Popper's well-known demarcation criterion has often been understood to distinguish statements of empirical science according to their logical form. Implicit in this interpretation of Popper's philosophy is the belief that when the universe of discourse of the empirical scientist is infinite, empirical universal sentences are falsifiable but not verifiable, whereas the converse holds for existential sentences. A remarkable elaboration of this belief is to be found in Watkins's early work on the statements he calls “all-and-some,” such as: “For (...) every metal there is a melting point.” All-and-some statements are both universally and existentially quantified in that order. Watkins argued that AS should be regarded as both nonfalsifiable and nonverifiable, for they partake in the logical fate of both universal and existential statements. This claim is subject to the proviso that the bound variables are “uncircumscribed” ; i.e., that the universe of discourse is infinite. (shrink)

Goodwill is an intangible asset that we can find in a company's accounting cycle. Goodwill is basically subject to depreciation and the measurement related to the amount of depreciation of goodwill does not yet have a strong enough basis so that the assessment of goodwill tends to be subjective and based on management's interests, the impact of this subjective assessment is a failure to present good financial statements and can trigger decision-making errors for third parties. internal or external. The (...) asymmetry of the philosophy of economic materialism is an approach that can be used to repress or negate goodwill by providing an alternative to eliminating goodwill. However, this Philosophical Asymmetry of Economic Materialism is not a final approach because it still depends on several factors that will influence it. Ethical utilitarianism is one of the factors that can influence the effectiveness and implementation of the Philosophical Asymmetry of Economic Materialism as a form of increasing profits and optimizing costs to be incurred by companies in the future. Philosophical asymmetry of Economic Materialism seeks to suppress or negate the existence of goodwill as a form of ethical utilitarianism in the business environment. (shrink)

At first blush, values such as diversity appear to be worth striving for. The question is whether or not such values—which have become increasingly prevalent in university mission statements—are values as such, which is to ask whether they are things of moral worth (Value, n.d.), or are something else altogether. My unpopular suspicion leans toward the latter. Personal opinions, of course, are hardly a justification for an impassioned critique, however, my opinions mirror those held by moderate and conservative witnesses (...) to the sociopolitical climate of academia (Pew Research Center, 2017) as well as individuals who would typically be considered classically liberal such as Peter Boghossian (2021). Because of this concordance and in order to understand the constitutive relations of academic production, it becomes necessary to critically examine the nature of institutional values, separate from polemical rhetoric that either seeks to construct a "straw man" of them in order to lay them low or insulate them from outside reproach altogether Since "diversity" seems to be the chief concern among interested groups both in the academic setting and the world at large, this article's point of access to the relations of production in academia will be anchored by a Marxian assessment of diversity as a product of social labour in the academic environment. (shrink)

The paper analyses economic evaluations by distinguishing evaluative statements from actual value judgments. From this basis, it compares four solutions to the value neutrality problem in economics. After rebutting the strong theses about neutrality (normative economics is illegitimate) and non-neutrality (the social sciences are value-impregnated), the paper settles the case between the weak neutrality thesis (common in welfare economics) and a novel, weak non-neutrality thesis that extends the realm of normative economics more widely than the other weak thesis (...) does. (shrink)

It is argued that rather than a well defined F-Twist, Milton Friedman’s “Methodology of positive economics” offers an F-Mix: a pool of ambiguous and inconsistent ingredients that can be used for putting together a number of different methodological positions. This concerns issues such as the very concept of being unrealistic, the goal of predictive tests, the as-if formulation of theories, explanatory unification, social construction, and more. Both friends and foes of Friedman’s essay have ignored its open-ended unclarities. Their removal may (...) help create new common ground for more focused debate in economics. Here I show how F53 can be reread/rewritten as a socially constructivist fallibilist, and realist statement – in contrast to the received instrumentalist interpretation. (shrink)

While the volume of material inspired by Rawls’s reinvigoration of the discipline back in 1971 has still not begun to subside, its significance has been in serious decline for quite some time. New and important work is appearing less and less frequently, while the scope of the work that is appearing is getting smaller and more internal and its practical applications more difficult to discern. The discipline has reached a point of intellectual stagnation, even as real-world events suggest that the (...) need for what political philosophy can provide could not be more critical. What follows then is a set of statements about how I believe that we, as political philosophers, should approach what we do. It contains my view as to what political philosophy should be about, how political philosophy should be done, and how courses in political philosophy should be taught, interlaced with commentary on the current state of the profession. (shrink)

