The relationship between Marxism and ecology has been sullied by Martinez-Alier's influential interpretation of Engels's reaction to the agricultural energetics of Sergei Podolinsky. This introduction to the first English translation of Podolinsky's 1883 Die Neue Zeit piece evaluates Martinez-Alier's interpretation in light of the four distinct but closely related articles Podolinsky published over the years 1880–3. This evaluation also emphasises the important but previously underrated role of energy analysis in Marx's Capital. Engels's criticisms of Podolinsky are found to be quite (...) justified from both political-economy and ecological perspectives. From the standpoint of Marx and Engels's metabolic and class-relational approach to production, Podolinsky's attempt to reduce use-value to energy is fraught with problems. Podolinsky's energy reductionism does not even come close to representing an alternative value analysis – let alone a groundbreaking perspective on ecological history – as was suggested by Martinez-Alier. Far from Marx and Engels's vision of communism as an ecologically sustainable and coevolutionary human development, Podolinsky's conception of human labor as an energy accumulation machine seems to uncritically mimic the standpoint of the capitalist interested in using nature only to extract as much energy throughput as possible from the labour-power of the worker. (shrink)

In an earlier article, I responded to Ted Benton's charge that Marx and Engels, upon realising the political conservatism associated with Malthusian natural limits arguments, retreated from materialism to a social-constructionist conception of human production and reproduction. I showed that Benton artificially dichotomises the material and social elements of historical materialism, thereby misreading Marx and Engels's recognition of the historical specificity of material conditions as an outright denial of all natural limits. In place of Marx and Engels's materialist and class-relational (...) approach to population issues and the reserve army of the unemployed, Benton employs a partially Malthusianised Marxism heavily reliant on ahistorical notions of natural limits. (shrink)

The rejection of the ‘dialectics of nature’ has long been thought of as the most fundamental factor distinguishing Western Marxism from official Soviet-style Marxism. Yet, in Tailism and the Dialectic, Georg Lukács – perhaps the most influential figure in Western Marxism – strongly endorses the existence of an objective dialectic in nature. A close examination of Lukács’s main writings on science shows, however, that he still in effect denied the possibility of applying dialectical method to nature. This paradox is bound (...) up with a dualistic conception of natural and social science with distinctly adverse implications for the development of an ecological Marxism. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a rethinking and renewal of Marxism on various levels, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s when New-Left movements in the developed capitalist countries combined with Maoist, Guevarist, and other Third-World liberation struggles to challenge the ossified theory and practice of Soviet-style communism and traditional social democracy. More recently, the rethinking of Marxism has been driven largely by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its official Marxist ideology, and by the movement toward neoliberal ‘free market’ policies (...) on a global scale, which together have brought forth a tidal wave of frankly pro-capitalist as well as ‘postmodern’ left varieties of ‘end of history'-type thinking. The contemporary challenge to Marxism, however, also has a positive side in the form of popular revolts against the neoliberalisation of the global economy – the Chiapas rebellion in Mexico, the December 1995 public sector upheavals in France, and many others, not to mention the heroic struggle of the Cuban people against the threat of recolonisation by US and global capital. Here the challenge is to incorporate the changing forms of working-class movement, and their new prefigurations of post-capitalist society, into the theory and practice of Marxian communism. (shrink)

Presents a response to the Paul Burkett's review of the book ``Ecology and Historical Materialism.'' Overview of the book; Details of the criticisms presented by Burkett; Information on sociologist Karl Marx's theory of history.

What would happen if you made your business decisions by the book? By the Bible that is. This updated version of the best-selling Business by the Book offers radical principles of business management that go beyond the Ten Commandments and other biblical maxims. Business by the Book is a step-by-step presentation of how businesses should be run according to the Creator of all management rules: God. Larry Burkett, founder and president of Christian Financial Concepts, provides business principles from his (...) own experience as well as what God’s Word says on topics such as: Hiring and Firing Decisions Pay Increases and Promotions Management Selection Employee Pay Decisions Borrowing and/or Lending Decisions Forming Corporations and Partnerships Business Tithing Retirement Whether you are the owner of a business, a corporate executive, or a manager, this best-selling classic is for you. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'oversimplification'. The fallacy of oversimplification occurs when we attempt to make something appear simpler by ignoring certain relevant complexities. Sometimes oversimplification makes sense. The world can be a convoluted place, and we may need to ignore certain factors in order to get our heads around certain thorny ideas. But in other cases, oversimplification can be used deliberately to deceive or divide people. In order to avoid the fallacy, we (...) need to become comfortable with accepting complicated answers to certain questions. When we obscure, ignore, or simply fail to identify certain factors, we run a high risk of misunderstanding reality. If we try to address an issue on the basis of this mistaken understanding, there is a good chance our actions will ‐ at best ‐ be ineffective, or ‐ at worst ‐ exacerbate the very problem we are trying to solve. (shrink)

