A milestone in the development of post-war Marxist thought.

Reply to John Lewis: Note on "The critique of the personality cult". Remark on the category "Process without a subject or goal(s)"--Elements of self-criticism: On the evolution of the young Marx.--Is it simple to be a Marxist in philosophy? "Something new".

Among his own posthumously released drafts, one, at least, is incontestably neither mistake nor out-take: the text of his lecture course on Machiavelli, ...

The central claim of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents sharing a territory can justifiably be forced to live under a state; they have, in Kant's words, a duty of right to leave the state of nature. Perhaps something along these lines is entailed by any theory of state legitimacy, but the point raises special difficulties for Kant. He believes that rational agents have a right to freedom; that is, he believes that a rational agent's external freedom - her (...) ability to set and pursue ends for herself without being subject to the choices of others - can justifiably be restricted only for the sake of external freedom itself. To establish that human beings can be forced to join a civil condition, it will therefore not do to show that the state promotes security, prosperity or any other such value: Kant has to show that human beings living side by side need a state to be free. (shrink)

It is difficult to wander far in contemporary metaphysics without bumping into talk of possible worlds. And reference to possible worlds is not confined to metaphysics. It can be found in contemporary epistemology and ethics, and has even made its way into linguistics and decision theory. What are those possible worlds, the entities to which theorists in these disciplines all appeal? This paper sets out and evaluates a leading contemporary theory of possible worlds, David Lewis's Modal Realism. I note two (...) competing ambitions for a theory of possible worlds: that it be reductive and user-friendly. I then outline Modal Realism and consider objections to the effect that it cannot satisfy these ambitions. I conclude that there is some reason to believe that Modal Realism is not reductive and overwhelming reason to believe that it is not user-friendly. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 71-80 [Access article in PDF] Some Reflections on the (Analytic) Philosophical Approach to Delusion Louis A. Sass There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." —Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5 The peculiar, often problematic phenome na of psychopathology have been attract ing the attention of analytic philosophers in recent years. The topic of delusion (...) has been a particular draw, with a number of analytic philosophers attempting to use their conceptual tools, usually combined with ideas from cognitive neuroscience, to criticize the traditional understanding and to clarify the nature of this central psychiatric topic. It is useful to have this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue. Indeed, there is good reason to hope that concepts honed in the philosophy of mind and other philosophical subfields will help to sort out our understanding of a phenomenon (or set of phenomena) for which contemporary psychiatric definitions and conceptualizations are clearly inadequate and, in some respects, downright misleading (see Parnas and Sass 2001; Spitzer 1990).1Here, however, I would like to call attention to some weaknesses that, it seems to me, are rather common (I do not say universal) in many analytic philosophical approaches to psychopathology. In my opinion, there is a tendency to formulate issues and arguments in overly polarized, even dichotomous terms, and then to rely too uncritically on these essentialistic formulations in exploring the domain of inquiry. Although this polarizing tendency sometimes has the salutary effect of clarifying conceptual domains, it can, when taken too far, actually hamper our understanding of phenomena that are often fraught with ambiguities and complexities that defy many standard conceptualizations.The relationship between philosophy and psychopathology is obviously a two-way street—we are familiar, for example, with disorders that challenge deep philosophical assumptions about self and mind (e.g., blindsight, split-brain phenomena, perhaps also Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the first rank symptoms of schizophrenia). I am suggesting that, in their work on delusions, philosophers may need to put more emphasis on moving from the natural phenomena [End Page 71] of psychopathology and to the domain of philosophical analysis.I believe that a greater sensitivity to the modes of knowing associated with the phenomenological tradition, and to the forms of conceptual self-critique fostered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, are crucial ingredients for any adequate approach to delusion as well as many other topics in psychopathology. In my opinion, the work of many analytic philosophers interested in psychopathology would be enriched if they spent more time trying to discover and imagine what it might be like to experience certain kinds of abnormal psychiatric conditions, and also speculating about what implications such experiential modalities might have for action and verbal expression. I believe they would also be wise to spend more time questioning, and attempting to transcend, the philosophically derived conceptual distinctions and dichotomies that appear to organize their conceptual universes. Phenomenological imagination and Wittgensteinian critique can show how to move outside the conceptual capsule and into the rich and strange realms of actual experience, both normal and abnormal.So far I have offered only slogans. Let me use the articles by Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie (2004) and Robert Klee (2004) to flesh out the criticisms I have offered. There is much that is intelligent and much that is worthwhile in both their articles. (For example, I was largely convinced by the criticisms of John Campbell and of Donald Davidson that are central to the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee, respectively.) Here, however, I will focus only on issues that illustrate the above-mentioned tendencies—tendencies that, in my view, tend to infect even the best writings on the (analytic) philosophy of psychiatry. I will also make some remarks about the works of Campbell and Davidson, the two philosophers criticized in the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee. Because the article by Eugenie Georgaca (2004) is in a different tradition, I will say only a few words about it at the end. Bayne and Pacherie on the Preservation-Of-meaning... (shrink)

