(1991). Different forms of causation in dynamical systems: Determinism, pattern generation, and information. World Futures: Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 221-237.

The book addresses the constitution of the high culture of modernity as an uneasy unity of the sciences, including philosophy, and the arts. Their internal dynamism and strain is established through, on the one hand, the relationship of the author - work - recipient, and, on the other, the respective roles of experts and the market.

We propose an extension to Mahr & Csibra's (M&C's) theory. For successful episodic memory formation, potentially relevant aspects of a situation need to be identified and encodedonlineand retained for prospective interactions.To be maximally convincing, the communicator not only has to encode not justanycontextual detail, but also has to track informationin relation tosocial partners.

N´emeti remarked that the notion of compactness of cylindric of algebras corresponds to the notion of universality of models in logic [5]. The purpose of this paper is to formulate this correspondence in a purely algebraic setting.

How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-olds and argue that the predictive scope of existing imitative learning models is either too broad or too (...) narrow to account for these findings. We outline our alternative theory of a human-specific adaptation for ‘pedagogy’, a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics. We show the central role that innately specified ostensive-communicative triggering cues and learner-directed manner of knowledge manifestations play in constraining and guiding selective imitation of relevant cultural knowledge that is both new and cognitively opaque to the naive learner. (shrink)

Although in core business practice most leaders are aware of the fact that information needs to be acquired from a wide range of sources, decision makers in corporate enterprises seem to forget this and all they do, in most cases, is ask their consumers and potential customers in the course of planning their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities. There are only few companies where managers refer to ethical principles as an argument for social contribution and the connection between CSR and (...) sustainability is being rarely explored. This article is based on research (interviews and questionnaires), observations and continuous action research carried out by the Kurt Lewin Foundation. The study focuses on the communication of social responsibility since according to our experience in most cases companies undertake causes in order to improve their own image and for marketing reasons. This article concludes that the reason for difficulties in finding the best CSR solutions for enterprises and creating the commitment of their employees for the undertaken cause is that they do not think of CSR as a consequence of ethical core business process, but rather as a separate task they try to complete aiming at short-term results and maximum benefits. (shrink)

The volume also publishes for the first time a part of his Debrecen Ph.D. thesis and it is concluded by a bibliography of his Hungarian writings.

How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-olds and argue that the predictive scope of existing imitative learning models is either too broad or too (...) narrow to account for these findings. We outline our alternative theory of a human-specific adaptation for ‘pedagogy’, a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics. We show the central role that innately specified ostensive-communicative triggering cues and learner-directed manner of knowledge manifestations play in constraining and guiding selective imitation of relevant cultural knowledge that is both new and cognitively opaque to the naive learner. (shrink)

Condorcet's arguments concerning the dependence of unhindered scientific development on the presence of democratic conditions still sounds relevant today, because they are based on specific and complex considerations concerning the character of the social enterprise of science that articulates problems that still continue. The implicit dispute between Condorcet and Rousseau is also the first great historical example of the conflict between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, which accompanies the history of modernity, as an unresolved and indeed irresolvable opposition that belongs to (...) the prehistory of our own confusions and quandaries concerning the relations between culture, science, politics and society. (shrink)

György Lukács first published the original Hungarian language version of Soul and Form in 1910. It included eight of the ten essays later to be published in subsequent German, Italian, and English editions. This current centennial edition adds to the mix one additional Lukács essay, "On Poverty of Spirit", written at roughly the same time as the others and bearing a vital relationship to them. Finally, in this edition we have added to the Lukács material an important introductory essay by (...) Judith Butler, as well as a concluding essay, by Katie Terezakis, which draws out connections between the Lukácsian concept of form and its elaboration and critique in Lukács’s own work and in works of critical theory and philosophy up to the present. (shrink)