Zen teachings--infused with elements of memoir--by a popular modern teacher who "grew up" at the feet of two of the great figures who brought Zen to America, Shunryu Suzuki and Dainin Katagiri. He employs his reminiscences of those two great masters as teaching anecdotes. Tim Burkett was twenty when he met Suzuki Roshi, and it was love at first sight. He immediately quit pursuing the career in law to which his illustrious family of jurists inclined him, and became a (...) serious Zen student. He went on to become a licensed psychotherapist and then followed Katagiri Roshi to Minneapolis to become a founder of the Zen scene there. He never left. Now that he's himself a revered Zen teacher, he's decided to articulate his own view of Zen. He structures the teaching according to five not-necessarily sequential levels on the road to enlightenment: (1) commitment to the path, (2) studying the self, (3) cultivating compassion and equanimity, (4) perseverance, and (5) emptiness. This is an introduction to Zen teaching that reads like an intriguing memoir, as the author discovers the teaching in the people, places, and experiences he encounters in the course of his practice. (shrink)

In some previous work, I tried to give a concept-based account of the nature of our entitlement to certain very basic inferences (see the papers in Part III of Boghossian 2008b). In this previous work, I took it for granted, along with many other philosophers, that we understood well enough what it is for a person to infer. In this paper, I turn to thinking about the nature of inference itself. This topic is of great interest in its own right (...) and surprisingly understudied by philosophers. A correct understanding of inference promises to shed light on a number of important topics. In particular, it threatens to undermine the sort of concept-based story about entitlement to which I had previously been attracted. (shrink)

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience. Our mutual understanding and even our introspection may then be reconstituted within the conceptual framework of completed neuroscience, a theory we may expect to be more powerful by far than the common-sense psychology it displaces, and more substantially (...) integrated within physical science generally. My purpose in this paper is to explore these projections, especially as they bear on (1) the principal elements of common-sense psychology: the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.), and (2) the conception of rationality in which these elements figure. (shrink)

There is growing acknowledgement of a moral obligation to curb our personal carbon emissions. However, while much has been said regarding certain kinds of carbon- ntensive behaviours, the philosophical literature has – until only very recently – been largely silent regarding one of the worst things that a person can choose to do from a climate perspective: namely, have a child. I contend that procreation is an inessential high-emission activity – one that results in inordinately greater emissions than other activities (...) like joyguzzling or flying. Given this, I argue that if we believe that individuals bear moral responsibility for their personal carbon emissions, then we have strong moral reasons to refrain from choosing to procreate, reasons which – for many – amount to a moral obligation to refrain from choosing to have children. I also consider whether our climate duties might also be discharged by offsetting the climate burden of any children we do choose to have and providing a concrete quantification of what that offsetting might look like. (shrink)

"First published in this translation 1955; second edition (revised) 1974; reprinted with additional revisions 1987; reissued with new Further Reading 2003; reissued with new introduction 2007"--T.p. verso.

Proponents of public reason views hold that the exercise of political power ought to be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. This article elucidates the common structure shared by all public reason views, first by identifying a set of questions that all such views must answer and, second, by showing that the answers to these questions stand in a particular relationship to each other. In particular, we show that what we call the ‘rationale question’ is fundamental. This fact, and the common (...) structure more generally, are often overlooked or distorted within the literature. As a result, we argue, several prominent argumentative moves made by both critics and defenders of public reason are unsuccessful. Our overall conclusion is that discussions of public reason views would be more fruitful if they made consistent use of the common structure we identify. (shrink)

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY PRIZE for the best published book in the history of philosophy [Awarded in 2010] _______________ -/- Although it is widely recognized that David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) belongs among the greatest works of philosophy, there is little agreement about the correct way to interpret his fundamental intentions. It is an established orthodoxy among almost all commentators that skepticism and naturalism are the two dominant themes in this work. The difficulty has been, (...) however, that Hume's skeptical arguments and commitments appear to undermine and discredit his naturalistic ambition to contribute to "the science of man". This schism appears to leave his entire project broken-backed. The solution to this riddle depends on challenging another, closely related, point of orthodoxy: namely, that before Hume published the Treatise he removed almost all material concerned with problems of religion. Russell argues, contrary to this view, that irreligious aims and objectives are fundamental to the Treatise and account for its underlying unity and coherence. It is Hume's basic anti-Christian aims and objectives that serve to shape and direct both his skeptical and naturalistic commitments. When Hume's arguments are viewed from this perspective we can solve, not only puzzles arising from his discussion of various specific issues, we can also explain the intimate and intricate connections that hold his entire project together. This "irreligious" interpretation provides a comprehensive fresh account of the nature of Hume's fundamental aims and ambitions in the Treatise. It also presents a radically different picture of the way in which Hume's project was rooted in the debates and controversies of his own time, placing the Treatise in an irreligious or anti-Chrisitan philosophical tradition that includes Hobbes, Spinoza and freethinking followers. Considered in these terms, Hume's Treatise constitutes the crowning achievement of the Radical Enlightenment. (shrink)

