At his death in 1945, the influential German philosopher Ernst Cassirer left manuscripts for the fourth and final volume of his magnum opus, _The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms_. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene have edited these writings and translated them into English for the first time, bringing to completion Cassirer's major treatment of the concept of symbolic form. Ernst Cassirer believed that all the forms of representation that human beings use—language, myth, art, religion, history, science—are symbolic, (...) and the concept of symbolic forms was the basis of his thinking on these subjects. In this volume, which contains one text written in 1928 and another in about 1940, Cassirer presents the metaphysics that is implicit in his epistemology and phenomenology of culture. The earlier text grounds the philosopher's conception of symbolic forms on a notion of human nature that makes a general distinction between Geist and life. In the later text, he discusses Basis Phenomena, an original concept not mentioned in any of his previous works, and he compares his own viewpoint with those of other modern philosophers, notably Bergson and Heidegger. (shrink)

The fallacy in Berkeley's argument for idealism is identified.

In this briskly written volume, a case is made that a value is a belief as to how one live one's life if one's psychological architecture is to retain its integrity, and a case is thereby made that intention is an operationalized value. This analysis makes it possible to distinguish between minds that do and minds that do not host selves. (Selves are minds that have values; minds that are not selves do not.) The relationship between weakness of the will (...) and self-deception is made clear, and it is explained how it is that one can knowingly act in self-destructive ways. (shrink)

A mugging can overwhelm our ability to apply moral principles. When words fail, we still need advice that allows us to remain moral in the face of an attack. Self-defense offers just such advice and can be supported by utilitarian, deontological, and virtue approaches to ethics. Self-defense increases safety and security that enhance our freedom and well-being, which, in turn, allow us to survive and flourish as moral agents. Self-defense must, however, itself be qualified because its violent treatment of muggers (...) may produce human time bombs that reduce the safety and security of society.The martial art of Aikido trains our hand to act morally in the face of a physical attack when our mind is otherwise occupied. Aikido teaches self-defense, but it goes beyond self-centeredness to also protect the attacker. Such concern helps build community because it reduces vectors of resentment that spread when violence is perpetuated. The defense-only nature of Aikido teaches virtues in an embodied form on the mat. It offers philosophers an experiential and kinesthetic view of moral conduct that supplements and complements an exclusively intellectual approach. Moral philosophy cannot demand that we learn a martial art since it is only one of many possibilities to assist us in living a moral life; nevertheless, a reasonable attention to those conditions necessary for freedom and well-being entails an awareness of self-defense. (shrink)

Academic journals are clogged with gratuitous scholarship. This prevents the advancement of the corresponding disciplines in many ways, five of which are identified in this short work.

It is shown that moral values are constitutive of the scientific process and therefore, contrary to the traditional view, not incidental to it.

It is discussed why it is beneficial to let go of anger. To this end, the teachings of the Buddha are discussed.

This short work proves the incompleteness of deductive logic. In other words, it proves that there is no recursive definition of K, where K is the class of all systems of logic.

According to a popular doctrine known as "intentionalism," two experiences must have different representational contents if they have different phenomenological contents; in other words, what they represent must differ if what they feel like differs. Were this position correct, the representational significance of a given affect (or 'quale'---plural 'qualia'--to use the preferred term), e.g. a tickle, would be fixed: what it represented would not be a function of the subject's beliefs, past experiences, or other facts about his past or present (...) psychological condition. To be sure, many a quale has a significance; but it is never a quale's intrinsic properties that assign it that significance, it being quale-external facts about the subject's psychological composition that do so. (An example of such a fact would be a belief on the subject's part to the effect that relevantly similar qualia are consistent with arthritis.). (shrink)

There are two kinds of bureaucracies: those that serve some non-bureaucratic purpose, albeit in a bureaucratic way, and those whose only purpose is to create more bureaucracy.

A brief statement of the most basic principles of the discipline of Knowledge Management (KM).

A bureaucrat is somebody who has surrendered all of his decision-making responsibilities to the bureaucracy that employs him. So long as a given person’s decision-making protocol is capable of being in conflict with the bureaucracy that hosts him, that person is not a bureaucrat. And so long as that condition obtains, he can be internally conflicted, since, under that circumstance, he has two decision-making protocols, one corresponding to the bureaucracy in question and one that is his own. For this reason (...) mutatis mutandis, the bureaucrat is incapable of being internally conflict. And this lack of internal conflict makes him emotionally sterile and unable to act. (shrink)

Instead of writing a book or article, which contains at most one paragraph’s worth of actual content, why not just write that one paragraph?