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this (...) publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. (shrink)

Confirming Robinson’s Statement? A Lakatosian Analysis of Keynes and his Immediate Orthodoxy Jesús Muñoz Abstract Was the Keynesian message alive during the second half of the XXth Century, or was it betrayed by his followers? This article in the fields of the history of economic thought and methodology contrasts the Scientific Research Programmes (SRPs), a Lakatosian concept, of Keynes in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (TGT) with those of its immediate orthodox schools: Monetarism (MS), Neoclassical Synthesis (...) (NS), New Classical Macroeconomics – rational expectations – (RE) and General Disequilibrium (GD). The objective is to to assess the immediate impact of Keynes’s vision in economics. It can be concluded according to this comparison that Keynes’s bequeath was alive during the period between 1950 and 1980, but that it was accepted under different names. Many economists deny this statement. However it is hereby argued with the help of Lakatosian methodology that in both economic and philosophical terms the MS, NS, RE and GD SRPs are degenerative variants of Keynes's SRP. The Keynesian reasoning chain -a non self-regulated system, non neutrality on the part of money, organicism, non-ergodicity, historical time and uncertainty- is misunderstood and hence misapplied on the part of these deviant schools, or transformed into “bastard Keynesianism”, to quote Joan Robinson (Joan Robinson, 1975[1973], 125). In other words, Keynes’s economics is different from Keynesian economics as was firstly proposed by Axel Leijonhuvfud (Leijonhuvfud, 1968). The internal history of macroeconomics in those periods is undertaken, since it is is the rational reconstruction of the meaning of a SRP. Section 1 is an introduction to basic concepts related to philosophy of science and methodology, especially Lakatosian methodology, which can be skipped by the specialized reader. Section 2 is an analysis of Keynes’s hard core in his SRP, also being an introduction to the problem as it outlines Keynes’s thinking, Section 3 describes initial Post Keynesianism, which was faithful to the original message. Sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 outline the hard cores of Monetarists, Neoclassical Synthesis, New Classical Macroeconomics and General Disequilibrium, respectively. Section 8 is a comprehensive analysis of the differences between the mentioned paradigms, and hence concludes. References are listed at the end of the article. (shrink)

Societal pressures on high tech organizations to define and disseminate their ethical stances are increasing as the influences of the technologies involved expand. Many Internet-based businesses have emerged in the past decades; growing numbers of them have developed some kind of moral declaration in the form of mottos or ethical statements. For example, the corporate motto “don’t be evil” (often linked with Google/ Alphabet) has generated considerable controversy about social and cultural impacts of search engines. After addressing the origins (...) of these mottos and statements, this chapter projects the future of such ethical manifestations in the context of critically-important privacy, security, and economic concerns. The chapter analyzes potential influences of the ethical expressions on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. The chapter analyzes issues of whether “large-grained” corporate mottos can indeed serve to supply social and ethical guidance for organizations as opposed to more complex, detailed codes of ethics or comparable attempts at moral clarification. (shrink)

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression, the cover story of the July 18th 2009 issue of The Economist, entitled “What went wrong with economics,” opened with an unequivocally incriminating statement: “Of all the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself.” In the months surrounding this indictment, many influential economists, including several Nobel laureates, were drawn to the (...) same embarrassing conclusion. Despite the existence of a handful of Cassandras, economists, as a group, had failed to foresee the crash. This short essay reviews the criticisms addressed to modern economic theory in the immediate aftermath of the crash. Overall, the main issues raised by critics were that (a) economists versed in the dominant models in macroeconomics and finance have been blinded to the possibility that we live in an uncertain and complex world; and (b) that the content of current economics education has sidelined many of the relevant insights to be found in the history of the discipline. This has led the critics to call for changes in the institutional structure of discipline, with a particular emphasis on the promotion of interdisciplinarity, and theoretical and methodological pluralism. (shrink)

At this juncture, the relevance of the human right to science is undeniable. The right, for a long time, has been a subject matter of deliberation under Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966 (ICESCR). Most of these deliberations emphasised the need for a concise meaning and scope of the right to science. In the year 2020, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) under the ICESCR made two interventions with (...) the objective of defining, advancing and mainstreaming the right to science. The two interventions include General Comment No. 25 on Science and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Statement on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This paper concerns the above mentioned statements of the CESCR, in particular, the interpretations and standards being advanced by the Committee. (shrink)

