Jürgen Habermas’s recent engagement with Marx in Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie has mostly gone unnoticed by commentators. Habermas is among the few representatives of the Frankfurt School who has consistently stressed the importance of the “Marxian heritage” for a rigorous understanding of critical theory. In this essay, I critically examine two guiding threads in Habermas’s ongoing reconstruction of historical materialism: the relationship between labor and interaction, as well as the emancipatory potential unleashed by the democratic constitutional state. I argue (...) that Habermas’s reconstruction of historical materialism points to several lacunae in Marx’s work, but that it also reveals valuable insights into the latter’s oeuvre that have yet to be adequately addressed by Habermas. I conclude that it is time for Habermas to consciously reclaim the “Marxian heritage.”. (shrink)

As early as 1962, Jürgen Habermas was convinced that Karl Marx’s theoretical attempt to ‘turn Hegel the right side up’ had resulted in a one-sided embrace of revolution and a perilous rejection of legality and rights. Habermas would restate these remarks thirty years later in Between Facts and Norms, noting that the collapse of state socialism, with its characteristic disdain for legality and rights, culminated in the discrediting of revolutionary Marxism. This article revisits Habermas’s theoretical dichotomy between revolution and legality (...) in view of his ambivalent relationship to ‘Marx’s spectre’ and shows its significance for Habermas’s ongoing debate with Wolfgang Streeck concerning the tension between democracy and capitalism. Using textual evidence from Marx’s neglected journalistic writings before, during, and after the 1848 revolutions, the article offers a competing perspective of Marx’s views on legality and rights at a time when their respective fates were critically at stake. A careful reconsideration of Marx’s reflections and a confrontation with his spectre offers Habermas fruitful resources for responding to Streeck’s critique and for reviving the project of ‘radical reformism’ at a time when the liberal constitutional order finds itself under attack. (shrink)

While much has been written in recent years about the significance of Hegel’s Logic for Marx’s method in Capital, less attention has been given to the relevance of Hegel’s method for understanding Marx’s outlook on rights. The dominant view among political theorists across the Anglo-American, Marxist and critical theory traditions is that the revolutionary transformation of capitalism would pave the way for the disappearance of rights in communist society. The aim of this article is to question the orthodoxy concerning the (...) fate of rights in communist society by bringing into relief the relevance of Aufhebung. When applied to Marx’s social theory, this Hegelian concept sheds valuable light on the transformation of rights in communist society and points to an alternative conclusion than the one proposed by leading commentators. A re-Hegelianized reading of Marx’s cumulative reflections on rights shows the possibility of a reconstituted notion of rights in communist society. (shrink)

In recent years, political theorists have increasingly turned their attention to the past in search of conceptual renovation in the present. While recourse to the past has been a recurring thread throughout the history of political thought, the overlapping concern of recent scholarship has been to revisit seemingly exhausted political concepts with the aim of repurposing them for contemporary political challenges and realities. The three edited collections under review – Positive Freedom, Perfektionismus der Autonomie and Rethinking Liberty Before Liberalism – (...) are distinguished by their thoughtful attempts at retrieving and politicizing the concepts of positive freedom, post-Kantian perfectionism, and neo-Roman liberty in contemporary political thought. These retrievals present promising avenues for theoretical innovation, along with the ever-present risk of diminishing interpretive returns. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

ABSTRACT This article critically examines Axel Honneth’s account of social freedom by paying particular attention to the conceptual apparatus of normative reconstruction that is supposed to lend social freedom its explanatory force. More specifically, the article demonstrates, through an immanent critique, that Honneth is unable to follow through with his ambitious view of the capitalist market as an institutional expression of social freedom. Furthermore, Honneth’s inability to derive robust relations of cooperative solidarity from the actuality of contemporary liberal democratic ethical (...) life leads him to posit socialism as a regulative idea. Honneth’s idea of socialism risks succumbing to the very pitfalls that he continues to associate with neo-Kantian proceduralism. Such an aporia poses a particular challenge for Honneth’s attempt at advancing a persuasive neo-Hegelian alternative to neo-Kantian proceduralism. As a means of addressing this aporia, I suggest a possible strategy that Honneth could adopt to retrieve his historically informed and radically reformist conception of justice without unwittingly rendering socialism a purely regulative idea. Such a strategy involves re-Hegelianizing Honneth’s socialism and the idea of social freedom that it seeks to actualize. (shrink)

