The fourth volume of Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science consists mainly of papers which were contributed to our Colloquium during the past few years. The volume represents a wide range of interests in contem porary philosophy of science: issues in the philosophy of mind and of language, the neurophysiology of perceptual and linguistic behavior, philosophy of history and of the social sciences, and studies in the fun damental categories and methods of philosophy and the inter-relation ships of the (...) sciences with ethics and metaphysics. Papers on the logic and methods of the natural sciences, including biological, physical and mathematical topics appear in the fifth volume of our series. We have included in the present volume the first English translation of the classic and fundamental work on aphasia by Carl Wernicke, together with a lucid and appreciative guide to his work by Dr. Norman Geschwind. The papers were not written to form a coherent volume, nor have they been edited with such a purpose. They represent current work-in progress, both in the United States and in Europe. Although most of the authors are philosophers, it is worth noting that we have essays of philosophical significance here written by a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist, and by three neurophysiologists. We hope that collaboration among working scientists and working philosophers may develop further. (shrink)

Recent anxieties about the deterioration of the global environment have had the effect of intensifying the ambiguity that surrounds the social roles of scientists and engineers. This has happened not merely, as suggested at the outset, because the environmental crisis has made their roles more conspicuous. Nor is it merely because recent disasters have alerted us to new, or hitherto unrecognized, social consequences of using the latest science-based technologies. What also requires recognition is that ideas about the social role of (...) modern science and engineering are embedded in, hence mediated by, larger views of the world. Within such American worldviews, moreover, the status of science and engineering is closely bound up with their perceived effect upon the environment.In the dominant culture, accordingly, the respect given to scientists and engineers is in large measure dependent on their ability to play the central role assigned to them in the historical narrative about progress. As the ostensible heroes of that popular story, they are expected to lead the way in realizing the promise of prosperity and general well-being. The environmental crisis surely has diminished the credibility of that story, thereby causing the social role of science and engineering to seem more dubious — more ambiguous. To be sure, the crisis also may have the effect, for very different reasons, of increasing the power and responsibility of organized science. But the late twentieth-century task of damage control cannot possibly elicit anything like the respect accorded to organized science by the earlier belief in progress.It also is important to recall, finally, that the narrative of progress itself has undergone a disillusioning transformation. The early Enlightenment version of the story depicted scientists and engineers working in the service of a social and political ideal that all people could share. But the later technocratic concept of progress, with its sterile instrumentalist notion of advancing the power of science-based technology as an end in itself, is far less likely to inspire trust. Its patent inadequacies have had the effect of enhancing the appeal, if only by contrast, of the seemingly “anti-science” ideologies of pastoralism and primitivism. All of which might be taken to suggest that if the scientific and engineering professions want to recover some of the respect and status they once had, they would be well advised to join with sympathetic humanists and social scientists in recuperating some of the idealism that the project of modern science formerly derived from its place within the ideology of progress. That might entail the sacrifice of their technocratic posture of neutrality, dissociating themselves from people and institutions responsible for environmental degradation, and their help in formulating a new concept — which is to say, new criteria — of progress to which they might commit themselves. A primary test of any proposed social policy under this new dispensation surely would be whether it would improve, or at a minimum protect, the life-enhancing capacities of the global ecosystem. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00011 *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00012 *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00013. (shrink)

Faced with declining fertility rates, media in Britain are reacting with anxiety about cultural annihilation. To look at how nationalism inflects concerns over biological and cultural reproduction, the authors analyze coverage of falling fertility and rising immigration in Great Britain in major newspapers in 2000-2. They find pronatalist appeals to be commonand especially directed at women but varying in how women’s duty to the nation is framed. Appeals characterized as begging, lecturing, threatening, and bribing express different relationships between individual interest (...) and the national good and offer positive and negative views of women. The political leanings of specific newspapers affect how they connect biological reproduction to the cultural threat seen in immigration. Even positive views of women as making rational reproductive choices are tainted by alarmist views of immigration as a threat to national survival. (shrink)

