Philip Pepper

Substituted Coupling: A Coupling-Architecture Mechanism in the 2026 Energy and Sanctions Crises

Coupling architectures — the infrastructural, contractual, and institutional arrangements through which a polity receives critical external flows — are not neutral conduits. They are attack surfaces. This paper formalises one case of the general mechanism: when a polity reduces d...

Paradox as Structural Feature: A Coupling-Dynamics Account of Self-Referential Systems

This paper argues that paradoxes of self-reference — paradigmatically the liar and Russell's paradox — are the limit case of a coupling-dynamics mechanism that operates throughout the coupling spectrum between assessment channels and the systems they assess. Under this account, p...