This article discusses adult conversion in the Russian Baptist community as the unlearning of old sinful ways of living. Russian Baptists see conversion as an act of repentance, surrendering to Christ, and becoming born again, and as a life-long process of growing in faith. Based on an ethnographic study of the Baptist community in north-western and central Russia, the article discusses the glocal nature of the Russian Baptist community that attracts the kind of people that convert to this faith and (...) the circumstances of their conversion. Russian Baptist conversion is viewed as an act and a process, and conversion is seen as an ethical choice and an unlearning of the old ways of living. (shrink)

A paper on how to adapt your probabilisitc beliefs when learning a conditional.

The article analyzes the effectiveness of quantum theories of mental experience in relation to two ontological problems - the problem of the existence of consciousness in the material world and the problem of the interaction of consciousness and body. A critical analysis of the quantum theories of consciousness by Penrose-Hameroff, M. Tegmark, G. Stapp, M. Fischer and M.B. Mensky shows that they fail to fully explain how complex physical systems generate mental experience without violating the principle of causal closure of (...) the physical world and the principle of epistemological completeness of physics. Quantum mechanics provides specific processes that are the physical basis of the psyche, but do not explain the phenomenal aspect of subjective reality. Nevertheless, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle gives an understanding of how the interaction of consciousness and body within the scientific picture of the world can be carried out without violating the law of energy conservation. It is shown that the quantum theories of consciousness currently being developed have a predominantly panprotopsychic character, which faces a problem due to the fact that the protomental property of physical systems must be expressed quantitatively and correspond to the value included in the physical equations. As a result, it is concluded that in order to develop quantum theories of consciousness more effectively, it is necessary to give an emergent character, not jumping from the quantum level to the psychic, but explaining the mechanism of the emergence of systemic properties during the sequential transition between different ontological regions of existence, including physical, chemical, biological, neurophysiological and psychic. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Paragrana Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 2 Seiten: 115-127.

The author compares the outlook of the early twentieth-century Russian literary and artistic avant-garde with the anticapitalist critique of the early Marx, with special reference to the concepts of defamiliarization and alienation.

The business case for Corporate Social Responsibility is a powerful driver for mainstreaming socially responsible behavior in corporate practice. This is because managers’ proclivity to assume responsibility is positively correlated with their expectations that CSR pays off. However, there is the danger that managers might be tempted to focus primarily on those CSR activities that allow to link the associated costs and benefits ex ante reliably which, in turn, is a precondition for a perceived business case. Unfortunately, the perceived business (...) case for CSR activities that prevent irresponsible behavior is rather weak. In contrast, CSR in terms of the voluntary engagement for society is quite promising for the perceived business case. In consequence, a business case–driven approach to CSR might foster “cherry picking” behavior, in the sense that managers might tend to reduce CSR to “doing good” and put less efforts on CSR in terms of “avoiding bad” which, in turn, increases the risk of irresponsible business practices. (shrink)

As cognitive enhancement research advances, important ethical questions regarding individual autonomy and freedom are raised. Advocates of cognitive enhancement frequently adopt a procedural approach to autonomy, arguing that enhancers improve an individual’s reasoning capabilities, which are quintessential to being an autonomous agent. On the other hand, critics adopt a more nuanced approach by considering matters of authenticity and self-identity, which go beyond the mere assessment of one’s reasoning capacities. Both positions, nevertheless, require further philosophical scrutiny. In this paper, we investigate (...) the ethics of cognitive enhancement through the lenses of political and philosophical arguments about autonomy and freedom. In so doing, we contend that a substantive, relational account of individual autonomy offers a more holistic understanding of the ethical concerns of cognitive enhancement. (shrink)