We propose an axiomatic approach to constructing the dynamics of systems, in which one the main elements 9e8 is the consciousness of a subject. The main axiom is the statements that the state of consciousness is completely determined by the results of measurements performed on it. In case of economic systems we propose to consider an offer of transaction as a fundamental measurement. Transactions with delayed choice, discussed in this paper, represent a logical generalization of incomplete transactions and (...) allow for a more rigorous approach to studying the properties of the algebra of economic measurements. Considering the behavior of an object as a sequence of actions and choices allows extending the obtained results to random systems, which include the subject's consciousness as one of its elements. The specifics, on which the description of fundamental measurements is based, allows easily transferring the formalism of Schwinger's theory of selective measurements (and the consequent quantum-mechanical formalism) to the economic and social systems. (shrink)

Societal pressures on high tech organizations to define and disseminate their ethical stances are increasing as the influences of the technologies involved expand. Many Internet-based businesses have emerged in the past decades; growing numbers of them have developed some kind of moral declaration in the form of mottos or ethical statements. For example, the corporate motto “don’t be evil” (often linked with Google/Alphabet) has generated considerable controversy about social and cultural impacts of search engines. After addressing the origins of (...) these mottos and statements, this chapter projects the future of such ethical manifestations in the context of critically-important privacy, security, and economic concerns. The chapter analyzes potential influences of the ethical expressions on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. The chapter analyzes issues of whether “large-grained” corporate mottos can indeed serve to supply social and ethical guidance for organizations as opposed to more complex, detailed codes of ethics or comparable attempts at moral clarification. (shrink)

An elementary algebra identifies conceptual and corresponding applicational limitations in John Kemeny and Paul Oppenheim’s (K-O) 1956 model of theoretical reduction in the sciences. The K-O model was once widely accepted, at least in spirit, but seems afterward to have been discredited, or in any event superceeded. Today, the K-O reduction model is seldom mentioned, except to clarify when a reduction in the Kemeny-Oppenheim sense is not intended. The present essay takes a fresh look at the basic mathematics of K-O (...) comparative vocabulary theoretical term reductions, from historical and philosophical standpoints, as a contribution to the history of the philosophy of science. The K-O theoretical reduction model qualifies a theory replacement as a successful reduction when preconditions of explanatory adequacy and comparable systematicization are met, and there occur fewer numbers of theoretical terms identified as replicable syntax types in the most economical statement of a theory’s putative propositional truths, as compared with the theoretical term count for the theory it replaces. The challenge to the historical model developed here, to help explain its scope and limitations, involves the potential for equivocal theoretical meanings of multiple theoretical term tokens of the same syntactical type. (shrink)

If the transcendence tree to which our world belongs has a root, and that root is a mind, then what can be known about that mind? It seems there are two sources of knowledge, theology (that mind may have revealed itself to us) and philosophy (we may be able to reason about it from first principles). Here we shall look into that latter aspect.

The economics and cybernetic circuit of the energetics of money is explained via formal and logical statements.

Amartya Sen’s remarkable endeavour to realize the normative capability of welfare economics goes beyond the impecunious resultants of the neoclassical welfare economy. The neoclassical welfare economy decoratively bracketed values to speculate about factual observations. This was due to the influence of logical positivists and their convictions about experimental scientific statements (primarily mathematical) and their vicinity to empirical truths and analytic statements. Sen adequately inquires “whether morality can be expressed in the form of choice between preference patterns rather than (...) between actions” (Sen, 1997a, 78). “A new phase classical theory” in economics from the hands of Sen and some others put forth two pivotal issues in a unified manner: a. Mathematical models of an economy. b. Ethical reflection on the subject of welfare economy–a value-laden enterprise in Sen’s literature. -/- In general, welfarists and utilitarians affirm that moral values are anchored in individual agency and involve mental metric utilities (pleasure, happiness, pain etc.). This focus, first of all, results in a disadvantage, as it undermines freedom in terms of achievement. Secondly, it pays no heed to achievement reasonably giving more importance to those who are incapable of reflecting on any one of those mental metrics. Besides, Sen argues that equality of opportunity does not accord with the equality of freedom, and its reason is rooted in the scope of the incongruity of human beings and the diversified meanings of efficiency. Developing a general methodological approach to revisit the notion of inequality concerned by exploring a particular substantive stand that Sen aims to underscore involves examining how social arrangements work to define freedom, capabilities, and welfare to ensure comparisons and assessments of quality of life. (shrink)