The shred of truth in Kuhn's erroneous theory of scientific theories is identified.

It is said what aggregative properties are and also what emergent properties are, and examples are given each of kind of property. It is also explained why, even though all emergent properties are aggregative properties, not all aggregative properties are emergent properties. It is further made clear that, strictly speaking, emergence is a property of one's knowledge of a given kind of aggregate, and not of such aggregates themselves, this being why a property that is emergent at one time will, (...) when additional information becomes available, cease to be emergent. And it is explained why, for this very reason, the right answer to the question 'why does X exist?' is never 'because X is an emergent property.'. (shrink)

Chomsky's arguments for the existence of pre-experiential knowledge, and for the existence of sub-personal cognition, are clearly stated and shown to be cogent.

It is shown that institutions are fractals, meaning that are structurally the same as their parts, and that for this reason liberal institutions are quicker than conservative institutions to decay into a condition of abject psychopathy.

The sciences are typically divided into the physical and the psychological—or, what comes to the same thing, the natural and the social. This is not the right way to divide the class of sciences. The right division is between the sciences that study entropic systems and the sciences that study counter-entropic systems. Biology and psychology study counter-entropic systems. Physics studies entropic systems. The concept of a function—not in the mathematical, but in the purpose-related sense---is completely alien to the logic of (...) the entropic sciences, but it is central to the logic of the counter-entropic sciences. (shrink)

The most important laws of the propositional calculus are clearly and succinctly stated.

The modern age has not given rise to any new psychopathologies. But modern social configurations have withdrawn some of the constraints that in times past inhibited the development of latent psychopathology.

The theorems of the propositional calculus and the predicate calculus are stated, and the analogous principles of Boolean Algebra are identified. Also, the primary principles of modal logic are stated, and a procedure is described for identifying their Boolean analogues.

In this short work, Cantor's famous 'diagonal' proof of the non-recursivity of the class of real numbers is stated and discussed.

Dishonesty with oneself makes one unable to act. Honesty with oneself makes one able to act.

It is said what it is to persist in time, and on that basis it is shown that time-travel, teleportation, and other mainstays of science fiction are impossible.

If It isn’t necessary, its non-existence is.

Non-biological systems are entropic systems. Biological systems are counter-entropic systems.

What we call "neurosis" is psychosis about specific facts, but not about the logical instruments used to judge relations between facts. What we call "psychosis" is psychosis about both facts and the aforementioned logical instruments.

Este libro establece y analiza la Teoría de las descripciones de Russell.

Vegans self-identify as animals. So for them, consuming animal products is cannibalism, and that is why don't consume such products.

It is concisely explained what Borderline Personality Disorder is and how it differs from psychopathy.

A therapist turns very damaged people into moderately damaged people. I turn moderately strong people into very strong people. I am an analyst, not a therapist.

Cassirer hat sich — wie der späte Cohen und der späte Natorp — von der Marburger Beschränkung auf Erkenntnistheorie entfernt. In bisher unpublizierten Texten aus der Emigrationszeit befaßte Cassirer sich mit dem Problem der Metaphysik. Goethes Lehre von den Urphänomenen und die Gestalttheorie Kurt Goldsteins beeinflußten Cassirers späte Theorie der « Basisphänomene ». Diese neue Denkrichtung knüpfte an die Symboltheorie Cassirers an und wies auf ihren Ausgang hin. Tout comme Cohen et Natorp dans leur œuvre tardive, Cassirer s'est situé au-delà (...) de la théorie de la connaissance à laquelle l'École de Marbourg entendait se limiter. Dans des textes écrits durant son exil et qui n'ont pas encore été publiés, Cassirer aborde la problématique de la métaphysique. La théorie gœthéenne des phénomènes originaires comme la théorie de la forme développée par Kurt Goldstein ont influencé la réflexion tardive de Cassirer sur les « phénomènes de base ». Cette nouvelle orientation de sa pensée s'articule sur la théorie du symbole, et indique comment la dépasser. (shrink)

Lack of coordination is an expression of internal conflict.

There are nine kinds of number: cardinal (measure of class size), ordinal (corresponds to position), generalized ordinal (position in multidimensional discrete manifold), signed (relation between cardinals), rational (different kind of relation between cardinals), real (limit), complex (pair of reals), transfinite (size of reflexive class), and dimension (measure of complexity.