There is considerable correspondence between theories and models used in biology and the social sciences. One type of model that is in use in both biology and the social sciences is the fitness landscape model. The properties of the fitness landscape model have been applied rather freely in the social domain. This is partly due to the versatility of the model, but it is also due to the difficulties of transferring a model to another domain. We will demonstrate (...) that in order to transfer the biological fitness landscape model to the social science it needs to be substantially modified. We argue that the syntactic structure of the model can remain unaltered, whilst the semantic dimension requires considerable modification in order to fit the specific phenomena in the social sciences. We will first discuss the origin as well as the basic properties of the model. Subsequently, we will demonstrate the considerations and modifications pertaining to such a transfer by showing how and why we altered the model to analyse collective decision-making processes. We will demonstrate that the properties of the target domain allow for a transfer of the syntactic structure but don’t tolerate the semantic transfer. (shrink)

This selection of papers that were presented (or nearly so!) to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during the seventies fairly re presents some of the most disturbing issues of scientific knowledge in these years. To the distant observer, it may seem that the defense of rational standards, objective reference, methodical self-correction, even the distin guishing of the foolish from the sensible and the truth-seeking from the ideological, has nearly collapsed. In fact, the defense may be seen to (...) have shifted; the knowledge business came under scrutiny decades ago and, indeed, from the time of Francis Bacon and even far earlier, the practicality of the discovery of knowledge was either hailed or lamented. So the defense may be founded on the premise that science may yet be liberating. In that case, the analysis of philosophical issues expands to embrace issues of social interest and social function, of instrumentality and arbitrary perspective, of biological constraints (upon knowledge as well as upon the species-wide behavior of human beings in other relationships too), of distortions due to explanatory metaphors and imposed categories, and of radical comparisons among the perspectives of different civilizations. Some of our contributors are frankly programmatic, showing how problems must be formulated afresh, how evasions must be identified and omissions rectified, but they do not reach their own completion. (shrink)

hope of obtaining a comprehensive and coherent understand ing of the human condition, we must somehow weave together the biological, sociological, and psychological components of human nature and experience. And this cannot be done indeed, it is difficult to even make sense of an attempt to do it-without first settling our accounts with Darwin, Marx, and Freud. The legacy of these three thinkers continues to haunt us in other ways as well. Whatever their substantive philosophical differences in other respects, (...) Darwin, Marx, and Freud shared a common, overriding intellectual orientation: they taught us to see human things in historical, developmental terms. Phil osophically, questions of being were displaced in their works by questions of becoming. Methodologically, genesis replaced teleological and essentialist considerations in the explanatory logic of their theories. Darwin, Marx, and Freud were, above all, theorists of conflict, dynamism, and change. They em phasized the fragility of order, and their abiding concern was always to discover and to explicate the myriad ways in which order grows out of disorder. For these reasons their theories constantly confront and challenge the cardinal tenet of our modern secular faith: the notion of progress. To be sure, their emphasis on conflict and the flux of change within the flow of time was not unprecedented; its origins in Western thought can be traced back at least as far as Heraclitus. (shrink)

This paper addresses the silence about the Haitian revolution in the oeuvre of Karl Marx. He, who regarded revolutions as “locomotives of world history,” ignored the history of the revolution in Haiti and remained silent about its protagonists. In a brief approach to this paradox, I argue that the main reason for this blank space was Marx’s deficient analysis of contemporary racism. This is made clear in relation to 1) his acceptance of the biological meaning of race, 2) (...) his involvement in two main racisms of the time, antisemitism and colonial racism, and 3) his differentiation and gradation of historical subjects. The consequences were dramatic not because of Marx’s involvement in the racist zeitgeist but insofar as his learning process with regard to the relevance of anti-colonial movements and his awareness of negative societalization as well as its significance were not reflected in a theory of racism. This was to prove a debacle for subsequent attempts at a Marxist analysis of racism and has had effects that are still evident today. (shrink)

First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to (...) save the good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to (...) save the good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