Introduction. The book is a study in Adam Smith's system of ideas; its aim is to reconstruct the peculiar framework that Adam Smith’s work provided for the shaping of a semi-autonomous new discipline, political economy; the approach adopted lies somewhere in-between the history of ideas and the history of economic analysis. My two claims are: i) The Wealth of Nations has a twofold structure, including a `natural history' of opulence and an `imaginary machine' of wealth. The imaginary machine is (...) a kind of Newtonian theory, whose connecting links are principles; provided either by `partial' characteristics of human nature or by analoga of physical mechanisms transferred to the social world; ii) a domain of the economic, understood as a self-standing social sub-system, was discovered first by Adam Smith. His `discovery' of the new continent of the economic was an `unintended result' of a deviation in his voyage to the never-found archipelago of natural jurisprudence. -/- 1. Imaginary machines and invisible chains: natural philosophy and method. The first chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in natural philosophy, presented primarily in the History of Astronomy (HA). The peculiar kind of semi-sceptical Newtonianism which permeates the essay is highlighted. Its reconstruction of the history of one natural science is shown to be based on the assumptions of Hume’s epistemology, and to lead to a self-aware deadlock. Smith's dilemma is between an essentialist realism and sceptical instrumentalism; the Cartesian presuppositions he shares with Hume and with the 18th century as a whole make it impossible for him to overcome his dilemma. The following chapters will show how, on the one hand, Smith's skeptical methodology encourages him in the enterprise to `carve off' a new self-contained discipline and how, on the other hand, his epistemological dilemma is reflected in the inner tensions of his moral and political theory as well as in a number of basic oscillations concerning the status of the new discipline. -/- 2. Chessboards and clocks: moral philosophy and method. -/- The second chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in the parallel field of moral philosophy, including the theory of moral sentiments and natural jurisprudence. I argue that The Theory of Moral Sentiments, when considered together with with the Lectures on Jurisprudence, where Smith's peculiar version of a `weaker' form of natural law is presented, wins special interest, not only for the history of ethics but even more for the history of political theory and the social sciences. The two most striking features of Smith's work in this area are highlighted. First, his effort at reformulating the `practical science' is a methodologically self-aware attempt at applying the Newtonian method to moral subjects. Secondly, this attempt ends in a stalemate as two distinguished kinds of normative order are introduced: one ultimate order of Reason, ultimately justifiable but inaccessible, and one weaker order of our `natural sentiments', to which we have empirical access, but which is so variable as to lack any ultimate value as a basis for grounding our normative claims. These two parallel conundrums may arguably account for the author's inability to publish during his lifetime both The History of Astronomy and the projected history and theory of law and government. -/- 3. Wheels, dams, and gravitation: the structure of scientific argument in The Wealth of Nations. -/- The third chapter provides the core of the book, dealing with the structure of the argument in WN. I argue that the main presupposition that makes the shift possible from a `natural history' to a `system' approach is the Newtonian contrast of `mathematical' with `physical' explanation; that is, Smith drops any discussion of the "original qualities" of human nature that could account for economic behaviour, while introducing, as `principles' for the system, a set of `hypothetical' statements of `observed' regularities in human behaviour and of `observed' super-individual self-regulating mechanisms. In bringing this presupposition to light, the coexistence of a teleological with a mechanistic approach is clarified; fresh light is shed on the notion of the invisible hand by a comparison of its occurrence in Smith with the occurrence of the same expression (until now overlooked) in the correspondence between Newton and Cotes. Finally, the peculiar semi-prescriptive and semi-descriptive character of political economy are highlighted, and the consistency of Smith's `impure' semi-prescriptive social science, when understood in his own terms, is defended against familiar charges with inconsistency and against even more familiar strained modernizations. -/- 4. Apples, deer, and frivolous trinkets: the construction of the economic. -/- The fourth chapter draws consequences from the third, examining how Smith's achievement in political economy, marking its transition to scientific status, carried a re-description of the phenomena, creating the comparatively independent and unified field of the economic. Smith's achievement is interpreted not as the `discovery' of an autonomous character already possessed by the economy out there, so much as a Gestalt-switch by which our perception of social phenomena is modified making us `see' the partial order of the economy as an isolated system. To sum up, the autonomy of the economic in social reality and the autonomy of the economic in social consciousness are shown to be two sides of one process. -/- 5. Concluding considerations: Political economy and the Enlightenment halved. -/- A few suggestions on the status of economic theory two centuries after The Wealth of Nations in its relationship to ‘practical philosophy’ are illustrated. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to determine the state of automotive corporations financial stability and to generalize the consequences of its violation for their activity and the global economy as a whole. Methods. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the scientific works in the field of corporate finance management and strategic development that studied analyzing and evaluating the financial stability of corporate companies, maintaining their financial stability in the medium and long term, official statistics data of (...) United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, financial statements of corporations Toyota Motor Corporation (Japan), Mercedes-Benz (Germany) and Tesla Motors (USA), own research results. The methodological basis of the study is a set of general scientific and special methods used to achieve the research goal: theoretical generalization, analysis and synthesis – in studying the content of scientific works on the research of financial stability of corporate companies and maintaining their financial stability; observation – to obtain primary information about the state of the world automotive market; the method of coefficient analysis and typing the situations – to assess the financial stability of automotive corporations; analytical – in determining the economic consequences of financial stability violation of automotive corporations; causation – to obtain final conclusions. Results. This article deals with the development of automotive industry in the world. The financial stability of leading automotive corporations is evaluated. The economic consequences of financial stability violation of automotive corporations are summarized. Financial strategies to improve the financial stability of automotive corporations are proposed. Practical value. The results of the study may be useful to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the financial management of Toyota Motor Corporation, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla Motors. Value / originality – the state of financial stability of automotive corporations is determined and the consequences of its violation for their activity and the world economy as a whole are generalized. Further research should be directed towards the development of project measures to improve the financial stability of automotive corporations in the world. (shrink)

