Many argue that transgenic technology will have wide-ranging implications for farmers in developing nations. A key concern is that competencies may be destroyed by predominantly foreign multinational transgenic technologies, exacerbating problems of social exclusion in the case of subsistence farmers. Conversely, those that fail to adopt the technology may become uncompetitive, particularly in commodity-based export markets. Drawing on interview data conducted in Brazil and supporting data collected in North America, Europe and China, we found that the impact of transgenic technology (...) varies. It has less impact on farmers that adapt the products to their crop systems and environment, and greater negative implications for less formally educated subsistence farmers in consequence of both complexity and compatibility. Earlier attempts at industrializing agriculture through technological innovation led to vastly improved agricultural output and exports, but the benefits of productivity was not equitably distributed [D. Lee: 2005, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87, 1325-1334], nor was it designed to meet specific local environmental and socioeconomic farmer conditions, exacerbating social exclusion. Multinationals attempting to introduce transgenic technology without considering the broader social and ethical implications will invite resistance. We discuss the implications for policy makers, multinationals and small-scale farmers. (shrink)

"The demonization of the radical right ill serves us when now, more than ever before, it is vitally important to know all we can about this esoteric milieu's nature and potentialities…by…demonizing the many, we cloak the few, and, however unwittingly, facilitate the existence of evil in the world." —From the Introduction by Jeffrey Kaplan White power groups are universally vilified and feared. But to better understand the threat they pose, scholars and activists must try to better understand their disturbing ideas (...) and practices. In this controversial volume, Jeffrey Kaplan brings to light the workings of white supremacy movements in the United States and Europe in the years since World War II. The first half of the Encyclopedia is made up of over 100 entries—many of them essay-length—describing the people, groups and themes that make up the radical racist right. Some of the entries are written by movement activists themselves, providing useful insider accounts. The second half contains original resources circulated within the movement, each prefaced and placed in scholarly context by the editor. These documents, although offending, are invaluable to researchers and often available nowhere else. Cross-references and an index make the information easily accessible. For scholars of race, religion, politics or social movements, the Encyclopedia of White Power is an essential resource. (shrink)

Humans are experts in cooperating with each other when trying to accomplish tasks they cannot achieve alone. Recent studies of joint action have shown that when performing tasks together people strongly rely on the neurocognitive mechanisms that they also use when performing actions individually, that is, they predict the consequences of their co‐actor’s behavior through internal action simulation. Context‐sensitive action monitoring and action selection processes, however, are relatively underrated but crucial ingredients of joint action. In the present paper, we try (...) to correct the somewhat simplified view on joint action by reviewing recent studies of joint action simulation, monitoring, and selection while emphasizing the intricate interrelationships between these processes. We complement our review by defining the contours of a neurologically plausible computational framework of joint action. (shrink)

The strong word and stance issue only from a strict will, a will that dares the error of reading all of reality as a text, and all prior texts as openings for its own totalizing and unique interpretations. Strong poets present themselves as looking for truth in the world, searching in reality and in tradition, but such a stance, as Nietzsche said, remains under the mastery of desire, of instinctual drives. So, in effect, the strong poet wants pleasure and not (...) truth; he wants what Nietzsche named as "the belief in truth and the pleasurable effects of this belief." No strong poet can admit that Nietzsche was accurate in this insight, and no critic need fear that any strong poet will accept and so be hurt by demystification. The concern of this book, as of my earlier studies in poetic misprision, is only with strong poets, which in this series of chapters is exemplified by the major sequence of High Romantic British and American poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Emerson, Whitman, and Stevens, but also throughout by two of the strongest poets in the European Romantic tradition: Nietzsche and Freud. By "poet" I therefore do not mean only verse-writer, as the instance of Emerson also should make clear. Harold Bloom is DeVane Professor of the Humanities at Yale University. This article is the first chapter of his new book, Poetry and Repression, to be published by the Yale University Press. The book completes a tetralogy, of which the earlier volumes are The Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading, and Kabbalah and Criticism. See also: "Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again" by Jerome J. McGann in Vol. 2, No. 3; "The Poet as Elaborator: Analytical Psychology as a Critical Paradigm" by David D. Cooper in Vol. 6, No. 1. (shrink)

Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude represents an attempt at intellectual cooperation. No effort has been made, however, to attain unanimity of belief nor to proffer a platform of "planks" on which there is agreement. The consensus represented lies primarily in outlook, in conviction of what is most likely to be fruitful in method of approach. As the title page suggests, the volume presents a unity in attitude rather than a uniformity in results. Consequently each writer is definitively responsible (...) only for his own essay. The reader will note that the Essays endeavor to embody the common attitude in application to specific fields of inquiry which have been historically associated with philosophy rather than as a thing by itself. Beginning with philosophy itself, subsequent contributions discuss its application to logic, to mathematics, to physical science, to psychology, to ethics, to economics, and then again to philosophy itself in conjunction with esthetics and religion. The reader will probably find that the significant points of agreement have to do with the ideas of the genuineness of the future, of intelligence as the organ for determining the quality of that future so far as it can come within human control, and of a courageously inventive individual as the bearer of a creatively employed mind. (shrink)

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) Adam Smith draws on the Stoic idea of a Providence that uses everything for the good of the whole. The process is often painful, so the Stoic ethic insisted on conscious cooperation. Stoic ideas contributed to the rise of science and enjoyed wide popularity in Smith's England. Smith was more influenced by the Stoicism of his professors than by the Epicureanism of Hume. In TMS, Marcus Aurelius's "helmsman" becomes the "impartial spectator," who judges (...) actions in terms of the way they are seen by others. This is the key to justice, without which society collapses. Business school students should be taught that Smith's "invisible hand" is best understood as a universal rationality that uses just actions for the benefit of the whole. (shrink)

In this resource for educators, Harold F. Burks offers a comprehensive guide to the evaluation techniques and intervention strategies that have worked with many school children experiencing problems. Thus, Diagnosis and Remediation Practices for Troubled School Children attempts to: clarify the understanding of observed, unwanted child behavior symptoms ; investigate with educators and parents—and sometimes children—the possible causal factors that antedate these behavior manifestations; create in cooperation with parents and school personnel, innovative intervention techniques to help children learn accepted (...) behavior patterns. (shrink)

Perhaps the best way to understand Harold Bloom's enigmatic theory of "poetic misprision" is to avoid the immanent critique altogether. It is best described, rather , as a synthesis. Bloom seems to have taken Aristotle's mimesis and linked it to Freud's concept of sublimation,1 with particular emphasis on the role that sublimation plays in "the family romance." Even if one were to hedge a bit and take into account the fact that neo-Freudian re-evaluations of orthodox psychoanalysis have succeeded in (...) extracting the purely sexual component out of the psychodynamics of sublimation, one is still left with the notion of sublimation as anxiety producing. Thus it is that, according to Bloom, the modern poet, in particular, sublimates his imitation of a strong precursor poet. Since the emphasis today is on desexualizing libido, Freud's original sexual vocabulary seems to have survived for its metaphorical value alone; the "unconscious fear of castration," for example, is simply a metaphor for "the poet's fear of ceasing to be a poet," a man's fear of ceasing to be a man. No matter how much we "modernize" Freud, the fact will always remain that the psychoanalytic context is the context of psychopathology: "a variety of the uncanny." · 1. See Sigmund Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. A. A. Brill , pp. 625-26. David D. Cooper is an associate in the department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Using the critical paradigm developed in the present essay, he has written a book on Thomas Merton's poetry. See also: "Poetry, Revisionism, Repression" by Harold Boom in Vol. 2, No. 2; "Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again" by Jerome J. McGann in Vol. 2, No. 3. (shrink)

Rosenberg was a chronicler and a good one, yet much of his inner dialogue was not with the present so much as the omnipresent artistic past. The central question, posed early in his life, concerned a man's individuality. Dostoyevsky had called it his "dearest" possession. At no time, even in his Marxist youth, did Rosenberg relinquish his vision of the individual as the central, most important player in any drama. Rosenberg was positively possessed with Dostoyevsky's doubts. One can hear the (...) rant of the man from the underground repeatedly in Rosenberg's written works—the stubborn hero who maintains the right even to be absurd and to "desire for himself what is positively harmful and stupid" if he claims it as a right. The right of the individual to live up to man's nature which, as Dostoyevsky said, "acts as one whole, with everything in it, conscious or unconscious" was Rosenberg's most consistent ideal. The individual he most admired, both in himself and in others, was the artist. But only in spite of everything. No one was more alert to the tartufferie that bedevils the world of the artist. Rosenberg craved sincerity with the same kind of passion for it he had found in Dostoyevsky. Art and artifact would not be a substitute for ethics and hard thought. Rosenberg's deepest conviction is revealed in his 1960 essay, "Literary Form and Social Hallucination," which begins with Dostoyevsky complaining about literature that does not lead to truth. Dore Ashton, professor of art history at The Cooper Union, is the author of numerous works, includingArt Before Columbus, Poets and the Past, A Reading Of Modern Art, and, most recently, A Fable of Modern Art. Her previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "No More than an Accident?" appeared in the Winter 1976 issue. (shrink)