A modified version of the mere exposure effect paradigm was utilized in an implicit artificial grammar learning task in an attempt to develop a procedure that would be more sensitive in assesing nonconscious learning processes than the methods currently utilized within the field of implicit learning. Subjects were presented with stimuli generated from a finite-state artificial grammar and then had to either decide if novel items conformed to the rule structure of the grammar or rate the degree to which they (...) liked novel items. Because the latter of the task was more indirect of the two procedures, subjects′ availability to discriminate between well-formed and ill-formed items on this liking task was taken as a more sensitive piece of evidence of implicit learning, compared to performance on the rule conformity task. A subsequent test of subjects′ explicit knowledge of the rules of the grammar showed that subjects do have some conscious knowledge of the artificial grammar, but subjects making liking decisions exhibited significantly less conscious rule knowledge than subjects initially making rule-conformity judgements. The findings are discussed in relation to synergistic relationships among implicit perception, implicit memory, and implicit learning proceses. (shrink)

Recently it was shown that certain fluid-mechanical ‘pilot-wave’ systems can strikingly mimic a range of quantum properties, including single particle diffraction and interference, quantization of angular momentum etc. How far does this analogy go? The ultimate test of quantumness of such systems is a Bell-test. Here the premises of the Bell inequality are re-investigated for particles accompanied by a pilot-wave, or more generally by a resonant ‘background’ field. We find that two of these premises, namely outcome independence and measurement independence, (...) may not be generally valid when such a background is present. Under this assumption the Bell inequality is possibly violated. A class of hydrodynamic Bell experiments is proposed that could test this claim. Such a Bell test on fluid systems could provide a wealth of new insights on the different loopholes for Bell’s theorem. Finally, it is shown that certain properties of background-based theories can be illustrated in Ising spin-lattices. (shrink)

This paper explores how realism is crucial in understanding rule-following. The strategy involves starting from what has been achieved by Wittgenstein and others as regards semantic normativity and then applying it to other areas, including moral deliberation. The result shows that realism in rule-following involves not only the weak claim that rules are independent of the individual rule-follower, as conventions are. It involves also the stronger claim that conventional rules are constrained by non-conventional constraints. These constraints depend neither on the (...) individual nor on the group. They arise from the nature of things. Human rule-followers are constrained first by being material beings, secondly by being living organisms, and thirdly by being rational. (shrink)

Impairments in cognitive coordination in schizophrenia are supported by phenomenological data that suggest deficits in the processing of visual context. Although the target article is sympathetic to such a phenomenological perspective, we argue that the relevance of phenomenological data for a wider understanding of consciousness in schizophrenia is not sufficiently addressed by the authors.

Purpose of review This review considers the literature on ethical and conceptual issues in eating disorders from the last 18 months. Some reference to earlier work is necessary in order to provide context for the recent findings from research that is ongoing. -/- Recent findings Empirical ethics research on anorexia nervosa includes novel ethical and conceptual findings on the role of authenticity and personal identity in individuals’ reports of their experience, as well as new evidence on the role of affective (...) states and values in decision making at later stages of the illness. Evidence points to the hypothesis that anorexia nervosa may be a distinct affective syndrome that organizes feelings and emotions in accordance with a fixed idea. -/- Summary There has been impressive progress in empirical ethics research on anorexia nervosa, with important implications for ethical and conceptual issues that surround decision-making capacity and our understanding of the illness. (shrink)

The interaction between science and theology is often seen as an interaction concerning their claims. This article examines how this interaction may also concern their questions. The focus will be on environmental issues because the relevance of these issues has increased tremendously during these last decades. Recent studies have focused on the way a question can become real for any community of inquirers, both in science and in theology. Reality here refers to the way a question emerges as one that (...) can, and should, be dealt with. The paper explores how this idea is applicable to questions concerning the environment, how they have become real, and how this fact will impact our moral deliberation about what we ought to do, personally and globally. (shrink)

Contemporary commentators such as Rosalind Hursthouse misconstrue Aristotle’s doctrine of the ethical mean. They propose a monist account of his moral psychology, explaining each virtue in terms of the presence or absence of a single psychological trait. In contrast, the author argues that Aristotle depicts virtue as a balancing of two opposed psychological inclinations that push and pull in different directions. Each inclination is a positive force in its own right; neither is mere privation. This dualistic account of moral psychology (...) is a more specific application of a recurrent explanatory model one finds elsewhere in Aristotle’s wide-ranging philosophy. In discussing the virtuous mean, moral success can be attributed to the human agent as composite whole or to the indivisible soul. (shrink)

