… power is never uni dimensional; it is exercised not only as a mode of domination, but also as an act of resistance or even as an expression of a creative mode of cultural and social production outside the immediate force of domination.The point is important in that the behavior expressed by subordinate groups cannot be reduced to a study of domination or resistance.Clearly, in the behavior of subordinate groups there are moments of cultural and creative expression that are informed (...) by a different logic, whether it be existential, religious, or otherwise.Our faith is ultimately in individuals and their potentialities.In saying this, I do not mean what is sometimes called individualism as opposed to association.I mean rather an individuality that operates in and through voluntary associations.If our outward scene is one of externally imposed organization, behind and beneath there is working the force of liberated individualities, experimenting in their own ways to find and realize their own ends.The testimony of history is that in the end such a force, however scattered and inchoate, ultimately prevails over all set institutionalized forms, however firmly established the latter may be. (shrink)

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

The persistent interpretation problem for quantum mechanics may indicate an unwillingness to consider unpalatable assumptions that could open the way toward progress. With this in mind, I focus on the work of David Bohm, whose earlier work has been more influential than that of his later. As I’ll discuss, I believe two assumptions play a strong role in explaining the disparity: 1) that theories in physics must be grounded in mathematical structure and 2) that consciousness must supervene on material processes. (...) I’ll argue that the first assumption appears to lead us toward Everett’s many worlds interpretation, which suggests a red flag. I’ll also argue that the second assumption is suspect due to the persistent explanatory gap for consciousness. Later, I explore ways that Bohm’s later work holds some promise in providing a better fit with our world, both phenomenologically and empirically. Also, I’ll address the possible problem of realism. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) had a powerful influence on the development of American pragmatism in the twentieth century. He also had a strong impact on the social sciences. This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasizes the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on the assumption (...) that the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. The emergence of novelty within the perceived rational order of reality is the crux of the problem that Mead explores. The present, in his words, is "the emergent event . . . something which is more than the processes that have led up to it and which by its change, continuance, or disappearance, adds to later passages a content they would not otherwise have possessed." The present as "the seat of reality" heavily conditions our retrospective view of the past as much as it helps to shape the future. The novelty of every present experience causes us to reconstruct our preceding experiences to make sense of the past, which is naturally assumed to be the main cause of what we presently experience. Our perspective on reality is thus relative to the conditioning of each new event and it changes continuously as the effects of the present shift our view of the past and future. This emphasis on the integrative, holistic nature of reality, in which everything past, present, and future is a condition of everything else, makes Mead's philosophy highly relevant to today's scientific picture of a quantum universe, where chance and probability play a role in the emergence of reality. Also of great interest is the way in which he extends his basic analysis of temporal-spatial reality to the emergence of mind and consciousness as a natural development of the evolutionary process. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as "the most original mind in philosophy in America" of his generation. (shrink)

Existentialism was one of the most important influences on 20th century thought, especially in the period between the 1920s and early 1960s. Best known in its atheistic representatives such as Sartre, it also numbered many significant religious thinkers. This text is a critical introduction to these religious existentialists, who are treated as a coherent group in their own right and not merely derivative of secular existentialism. The book argues that they constitute a distinctive religious voice that continues to merit attention (...) in an era of postmodernity. (shrink)

This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. (...) In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies. (shrink)

This new edition of a standard reference of jurisprudence has been fully revised. Many recent developments which touch on the relationship of laws to morals--homosexuality, obscenity, suicide, and abortion--are discussed, together with controversial economic aspects of modern legislation on such as topics as restrictive trade practices and trade unions.

