This group of essays critically examine Horace Kallen's ideas and philosophy, and the extent of his influence. It describes how Kallen helped introduce Zionism in the United States, and how he became one of the first Americans involved in the founding of national civil rights and civil liberties organizations.

William James and Henri Bergson : A Study in Contrasting Theories of Life (1914).

In Stages of Thought, Michael Barnes examines a pattern of cognitive development that has evolved over thousands of years--a pattern manifest in both science and religion. He describes how the major world cultures built upon our natural human language skills to add literacy, logic, and, now, a highly critical self-awareness. In tracing the histories of both scientific and religious thought, Barnes shows why we think the way that we do today. Although religious and scientific modes of thought are often portrayed (...) as contradictory-one is highly rational while the other appeals to tradition and faith-Barnes argues that they evolved together and are actually complementary. Using the developmental thought of Piaget, he argues that cultures develop like individuals in that both learn easier cognitive skills first and master the harder ones later. This is especially true, says Barnes, because the harder ones often require first the creation of cognitive technology like writing or formal logic as well as the creation of social institutions that teach and sustain those skills. Barnes goes on to delineate the successive stages of the co-evolution of religious and scientific thought in the West, from the preliterate cultures of antiquity up to the present time. Along the way, he covers topics such as the impact of literacy on human modes of thought; the development of formalized logic and philosophical reflections; the emergence of an explicitly rational science; the birth of formal theologies; and, more recently, the growth of modern empirical science. This groundbreaking book offers a thorough and persuasive argument in favor of the development of modes of thought across cultures. It will serve as an invaluable resource for historians of religion, philosophers and historians of science, and anyone interested in the relationship between religion and science. (shrink)

A reprint of the New American Library edition of 1970.

Statistical regularities of the environment are important for learning, memory, intelligence, inductive inference, and in fact, for any area of cognitive science where an information-processing brain promotes survival by exploiting them. This has been recognised by many of those interested in cognitive function, starting with Helmholtz, Mach, and Pearson, and continuing through Craik, Tolman, Attneave, and Brunswik. In the current era, many of us have begun to show how neural mechanisms exploit the regular statistical properties of natural images. Shepard proposed (...) that the apparent trajectory of an object when seen successively at two positions results from internalising the rules of kinematic geometry, and although kinematic geometry is not statistical in nature, this is clearly a related idea. Here it is argued that Shepard's term, “internalisation,” is insufficient because it is also necessary to derive an advantage from the process. Having mechanisms selectively sensitive to the spatio-temporal patterns of excitation commonly experienced when viewing moving objects would facilitate the detection, interpolation, and extrapolation of such motions, and might explain the twisting motions that are experienced. Although Shepard's explanation in terms of Chasles' rule seems doubtful, his theory and experiments illustrate that local twisting motions are needed for the analysis of moving objects and provoke thoughts about how they might be detected. Key Words: Chasles' rule; evolution; geometry; perception; redundancy; statistics; twisting. (shrink)

FIRST MERTTENS LECTURE ON WAR AND PEACE JUSTICE AMONG NATIONS BY HORACE G. ALEXANDER, M. A. LECTURER ON INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLITICS AT WOODBROOKE, SBLLY OAK, ...

Almost all representations have both distributed and localist aspects, depending upon what properties of the data are being considered. With noisy data, features represented in a localist way can be detected very efficiently, and in binary representations they can be counted more efficiently than those represented in a distributed way. Brains operate in noisy environments, so the localist representation of behaviourally important events is advantageous, and fits what has been found experimentally. Distributed representations require more neurons to perform as efficiently, (...) but they do have greater versatility. (shrink)

The “determination to catch the world's multiplicity and variety in a single net appears to be an incurable bias of the learned mind.” The extremes to which a philosopher will go to make his net hold water should be nothing short of absurd to the literal minded who neglect “the climate of opinion” which shapes the very logic of the systems or who fail to sympathize with the deep underlying human needs which call forth the great philosophies. Most thinkers in (...) this anthropological day make their bow to the fact of cultural conditioning and to the fact of personal and social surds in the thought of the past. We make our bow, and then proceed to forget that we are human individuals living in an historical period with its own unique strains and symphonies and discords: if only today's system can be shown to be scientific, it must then be beyond dispute. (shrink)

This piece is Horace Kallen's review of Essays Philosophical and Psychological. In Honour of William James. London: Longmans, Green.

Ethical mysticism, by S. Coit.--The ethical import of history, by D. S. Muzzey.--The tragic and heroic in life, by W. M. Salter.--Distinctive features of the ethical movement, by A. W. Martin.--Ethical experience as the basis of religious education, by H. Neumann.--"All men are created equal," by G. E. O'Dell.--How far is art an aid to religion? by P. Chubb.--Evolution and the uniqueness of man, by H. J. Bridges.--The spiritual outlook on life, by H. J. Golding.--The ethics of Abu'l Ala al (...) Ma'arri, by N. Schmidt.--Life's unused moral force, by H. Snell.--Is the ideal real? by G. A. Smith.--Some ethical tendencies in the professions, by R. D. Kohn.--On the art of living, by W. Boerner.--The relation of the ethical ideal to social reform, by J. L. Elliott.--Concerning tolerance, by R. F. Dewey.--Ethical culture in Germany after the war, by R. Penzig.--A confession of faith, by S. B. Weston.--"Hearing the witnesses," by J. Gutmann. (shrink)

TAKING THE NAME OF SCIENCE IN VAIN CHAPTER I THE MEANING OF LIFE AND ITS VALUES 1. THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS He in whose honor these ...

In view of the importance of the philosophical method argued in Mr. C. I. Lewis's “Experience and Meaning,” I wish to call attention to ambiguities which may have an important bearing on one of his conclusions. The method for which he argues is a certain empirical test of meaningfulness. It is his ‘positivistic’ inference from this method which I wish to challenge. To do so I shall present four points: A summary of his empirical test of meaningfulness; A ‘non-positivistic’ hypothesis (...) which Mr. Lewis rejects; An analysis of this hypothesis in view of his test; The theory of universals implied in my analysis. (shrink)

Prediction, like filling-in, is an example of pattern completion and both are likely to involve processes of statistical inference. Furthermore, there is no incompatibility between inference and neural filling-in, for the neural processes may be mediating the inferential processes. The usefulness of the “bridge locus” is defended, and it is also suggested that the interpersonal level needs to be included when considering subjective experience.

CHAPTER I THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON AND CONSCIENCE To MANY observers of the strange and discouraging developments of the past quarter-century, ...