One of the leading representatives of a “Western” Marxism, György (Georg) Lukács was born in 1885 in Budapest. He joined the Communist Party of Hungary in 1918. During the short‐lived Hungarian Commune of 1919 he was responsible for the cultural policy of the revolutionary regime. After its collapse he lived in emigration in Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow. Following the condemnation of his political views by the Comintern in 1928 he withdrew from direct participation in politics. He returned to Hungary in (...) 1945. A new wave of official attacks in 1949 resulted in his renewed retreat from political activity. During the Hungarian revolution of 1956 he was minister of culture in the government of Imre Nagy. First interned in Romania, he worked then in the situation of an internal emigration and banishment in Hungary till 1967, when he was allowed to return to public cultural life. He died in 1971. (shrink)

The ArgumentContemporary natural sciences succeed remarkably well in ensuring a relatively continuous transmission of their cognitively relevant traditions and in creating a widely shared background consensus among their practitioners – hermeneutical ends seemingly achieved without hermeneutical awareness or explicitly acquired hermeneutical skills.It is a historically specific – emerging only in the nineteenth century – cultural organization of the Author-Text-Reader relation which endows them with such an ease of hermeneutical achievements: an institutionally fixed form of textual and intertextual practices, normatively posited (...) ways of adequate reception and criticism, etc. The same organization also explains a number of their often-discussed epistemic and cultural characteristics: their depersonalized objectivity, the social closure of their discourse and their reduced cultural significance, the shallow historical depth of their activated traditions, etc.The cognitive structure and the social function of contemporary natural sciences are intimately interwoven with a set of sui generis cultural relations that are partially fixed in the textual characteristics of their literary objectivations. A comparative hermeneutical analysis of natural sciences as a specifically constituted and institutionalized cultural genre or discourse-type brings into relief those contingent cultural conditions and relations to which some of their fundamental epistemological characteristics are bound, or at least with which they are historically closely associated. (shrink)

The habit of giving a gratuity became so frequent at the end of the 1950's that counter-measures were enacted. These have been completely ineffective. Although granting and accepting gratuities is forbidden by law, the wages of doctors have been fixed since 1954, for so long that accepting gratuities has come to be considered part of the wages, even in semi-official comments and in the media. The author is of the opinion that, in view of this anomaly, a fundamental transformation of (...) the health provision system (sickness insurance) is needed. The doctor should be paid according to the number of patients in his or her charge, instead of the mere number of the sick. By transforming the provision of medical care in this way, the giving and accepting of gratuities for doctors could be terminated, not only in law but also in the economy. Keywords: gratuity, Hungary, Marxism-Leninism, medical ethics, remuneration CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Originally published in Common Knowledge 11, no. 2 (Fall 2005), this essay is reprinted in 2022 as the prelude to the first installment of a project titled “Antipolitics” and dedicated to the author's memory. “To really know” what a writer “is like,” Konrád writes here, “he would have to look back on his biography from after death” — and in this piece he hauntingly does so. Explaining that he composed his first autobiography upon being expelled from university in Hungary after (...) Stalin's death in 1953, he defines the process as “the main event in the ritual of political detention.” In an overview of the writer's life, he describes any act of writing as like scratching one's initials “into the brick of a prison wall” in an effort “to avoid dying completely.” The editors of Common Knowledge, of whose editorial board Konrád was a founding member, chose to reprint this statement at the head of a symposium whose purpose is, in no small part, to help secure his posthumous existence. (shrink)

Semantic systems are sytems with an inherent semantics. An example would be systems showing intrinsic intentionality: if a system is genuinely intentional, it must be able to define its own meanings. Searle was a forerunner of the modern idea of semantic systems in his oft-cited “Chinese Room” paper in 1980. The current author has approached the problem from a different angle 30 years ago in his book Self-Modifying Systems, claiming that minds can define their own meanings by virtue of being (...) “material”, in the sense of freely generating new properties on the fly, as do material objects. In the course of the process, meaning should arise because syntax does not fully describe the rich functioning of such systems, so goes the argument. While still attractive, the author has in the meantime abandoned the idea, for at least two reasons. One, fundamentals-seeking has itself been largely abandoned, because the study of questions like “is the mind computational”? has turned out to be non-productive. Two, brute force approaches such as ANN-based deep learning have been “unreasonably” successful, and this fact puts aside arguments about the limits of computational systems. The paper provides an overview of these developments. (shrink)

