Regarding the metaverse, there is a mix of optimistic views that it will liberate people from the real society's oppressive culture and the physical body's constraints, and pessimistic views that it will not. This paper makes a ‘melioristic’ proposal, which is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but aims to redesign the use of the metaverse for the better. It analyzes the characteristics of the metaverse as a communication space. The paper then introduces the pessimists' criticisms that the real society's undesirable practices (such as gender stereotypes, ableism, etc.) are being brought into the metaverse. Finally, it argues that the problems pointed out can be solved by redesigning both the technology and practices of the metaverse, and proposes specific solutions to these issues.

The aim of this paper is twofold. The first is to show how Kripke's influential discussion of the rule-following paradox (Kripke 1982) is at bottom motivated by a rationalist idea about knowledge of meaning that each linguistic agent should be able to non-inferentially know what one's own words mean, qua a speaker who confers meanings on them by their use. The second is to argue that a promising strategy for incorporating the rationalist idea is to recognize how the required kind of non-inferential knowledge of meaning is implicated in a speaker's practical ability to perform what I call acts of meaning explication.

In this paper, I defend the theory theory of understanding others against interaction theorists' challenge. According to the theory theory, our understanding of others relies on theoretical inference employing folk psychological knowledge. However, interaction theorists claim that our comprehension of others is a perceptual process embedded in practical interaction, which is not describable as a theoretical inferential process. I examine the arguments of theory theorists concerning the role of theoretical inference in perception and action. I also introduce the account of the perception of social affordance that can align with theory theory. Building upon these discussions, I propose an interpretation and the explanatory model of our experience of understanding others, wherein theoretical inference complements perceptual processes by providing a perceptual representation of other minds and affordance for interaction. Consequently, this paper concludes that the theory theory can interpret and explain our perceptual and interactive understanding of others.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the conceptualism/nonconceptualism debate does not matter in the direction suggested by McDowell's current position. In section 1 I introduce the distinction between perception and judgment that is the premise of conceptualism. I then present three interpretations (content, state, and capacity) of perceptual experience as “conceptual”. Section 2 takes up McDowell's later article “Avoiding the Myth of the Given”, in which he makes the substantive change. In section 3, I show that the conceptualism debate should not be taken seriously, by pointing to “the capacity view” presented by McDowell as a Disjunctivist and his successors, according to which the distinction between perception and judgment disappears.