The philosopher is an obsessive-compulsive and the obsessive-compulsive is a philosopher.

A rigorous examination of the assumptions underlying empirical inquiry, with special attention being paid to: -/- *Causation *The relationship between the causal order and the spatiotemporal order *Probability (specifically, the distinction between statistical probability and explanatory probability) *Causation in relation to determinism *Different kinds of determinism *Causation in relation to prediction *Factors limiting the scope and accuracy of prediction *Data-modeling vs. truth-identification (the convergence of the two in psychology, the divergence of the two in the physical sciences) *Interdisciplinary reduction *The (...) distinctive nature of psychology *Substantive but under-examined empirical questions within the discipline of psychology relating to the different kinds of psychopathy and to the distinction between psychopathy and non-psychopathic (in some cases counter-psychopathic) criminality *The concept of a datum *The distinction between data and truths and, more generally, between non-propositional and propositional content *The linguistic basis of discursive thought and scientific procedure -/- The last chapter of the present work contains definitions of every philosophy-specific term occurring in the book, along with an analysis of the corresponding concept. (shrink)

Double-think is more of a threat to psychical integrity than repression.

The United States is not communist: We have a market-economy. But that economy is embedded in a larger culture whose outlook is largely Marxist in nature, and this constricts and also sterilizes commercial activity in the United States.

Climbing the ranks in academia is about forfeiting integrity. But if integrity is forfeited too soon, the person in question won't have the moral fiber needed to write a dissertation. And when this happens, the result is a perpetual dissertator. The phenomenon of being a perpetual dissertator has nothing to do with the difficulties supposedly inherent in writing a philosophy or economics dissertation. There are no such difficulties. The perpetual dissertator simply forfeited his moral fiber too soon.

It has been noted that certain similarities can be detected between the work of the Bakhtin Circle and the work of Jürgen Habermas. While I do not deny that these sorts of similarities can be detected, I also argue that the insights of the Bakhtin Circle can be used to provide the basis of a critique of Habermas. My specific aim is to show how Habermas perpetuates a ‘stylistic’ approach to discourse theory. ‘Stylistics’, as conceived by the Bakhtin Circle, explores (...) discourse through the dualism of an objectively defined set of linguistic norms that can be appropriated through the creative linguistic competence of individual speakers. On this understanding, individuals within their everyday environment choose elements from objective linguistic norms in order to make sense of their world. However, a stylistic approach to discourse implicitly denigrates the usefulness of everyday utterances because it suggests that, for language to gain normative meaning and understanding, it must always refer back to an objective linguistic system. By using the Bakhtin Circle’s theoretical insights, I flag up several problems that emerge from Habermas’s particular standpoint on stylistics. (shrink)

A series of sharp, deep answers to hard-hitting questions about psychopathy, with embedded link to the author real-timing it.

Según David Hume, el concepto de causalidad y probabilidad debe entenderse en términos de los conceptos de similitud y repetición. En este libro, se demuestra que deben ser entendidos en términos del concepto de la continuidad. Un corolario es que no existe una base legítima para el escepticismo sobre la legitimidad de la inferencia inductiva. Otra es que el anti-realismo sobre las entidades teóricas es erróneo.

Alan Turing advocated a kind of functionalism: A machine M is a thinker provided that it responds in certain ways to certain inputs. Davidson argues that Turing’s functionalism is inconsistent with a cer-tain kind of epistemic externalism, and is therefore false. In Davidson’s view, concepts consist of causal liasons of a certain kind between subject and object. Turing’s machine doesn’t have the right kinds of causal li-asons to its environment. Therefore it doesn’t have concepts. Therefore it doesn’t think. I argue (...) that this reasoning is entirely fallacious. It is true that, in some cases, a causal liason between subject and object is part of one’s concept of that object. Consequently, to grasp certain propositions, one must have certain kids of causal ties to one’s environment. But this means that we must rethink some old views on what rationality is. It does not mean, pace Davidson, that a precondition for being rational is being causally embedded in one’s environment in a certain way. If Tur-ing’s machine isn’t capable of thinking (I leave it open whether it is or is not), that has nothing to do with its lacking certain kinds of causal con-nections to the environment. The larger significance of our discussion is this: rationality consists either in one’s ability to see the bearing of purely existential propositions on one another or rationality is simply not to be understood as the ability see the bearing that propositions have on one another. (shrink)