Working papers & published research
Research
Selected research on Ancient and Early Modern philosophy, with Vico, Plato, and Aristotle at its center.
Twelve projects
Current and selected work
Work across philosophical method, ancient ethics, natural philosophy, aesthetics, and comparative philosophy.
A Verification-Gated Architecture for AI-Assisted Research Production in the Humanities
Hyder Husain Arastu (University of South Florida), Aakash Shahani (Independent), Taher Ali (Independent)
This paper describes a verification-gated architecture for AI-assisted research production in the humanities—a systems and infrastructure contribution built around a closed, pre-manifested source corpus. A mechanical, script-run check settles whether a quotation resolves against that corpus, and a rule-based join settles whether a claim inherits its verification status, while paraphrase fidelity and source trust remain reserved for human or independent-agent review at every result, not only at failures. The architecture is demonstrated by applying it to itself: a meta-project run by two parallel moderating agents, one conducting the research and the other building a reference implementation of the design pattern under study.
Earlier drafts (31)
Drafts v9, v12, v22b and v23b are rebuilt from their archived sources; the remaining drafts are remade from archived PDFs (byline and metadata restored). Drafts v1–v8, v10 and v11 were not preserved.
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Palimnote project
An automated “interactive critical edition” platform: upload a difficult scholarly text and Palimnote produces an annotated reader, a resolved and classified citation apparatus, a personalized reading roadmap, a knowledge graph, and a library-grounded Socratic chat — governed throughout by a provenance-first, anti-hallucination design discipline.
About this project
Palimnote pairs a production TypeScript platform (Next.js web application, background research worker, and seventeen shared packages) with a companion scholarly manuscript that analyzes the system’s built mechanisms through the trust-calibration, cognitive-load, extended-mind, and metaphor literatures. The project page collects the full technical and scholarly documentation: the architecture and data model, every processing pipeline, the reading roadmap and curriculum engines, the research paper’s argument, and the governed research process behind it.
The Cartesians of the Letter, Not the Spirit: Vico’s Aristotelian Descartes
Within Vico scholarship, the starting point of Vico’s thought is taken to be a rejection of the Cartesian first principles. I argue that this is incorrect and that Vico instead proceeds from a foundation not too distinct from that of Descartes.
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This continuity is found when one considers his discussion of the ingenium parallel to Descartes’s work on the subject. Descartes’s discussion of the ingenium is most explicitly found in the Rules, but—as will be demonstrated—to a Latin reader like Vico the same line of thought is evident in the first part of the Discourse on Method. Second, this paper highlights two movements in Vico’s own thought—one Cartesian and one Aristotelian. It is of historical interest that interpreting Vico on these terms yields a Descartes that may be compatible with Aristotelian thought—precisely that mode which most Cartesians leave behind. To this end, this paper contributes both to Vico and Descartes scholarship. In the former case, it reinterprets Vico in a radically distinct manner and explains apparent discontinuities between his earlier work and his New Science.
Art, A Metaphor from Metaphors of Science
Brains are understood in terms of computers; doing so is elucidatory because we understand computers better than brains. Except, we understand computers through brain terms: neural networks and processing powers.
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Scientific theory is built on self-referential metaphors, and these serve as heuristics to scientific inquiry. Yet, to say that a work of art is an art-kind and in virtue of being an art-kind is a work of art is unsatisfactory. By reference to historical attempts at formulating an answer to the question, “What is Art?” I demonstrate underlying the concept of art is the same principle as science—metaphor.
Resurrecting God: Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam as a Response to Nietzsche’s Greatest Challenge—the Genuine Philosopher
Nietzsche asserts that after the death of God the only way to live meaningfully is through commanding and legislating values, but he is ambiguous as to how the future philosophers create values. I argue that this question takes center stage in Allama Mohammed Iqbal’s philosophy and poetry.
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This essay demonstrates this as the starting point of Iqbal’s philosophy and examines how he responds to the problem posed by Nietzsche through a rejection of his eternal recurrence and conception of time, which cannot admit of the possibility of creativity. I argue that Iqbal’s notion of Khudi, derived from his close reading of the Quran, provides an answer to creating values after the death of God. In a sense, this describes Iqbal as more Nietzschean than Nietzsche himself: under this interpretation Iqbal completes Nietzsche’s otherwise incomplete project—the genuine philosopher. I demonstrate both a reconciliation between eastern and western thought and simultaneously one between Islam and Nietzschean thought. This opens a bridge to an otherwise underexplored yet philosophically rich ground.
Plato’s Poetry: A Vichian Vivisection
Among the most puzzling aspects of Plato’s work is his banishing of the poets in the Republic. There has been little agreement on Plato’s motivations in doing this. This paper employs a novel approach using Vico’s New Science to understand the role of poetry and mimesis in Platonic education.
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It is argued here that the poet is banished from the city because of the ability to directly influence the appetites. It is then derived from this initial conclusion that engaging in poetry constitutes an unmediated ethical education. Since this education takes place without any rational mediation, the poet’s ability is simultaneously powerful and dangerous. This conclusion is arrived at through an investigation of the language employed in reference to the poets; this investigation derives from Vico’s work on the relations between the development of languages and the progression of thought from imaginative to universal. Though much has been written on Plato’s influence on Vico, this investigation employs Vico’s work as a hermeneutic aimed at interpreting puzzles within the Platonic corpus.
A Poetic Moral Education
Paper available as a public working draft.
Understanding Vice and Virtue in Aristotle: Nature, Fortune, and Foolishness
Published in Southwest Philosophy Review 42, no. 1 (2026), 75–81.
Always and for the Most Part—but Not for the Sake of
A concern within contemporary discussions of Physics II.8 is the place of natural phenomena in teleology, whether or not rain is for a purpose or if it is accidental. Through the course of this paper I argue for a third position that sidesteps the dichotomy. By appeal to Aristotle’s discussion of residue, I argue that there is space for phenomena which occur always and for the most part but are not for a purpose.
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This discussion is instrumental to the later argument that within Aristotle’s discussion of teleology in the sublunary realm we must discuss first the material cause and the final cause only after this. Nature acts on what is already available to it. There are cases where nature can directly incorporate the available material and form the more important organs out of it; cases where nature can reappropriate the material left over from primary teleological processes; and material which is not appropriated because it has been exhausted. This last class includes useless residues. A more nuanced understanding of residue allows us to collapse the dichotomy derived from Physics II.8 and permits us to posit processes that are always and for the most part and yet not for the sake of anything. Rain becomes parallel with cephalopod ink: its material origin can be explained without teleology while its later use may still serve an end.
Psychology Meets Philosophy: Objectification Theory in a New Light
Paper available as a public working draft.
The Fifth Genre of the Historiography of Philosophy: Rationally Reconstructing Nietzsche
Paper available as a public working draft.
Pascal’s Cross and Nietzsche’s Abyss
Paper available as a public working draft.