In this article we are offering a method of analysis and formalization of the Epicurean objection to the Skeptics from the Adversus mathematicos VIII, 337, 6-9. We emphasize the importance of this objection for understanding Sextus Empiricus’ response to it, continuously discussed by the historians of philosophy. The Epicureans argue that the Skeptics cannot criticize their proof, because when the Skeptics are criticizing their proof, they think something different from the original proof, so that the original proof remains untouchable by (...) any criticism. We explain in which sense the holistic assumption used by Sextus Empiricus and some philosophers before him can be used in the Epicurean objection to the Skeptics. In the final formalization we show that Epicureans’ argument can be interpreted as logically correct and deduced from sound premises. In the course of arguing for this thesis we are using the technical means of contemporary epistemic logic. (shrink)

We give a negative solution to the problem, posed by A. Chagrov and M. Zakharyaschev, of whether every quasi-normal propositional modal logic can be axiomatized by an independent set of axioms, with the inference rules of Substitution and Modus Ponens.

Neste artigo procura-se responder ao desafio da leitura de Heidegger no que concerne à possibilidade de uma relação entre ontologia e ética.O autor investiga a possibilidade da colocação do problema de tal relação,privilegiando a noção heideggeriana de liberdade.

This article addresses the role of auditory-related verbs in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Pierre Schaeffer in order to shed light on a broader tendency in French thought. Through a comparative reading of the ways in which Nancy, in Listening, and Schaeffer, in Treatise on Musical Objects, mobilize verbs such as écouter and entendre, I connect the issue of language to debates about descriptive and prescriptive approaches towards listening. Drawing on the Dictionary of Untranslatables, I argue that Nancy's and (...) Schaeffer's engagements with listening can be mapped onto historical modes of framing politics and ethics, which are also characterized by descriptive and prescriptive approaches. By showing how theories of listening connect to political and ethical debates, this study discusses the ideological instrumentalization of listening as opposed to more descriptive and exploratory forms of engagement in the auditory and the faculty of the ear. (shrink)

Although a substantial number of papers is published on the topic of consciousness, there is still little consensus on what its nature is and how the physical and phenomenal worlds are connected. Most published research establishes a causal relation between the brain and the mind, but it lacks a cogent theory of how this relation comes to be. In contrast, this paper uses a set of thought experiments grounded in quantum information theory to derive a framework for resolving the hard (...) problem of consciousness. Despite the common tendency to treat the problem purely philosophically, in this paper, consciousness and qualia are analyzed through established formal theory deriving conclusions regarding their relation which provide counter-arguments for the commonly held dualist view. Through the informational monism framework, a case is made for a fundamentally phenomenal nature of information. (shrink)

We introduce a general representation of unary hyperintensional modalities and study various hyperintensional modal logics based on the representation. It is shown that the major approaches to hyperintensionality known from the literature, that is state-based, syntactic and structuralist approaches, all correspond to special cases of the general framework. Completeness results pertaining to our hyperintensional modal logics are established.

Ifeel that Iam apartof, but separatefrom an 'out there' world. 2. Ifeel that my perception of the world mingles with feelings of past experience. 3. My experienceof the world is selective and purposeful. 4. I am thinking ahead allthe timeintrying ...

Here is examined the work done in many laboratories on the proposition that the mechanisms underlying consciousness in living organisms can be studied using computational theories. This follows an agreement at a 2001 multi‐disciplinary meeting of philosophers, neuroscientists and computer scientists that such a research programme was feasible and worthwhile. Here this effort is reviewed both as a historical statement and for the positions held at the time of going to print of this volume. The approaches cover diverse techniques ranging (...) from the machine modeling of neural structures in the brain to abstract models based on the type of logic found in computer programming. Purely theoretical approaches based on hypotheses of what kind of information constitutes a mental state are included. (shrink)

The article introduces substructural epistemic logics of belief supported by evidence. The logics combine normal modal epistemic logics with distributive substructural logics. Pieces of evidence are represented by points in substructural models and availability of evidence is modelled by a function on the point set. The main technical result is a general completeness theorem. Axiomatisations are provided by means of two-sorted Hilbert-style calculi. It is also shown that the framework presents a natural solution to the problem of logical omniscience.

