Published Works by Theme

Examines the historical tendency of Western philosophy to conceive order as a pre-existing foundation prior to its own naming. Through engagement with Foucault, Derrida, Butler, Simondon, Deleuze, and Prigogine, it argues that order is a contingent and situated effect — not a primordial given — and that naming is a material operation capable of reorganising the field of the possible.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16879435 · PhilArchive: COTTRI

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "The Retrospective Illusion of Origin – Order as Post-Nomination." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16879435

A radical reformulation of the concept of the symbol, displacing it from representational traditions toward a relational materialist ontology. Through the distinction between trace, mark, and symbol, the text constructs a rigorous terminology for inscription as functional reorganisation of matter. The quantum experiment — in particular the wave function as a technical operator that reorganises probabilities — serves as the philosophical paradigm of inscription of material possibility.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16936941 · PhilArchive: COTTSA-2

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "The Symbol as Material Operation – A Quantum Example." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16936941

Proposes a radical reformulation of contemporary ontology through the concept of inscription as a material and symbolic operation that stabilises differences under local conditions. Inscription is presented as an ontogenetic gesture that does not reveal essences but reorganises material instabilities into legible marks. Finitude is reframed not as restriction but as configurative power: there is inscription only because there is cut, and meaning only because every mark excludes an infinity of alternatives.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16904110 · PhilArchive: COTTIA-3

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "The Inscription as Ontogenesis: Finitude, Emergence and the Philosophical Gesture — a Quantum Example." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16904110

Taking as its starting point the shared refusal of substance, foundation, and transcendence across post-structuralism, complexity theory, and the sociology of associations, the essay identifies the operational question such convergence leaves open: what drives the emergence of novelty without reinstating ontological reserves under new guises. Through a demarcating engagement with Deleuze, Prigogine/Morin, Maturana/Varela, and Latour, it proposes the concept of the operative excess of present matter and makes explicit the trace–mark–symbol chain.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18731433 · PhilArchive: COTFRT

Citation: Cota, David. 2026. "From Refusal to Excess: Confluences and Demarcations in the Contemporary Philosophical Landscape." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18731433

Argues that even the most radical critiques of metaphysics — from Plato and Aristotle to Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Badiou, and Butler — remain tethered to a demand for origin and legitimacy, reinscribing a principle of grounding under new guises. Proposes a symbolic alternative that reframes philosophy as a gesture of symbolic reinscription rather than revelation, making thought the operative reorganisation of unstable matter.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16877842 · PhilArchive: COTTIO-2

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "The Impossibility of Western Philosophy to Liberate Itself from Metaphysics." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16877842

Proposes an ontological approach to the distinction between truth and falsehood, shifting the debate from moral and epistemic registers to the material plane of language. Proof is defined not as a technical or consensual procedure but as the confrontation between symbolic inscription and material alterity — that which continues to make a difference across variable contexts of action and inference.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17220457 · PhilArchive: COTOOT

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Ontology of the Difference Between Truth and Fiction." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17220457

Analyses how social platforms operate as ontopolitical infrastructures whose ontotechnical design reallocates the conditions and costs of proof. By indexing value to attention capture — clicks, shares, dwell time — they make functional falsehood operationally superior. The essay reframes the question of intentionality: when falsehood is largely a systemic effect rather than a deliberate act, philosophical responsibility must operate across design, institutional, and individual planes simultaneously.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17238158 · PhilArchive: COTTOD

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "The Operatory Dissolution of Truth: Ontotechnics of Functional Falsehood." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17238158

Taking Nietzsche's thesis — that truth is sought only when it serves life — as its starting point, the essay explores the mechanisms of symbolic stabilisation that sustain the narrative cohesion of individuals and societies. Narrative stabilisation is presented not as cognitive error but as a normal and necessary function in the process of matter's complexification; truth emerges as a functional operator within cycles of stabilisation and reorganisation.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16849535 · PhilArchive: COTTSO-4

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "The Survival of the Narrative: Nietzsche, Truth, and Self-Preservation." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16849535

Examines the contemporary condition of philosophy under the regime of emission without listening: textual proliferation detached from any interlocutive function. Three diagnostic nuclei are developed — textual inflation as a symptom of symbolic disarticulation, citation transformed into an emblem of belonging rather than a conceptual operator, and algorithmic silencing that reduces difference to statistics of compatibility. Against this scenario, listening and hesitation are proposed as ontological conditions of thought.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16951507 · PhilArchive: COTPIT

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Philosophy in the Age of Emission without Listening." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16951507