Dieses historische Buch kann zahlreiche Tippfehler und fehlende Textpassagen aufweisen. Kaufer konnen in der Regel eine kostenlose eingescannte Kopie des originalen Buches vom Verleger herunterladen (ohne Tippfehler). Ohne Indizes. Nicht dargestellt. 1910 edition. Auszug:...endliche als durch sie erzeugt; oder diese in jener involviert und aus ihr sich evolvierend. Der wahre Erzeuger der endlichen Grosse ist nicht die unendlichkleine" Grosse (das Unendlichkleine ware dem Grossenwert nach vielmehr Null), sondern es ist das Gesetz der Grosse (als Veranderlicher), das man sich nun wie (...) in einen Punkt zusammengezogen, d. h. fur den einzelnen Punkt ausgedruckt, oder an einer endlichen Erstreckung sich darstellend denken kann, das aber dem letzten Sachgehalt nach dasselbe ist fur den Punkt und die endliche Erstreckung, wenn es auch in Bezug auf beide verschiedene, im allgemeinen auseinander ableitbare Ausdrucke erhalten muss. Da aber die endliche Grosse uberhaupt von Punkt zu Punkt entstehend (d. h. veranderlich) gedacht wird, so ist insofern der punktuelle, d. h. infinitesimale Ausdruck der fundamentale, aus dem der extensionale gleichsam erst hervorwachst. Die Differenz entsteht eben von der Null an; nicht aus ihr; aus Null wird keine extensive Grosse; wohl aber von der Null, d. h. dem Nichtsein dessen, was werden soll, oder ganz schlicht1) vom Ausgangs wert an; woraus? Aus dem Gesetz; eine andere Antwort ist nicht zu geben und nicht zu verlangen. Durch dies Gesetz aber ist die Grosse als Eines, Identisches, im Unterschied von den sukzessiven Grossenwerten, also in ihrem Gattungsausdruck definiert. i) Vgl. oben S. 122. Fragt man also: wie soll aus der Null gewordenen, verschwundenen" Grosse die endliche Grosse wiederentstehen? so ist zu antworten: die Grosse zwar (yuantitas). (shrink)

A study of how syntax relates to meaning by a leader of the new generation of philosopher-linguists.

Many of our most important goals require months or even years of effort to achieve, and some never get achieved at all. As social psychologists have lately emphasized, success in pursuing such goals requires the capacity for perseverance, or "grit." Philosophers have had little to say about grit, however, insofar as it differs from more familiar notions of willpower or continence. This leaves us ill-equipped to assess the social and moral implications of promoting grit. We propose that grit has an (...) important epistemic component, in that failures of perseverance are often caused by a significant loss of confidence that one will succeed if one continues to try. Correspondingly, successful exercises of grit often involve a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of failure, injury, rejection, and other setbacks that constitute genuine evidence that success is not forthcoming. Given this, we discuss whether and to what extent displays of grit can be epistemically as well as practically rational. We conclude that they can be (although many are not), and that the rationality of grit will depend partly on features of the context the agent normally finds herself in. In particular, grit-friendly norms of deliberation might be irrational to use in contexts of severe material scarcity or oppression. (shrink)

A number of attempts have been made to construct a plausible ontology of rock music. Each of these ontologies identifies a single type of ontological entity as the “work” in rock music. Yet, all the suggestions advanced to date fail to capture some important considerations about how we engage with music of this tradition. This prompted Lee Brown to advocate a healthy skepticism of higher-order musical ontologies. I argue here that we should instead embrace a pluralist ontology of rock, an (...) ontology that recognizes more than one kind of entity as “the work” in rock music. I contend that this approach has a number of advantages over other ontologies of rock, including that of allowing us to make some comparisons across ontological kinds. (shrink)