This essay is part of an attempt to reconcile two extreme views in economics: the (neglected) subjective, apriorist approach and the (standard) objective, scientific (i.e., falsifiable) approach. The Austrian subjective view of value, building on Carl Menger’s theory of value, was developed into a theory of economics as being entirely an a priori theory of action. This probably finds its most extreme statement in Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action (1949). In contrast, the standard economic view has developed into making (...) falsifiable predictions about economic phenomena whereby the truth of the assumptions, especially about economic agents, is relatively unimportant: predictive fecundity is all. This finds an extreme statement in Milton Friedman’s introductory essay in his Essays in Positive Economics (1953). However, many economists fall somewhere between the two extremes, such as McKenzie and Tullock (1978). (shrink)

Linden Lab studies massive online game "Second Life" unexpectedly gained worldwide fame after a few years after release. To the surprise of many game has met with great interest, despite the lack of promotional campaigns. It can be assumed that the reason why "second life" reached a wider audience was a special type of offered entertainment. Network game proved to be no longer a game that was known so far, but an example of a mass media, whose central element is (...) a dynamic virtual world which is an extension of our "first" reality. "Second Life" has the potential, which is challenging the widely shared rules could shake the foundations of the social world. This program is currently the most advanced example of a virtual economy. Unlike many other massive online games and their predecessors, this game is entirely based on the principles of virtual property ownership, as well as rules of conduct virtual business and service, and finally also the consumption of goods. Users of the game, just like the person providing the data in the framework of social networking sites maintained in the mainstream of Web 2.0, user-generated content constituting the virtual world, which can trade content with others linden virtual dolars that can be exchanged to real U.S. dollars. The increase in popularity of "Second Life" brings to mind the vision of the possibility of creating a better place to live for many people. Closer analysis of this phenomenon does not allow for such statements. In the following instances will be presented: information about the growth of the global market for online games and its consequences, the distinguishing features of "Second Life" from traditional online games, virtual elements of the impact of economics on social life, the concept of entertainment as a job stream properties Games 2.0 and contentious issues, which produces "second life". ** Masowa gra on-line "Second Life" studia Linden Lab nieoczekiwanie zdobyła sławȩ na całym świecie po kilku latach od premiery. Ku zaskoczeniu wielu tytuł spotkał siȩ z ogromnym zainteresowaniem mimo braku akcji promocyjnych. Można przypuszczać, że powodem dla którego "drugie życie" dotarło do szerszego grona odbiorców był szczególny typ zaoferowanej formy rozrywki. Sieciowa gra okazała siȩ nie być już gr¸a} jak¸a} znano do tej pory, lecz przykładem środka masowego przekazu, którego centralnym elementem jest dynamiczny wirtualny świat stanowi¸a}cy przedłużenie naszej, "pierwszej", rzeczywistości. "Second Life" kryje w sobie potencjał, który podważaj¸a}c podzielane powszechnie reguły może wstrz¸a}sn¸a}ć posadami świata społecznego. Program ten jest obecnie najbardziej zaawansowanym przykładem wirtualnej gospodarki. W odróżnieniu od wielu innych masowych gier on-line i ich poprzedniczek pozycja ta w całości opiera siȩ na zasadach posiadania wirtualnej własności, jak też regułach prowadzenia wirtualnej działalności gospodarczej i usługowej, i wreszcie takiej też konsumpcji dóbr. Użytkownicy gry, podobnie jak osoby udostȩpniaj¸a}ce dane w ramach internetowych serwisów społecznościowych utrzymanych w nurcie Web 2.0, generuj¸a} treści tworz¸a}ce wirtualny świat, treści którymi mog¸a} handlować z innymi pobieraj¸a}c za nie opłaty w wirtualnych dolarach lindeńskich wymiennych na realne dolary amerykańskie. Wzrost popularności "Second Life" przywodzi na myśl wizjȩ możliwości stworzenia lepszego miejsca do życia dla wielu ludzi. Bliższa analiza tego zjawiska nie pozwala już na takie stwierdzenia. W dalszej czȩści wyst¸apienia przedstawione zostan¸a: informacje o wzroście globalnego rynku gier on-line i jego konsekwencjach, cechy odróżniaj¸ace "Second Life" od tradycyjnych gier sieciowych, elementy wpływu wirtualnej gospodarki na życie społeczne, pojȩcie rozrywki jako pracy, właściwości nurtu Games 2.0 oraz sporne kwestie, jakie wywołuje "drugie życie". (shrink)