Proposes a rigorous ontological clarification within contemporary debates on quantum physics: the distinction between probability as a regime of prediction and the real as material dynamics. Quantum physics does not describe an ontologically fluctuating world but a world whose symbolic access is structurally limited. On this basis, Born's statistical interpretation, decoherence theory, Bell's theorems, and the PBR result are examined as formal costs imposed on any ontology that conflates formalism and reality.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18111228 · PhilArchive: COTWPI

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "When Probability Is Not the Real: Stability and Concretion in Quantum Physics." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18111228

Proposes an operative ontology of quantum mechanics grounded in a disciplined separation between the real (material dynamics), the concrete (the mark as irreversible inscription), and theory (symbolic organisation of predictions). To exist is to acquire material stability under constraints — to maintain sufficient functional consistency to produce real differences. On this basis, classical paradoxes of superposition, interference, entanglement, and measurement are dissolved without reifying the formalism or resorting to inflationary ontologies.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18179356 · PhilArchive: COTOOO

Citation: Cota, David. 2026. "Operative Ontology of Quantum Physics: Regimes, Stability, and Mark." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18179356

A philosophical reading of Bell's theorem as an ontological constraint rather than a technical curiosity. The EPR demand for 'completeness' is interpreted as the defence of an inventory ontology: the real as a set of pre-inscribed properties, locally attributable and defined for measurement counterfactuals. The CHSH inequality functions as a symbol-operator — a quantitative device that renders testable the compatibility between that ontological grammar and empirically inscribable patterns of correlation.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18090193 · PhilArchive: COTBTA

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Bell's Theorem and the Interdiction of Classical Separability." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18090193

Argues that the controversy over the status of ψ is distorted when three irreducible planes are conflated: the real, the concrete, and theory. The PBR theorem does not show that ψ is a physical entity; it only constrains models that posit a hidden-state space Λ and a bridge μψ(λ) between preparation and ontology. This bridge reifies the linear structure of Hilbert space and clashes with Born's quadratic rule, failing to carry phases and cancellations.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18259595 · PhilArchive: COTTES

Citation: Cota, David. 2026. "The Epistemic Status of the Wavefunction: A Materialist Critique of the Pusey–Barrett–Rudolph Theorem." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18259595

Argues that many interpretative paradoxes in quantum mechanics arise from a systematic confusion between regimes of description and regimes of existence. Degeneracy is reinterpreted as a limit of individuation defined by the experimental cut; the density matrix is treated as an epistemic operator for incomplete knowledge rather than a reified entity; interference and superposition are traced to the way the calculus organises possibilities prior to their separation by a mark. Entanglement is analysed as epistemic correlation, not dynamical non-separability.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18166211 · PhilArchive: COTOEA

Citation: Cota, David. 2026. "Ontology, Epistemology, and Quantum Reality." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18166211

Revisits Einstein's distinction between principle theories and constructive theories to reassess quantum mechanics in a material–operatory key. The Bohmian reading is evaluated as a realisation of the constructive ideal: it introduces microstructure (particles with positions and a guidance law) and treats the wave function as an operative symbol — a material structure that represents material relations and organises non-signalling global dependencies — thereby dispensing with ontological collapses.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17478111 · PhilArchive: COTFPT

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "From Prediction to Legibility: Quantum Mechanics as a Constructive Programme." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17478111

Reconfigures semantic operation in the context of statistical learning machines. Statistical learning is reframed as technical inscription of materially stable patterns — without recourse to an intentional subject. The ethical dimension is explicitly addressed: materially inscribed biases and the question of responsibility in non-subjective systems require critical engagement with the computational infrastructures that enable this new regime of operation.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17650070 · PhilArchive: COTSOA

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Statistical Operation and Technical Inscription: An Ontology of Non-Subjective Semantic Operation." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17650070

Analyses the different forms of symbolic inscription of the origin of the universe, from classical philosophy to contemporary cosmology. In Plato and Aristotle, the intelligibility of the cosmos is guaranteed by concealed subjects — silent instances that ensure order without voice or narrative agency. In the biblical narrative, this function is reorganised in the figure of God as a fully functional subject. In modern science, intelligibility derives from a plural, collective, and distributed subject constituted by researchers, apparatuses, and mathematical languages.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17058552 · PhilArchive: COTSOO

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Symbolic Ontologies of Origin: from Classical Philosophy to Modern Cosmology." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17058552

Investigates the symbolic formation of the figure of God in Christianity, highlighting structural continuity with classical Greek metaphysics. The Platonic Demiurge and the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover are not theological gods but conceptual operators that render the world legible and thought orientable. Christian theology repurposes these functions, attributing to them language, will, and agency — a synthesis of philosophical principles, mythical narratives, and religious symbolic dispositifs.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17046100 · PhilArchive: COTFCM