The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented 'crisis in the foundations of mathematics', featuring a world-famous paradox, a challenge to 'classical' mathematics from a world-famous mathematician, a new foundational school, and the profound incompleteness results of Kurt Gödel. In the same period, the cross-fertilization of mathematics and philosophy resulted in a new sort of 'mathematical philosophy', associated most notably with Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and Gödel himself, and which remains at the focus of Anglo-Saxon philosophical discussion. The present collection (...) brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers. It is a substantially revised version of the edition first published in 1964 and includes a revised bibliography. The volume will be welcomed as a major work of reference at this level in the field. (shrink)

In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded (...) cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Paul Weithman has explored the thought of John Rawls to ask how liberalism can secure the principled allegiance of those people whom Rawls called 'citizens of faith'. This volume brings together ten of his major essays, which reflect on the task and political character of political philosophy, the ways in which liberalism does and does not privatize religion, the role of liberal legitimacy in Rawls's theory, and the requirements of public reason. The essays reveal Rawls (...) as a thinker deeply engaged with political and existential questions that trouble citizens of faith, and explore how - in firm opposition to political realism - he tries to show that the possibility of liberal democracy and the natural goodness of humanity are objects of reasonable faith. The volume will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, moral theologians, and religious ethicists. (shrink)

The first study of this ancient text in over 70 years, Rituals of the Way explores how the Xunzi influenced Confucianism and other Chinese philosophies through its emphasis on "the Way.".

The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented 'crisis in the foundations of mathematics', featuring a world-famous paradox (Russell's Paradox), a challenge to 'classical' mathematics from a world-famous mathematician (the 'mathematical intuitionism' of Brouwer), a new foundational school (Hilbert's Formalism), and the profound incompleteness results of Kurt Gödel. In the same period, the cross-fertilization of mathematics and philosophy resulted in a new sort of 'mathematical philosophy', associated most notably (but in different ways) with Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and Gödel himself, (...) and which remains at the focus of Anglo-Saxon philosophical discussion. The present collection brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers. It is a substantially revised version of the edition first published in 1964 and includes a revised bibliography. The volume will be welcomed as a major work of reference at this level in the field. (shrink)

In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory, metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of political communities and their development and transformation. Alain Badiou's analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms (...) the backbone of his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities. These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many constituents. (shrink)

According to the subset account of realization, a property, F, is realized by another property, G, whenever F is individuated by a non-empty proper subset of the causal powers by which G is individuated (and F is not a conjunctive property of which G is a conjunct). This account is especially attractive because it seems both to explain the way in which realized properties are nothing over and above their realizers, and to provide for the causal efficacy of realized properties. (...) It therefore seems to provide a way around the causal exclusion problem. There is reason to doubt, however, that the subset account can achieve both tasks. The problem arises when we look closely at the relation between properties and causal powers, specifically, at the idea that properties confer powers on the things that have them. If realizers are to be ontically prior to what they realize, then we must regard the conferral of powers by properties as a substantive relation of determination. This relation of conferral is at the heart of a kind of exclusion problem, analogous to the familiar causal exclusion problem. I argue that the subset account cannot adequately answer this new exclusion problem, and is for that reason ill-suited to be the backbone of a non-reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Although thinkers of the past might have started from presumptions of fundamental difference and inequality between (say) the genders, or people of different races, this is no longer the case. At least in mainstream political philosophy, we are all now presumed to be, in some fundamental sense, basic equals. Of course, what follows from this putative fact of basic equality remains enormously controversial: liberals, libertarians, conservatives, Marxists, republicans, and so on, continue to disagree vigorously with each other, despite all presupposing (...) some kind of basic equality. They may argue about who gets what, how much, and why, but the starting point - that all people are in some sense deserving of prima facie equal consideration - has become an axiom of our moral and political thinking. But why? Why are we basic equals? The trouble is that as soon as one asks for an explanation of this foundational premise, it begins to look shaky. After all, on any conceivable metric human beings are notably unequal, and often to striking degrees. Philosophers in this area tend to talk of equal worth, but often without trying to specify what exactly that means. Philosophically, basic equality is neither acceptable nor rejectable. It is not rejectable because we appear to be, as a matter of fact, profoundly committed to the truth of the claim that we are all one another's basic equals. But to the extent that there appear to be no philosophical arguments for believing in the truth of basic equality, it is not acceptable either. The aim of this book is to try and show why basic equality is acceptable. To do so, however, it will also contend that we need to approach the question rather differently to how it has mostly been handled so far. What's required is an exercise in what Bernard Williams called 'impure philosophy': it must include insights from other areas of human intellectual endeavour, whether psychology and history or even what we learn from how we go about practicing basic equality in our collective lives. (shrink)