Vaccination against various diseases has been widely practised for more than a century and on a more limited scale its use in a variety of forms stretches back far longer. During earlier eras disease spread more slowly along shipping lanes on water and traditional transport routes on land. Today, in an era of air transport, contagion spreads far more rapidly. Travelling far more rapidly (indeed instantaneously) is the spread of misinformation that hinders vaccination which can, in the instance of Covid-19, (...) reduce disease impacts, including rates of severe illness and death. This paper explores the ethical issue of informed consent in the context of the contest between personal choice and the greater public welfare. It also makes reference to a number of low, middle and high income countries where vaccine hesitance, and to a lesser extent refusal, has been fed by misinformation on a scale not previously observed but made possible by the proliferation of modern technology. This campaign of ignorance has further undermined trust in governmental health bodies and their attempts to implement quarantine and other measures such as vaccination that had already been damaged by early variations and vacillation in governmental approaches around the globe due in part to a reluctance by some governments to take actions that would have economic repercussions but also by the necessary evolution of their approaches as more became known about the disease and its variants. The paper examines the historical background and the current situation and finds that more must be done to restore or increase trust levels between citizens and governmental authorities, including the dissemination of high quality accurate information in a form relevant to readers/viewers. While potential side-effects of vaccines must be disclosed to ensure informed consent, their incidence should also be clearly communicated (e.g., in vaccine information statements) so that clients/patients are aware that a risk is 1 in 100 or 1in 1000 or 1 in 2 million etc. Governments are urged to learn from their experience and better prepare for inevitable future pandemics to minimise vaccine hesitancy and refusal and maximise its acceptance where evidence is overwhelming as to the benefit to the community. Informed consent is part of the context of efforts to use vaccination to contain or eradicate any disease. Nevertheless, while better information for clients/patients/consumers may reduce vaccine hesitancy/refusal, it is unlikely that it would but eliminate the need for mandating vaccination in some circumstances for the benefit of the broader community, although strict quarantine of those reluctant to accept it is an alternative but one not generally accepted by those reluctant to be vaccinated. The information war is one that needs to be won to increase the voluntary uptake of vaccination in the context of voluntary informed consent. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the ways in which metaphors are used in the text of “The Wealth of Nations”. Its claims are: a) metaphor statements are basically similar to those in the “Theory of the Moral Sentiments”; b) the metaphors’ ‘primary subjects’ refer to mechanics, hydraulics, blood circulation, agriculture, medicine; c) metaphors may be lumped together into a couple of families, the family of mechanical analogies, and that of iatro-political analogies. Further claims are: a basic physico-moral analogy is the framework (...) for Smith’s psychological theory as well as for his overall social theory and for his theory of market mechanisms; a iatro-mechanical analogy is as pervasive as the physico-moral analogy and provides the framework for his overall evolutionary theory of society; the invisible-hand simile relies on the physico-moral analogy, and elaborates on the role of vis attractiva and vis a tergo in mechanics. (shrink)