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "From Classical Metaphysics to Christian Theology." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17046100

Examines the structural limitations of inherited morality in addressing unprecedented ethical dilemmas posed by the rapid emergence of artificial intelligences, human–machine hybrids, and non-human life forms. Drawing a sharp distinction between morality — as a historically situated codification of norms — and ethics — as a situated, critical, and adaptive practice — the text argues that only ethics can provide coherent guidance when facing realities without historical precedent.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17626159 · PhilArchive: COTTHM

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "The Hesitant Minds: The Weight of Choice Before the New." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17626159

Advances an original philosophical framework for understanding the ontological and ethical bifurcation that becomes explicit within post-singularity conditions. Introduces the concept of an 'ontology of response', proposing that intelligence — whether human or artificial — becomes ethically significant not through predictability or internal experience, but through its symbolic capacity to respond to irreducible alterity. The singularity is reframed not as technological rupture but as the historical threshold through which a pre-existing ontopolitical divergence — between symbolic responsiveness and algorithmic normativity — becomes irreducible.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16862809

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Between Response and Norm: The Ethical Bifurcation of Post-Singularity Intelligence." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16862809

A philosophical critique of rigid universalism: the mechanism by which observable recurrences are elevated to essential necessities, transforming patterns of occurrence into determinations of being. This movement sustains episteme — to know is to produce statements whose necessity exceeds individual cases and survives variation — while installing a confusion of regimes. Matter is proposed as the immanent operator of revision: it is constitutively capable of producing cases that compel the rewriting of the protocol.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18727584 · PhilArchive: COTPOU

Citation: Cota, David. 2026. "Protocols of Universalisation: Ontological Rigidity, Symbolic Closure, and Matter as a Revisionary Instance." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18727584

Any entity defined as existing outside spacetime is, by that very definition, inaccessible to any mark. The impossibility is not empirical but structural: spacetime constitutes the condition of possibility for inscription, and without inscription there is no fact. Applied to Ruth Kastner's Relativistic Transactional Interpretation and to Everett's many-worlds interpretation, the argument identifies in both cases the same structural property: immunity to refutation by domain definition. A thesis irrefutable by construction does not produce knowledge; it produces belief.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18895997 · PhilArchive: COTTMA

Citation: Cota, David. 2026. "The Mark as the Limit of the Real: On the Ontological Impossibility of Entities Beyond Spacetime." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18895997

Defends philosophy as a rational practice founded on knowledge, in contrast with approaches that confuse it with mythopoetic narrative or metaphysical speculation. Through the analysis of the proposition 'Evil is a cosmic force', it demonstrates how certain formulations fail when confronted with the criteria of intelligibility, criticisability, and public justification. The persistence of the term metaphysics, even in contemporary discourses that deny the transcendent, reintroduces through language precisely that which it seeks to refuse.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16937687 · PhilArchive: COTPIN

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Philosophy Is Not the Invention of Narratives: Reason, Knowledge, and the Refusal of Metaphysics." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16937687

Understanding form as an integrated configuration — body, cognitive and relational dispositions, technical-symbolic couplings — the essay shows how the displacement of risk from early mortality to effective reproductive fitness reparametrises evolution. In the technogenic niche, informational mediation of encounter, functional externalisation, and mental health operate as a selective channel. A verification programme is proposed, defending that data operate as philosophical operators that make capillary selection measurable.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17447988 · PhilArchive: COTFIN

Citation: Cota, David. 2025. "Form Is Never Final: Second-Order Nature and Capillary Selection." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17447988

Examines the foundationalist assumption shared by Descartes and Spinoza that genuine knowledge requires an absolute ground. It argues that the architectural metaphor of epistemology silently imports false assumptions about temporal sequence, systemic unity, and the global propagation of failure. In its place, the essay proposes an emergentist materialist account of reason as a historically reinscribed symbolic reorganisation of matter, validated through operative practices without transcendence or ultimate foundations.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19197664 · PhilArchive: COTKWF · Academia.edu: available

Citation: Cota, David. 2026. "Knowing Without Foundations: A Materialist Critique of Classical Rationalism." Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19197664

Forthcoming — Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16854132

Explores the symbolic and philosophical implications of quantum theory beyond its mathematical formalism, focusing on the ontological consequences of indeterminacy, relationality, and observation. Reframes quantum phenomena as sites of performative ambiguity where reality is neither fixed nor fully knowable, but always contingent upon interaction and inscription.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16854132

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5156-7043 · Zenodo profile · PhilPeople profile · travessia.online