As I understand it, Cardith Lorda's Philosophical Trait is simply his 'default' setting for Adaptive. Otherwise, they'd have, what, FIVE traits? Nuh-uh. Practiaclly speaking, it's just the three... Expansive, Sprawling, and Adaptive (which defaults to Philosophical).
That being said... there IS actually a bug in the Kuriotates trait system, which is actually related to the default of Philosophical. One of the effects of Philosophical is that it eliminates the upkeep cost for all Education civics. In my game, I swapped it for Creative (early city rush) and later Arcane (just after developing Knowledge of the Ether). However, I'm still not paying anything for Education civics...
I'd upload a save, but apparently my save file is just barely over the limit, so I can't. It should be easy to confirm, though... just start any game as the Kuriotates, switch off Philosophical, and see if any upkeep costs are listed for the Education civics.