On 4th of August 2020, the Lebanese capital and port city, Beirut, was rocked by a massive explosion that has killed hundreds and injured thousands more, ravaging the heart of the city’s nearby downtown business district and neighbouring housing areas, where more than 750,000 people live. The waterfront neighbourhood and a number of dense residential neighbourhoods in the city’s eastern part were essentially flattened. Lebanese Government officials believe that the blast was caused by around 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored (...) near the city’s cargo port without proper control for six years. -/- The disaster devastating Beirut’s port and city shows the latent danger of safe storage of potentially dangerous goods in modern ports, particularly ones located close to the heart of the city. The huge blast tore through major grain silos, stoking fears of shortages in a nation that imports nearly all its food and is already reeling from economic crisis. As the WFP (World Food Programme) said in a statement: the blast will “exacerbate the grim economic and food-security situation.” The Beirut blast also reminds us of the importance of ports in the contemporary globalized world. It calls our attention to safety and security, of governance and collaboration between port and city or region and of accessibility to the hinterland. What do local governments and port cities need to do to enhance the safety and security issues in port terminals? Or, to put it differently, how do we reconcile this challenge between the ports we need to feed us, serve us, provide us with medicines, equipment, etc. and the ports that threatens us? (shrink)

This study aims to examine the Islamic Theological School that was opened in Nicosia back in 1932 to meet the chaplain needs of the Cypriot Muslims. In this context, how the Islamic Theological School was welcomed among the groupings of the period, its physical structure, teaching staff, and students were all addressed within the framework of the education program and the closure process. The "Foundation Files" in the National Archives and Research Department in the TRNC and the newspaper collections of (...) the period and the "British Colonial Documents" in the Archives of the General Directorate of the Foundations of Cyprus are the main sources of our research. Documentation method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. In this context, the documents that could be accessed in the researches related to the subject of the study are examined and described for the objectives of the study. In conjunction with the madrasas in Cyprus becoming dysfunctional until the end of the 1920s, the wrecked Great Madrasah building in Nicosia, which had the purpose of training personnel such as imams, preachers, chaplains and muezzins for the mosques, was demolished and a school called Islamic Theological School was built instead. The opening of the Islamic Theological School led to important debates between the two opposition groups of the time, the Halkçılar and the Evkafçılar. Halkçılar are the group of people who advocate the adoption of the revolutions and reforms of the newly established Turkish Republic also by Turkish Cypriots. For this reason, they strongly criticized the opening of the Islamic Theological School on the grounds that it would cause reactionism and bigotry. On the other hand, the concept of Evkafçılar is used for people who represent tradition and are close to the current British rulers. Evkafçılar advocated the opening of the Islamic Theological School by stating that it was a social need. Accordingly, both groups used the press effectively as a means of conveying their own thoughts. The halkçı group used the newspapers called "Söz" and "Masum Millet" and the evkafçılar group used the newspaper called "Hakikat" as a means to convey their views to the society. In the shadow of the discussions between the two groups, the Islamic Theological School, which was built in 1932 in place of the wrecked Great Madrasah building in the northeast of Selimiye (Hagia Sofia) Mosque in Nicosia, was built as a single-floor building and a gable roof system was used on its roof. Funds were appropriated by Education (Hatib Ahmed Efendi) Foundation for supplying the school's materials such as tables, chairs, cabinets, sofas, and armchairs. In 1932, when the Islamic Theological School began educating, there were only three professors and one teacher in its teaching staff. Hürremzâde Hakkı Efendi, one of the professors, was both the school director and the Fatwa Emin. One of the other professors was an imam and the other one was a fatwa clerk. And Muallim Ahmed Fehim Efendi undertook the duty of imamate. According to the documents examined, the aforementioned faculty members have taught religious and human sciences-oriented courses in the school. As far as we can identify from the documents open to research in the archives, in the years between 1932 and 1950, when the Islamic Theological School was open, a total of 11 students were educated in this school. In the first year of this school, which started education with three students only, students were given a monthly scholarship of 15 shillings. In addition, the students were both able to practice as assistants to muezzins in the mosques during the month of Ramadan and they were also provided with economic support. After graduation, the students were nominated as imams, muezzins and devirhan. The Islamic Theological School was closed in 1950 because there was no student demand. Despite the fact that 11 people received education in 18 years between the school's opening year 1932 and 1950, and the annual reports published by General Directorate of Foundations stated that the Islamic Theological School continued its services satisfactorily under the upervision of its Fatwa Emin, these statements were unrequited in reality. The Islamic Theological School started to serve in the shadow of the debates between the opposition groups of its time. The parties of the discussions are divided into two groups: Halkçılar and Evkafçılar. The first group opposed the opening of the school by claiming that the financial resources of the General Directorate of Foundations would be spent unnecessarily and that the students to be educated would be raised with reactionism and bigoted ideas. The second group, Evkafçılar, approached the issue with a need-centred approach and defended the necessity of a school to educate religious officials. The mentality of the populist group reflects the ideology of the young Turkish Republic and this is clearly seen in their defence mechanisms. Evkafçılar, on the other hand, did not pay the required attention to the Theological School despite their discourses of necessity. As a result, the power struggle of these two groups aiming to hold the leadership of the Turkish Cypriots caused the Theological School to be adversely affected. Very low salaries of religious officials working in existing mosques and low fees being paid to the graduates of the Theological School who were employed in mosques were other factors that reduced the demand for Theological School. As a result, those who saw low-paid religious officials who had difficulty even getting along did not seek education to become religious officials and their families never pointed such way to them. The fact that a very limited number of students attended Theological School did not lead General Directorate of Foundations to alternative solutions. As the Islamic Theological School was not well organized, the issue of religious officials was felt more and more by the muslim people in the following years in Cyprus where many villages do not even have religious officials. (shrink)

