George F. Kennan's political realism defines the object of diplomacy as the pursuit of the national self-interest and renders legitimate any means which expediently serve that purpose.

Classical realism is enjoying a renaissance in the study of international relations. It is well known that the analytical and normative international-political thought of early 20th-century classical realists is based on assumptions about human nature. Yet current knowledge of these assumptions remains limited. This article therefore revisits and examines the nature and intellectual roots of the human nature assumptions of three truly consequential classical realists. The analysis shows — similar to the causa Hans J. Morgenthau — that the human nature (...) assumptions of George F. Kennan, Walter Lippmann and E. H. Carr are — to varying degrees — Freudian. Unless this hitherto neglected dimension is recognized, an understanding of their international-political thought and of the political philosophy of realism remains incomplete. Two conclusions are presented. First, current criticism of classical realism’s human nature assumptions is unjustified. Second, any (re-) engagement with classical realism must recognize its human nature baggage. Realist international-political theorizing is necessarily human nature-based international-political theorizing. (shrink)

Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This paper explores how this asymmetry arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction of Time is imposed by the expansion of the universe. This situation is best represented by an Evolving Block Universe, where local arrows of time emerge in concordance with the Direction of Time because a global Past Condition results in the Second Law of Thermodynamics pointing to the future. At the quantum level, (...) the indefinite future changes to the definite past due to quantum wave function collapse events. (shrink)

The causal closure of physics is usually discussed in a context free way. Here I discuss it in the context of engineering systems and biology, where strong emergence takes place due to a combination of upwards emergence and downwards causation. Firstly, I show that causal closure is strictly limited in terms of spatial interactions because these are cases that are of necessity strongly interacting with the environment. Effective Spatial Closure holds ceteris parabus, and can be violated by Black Swan Events. (...) Secondly, I show that causal closure in the hierarchy of emergence is a strictly interlevel affair, and in the cases of engineering and biology encompasses all levels from the social level to the particle physics level. However Effective Causal Closure can usefully be defined for a restricted set of levels, and one can experimentally determine Effective Theories that hold at each level. This does not however imply those effective theories are causally complete by themselves. In particular, the particle physics level is not causally complete by itself in the contexts of solid state physics, digital computers, or biology. Furthermore Inextricably Intertwined Levels occur in all these contexts. (shrink)

A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross‐culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.). Realization of the portalling experience is shown to be fundamental to the phenomenology underlying multiple reality cosmologies in traditional cultures and is explained in (...) terms of radical re‐entrainment of the neurological systems mediating experience in the brain. Phenomenological experiments with mirror portalling devices from both the Tibetan and the Tsimshian religious traditions are reported. (shrink)

In this response, George Ellis comments on the publications of Part I. He responds first to Sara Green and Robert Batterman, before outlining his thoughts on Otávio Bueno’s piece.

This chapter responds to claims that causal closure of the underlying microphysics determines brain outcomes as a matter of principle, even if we cannot hope to ever carry out the needed calculations in practice. The reductionist position is that microphysics alone determines all, specifically the functioning of the brain. Here I respond to that claim in depth, claiming that if one firstly takes into account the difference between synchronic and diachronic emergence, and secondly takes seriously the well established nature of (...) biology in general and neuroscience in particular, downward causation enables genuine causal powers to occur at higher emergent levels in biology and that causal closure is in reality an interlevel affair involving even social levels. (shrink)

There has been much controversy over weak and strong emergence in physics and biology. As pointed out by Phil Anderson in many papers, the existence of broken symmetries is the key to emergence of properties in much of solid state physics. By carefully distinguishing between different types of symmetry breaking and tracing the relation between broken symmetries at micro and macro scales, I demonstrate that the emergence of the properties of semiconductors is a case of strong emergence. This is due (...) to the existence of quasiparticles such as phonons. Furthermore time dependent potentials enable downward causation as in the case of digital computers. Additionally I show that the processes of evolutionary emergence of living systems is also a case of strong emergence, as is the emergence of properties of life out of the underlying physics. A useful result emerges: standard physics theories and the emergent theories arising out of them are all effective theories that are equally valid. (shrink)

The context for biological emergence is modular hierarchical structures; their existence is what enables functional complexity to arise. Because of the openness of organisms to their environment, complete initial data (position, momentum) of all particles making up their structure is insufficient to determine future outcomes, because unpredictable new matter, energy, and information impacts each organism from the exterior. Consequently, through Darwinian evolution, life has developed processes to handle this issue functionally on short time scales as well on longer developmental timescales. (...) Symbolism and technology are the transforming factors handling this issue at the social levels, which is where the most sophisticated outcomes of openness occur. Considering the cosmological context, the issue is, should the universe itself be regarded as an open system over time? I make the case that is indeed so, because radically new outcomes occur such as the existence of aircraft, iPads, and the internet, which could not plausibly have been encoded in some form of data on the Last Scattering Surface in the expanding universe. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In considering the relation of faith and reason it is important to appreciate that the issue generally is viewed from the perspective of the ...