The rationale of patents on transgenic organisms leads to the startling notion of the human qua infringement. The moral reasons by which we may tenably reject such notion are not conclusive as to human life forms outside the body. A close look at recombinant DNA experimentation reveals ingenious processes, but not entities that the body lacks. Except for artificial genes, the genes of biotechnology are found on chromosomes, albeit nonconsecutively, and their uninterrupted transcripts appear in messenger RNA. An enhanced form (...) of protection for ingenious processes, the human methods patent, is proposed and defended as a replacement for product patents. The proposed patent would pertain to biotechnology manufacturing and genetic intervention in somatic and germ cells. A counterpart could govern nonhuman life forms. It is argued that compulsory licensing protections should be a condition of such patent. Contrary to the conservative assumption that statutory sobriquets suffice, the reckoning of what qualifies as a patentable ingenious process will continue to require systematic scientific guidance. (shrink)

In this essay, I compare and contrast how Boethius, the author of Beowulf, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis found ways to integrate their Christian theological and philosophical beliefs into a work that is set in a time and place that possesses the general revelation of creation, conscience, reason, and desire, but lacks the special revelation of Christ and the Bible. I begin by using Lewis’s own analysis of the Consolation in his Discarded Image to discuss what it (...) means for a Christian author to write in a pre-Christian mode. I find a model for such writing in Ecclesiastes, and discuss how Boethius, while confining himself to the pagan wisdom of Greece and Rome, points the way from philosophical consolation to theological transformation. I then use Tolkien’s ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’ to unpack the distinction between the author’s Christian faith and the purely pagan consolation he offers to his characters, and locate that dynamic in the epic itself. Next, I explore how Tolkien, in imitation of Beowulf, balances a deep sense of loss and fatalism with an intimation of a higher providence guiding all. Finally, I show how Lewis, in imitation of Boethius, finds in the pagan world of his novel seeds of a greater revelation to come. (shrink)

In its first section, dedicated to the topic science and relativism, the article argues against those who hold that science is absolutist while ethics is relativist. The point made is that the two disciplines are not all that different. There is an element of objectivity and an element of relativity in both. The article insists that there are two plausible ways in which these elements may be appreciated in both disciplines. The first way involves an analysis of precedents; the second (...) way an analysis of secondary precepts. Then, in its second section, dedicated to science and utilitarianism, the article focuses on the problem of abstraction. The author argues that the crucial issue is the way both scientists and utilitarian philosophers choose the relevant parameters for their theorising. When the choice of parameters is not correct, deformation results. Like economics, utilitarianism tends to present itself as an exact science that guarantees a complete explanation. However, the article shows how and why this attitude can be deeply problematic. (shrink)

The way we understand the environment is analogous to the way we draw a map. Drawing insights from this analogy, this paper shows how the abstraction that occurs in ecological explanation can lead to damaging distortion. It is mistaken, therefore, to assume that by abstraction we can easily determine the correct variables for controlling a given ecosystem as if it were ideally closed. Recent work shows that the environment is a global composite with a very high degree of internal dependence (...) between its parts, a kind of dependence that makes it more holistic than a machine and perhaps even as holistic as an organism. This paper was presented at the 6th European Meeting of Jesuits in Science on “Science and Culture”, Frankfurt a. M., Germany (8th - 12th September 1999). (shrink)

The main problem which I wish to discuss in this paper may be set out in the form of a very simple question. It is this: What makes an artist—whether he be painter, sculptor, musician, poet, or anything else—desire to produce a work of art and to go on working until he has done so?

Through such topics as emotive association, taboo, vagueness, and euphemism, the author explains to the reader how language conveys ideas.

In 1941 Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish friar from Warsaw was arrested for publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets and sentenced to Auschwitz. There he was beaten, kicked by shiny leather boots, and whipped by his prison guards. After one prisoner successfully escaped, the prescribed punishment was to select ten other prisoners who were to die by starvation. As ten prisoners were pulled out of line one by one, Fr. Kolbe broke out from the ranks, pleading with he Commandant to be allowed to (...) take the place of one of the prisoners, a Polish worker with a wife and children dependent upon him. "I'm an old man, sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose," the 45 year old priest pleaded. He was taken, thrown down the stairs into a dank dark basement with the other nine prisoners and left to starve. Usually, prisoners punished like this spent their last days howling, attacking each other and clawing the walls in a frenzy of despair. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.