The Essential Herman Kahn offers the public for the first time an anthology consisting of the best of Herman Kahn's work. It brings together, out of the several thousands of pages published in his life, the "essential Kahn"—the most relevant, consequential, and interesting themes, ideas, and arguments of his work in areas such as international relations, public policy, environmentalism, strategic thinking, and futurology.

One of the boldest claims one finds in the enactivist and embodied cognition literature is that perceiving is bodily action. Research on the role of eye movements in vision have been thought to support PBA, whereas research on paralysis has been thought to pose no challenge to PBA. The present paper, however, will argue just the opposite. Eye movement research does not support PBA, whereas paralysis research presents a strong challenge that seems not to have been fully appreciated.

The world awaits a SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccine to keep the populace healthy, fully reopen their economies, and return their social and healthcare systems to “normal.” Vaccine safety and efficacy requires meticulous testing and oversight; this paper describes how despite grandiose public statements, the current vaccine development, testing, and production methods may prove to be ethically dubious, medically dangerous, and socially volatile. The basic moral concern is the potential danger to the health of human test subjects and, eventually, many vaccine recipients. (...) This is further complicated by economic and political pressures to reduce government oversight on rushed vaccine testing and production, nationalistic distribution goals, and failure to plan for the widespread immunization needed to produce global herd immunity. As this paper asserts, the public must be better informed to assess promises about the novel vaccines being produced and to tolerate delays and uncertainty. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to trace how a perverted understanding of the human – of human nature, growth, and well-being – came to form the foundation for classical liberal economic thought and to identify some of the negative consequences of this development. My suggestion is that, in response to the social upheaval of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries that would lead to the rise of capitalism and make possible the industrial revolution, moral philosophers applied to humans and (...) to human society mechanistic principles from the highly successful natural sciences in an effort to make sense of a social world that had ceased to make sense. Thus emerged the impoverished view of the human that lies at the foundation of mainstream economic thinking: homo economicus – the human as a rational, utility-optimizing machine, driven by unlimited desires. (shrink)

According to the modal philosophy the many different arts serve to acknowledge and promote the career and value of existence. Architecture does not exist primarily because men need shelter, nor sculpture because men have hands, nor painting because they have eyes. Neither do story, poetry and theatre arise because men speak, nor music because they hear, nor dance because men leap. The arts are surrogates, embodiments and representatives of the mighty power of existence.

Despite the prominence of the systematicity argument in the debate between Classicists and Connectionists, there is extremely widespread misunderstanding of the nature of the argument. For example, Matthews (1994), has argued that the systematicity argument is a kind of trick, where Niklasson and van Gelder (1994), have claimed that it is obscure. More surprisingly, once one examines the argument carefully, one finds that Fodor, Pylyshyn, and McLaughlin, themselves have not fully understood it. 1 In part as a result of this, (...) many Connectionists who have tried to meet the challenge of explaining the systematicity of thought have been misled about what this challenge involves (e.g. Pollack 1990; Smolensky 1990; Niklasson and van Gelder 1994). I have five principal objectives in this paper. First, I want to respond to those who believe that the systematicity argument is mere obscurity by providing a clear presentation of it. Second, and at the same time, I want to respond to those who believe the argument is mere trickery by showing it to be an instance of a rather familiar form of legitimate scientific reasoning. Third, having seen what sort of reasoning is involved in the argument, I wish to indicate how certain attempts to meet the challenge of systematicity are inadequate. Fourth, having seen the explanatory standard set by the systematicity argument, I want to indicate how even Fodor, Pylyshyn, and McLaughlin, fail to see how Classicism fails to meet the standard. Fifth, and finally, I wish to indicate what consequences the foregoing considerations have for the prospects of Classicism and Connectionism. (shrink)