When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--indeed, so great that the sum far transcends the parts and represents something utterly new and different--we call that phenomenon emergence. When the chemicals diffusing in the primordial waters came together to form the first living cell, that was emergence. When the activities of the neurons in the brain result in mind, that too is emergence. In The Emergence of Everything, one of the leading scientists involved in the study of (...) complexity, Harold J. Morowitz, takes us on a sweeping tour of the universe, a tour with 28 stops, each one highlighting a particularly important moment of emergence. For instance, Morowitz illuminates the emergence of the stars, the birth of the elements and of the periodic table, and the appearance of solar systems and planets. We look at the emergence of living cells, animals, vertebrates, reptiles, and mammals, leading to the great apes and the appearance of humanity. He also examines tool making, the evolution of language, the invention of agriculture and technology, and the birth of cities. And as he offers these insights into the evolutionary unfolding of our universe, our solar system, and life itself, Morowitz also seeks out the nature of God in the emergent universe, the God posited by Spinoza, Bruno, and Einstein, a God Morowitz argues we can know through a study of the laws of nature. Written by one of our wisest scientists, The Emergence of Everything offers a fascinating new way to look at the universe and the natural world, and it makes an important contribution to the dialogue between science and religion. (shrink)

Much of the debate about identity in recent decades has been about personal identity, and specifically about personal identity over time, but identity generally, and the identity of things of other kinds, have also attracted attention. Various interrelated problems have been at the centre of discussion, but it is fair to say that recent work has focussed particularly on the following areas: the notion of a criterion of identity; the correct analysis of identity over time, and, in particular, the disagreement (...) between advocates of perdurance and advocates of endurance as analyses of identity over time; the notion of identity across possible worlds and the question of its relevance to the correct analysis of de re modal discourse; the notion of contingent identity; the question of whether the identity relation is, or is similar to, the composition relation; and the notion of vague identity. A radical position, advocated by Peter Geach, is that these debates, as usually conducted, are void for lack of a subject matter: the notion of absolute identity they presuppose has no application; there is only relative identity. Another increasingly popular view is the one advocated by Lewis: although the debates make sense they cannot genuinely be debates about identity, since there are no philosophical problems about identity. Identity is an utterly unproblematic notion. What there are, are genuine problems which can be stated using the language of identity. But since these can be restated without the language of identity they are not problems about identity. (For example, it is a puzzle, an aspect of the so-called “problem of personal identity”, whether the same person can have different bodies at different times. But this is just the puzzle whether a person can have different bodies at different times. So since it can be stated without the language of personal “identity”, it is not a problem about identity, but about personhood.) This article provides an overview of the topics indicated above, some assessment of the debates and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Chapter 1 : Introduction General Argument My aim is to survey some of the most influential philosophical writers on human nature from the time that ...

Professor Brown describes and criticises the major classical model of rationality and offers a new model of this central concept in the history of philosophy and of science.

Aesthetic internalism claims a link between judgement and motivation: aesthetic judgements bring with them motivations to act in characteristic ways. Critics object that there is a difference between merely liking something and judging it to be aesthetically good, and that it is our likings, not our aesthetic judgements, that motivate us. This paper develops a version of aesthetic internalism that can respond to this criticism. Wholehearted aesthetic judgements are characterized by stability, attention, and motivation. Making such judgements is an important (...) part of a good life, and so at least some aesthetic judgements are motivating. So we have reason to think that this version of aesthetic internalism is true. This paper defends wholehearted aesthetic internalism against objections, and assesses an argument from aesthetic internalism to aesthetic non-cognitivism. While wholehearted aesthetic internalism can only offer qualified support to non-cognitivism, it nonetheless offers a number of fruitful avenues for further work. (shrink)

Thats logic. LEWIS CARROLL, Through the Looking Glass 1-1. The fundamental problem of this work is the question of the nature of scientific inference.