The two main domains of high culture - the arts and the sciences - seem to be completely different, simply unrelated. Is there any sense then in talking about culture in the singular as a unity? A positive answer to this question presupposes that there is a single conceptual scheme, in terms of which it is possible to articulate both the underlying similarities and the basic differences between these domains. This article argues that - at least in respect of ‘classical’ (...) modernity - there is such a framework: the normatively conceived Author-Work-Recipient relation. It allows the disclosure of the paradoxical unity of culture: its two main realms are constituted as polar opposites and thus as strictly complementary. Through such an organization, culture could fulfil an affirmative, compensatory role. At the same time however, it also allowed culture to acquire the character of social critique, a function realized through the antagonistically opposed projects of Enlightenment and Romanticism - projects whose illusions are now evident. (shrink)

From the late seventeenth century on the idea of culture underwent a gradual transformation. Originally this concept referred essentially to the “refined” way of life of the ruling social elite. Popular culture, on the other hand, refers to the usually collective practices of groups of rural and urban workers taking the form of performance. They were not only excluded from refined culture, but it was regarded as completely unsuitable for them, potentially creating dangerous social aspirations. It is with the great (...) social transformation from feudal to bourgeois society that the idea of refined culture was replaced by that of “high culture” encompassing both the arts and the sciences: works claiming universal human significance. This “high culture” for a considerable time coexisted with the remnants of popular culture. It has been only due to the great technical advances that its true opposite, “mass culture” emerged, at the turn to twentieth century, claiming an empirical universality: being understandable and truly interesting to everyone. In economic respect, there is a competitive relation between high and mass culture. However, it is argued that there can be no cultural competition between them. For they posit differing and potentially co-existing receptive attitudes. The characterisation of this difference and the discussion of the seeming exceptions to the so-articulated conceptual scheme occupies the concluding part of this essay. (shrink)

We analyze a frequent but undertheorized form of structural injustice, one that arises due to the difficulty of reaching numerically equitable representation of underrepresented subgroups within a larger group. This form of structural injustice is significant because it could occur even if it were possible to completely eliminate bias and overt discrimination from hiring and recruitment practices. The conceptual toolkit we develop can be used to analyze such situations and propose remedies. Specifically, based on a simple mathematical model, we offer (...) a new argument in favour of quotas, explore implications for policy-making, and consider the wider philosophical significance of the problem. We show that in order to reach more equitable representations, quota-based recruitment may often be practically unavoidable. Assuming that members of groups in statistical minority are more likely to quit due to their marginalization, their proportions can stabilize at a low level, preventing a shift towards more equal representation and conserving the minority status of the subgroup. We show that this argument has important implications for addressing, preventing, and remediating the structural injustice of unfair representation. (shrink)

We analyze a frequent but undertheorized form of structural injustice, one that arises due to the difficulty of reaching numerically equitable representation of underrepresented subgroups within a larger group. This form of structural injustice is significant because it could occur even if it were possible to completely eliminate bias and overt discrimination from hiring and recruitment practices. The conceptual toolkit we develop can be used to analyze such situations and propose remedies. Specifically, based on a simple mathematical model, we offer (...) a new argument in favour of quotas, explore implications for policy-making, and consider the wider philosophical significance of the problem. We show that in order to reach more equitable representations, quota-based recruitment may often be practically unavoidable. Assuming that members of groups in statistical minority are more likely to quit due to their marginalization, their proportions can stabilize at a low level, preventing a shift towards more equal representation and conserving the minority status of the subgroup. We show that this argument has important implications for addressing, preventing, and remediating the structural injustice of unfair representation. (shrink)