Ever since the Proslogion was first circulated , critics have been bemused by St Anselm's brazen attempt to establish a matter of fact, namely, God's existence, from the simple analysis of a term or concept. Yet every critic who has proposed to ‘write the obituary’ of the Ontological Argument has found it to be remarkably resilient . At the risk of adding to a record of failures, I want to venture a new method for attacking this durable argument. Neither the (...) common version of Anselm's argument from Chapter II of the Proslogion nor the previously unrecognized modal version uncovered by Norman Malcolm from Pros , III can possibly get under way without Anselm's celebrated assertion that God is that than which no greater can be conceived. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify certain features of the systematicity arguments by a review of some of the largely underexamined background in Chomsky’s and Fodor’s early work on transformational grammar.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider arguments both for and against intellectual property rights that are premised on each of two conceptions of the information commons that attributes either moral value or disvalue to its preservation. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is the philosophically standard one of reflective equilibrium. The author considers the argument for a morally protected information commons that is grounded in Locke's famous proviso limiting original acquisition of material property to situations that leave enough (...) of the resource to others and Hardin's famous argument that holding material property in common leads to overuse and depletion – a Tragedy of the commons. In particular, the arguments are evaluated according to whether they cohere with ordinary foundational commitments. Findings – The author argues that neither conception of the commons is directly applicable to information objects and hence is relevant with respect to the issue of whether legal protection of IP rights is morally justified. Originality/value – The identification of key differences between material objects and information objects that shows the irrelevance of these two leading conceptions in resolving the general issue of whether legal protection of IP rights is justified. (shrink)

This brief 1994 book review essay (5500 words) examines Telford Taylor's memoir, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (1992). The review is a personal one, set against two things - the author's work, while reading Taylor's memoir, in Iraq for Human Rights Watch leading a forensic team excavating Kurdish victims of the 1988 al-Anfal campaign, and the diplomatic discussions leading to the formation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. The essay argues that the Nuremberg trials, according to Taylor, had (...) a certain deflationary emotional affect - deliberately ratcheting down the emotions of what had occurred to the limited world of the courtroom. It was able to do that because the WWII allies had been willing to pay the price of victory and had 'earned' the right to conduct a trial. The Yugoslavia tribunal, by contrast, and at that time, was premised on a claim to universal justice that did not depend upon the willingness of its sponsors to intervene in the slaughter in the former Yugoslavia. "Nuremberg was a lovely hood ornament," said one of the author's unnamed sources, a senior European military judge advocate, "on the ungainly vehicle that liberated Western Europe, but it was not a substitute for D-Day.". (shrink)

The contributions to this symposium raise several issues that extend beyond an examination of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. For example, is the conventional distinction between ancient and modern in political philosophy too simplistic? Is religion necessary to preserve democracy, and if so, what kind of religion must it be? Theological and sociological sources both suggest that the fate of democracy in the modern world is inextricably, not merely accidentally, connected with the fate of Christianity.

Robert R. Reilly’s America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding argues that the intellectual roots of the founders’ political theory are found in the Christian understanding of man, society and the world, and in the tradition of natural law thinking that emerged under its aegis. The American founding, he concludes, must be understood as an attempted “re-establishment” of “the principles and practices” of medieval constitutionalism. While finding the broad outlines of Reilly’s argument persuasive, the author worries that Reilly does (...) not adequately take into account the eclectic character of the founders’ thought, the influence of the Enlightenment and Reformation on it, and the long-term implications of the latter influences for the historical trajectory of public order they created. The contrast between Reilly’s understanding of the founding and John Courtney Murray’s more nuanced account, the article argues, underscores both the strengths and weaknesses of this book. While both Reilly and Murray would agree that the founding was “good,” Murray, unlike Reilly, recognizes that “the seeds of dissolution” were present from the beginning and worries whether it is ultimately “good enough” to sustain the American experiment in self-government and ordered liberty. (shrink)

Levels of Analysis in Psychopathology draws research from psychiatry, philosophy, and psychology to explore the variety of explanatory approaches for understanding the nature of psychiatric disorders both in practice and research. The fields of psychiatry and clinical psychology incorporates many useful explanatory approaches and this book integrates this range of perspectives and makes suggestions about how to advance etiologic theories, classification, and treatment. The editors have brought together leading thinkers who have been widely published and are well-respected in their area (...) of expertise, including several developers of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and authors of the US National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria Project (RDoC). Each main chapter has a commentary provided by one of the other authors and an introduction written by one of the editors to create an accessible, interdisciplinary dialog. (shrink)

In the face of the new and radically different type of public order that seems to be emerging on the contemporary scene, Catholics have sought to secure the legal and social space necessary for themselves and their institutions to live in accordance with their beliefs by appealing to America’s historic commitment to religious freedom. The difficulty we confront is that the vision of man and society animating this order, a vision that emerges from Enlightenment Liberalism issues in an impoverished understanding (...) of religious freedom that fails to secure this legal and social space. (shrink)