Correspondences

Issue 94 March 2026

Humanism After the Algorithm

This essay examines how artificial intelligence challenges core humanist commitments to reason, moral responsibility, and human judgment. Rather than treating AI as a technical innovation or future speculation, the essay approaches it as a philosophical problem: the emergence of systems whose conclusions increasingly guide human decisions while appearing objective, neutral, and resistant to scrutiny. It argues that the primary risk posed by AI is not replacement of human intelligence, but deference to automated authority. Drawing on themes from epistemology and ethics, the essay explores how algorithmic systems affect moral judgment, empathy, personal agency, and the human search for meaning. While artificial systems may extend human analytical capacity, the essay contends that interpretation, accountability, and ethical responsibility remain irreducibly human. Written for a philosophically engaged, non-specialist audience, the piece defends a humanist framework that emphasizes skepticism, transparency, and responsibility in an increasingly algorithmically mediated world.

The Architecture of Misalignment: Visualizing Domain Coordination in Embodied Experience

Contemporary approaches to emotion and embodiment often diverge along bottom-up (somatic) and top-down (cognitive) lines, giving rise to disagreements about the origins of feeling, the role of meaning, and regulation mechanisms. This paper introduces a visual–operational framework that distinguishes body-led and mind-led domains as coupled operating systems governed by different rules for safety, security, attention, and boundary behavior. Misalignment is modeled as forced single-domain operation, while coherence is defined as restored domain coordination enabling voluntary switching and bidirectional exchange. Through diagrams and visual translation artifacts, the framework functions as an orientation interface that renders existing approaches complementary and interoperable.

Tree Veneration in the Time of the Anthropocene: Why Trees Matter and Why a Cultural Response Matters Too

This article introduces the Tree Veneration Society (TVS), an interdisciplinary charity of eco-artists and scientists dedicated to fostering cultural and ecological awareness of trees. While scientific research clearly demonstrates the essential role of forests in climate regulation and biodiversity, the article argues that meaningful environmental action also requires shifts in perception, values, and cultural narratives. Drawing on Deep Ecology and eco-art practice, the article presents tree veneration as a relational framework that reconnects humans with the living world. TVS’s exhibitions, workshops, and public programs are discussed as practical models for cultivating ecological care and responsibility.

Reflections on the Evolution of Consciousness

Primarily a visual artist, Paul Forte also writes essays and poetry. Forte’s career as an artist began in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970’s. Influenced early on by Conceptual art, Forte has employed a variety of media over the years to realize ideas, including making and self-publishing artist’s books and related objects.
“An experimental approach to art making coupled with an abiding sense of the poetic are the hallmarks of my art. It is an art that has explored this approach and sensibility through a variety of media and artforms over the years: Word works and poetry, artist’s books and book works, performance art, drawings, collage, montage, and assemblage. Central to much of this work is the use of found or appropriated material.”

From Curvature to Creation : What π really measures

Sabahat Fida is a lecturer in Zoology with the Higher Education Department in Kashmir. With academic training spanning in both the sciences (MSc Zoology) and the humanities (MA Philosophy), her work seeks to bridge the realms of science, metaphysics, religion, and philosophy. ‘From curvature to creation: what pi really measures’ explores the philosophical implications of the mathematical constant π. The piece traces π from its definition to its quiet governance of physical laws and biological form, arguing that its ubiquity points to a mathematically ordered cosmos.

No One Writes to the Colonel

Florian Coulmas is Professor emeritus of Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies at Duisburg-Essen University. He has published numerous books, including one about Hiroshima, where he once lived. In 2016, he was awarded the Meyer-Struckmann-Prize for Research in Arts and Social Sciences.

As above, so below: ‘Organic Worlds’ celebrates human-nature symbiogenesis

Curated by Dr. Charissa Terranova at the SP/N Gallery at The University of Texas at Dallas, ‘Organic Worlds: Symbiogenesis in Art’ tackles its subject matter(s) of organisms and organicism, and, arguably, of the Great Chain of Being and Lynn Margulis’ theory of symbiogenesis. ‘Organic Worlds’ seats mankind as conscious players in the biological Great Chain of Being — below God and above rock — and invites the layman viewer to introspect upon and engage with the commemorations of life in this exhibition.

Voyage to a Beginning: A review of Gary Lachman’s ‘Touched by the Presence’

Luke Gilfedder, a British author and modernist scholar, reviews Gary Lachman’s new memoir, ‘Touched by the Presence: From Blondie’s Bowery and Rock and Roll to Magic and the Occult’. ‘Touched by the Presence’ follows Lachman’s journey from founding member of Blondie to prolific writer on consciousness, counterculture, and the Western esoteric tradition. The book offers a distinctive perspective on the intersection of the arts, existentialism, and the philosophy of consciousness, as experienced by a young person undergoing a major life transition – from member of a world-famous band to full-time author.

Gisela Colón: Radiant Earth

Mesmerizing, light-infused artworks take over the Bruce Museum’s Sculpture Gallery in “Gisela Colón: Radiant Earth”. Showcasing nine luminescent sculptures, the exhibition offers a powerful introduction to the work of internationally acclaimed sculptor Gisela Colón, whose radiant forms explore the profound forces and energies of the natural world.

Rutherford Chang: Hundreds and Thousands

Rutherford Chang’s first institutional solo presentation ‘Hundreds and Thousands’ is at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Rutherford Chang (1979-2025) was a New York-based conceptual artist whose practice revolved around collection, repetition, cultural memory, and value. His work often recontextualized everyday media, transforming their significance to reveal underlying cultural narratives. This marks the first posthumous exhibition for the artist and first solo museum exhibition as well as the worldwide debut of several works.

Major theories of consciousness may have been focusing on the wrong part of the brain

Peter Coppola is a Visiting Researcher, Cambridge Neuroscience, University of Cambridge.
“Most of my work focuses on network dynamics, graph theory and consciousness. I am very interested in neurological and neuropsychological cases and what these can tell us regarding consciousness. I intend to investigate how the neuroscience of consciousness can be integrated in clinical psychological practice and ethics.”

How conversation works – and why people with hearing loss rely more on their powers of prediction

Ruth Corps is an Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Sheffield.
“I specialise in the cognitive mechanisms supporting conversation and the broader impacts of conversational breakdown and difficulty. My work has predominantly focused on student populations, but I am increasingly interested in populations that struggle with communication (such as those with hearing loss or ADHD) and how these difficulties develop across the lifespan.
I completed both my MA (Hons) in Psychology and my MSc in Psychology of Language at the University of Dundee and my PhD in the Psychology of Language at the University of Edinburgh. My PhD investigated the predictive mechanisms that support rapid turn-taking during conversation, focusing on how predicting what another person is likely to say help us determine what we should say and when we should say it.
After graduating, I stayed at Edinburgh for a further two years as a postdoctoral researcher, investigating how another person’s perspective may help us predict what they are likely to say. I then spent four years at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, investigating the mechanisms supporting conversation in real-world interactions.”