Recent attempts to develop scientific research strategies for cultural evolution have mostly drawn upon evolutionary biology, but within anthropology there is also an influential tradition of non-biological evolutionary thought whose basic principle is adaptation to the environment. This article is mainly concerned with the "cultural materialist" school of Marvin Harris, but also treats the recent attempt of Jared Diamond to create a more radical model of evolutionary ecology. I argue that the ecological tradition does not represent a real alternative (...) to neo-Darwinism and is in fact a pseudo-Darwinist theory. I also suggest that the bias in favor of materialistic explanation in cultural evolution may not be justified. (shrink)

Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto has become one of the world’s most influential political tracts since its original 1848 publication. Part of the Rethinking the Western Tradition series, this edition of the Manifesto features an extensive introduction by Jeffrey C. Isaac, and essays by Vladimir Tismaneanu, Steven Lukes, Saskia Sassen, and Stephen Eric Bronner, each well known for their writing on questions central to the Manifesto and the history of Marxism. These essays address the Manifesto's historical background, its impact (...) on the development of twentieth-century Communism, its strengths and weaknesses as a form of ethical critique, and its relevance in the post-1989, post-Cold War world. This edition also includes much ancillary material, including the many Prefaces published in the lifetimes of Marx and Engels, and Engels's "Principles of Communism.". (shrink)

This volume contains a selection of Karl Marx's most important writings, organized thematically under eight headings: methodology, alienation, economics, exploitation, historical materialism, classes, politics, and ideology. Jon Elster provides a brief introduction to each selection to explain its context and its place in Marx's argument. The volume is designed as a companion to Elster's An Introduction to Karl Marx and the thematic structure of each book is the same. But the Reader can also stand on its own (...) and offers the student a substantial and revealingly organized selection of the crucial texts needed to understand and assess Marx's views. (shrink)

Marx: Later Political Writings brings together new translations of Marx's most important texts in political philosophy written after 1848. Marx challenged poitical theory to its very fundamentals, as his works do not follow traditional models for exploring politics theoretically. In his introduction, Terrell Carver situates Marx in a politics of democratic constitutionalism and revolutionary communism. The works are presented here complete, according to the first editions or the earliest manuscript state, and include the Manifesto of the (...) Communist Party, the Preface of 1859 to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, The Civil War in France, and the little-known Notes on Adolph Wagner. More than most political theorists, Marx made contemporary politics the focus for his theoretical work. He created a distinctive kind of political theory, and this volume makes it accessible today. (shrink)

Originally published on the eve of the 1848 European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a condensed and incisive account of the worldview Marx and Engels developed during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration. Formulating the principles of dialectical materialism, they believed that labor creates wealth, hence capitalism is exploitive and antithetical to freedom. -/- This new edition includes an extensive introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones, Britain's leading expert on Marx and Marxism, providing a complete course for students of (...) The Communist Manifesto, and demonstrating not only the historical importance of the text, but also its place in the world today. (shrink)

The political doctrine of Karl Marx is to be found in a broad range of both published and unpublished writings. This volume, the first of two which together span his entire output, presents his early texts of 1843-7, which predate the Communist Manifesto. excerpts from the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and from the Paris Notebooks, Points on the State and Bourgeois Society and other writings are newly translated and arranged in a sequence that illuminates the development of (...) Marx's thought, while the introduction discusses the intellectual context of the theories he constructed. A chronology of Marx's life and career and an annotated bibliography complete a volume which will be an invaluable guide to the formation of one of the most influential doctrines in the history of political thought. (shrink)

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

It features Easton and Guddat's own highly regarded translations (based on the best German editions as well as on the original manuscripts and first editions) ...

This edition of McLellan's comprehensive selection of Marx's writings includes carefully selected extracts from the whole range of Marx's most important pieces alongside a fully revised and updated bibliography and editorial commentary on each document. New editorial introductions to each section of the book provide the reader with the background and context of Marx's writing in each period. Essential reading for anyone wishing for a detailed overview of Marx's political philosophy.