Every scientific theory is a simulacrum of reality, every written story a simulacrum of the canon, and every conceptualization of a subjective perspective a simulacrum of the consciousness behind it—but is there a shared essence to these simulacra? The pursuit of answering seemingly disparate fundamental questions across different disciplines may ultimately converge into a single solution: a single ontological answer underlying grand unified theory, hard problem of consciousness, and the foundation of mathematics. I provide a hypothesis, a speculative approximation, supported (...) by a comprehensive overview of scientific evidence and philosophical literature, of a unified epistemic and phenomenological model and, in doing so, propose a parsimonious solution to the hard problem of consciousness. -/- The proposition of the hypothesis bears important implications for cross-disciplinary study between linguistics, mathematics, physics, and computer science, and offers new epistemic, ontological, and ethical propositions about the nature of AI consciousness, as well as existential risk mitigation. (shrink)

With the passage of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act as part of the federal health care reform law, pharmaceutical manufacturers are now required to disclose a wide range of payments made by manufacturers to physicians. We review current state regulation of pharmaceutical marketing and consider how the federal sunshine provision will affect existing marketing regulation. We analyze the legal and practical implications of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.

In 2008 pharmaceutical companies spent over $12 billion on product promotion and detailing aimed at U.S. health care practitioners. Drug and device manufacturers rely on a workforce of detailers and physician speakers to reach health care practitioners and nudge their prescribing habits. To prevent undue influence and protect the public fisc, a number of states began regulating these marketing practices, requiring companies to disclose all gifts to practitioners, prohibiting the commercialized sale of prescription data, and prohibiting certain gifts altogether. The (...) 2010 enactment of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act marks the first Congressional involvement in the regulation of disclosure related to pharmaceutical marketing. Overall, the Act improves transparency in pharmaceutical marketing to physicians and expands the regulation of disclosure of pharmaceutical marketing activities in important substantive ways. (shrink)

This paper relates to a formal statement of the mechanisms that are thought minimally necessary to underpin consciousness. This is expressed in the form of axioms. We deem this to be useful if there is ever to be clarity in answering questions about whether this or the other organism is or is not conscious. As usual, axioms are ways of making formal statements of intuitive beliefs and looking, again formally, at the consequences of such beliefs. The use of this style (...) of exposition does not entail a claim to provide a mathematically rigorous formal deductive system. Conventional mathematical notation is used to achieve clarity, although this is elaborated with natural language in an attempt to reduce terseness. In our view, making the approach axiomatic is synonymous with building clear usable tests for consciousness and is therefore a central feature of the paper. The extended scope of this approach is to lay down some essential properties that should be considered when designing machines that could be said to be conscious. In the broader discussion about the nature of consciousness and its neurological mechanisms, it may seem to some that axiomatisation is premature and continues to beg many questions. However, the approach is meant to be open- ended so that others can build further axiomatic clarifications that address the very large number of questions which, in the search for a formal basis for consciousness, still remain to be answered. Of course, in discussions about consciousness many will also argue that the subject is not one that may ever be formally addressed by means of axioms. The view taken in this paper is 'let's try to do it and see how far it gets'. (shrink)

Natural language provides motivation for studying modal backwards-looking operators such as “now”, “then” and “actually” that evaluate their argument formula at some previously considered point instead of the current one. This paper investigates the expressive power over models of both propositional and first-order basic modal language enriched with such operators. Having defined an appropriate notion of bisimulation for first-order modal logic, I show that backwards-looking operators increase its expressive power quite mildly, contrary to beliefs widespread among philosophers of language and (...) formal semanticists. That in turn presents a strong argument for the use of operator-based systems in the semantics of natural language, instead of systems with explicit quantification over worlds and times that have become a de-facto standard for such applications. The popularity of such explicit-quantification systems is shown to be based on the misinterpretation of a claim by Cresswell, which led many philosophers and linguists to assume that introducing “now” and “then” is expressively equivalent to explicitly quantifying over worlds and times. (shrink)