This short piece addresses how the possibility of humanity’s creating the technological singularity challenges and reshapes a host of traditional debates in the philosophy of religion about the significance of God’s status as creator.

This paper studies the market microstructure implications of uninformed trading volume. We capture uninformed volume using spikes in retail trading triggered by weekly advertisements (ads) in the Wall Street Journal that are largely duplicates. We report three findings. First, consistent with a positive volume-volatility relation, stock price volatility amplifies on recurring ad days. Second, informed investors time liquidity to trade more aggressively on recurring ad days. Third, despite the increase in informed trading on such days, price impact is lower, yielding a negative volume–price impact relation. Collectively, the evidence supports the theoretical predictions of Collin-Dufresne and Fos (2016).

Scholar-activism, which we define as scholarship that seeks to contribute knowledge to activism is often underappreciated. From a methodological perspective, the positionality of scholar-activists is too often misunderstood. Yet scholar-activism is a relatively common approach to generating new knowledge about hard-to-access, repressive contexts while also assisting political movements and their strategies. Feminist-informed scholarship necessitates scholar-activism because it is driven by an emancipatory purpose that demands critical reflexivity about the power of epistemology, boundaries, relationships, and the researcher’s situatedness (Ackerly and True 2020, 22). We argue that a deeper understanding of scholar-activism and lived experiences is vital for furthering knowledge and impact in the politics and gender field.

This article aims to explain the strains and paradoxes of how African communities have been unable to obtain legal access and control to expropriated or stolen cultural heritage held in foreign museums despite their increased participation in international cultural heritage law. Further, it outlines the strained relationship between communities’ participation in cultural heritage governance under international cultural heritage law and cultural heritage law in Kenya. Using a postcolonial critique, this article examines these cultural heritage laws using notions of communitarianism and relationality in relation to the African Renaissance. It is demonstrated that communities should have increased participation in cultural heritage governance and, as a result, access to and control over their appropriated cultural heritage held in foreign museums. The purpose of a post-colonial critique of cultural heritage laws seeks to allow states and communities to listen to each other as opposed to one replacing the other in matters of cultural heritage.

Detailed analysis of the expression ‘things in general and in themselves’ reveals two further uses of ‘noumenon’ (and ‘thing in itself’) in addition to the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ senses distinguished by Kant himself. It follows (pace various ‘reductive’ interpretations) that Kant’s transcendental distinction comprises four different contrasts. On a new resolution of the long-running ‘one or two objects?’ dispute, there follows a complete re-interpretation of Kant’s transcendental distinction as a meta-metaphysical thought experiment. It has the ‘metaphysical density’ necessary to forestall charges of ‘innocuousness’ without giving purchase to the well-known objections that have dogged Kant’s transcendental distinction from its inception.

A potent investigative instrument in the fight against highly sophisticated criminal schemes camouflaged by layers of secrecy is the sting operation. However, its application provokes crucial questions of legality and admissibility. Additionally, lack of legal provisions governing sting operations in India has resulted in conflicting judicial stances, calling for clarity on this issue. Hence, this paper examines the intricate legal and ethical challenges surrounding sting operations, which, on one hand, aid in uncovering serious offences and foster public interest but, on the other hand, threaten to infringe privacy rights and fairness of trials. The paper analyses international practices in Canada and the United States of America, alongside judicial precedents and scholarly opinions in India, and recommends statutory inclusion of sting operations in the Indian legal system. The paper proposes stringent judicial control, elaborate ethical guidelines to avoid staging crimes, and regulations on media reporting to maintain the delicate balance of public interest versus personal rights. The paper concludes with a model draft for legislative reform that seeks to strengthen the idea of justice without weakening fundamental rights.

This introduction outlines the motivation and significance of the first special issue dedicated to engaging philosophically with Afro-Brazilian religions in an Anglophone journal of philosophy. It traces the project’s origins, inspired by a need to diversify the philosophy of religion beyond traditional Western paradigms, and explores how Afro-Brazilian traditions like Candomblé and Umbanda challenge the discipline’s predominant focus on belief and intellectualized theism. By examining their ritual-centric practices, embodied epistemologies, and syncretic dynamics, the special issue demonstrates how these underrepresented traditions can enrich philosophical debates on metaphysics, epistemology, and religious diversity. The introduction also highlights the interdisciplinary methodology employed, emphasizing the integration of cultural anthropology and ethnography to explore emic concepts, rituals, and mythic narratives. This special issue seeks to inspire further philosophical engagement with Afro-Brazilian traditions and other neglected religious practices.

Democracies today do not collapse all at once, in an extreme and illegal manner, but erode gradually, through a series of subtle and seemingly legal measures. This challenges traditional theories of unconstitutional constitutional amendments, which are designed to address revolutionary changes that negate core features of the constitutional order. How should courts respond when a constitutional amendment comes at the early stages of a process of democratic erosion, when the ‘first brick’ is falling from the fortress of democracy, or when would-be autocrats slice the first piece from the ‘salami’ that is the democratic constitutional order? Against the backdrop of Israel's recent judicial overhaul, we argue that in countries experiencing incremental democratic erosion, courts must take a broad and contextual view and, when there is evidence that further anti-democratic moves are being planned, prevent that ‘first brick’ from falling. This is crucial to protect other democratic institutions, such as significant gatekeepers or constitutional courts.