This book, written by one of the most distinguished of contemporary philosophers of mathematics, is a fully rewritten and updated successor to the author's earlier The Unprovability of Consistency. Its subject is the relation between provability and modal logic, a branch of logic invented by Aristotle but much disparaged by philosophers and virtually ignored by mathematicians. Here it receives its first scientific application since its invention. Modal logic is concerned with the notions of necessity and possibility. What George Boolos (...) does is to show how the concepts, techniques, and methods of modal logic shed brilliant light on the most important logical discovery of the twentieth century: the incompleteness theorems of Kurt Godel and the 'self-referential' sentences constructed in their proof. The book explores the effects of reinterpreting the notions of necessity and possibility to mean provability and consistency. (shrink)

This important new work surveys the source and ramifications of the famed Nuremburg Code -- recognized around the world as one of the cornerstones of modern bioethics.

What is the relationship between common-sense, or 'folk', psychology and contemporary scientific psychology? Are they in conflict with one another? Or do they perform quite different, though perhaps complementary, roles? George Botterill and Peter Carruthers discuss these questions, defending a robust form of realism about the commitments of folk psychology and about the prospects for integrating those commitments into natural science. Their focus throughout the book is on the ways in which cognitive science presents a challenge to our common-sense (...) self-image - arguing that our native conception of the mind will be enriched, but not overturned, by science. The Philosophy of Psychology is designed as a textbook for upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students in philosophy and cognitive science, but as a text that not only surveys but advances the debates on the topics discussed, it will also be of interest to researchers working in these areas. (shrink)

Drawing on five months of ethnography among rank-and-file Soka Gakkai members, this article takes issue with the conventional view of Komeito and Gakkai political socialization as one of group identity. It uses interviews and primary sources from Gakkai socialization practice to document how the two organizations appeal to Gakkai members by promoting the Komeito policy agenda, and how Gakkai members use the same arguments in search of non-Gakkai votes for the party. Social ties remain important, but they are vehicles for (...) this policy message, not a justification for supporting Komeito. This makes Komeito leadership far more constrained in its political choices than is currently recognized. The article finishes by showing how this theory explains variation in Komeito electoral support better than a social identity alternative. (shrink)

The Politics of Paradigms shows that America’s most famous and influential book about science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions of 1962, was inspired and shaped by Thomas Kuhn’s political interests, his relationship with the influential cold warrior James Bryant Conant, and America’s McCarthy-era struggle to resist and defeat totalitarian ideology. Through detailed archival research, Reisch shows how Kuhn’s well-known theories of paradigms, crises, and scientific revolutions emerged from within urgent political worries—on campus and in the public sphere—about the invisible, unconscious (...) powers of ideology, language, and history to shape the human mind and its experience of the world. (shrink)

Los Principios del Conocimiento Humano de George Berkeley es un texto crucial en la historia del empirismo y en la historia de la filosofía en general. Su afirmación central y aparentemente sorprendente es que el mundo físico no puede existir independientemente de la mente que percibe. El significado de esta afirmación, los argumentos poderosos a su favor y el sistema en el que está incrustado, se explican de manera altamente lúcida y legible y se colocan en su contexto histórico. (...) La filosofía de Berkeley es, en parte, una respuesta a las profundas tensiones y problemas en la nueva filosofía del período moderno y al lector se le ofrece una descripción de este medio intelectual. Luego, el libro sigue el orden y la sustancia de los Principios mientras se basa en materiales de otros escritos de Berkeley. Este volumen es la introducción ideal a los Principios de Berkeley y será de gran interés para los historiadores de la filosofía en general. (shrink)

For the first time in 20 years, the prefectural level 2001 LDP primaries offer a chance to reevaluate the relationship between Diet members and the LDP rank and file. Since 1982, scholars have agreed that Diet members use their support organizations to control how rank and file vote in LDP leadership contests; and the absence of any suitable data from the 1980s and 1990s has prevented a reassessment of this hypothesis in Japan's evolving political environment. This study uses regression analysis (...) on prefectural-level primary ballot totals in order to measure Diet member influence over the rank-and-file primaries. The results suggest while national politicians did influence voters, their impact was too small to affect the outcome of the election. This implies that the relationship between LDP Diet members and the rank and file is changing and suggests directions for further study. (shrink)