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)

The worldwide development of the revolution in science and technology is still in its initial stage. However, the characteristics of a qualitatively higher stage are already becoming evident in the area of the development of the system of labor, and therefore systematic philosophical study on the basis of the available data is a pressing task. Theory plays a special role precisely in periods when a phenomenon is not yet evident in final form. It is especially then that an acute need (...) arises for scientifically foreseeing, in its major outlines, the course of its development in the future. Within the bounds of the present article we shall attempt to do this with respect to certain aspects of the process of interaction between man and nature. (shrink)

It has been fashionable in the generalist literature to argue that the Ottomans lacked knowledge in European geography and politics. This chapter first offers some comments regarding Istanbul's understanding of geography and environment in the context of Ottoman strategy and frontier warfare. The, it presents a short overview of the importance of rivers, marshlands and mountains with regard to the formation of the opposing Hapsburg and Ottoman defence systems in Hungary. The last part of the chapter deals with the relationship (...) between landscape, climate and fortifications and offers some preliminary results and tentative observations regarding deforestation and marshlands. The discussion also argues, although in somewhat different ways, that the Ottomans and their Hapsburg rivals both had a keen interest in geography and mapped their empires and resources, and possessed adequate information as to the terrain and river systems of their lands and frontiers. (shrink)

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)

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.

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.

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)

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)

Teleonics is a systemic approach for the study and management of complex living systems, such as human beings, families, communities, business organisations and even countries and international relationships. The approach and its applications have been described in several publications, quoted in the paper. The units of teleonics are teleons, viz, end?related, autonomous process systems. An indication of malfunction in teleons is a high level of telentropy that can be caused by many factors, among which the most common are the lack (...) of well defined goals, inefficient governance, inappropriate interference and undeclared sharing of subsystems between teleons. These factors, as well as other modes of telentropy generation and transfer are described, together with some suggestions about ways to avoid them. (shrink)

The algebra of all binary relations on a given set is the most important example of a relation algebra . In this note we will examine the possible isomorphisms within some subclasses of a closely related class ; A is a relation set algebra with base U if its Boolean reduct is a field of sets with unit element 2 U, its universe A contains the identity relation on U and it is closed under the operations −1 and |, where (...) R |S = { : ∈ R, ∈ S for some z} and R−1 = { : ∈ R} for any R, S ⊆ 2 U. The class of all relation set algebras is denoted by Rs. (shrink)

Boolos's proof of incompleteness is extended straightforwardly to yield simple “diagonalization-free” proofs of some classical limitative theorems of logic.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

On the basis of these findings, I suggest that the structure and organisation of the field of Hungarian economics under state socialism should be described as a case of “partitioned bureaucracy”.9 The compromise between research economists and the political elite in the New Course era between 1953 and 195510 survived the post-1956 reaction in so far as political economy, with its predominantly legitimatory and ideological functions, remained partitioned from the other sectors in the field through the remainder of the state-socialist (...) period. This secured considerable protection both for Marxist-Leninist political economy—which faced the destabilising effects of exposure to the findings of serious empirical research—and for the other sectors, which were professionally oriented and earnestly interested in the pursuit of unbiased empirical research, free from stifling agitprop interference. Our data concerning the reputational control of the field reflects only one, although very important, aspect of this partitioning. Another and much plainer aspect is that, from the early 1960s, the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee no longer exercised control over the field, except in the political economy sector.The proposition about the “mechanism paradigm” should not be taken seriously as a statement of a Kuhnian type of intellectual organisation of Hungarian economics, with “reform economics” at its “hard theoretical core”. But it should certainly be taken seriously as a reflection of the sociopolitical structure which emerged and developed from the mid-1950s onwards. Neither the politicians nor the economists saw as necessary or even contemplated the integration of Hungarian economic research with Western mainstream economic thought. In exchange for the professional expertise and socio-economic intelligence necessary for the exercise of power, Hungary's state-socialist political class offered their economists relative autonomy and freedom from interference. The price the economists had to pay was partly to refrain from openly and systematically challenging the beliefs perpetuated by the political economy of socialism, and partly to accept in their research the paramountcy of policy orientation. But this burden they assumed willingly since it made them the only group within Hungary's academic intelligentsia—indeed, the only group in Hungarian society outside the political class—with the privilege of being coopted to the institutions with power over some restricted domains of policymaking. After 1989, especially under the conservative Antall government, this proved less than advantageous.11 Although the benevolence of many critics is open to question, it could greatly benefit the field if the economists' expulsion from contemporary politics went hand in hand with provision of the material, intellectual and institutional conditions for a new approach where a fundamentally scientific orientation is paramount. (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)

In this autobiographical essay, written in 2018 and previously unpublished, the late György Konrád intertwines his memories as a child during World War II with more theoretical reflections (and unanswered questions) on the war, its repercussions, its lessons. Written in Hungarian not long before his death in 2019, Konrád goes back in this essay to the period following the arrest of his parents after the German invasion of Hungary. Aged eleven, he was able to escape the small town where he (...) was born—and hence the fate of its entire Jewish community. “The others had been turned to ash,” in Konrád's chilling words. Seventy years later, he proceeds from these events to reflect on guilt and contrition, on sympathy and empathetic suffering, on how friends can become enemies during war, as well as on the Jewish heritage underlying Christian culture. (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)

RésuméCeux qui s'intéressent à l'heuristique peuvent trouver dans les œuvres de Descartes — plus spécialement dans ses Regulae ad directionem ingenii — des pensées dont l'élaboration pourrait faire avancer cette science nouvellement développée. Descartes, toujours formellement opposé à la logique traditionnelle, peut ětre considéré comme l'un des fondateurs de l'heuristique orientée du cǒté mathématique. Il étudia le mécanisme psychologique de la pensée inventive, mais principalement sa structure logique, et il essaya d'encourager et d'inspirer la pensée inventive et productive.Ses plus importantes (...) découvertes dans ce domaine sont: la nécessité de limiter et de clairement définir le problème; la nécessité d'utiliser des analogies, des modèles et des hypothèses dans la solution des problèmes; l'importance à accorder au rǒle des « expériences de pensée » et — en connexion avec cela — le rejet des manières schématiques de penser. Descartes reconnut que la pensée théorique est semblable à certaines opérations de l'esprit obéissant à des tendances ludiques ou pratiques, aussi bien en ce qui concerne ses motifs psychologiques que sa structure logique.Les analyses cartésiennes des formes et des structures de pensée sont très instructives; ici également il devança des tentatives ultérieures dans ce domaine.Those concerned with heuristic ars inveniendi may find in the works of Descartes—especially in his Regulae ad directionem ingenii—thoughts, the elaboration of which might well promote this newly developing science. Descartes, always sharply opposed to traditional logic, may be considered to be one of the founders of mathematically oriented heuristic. He investigated the psychological mechanism of inventive thinking, but mainly its logical structure, and he tried to encourage and to inspire inventive, productive thinking.His most important findings in this respect are: the necessity of limiting and clearly defining the problem; the necessity of applying analogies, models and hypotheses in problem solving; the stressing of the rǒle of Gedankenexperimente and—in connection with this—the rejection of schematic ways of thinking. Descartes recognized that theoretical thinking is similar to certain operations of the mind with a playful or pratical tendency, with regard both to its psychological motives and often also its logical structure.Descartes' analyses of forms and structures of thought are very instructive; he also forestalled herewith later endeavours in the field. (shrink)