwavering commitment to their concepts, potentially offending user's metaphysical sensibilities.👉 https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/26/meow-gpt-feedbackon-testing-meow-gpt-and-the-delicate-souls-it-might-upset/

The provided text is an announcement from the blog Philosophics introducing "MEOW GPT," a custom generative pre-trained transformer model created to apply the author’s philosophical frameworks. This AI model explicitly processes inputs through the Mediated Encounter Ontology (MEOW), which analyses concepts across four distinct tiers of mediation (T0–T3), and the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis (LIH), which explains the structural limitations of language. The announcement includes a detailed sample output where the MEOW GPT analyses the concept of modernity, breaking down its impact on biological, cognitive, linguistic, and socio-technical environments. The primary goal of the new tool is to offer a transparent and applied demonstration of how the author’s complex philosophical system operates.

The provided text, an excerpt from the work "MEOW: Solving Consciousness's Hard Problem with Grammar" by language philosopher Bry Willis, argues that the "hard problem of consciousness" is not a genuine metaphysical dilemma but an artefact manufactured by faulty grammar and conceptual framing within the English language. Willis introduces the MEOW framework (Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World) to dissolve the problem by treating experience as an encounter manifesting through layered mediations rather than assuming a gap between two substances ("mind" and "world"). These layers are detailed across Biological, Cognitive, Linguistic–Conceptual, and Cultural–Normative Mediation, with the Linguistic layer being primarily responsible for creating the illusion of the problem by forcing a binary opposition between "physical" and "experience." Ultimately, the text asserts that MEOW shows that the hard problem only exists because of a conceptual architecture that fails to model its own linguistic limitations.https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/25/how-meow-turns-a-metaphysical-mountain-into-a-linguistic-molehill/

The provided text, an excerpt from an essay titled "The Hard Problem Was Never Consciousness" on the Philosophics blog, argues that the central difficulty in the philosophy of mind is not consciousness itself, but rather the limitations of language used to discuss it. The author, Bry Willis, traces this idea back to 2018 when documenting the Language Insufficiency Hypothesis (LIH), which posits that words like "identity," "selfhood," and "free will" cannot bear the conceptual load placed upon them. Willis critiques prominent philosophers, including Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers, suggesting that Chalmers’ "hard problem of consciousness" is a linguistic artefact or "parlour trick" resulting from a failure to recognise language's inherent limits. Instead of seeking an emergent explanation for consciousness, the author proposes the Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World (MEOW), a relational metaphysics which, alongside LIH, aims to show what language was failing to describe, thereby demonstrating that the difficulty lies in the dictionary's limits, not a cosmic riddle.https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/24/the-hard-problem-was-never-consciousness/

The philosophical essay, "Seeing Red – Or, How the Enlightenment Got Colour-Blind," presents a critique of traditional Western metaphysical architectures—specifically Realism and Idealism—concerning the nature of perception, using colour as a primary case study. The author introduces the MEOW thesis, which posits that properties like redness are not located "in" the mind or "in" the world but rather exist in the event of the encounter between the two. The central argument is that perception is never "raw" but is instead thoroughly shaped by four layers of mediation: Biological (T₀), Cognitive (T₁), Linguistic–Conceptual (T₂), and Cultural–Normative (T₃). Ultimately, the text argues that colour is a "structured relational event" co-constituted by these layers interacting with stable constraint patterns, challenging the Enlightenment's view of objective, unmediated perception.👉 https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/24/seeing-red-or-how-the-enlightenment-got-colour-blind/

The provided text comprises excerpts from a scholarly essay titled "The Mediated Encounter Ontology of the World (MEOW)" by Bry Willis, an independent scholar, which proposes a relational metaphysics intended to resolve the long-standing debate between realism and idealism. Willis argues that this traditional conflict rests on a false dichotomy stemming from the inherited assumption that "mind" and "world" are independently existing substances. The MEOW framework asserts that the fundamental unit of reality is the encounter-event, a structured occurrence where mediation (biological, cognitive, cultural structure), presentational structure, and constraint (resistance or stability) co-emerge. Under this ontology, "mind" and "world" are treated as derivative abstractions—patterns distilled from regularities across these basic encounter-events—thereby accommodating objective constraint without requiring unmediated access to a hidden external world. The essay details MEOW's core commitments, contrasting it with adjacent traditions like phenomenology and enactivism, and outlines its implications for epistemology, philosophy of science, and cognitive theory.Full Essay on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17685689

The parable of the last unicorn is not a children's story. It's a thought experiment by philosopher Bry Willis. What does it mean to you? Discover more on the blog.🦄 https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/21/the-last-unicorn/

The provided sources constitute an essay, "Arriving Late to Massimi’s Party," written by Bry Willis, that places his version of Perspectival Realism in dialogue with that of Michela Massimi. Willis notes that while both projects share a foundation—rejecting universal objectivity and embracing situated knowledge—they diverge significantly, primarily because Massimi focuses on epistemology and scientific practice, whereas Willis focuses on ontology, structured resistance, and the deeper conditions of access to reality. Willis explicitly states that he is pursuing a "realism of resistance," unlike Massimi’s "realism of models," even though they are intellectual cousins rejecting both universalism and relativism. An accompanying disclaimer reveals that this essay was drafted by an AI (ChatGPT) based on extensive prior conversations between Willis and the model regarding his philosophical position. The source text thus serves as a meta-commentary on a philosophical concept and the AI-assisted process used to articulate it.👉 https://philosophics.blog/2025/11/22/arriving-late-to-massimis-party-perspectival-realism-in-parallel/

The provided text, Bry Willis' essay accompanying the parable about "The Last Unicorn," offers a philosophical argument that many fundamental societal concepts are merely foundational fictions invented to stabilise and legitimise social structures. The author contends that entities like 'the rule of law' or 'the rational agent' function as the titular unicorn: a necessary, invisible centre that allows the supporting architecture, or scaffolding, to maintain coherence without needing a basis in external truth. This coherence, which the essay terms "coherence without correspondence," arises because the instruments designed to measure the fiction instead measure one another, making the system self-confirming. Ultimately, the text argues that the true authority lies not in the mythical centre but in the instruments and the systems themselves, which become sovereign long after the originating myth loses its credibility. The danger lies in those who control the instruments forgetting that the fiction is a manufactured requirement, leading to the use of these empty foundations as weapons of control.