Throughout his life Karl Marx commented on the French Revolution, but never was able to realize his project of a systematic work on this immense event. This book assembles for the first time all that Marx wrote on this subject. François Furet provides an extended discussion of Marx's thinking on the revolution, and Lucien Calvié situates each of the selections, drawn from existing translations as well as previously untranslated material, in its larger historical context. With his early (...) critique of Hegel, Marx started moving toward his fundamental thesis: that the state is a product of civil society and that the French Revolution was the triumph of bourgeois society. Furet's interpretation follows the evolution of this idea and examines the dilemmas it created for Marx as he considered all the faces the new state assumed over the course of the Revolution: the Jacobin Terror following the constitutional monarchy, Bonaparte's dictatorship following the parliamentary republic. The problem of reconciling his theory with the reality of the Revolution's various manifestations is one of the major difficulties Marx contended with throughout his work. The hesitation, the remorse, and the contradictions of the resulting analyses offer a glimpse of a great thinker struggling with the constraints of his own system. Marx never did elaborate a theory of an autonomous state, but he never stopped wrestling with the challenge to his doctrine posed by late eighteenth-century France, whose changing conditions and successive regimes prompted some of his most intriguing and, until now, unexplored thought. (shrink)

This is a new and extensive introduction to Marx for the beginner. It includes selections from all of Marx's major works; each section is preceded by an editors' introduction.

Marx was barely 25 when he produced this astonishing rich body of work-including economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and On the Jewish Question.

A collection of essays by friends, students, and colleagues on Max Wartofsky's 65th birthday. Reflecting Wartofsky's own interests, topics discussed in this text range from the arts and sciences, to ethics and history, from the Enlightenment, through the 19th century to the present day.

Hybrid languages are expansions of propositional modal languages which can refer to worlds. The use of strong hybrid languages dates back to at least [Pri67], but recent work has focussed on a more constrained system called $\mathscr{H}$. We show in detail that $\mathscr{H}$ is modally natural. We begin by studying its expressivity, and provide model theoretic characterizations and a syntactic characterization. The key result to emerge is that $\mathscr{H}$ corresponds to the fragment of first-order logic which is invariant for generated (...) submodels. We then show that $\mathscr{H}$ enjoys interpolation, provide counterexamples for its finite variable fragments, and show that weak interpolation holds for the sublanguage $\mathscr{H}$. Finally, we provide complexity results for $\mathscr{H}$ and other fragments and variants, and sharpen known undecidability results for $\mathscr{H}$. (shrink)

What I want to focus on in this paper is the question of the connection between the positivism of the Vienna Circle — the "scientific conception of the world" — and politics. The Vienna Circle will be considered first ''als soziale Bewegung'' and second from the point of view of "Sozialforschung". The paper is a case study in the problem of the relation of a theory to practice, and more particularly, of the relation of a technical epistemological and methodological theory (...) of science to social practice. The critical assessment of the nature of the Vienna Circle as a social movement starts from the consideration of the views of Otto Neurath; and concludes with some theses about the failure of this social movement precisely as it relates to the logical positivist and logical empiricist theory of science, and to its scientific conception of the world. (shrink)

What I want to focus on in this paper is the question of the connection between the positivism of the Vienna Circle — the "scientific conception of the world" — and politics. The Vienna Circle will be considered first ''als soziale Bewegung'' and second from the point of view of "Sozialforschung". The paper is a case study in the problem of the relation of a theory to practice, and more particularly, of the relation of a technical epistemological and methodological theory (...) of science to social practice. The critical assessment of the nature of the Vienna Circle as a social movement starts from the consideration of the views of Otto Neurath; and concludes with some theses about the failure of this social movement precisely as it relates to the logical positivist and logical empiricist theory of science, and to its scientific conception of the world. (shrink)

It has become necessary to enter any discussion of the date of the Kallias decrees, IG i3.52, armed with apologies and justifications merely for bringing up the matter again; such is the result not so much of the quantity of articles and chapters written on the subject as of the belief that the orthodox date, 434/3, has been proved, despite reliance on circumstantial evidence and some forceful objections levied against it.1 Indeed, that the case is considered closed can find no (...) better reflection than the assignment of the date 434/3 in IG i3 without even a question mark. (shrink)