Used by more than one million students around the world since its original publication, this introductory philosophy text makes accessible a wide range of philosophical issues closely related to everyday life. Emphasizing personal and immediate questions, the authors approach introductory philosophy through basic human questions rather than focusing on methodology or the history of thought. The text presents vital questions of contemporary interest in an overall framework of enduring concepts, interweaving coverage of various topics in art, history, and education. It (...) covers a variety of types of philosophy in depth, and both western and eastern perspectives are represented. Ideal for students who have no background in philosophy, Living Issues in Philosophy, 9/e simplifies technical language wherever possible; unfamiliar terms are clearly defined upon first appearance and in the end-of-chapter glossaries. Additional pedagogical features include exercises, chapter summaries, and annotated bibliographies at the end of every chapter. The text also features photo biographies of major philosophers and short excerpts from philosophical classics. (shrink)

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text--the original expression of Taoist philosophy--and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes the seminal text of (...) Taoism--_Inward Training (Nei-yeh)_--not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C. (the late Warring States period in China). These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text -- the original expression of Taoist philosophy -- and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes (...) the seminal text of Taoism -- _Inward Training _ -- not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C.. These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

In recent years largely due to the seminal work of Kit Fine and that of Jonathan Lowe there has been a resurgence of interest in the concept of essence and the project of explaining de re necessity in terms of it. Of course, Quine rejected what he called Aristotelian essentialism in his battle against quantified modal logic. But what he and Kripke debated was a notion of essence defined in terms of de re necessity. The new Aristotelian essentialists regard essence (...) as entailing but prior in the order of explanation to de re necessity. In what follows I argue that the concept of essence so understood has not been adequately explained and that any attempt to explain it, at least along the lines most familiar from the literature, must be flagrantly circular or make use of de re modal notions. (shrink)

Responses to skeptical arguments need to be _serious_: they need to explain not only why some premise of the argument is false, but also why the premise is _plausible_, despite being false. Moorean responses to skeptical arguments are inadequate because they are not serious: they do not explain the plausibility of false skeptical premises (Sects. 2–3). Skeptical arguments presuppose the truth of the following two claims: the requirements for epistemic justification are internalist, and these internalist requirements are never satisfied (with (...) respect to our beliefs about the external world). In this paper, I provide a serious response to the skeptic on behalf of the internalist: I explain why the claim that internalist requirements are never satisfied is plausible but false. First, I argue that the claim is plausible, but only insofar as one lacks an account of how perceptual experiences make it rational to hold beliefs about the external world (and the skeptic does lack such an account) (Sect. 4). Second, I provide such an account of experiential rationality, and I argue that in light of this account John McDowell can be understood as persuasively arguing that the claim that internalist requirements are never satisfied is false (Sects. 5–6). (shrink)

Harold Tarrant here explores ancient attempts to interpret Plato's writings, by philosophers who spoke a Greek close to Plato's own, and provides a fresh, ...

Analyzes the development of art during the past decade paying special attention to the works of Mondrian, Arp, Newman, and Dubuffet.

The paper defends Gareth Evan's argument against vague identity "de re" from a criticism that quantum mechanics provides actual counter-examples to its validity. A more general version of Evans's argument is stated in which identity involving properties are not essential and it is claimed that the scientific facts as so far known are consistent with the Evansian thesis that indeterminacy in truth-value must always be due to semantic indecision.

Considered ahead of its time since the first publication in 1981, Medical Choices, Medical Chances provides a telescope for viewing how developments in the fields of medical research, medical technology, and health care organization are likely to influence the doctor-patient relationship in the 21st Century. The book explores this intricate web of relationships among doctors, patients, and families and offers a new framework for mastering the emotional and intellectual challenges of uncertainty, while at the same time providing tools for all (...) concerned to regain control from managed care. It is a must-read for all those interested in medicine and where it is headed in the new millennium. (shrink)

David Cooper explores and defends the view that a reality independent of human perspectives is necessarily indescribable, a "mystery." Other views are shown to be hubristic. Humanists, for whom "man is the measure" of reality, exaggerate our capacity to live without the sense of an independent measure. Absolutists, who proclaim our capacity to know an independent reality, exaggerate our cognitive powers. In this highly original book Cooper restores to philosophy a proper appreciation of mystery-that is what provides a (...) measure of our beliefs and conduct. (shrink)