George F. Dole, Harvard Ph.D., has translated and arranged by theme a selection of passages from Swedenborg's works on life, heaven and hell, and the nature of God. This book is an accessible introduction for the reader new to Swedenborg, as well as a concise reference for those familiar with his philosophy. [Swedenborg's] philosophy is about as practical as one could ask. Ascetism is not the way to God.... A good person can be saved with any religion or with (...) no religion. "George F. Dole... has done us a great service in bringing Emanuel Swedenborg back to the attention of our distracted age." -from the foreword by Huston Smith. (shrink)

In this response, George Ellis comments on the publications of part III. He responds first to Denis Noble, before outlining his thoughts on Larissa Albantakis’, Francesco Massari’s, Maggie Beheler-Amass’ and Giulio Tononi’s piece.

Suppose that T is an equational theory of groups or of rings. If T is finitely axiomatizable, then there is a least number μ so that T can be axiomatized by μ equations. This μ can depend on the operation symbols that occur in T. In the 1960s, Tarski and Green completely determined the values of μ for arbitrary equational theories of groups and of rings. While Tarski and Green announced the results of their collaboration in 1970, the only fuller (...) publication of their work occurred as part of a seminar led by Tarski at Berkeley during the 1968–69 academic year. The present paper gives a full account of their findings and their proofs. (shrink)

Achilleus′ speeches and action in Iliad 24 ‘complete a development of character-or better, enlargement of experience and comprehension-which stretches through the whole poem’. I largely agree with this statement, but since I also believe that an ‘enlargement of experience and comprehension’ necessarily entails ‘ a development of character’, I do not hesitate, as its author does, to assert that Achilleus′ character develops, i.e., changes for the better, in the course of the Iliad. It is my purpose here to discuss one (...) of the ways in which his speeches in Book 24 are specifically designed to bring this out. I will also argue that it is precisely because his character changes for the better that the poem fits the Aristotelian concept of epic. Lastly, I will attempt to refute Redfield's arguments in support of his opinion that Achilleus does not change in the course of the story. (shrink)

This question as to whether machines can, or could, be made to think, has become familiar in recent years since the renewed outburst of interest that has taken place in the development of Cybernetics. The notion of servo–mechanisms and the like has a history in remote antiquity but the form of its fundamental question has recently taken on a new and especially acute significance.

Much has been written about the Benthamite theories of education and their debt to monitorialism. Bentham himself, in Chrestomathia, based his blueprint for the schools of the future on the use of monitors, and James Mill, in his various articles on education, envisaged universal schooling within a monitorial framework. In more recent times, scholars, such as Burston, have discussed the influence of the theory of mutual instruction on Utilitarian educational thought. Yet in all this output, little attention has been given (...) to relations between Benthamites and Joseph Lancaster, one of the foremost practical exponents of monitorial teaching in the early nineteenth century nor to the organization in Southwark which perpetuated his methods. When Lancaster himself has been referred to, it has usually been in unfavourable terms. Bentham expressed his contempt for the ‘self-styled Quaker’, who ‘so notoriously and scandalously abused’ his early reputation as a successful schoolmaster. Francis Place, abandoning his early enthusiasm for Lancaster, decided that he was ‘adapted to the teaching in the school and to nothing else’ and became ‘mischievous, ridiculous and childish’ after he was ‘caressed by the great’. Halévy summed him up as ‘a pure madman’. (shrink)

Kurt Gödel opposed the reductionist viewpoint of logical positivism. The arguments I give below show he is correct. The reductionist explanation he opposed is doomed to failure.

Accession Number: ATLA0001712277; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 751-766.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 765-766.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 5, Page 8-9, May 2012.

This short work is a collection of four essays by nineteenth-century author and transcendentalist Samson Reed. "A Dissertation: On the Evidence from the Light of Nature of a Future Retribution" is a religious treatise that laid the groundwork for his aesthetic theory; the "Oration on Genius" is a vibrant speech which is probably America's earliest Romantic manifesto; "Observations on the Growth of the Mind" reflects the aesthetic theory embraced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the New England transcendentalists; and Reed's preface (...) to the 1838 edition of "Observations," which showed his growing disenchantment with the transcendentalist movement he helped to inspire. Edited by George F. Dole, the collection contains a preface by Sylvia Montgomery Shaw giving the historical context to these writings. (shrink)