Most properties have comparatives, which are relations. For instance, the property of width has the comparative relation denoted by `_ is wider than _'. Let us say a property is reducible to its comparative if any statement that refers to the property has the same meaning as another statement that refers to the comparative instead. Width is not reducible to its comparative. To be sure, many statements that refer to width are reducible: for instance, `The Mississippi is wide' means (...) the same as `The Mississippi is wider than most rivers'. But some statements that refer to width are not reducible: for instance, `Electrons have zero width' is not. A property is not reducible to its comparative if it has absolute degrees, and specifically an absolute zero. A property's comparative relation places things in an order from those that have the property least to those that have it most. If there is an absolute zero point somewhere in this ordering, the property is not reducible to its comparative. For width, there is an absolute zero at one end of the ordering, so width is not reducible. The property of goodness is reducible to its comparative, betterness. In particular, there is no absolute zero of goodness. Things are ordered by betterness – some things are better than others – but nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad. This is an exaggeration. In certain applications, goodness does have absolute degrees of a sort, and an absolute zero. For instance, it makes sense to say an event is good, and another event bad. These are absolute degrees of a sort, but they are themselves reducible to betterness. To say an event is good simply means the event is better than what would otherwise have happened. The goodness of lives has a different sort of absolute zero. Lives are ordered by betterness; some lives are better than others. We can make sense of the question `Where in this ordering is the division between lives that are good and those that are bad?' The division between good and bad lives is again reducible to betterness. To say a person's life is good means it is better that the person should continue living, rather than that she should die. Or it may mean it is better that her life should be lived rather than that it should never have been lived at all. As it is often put: a good life is a life worth living. Derek Parfit appears to attach a different sense to the idea of a good life. He appears to mean a life that contains a preponderance of good things (such as pleasure) over bad things (such as pain). If a life contains no good things and no bad things, it has zero goodness in this sense. In this sense, absolute goodness and the absolute zero of goodness are not reducible to betterness. However, this is a naturalistic sense of goodness, and it is subject to the open-question objection. If a life contains no good things and no bad things, it is an open question whether it has zero goodness. It might, for instance, be a bad thing that this life should be lived. In discussing the evil of death, some philosophers seem to have been searching for an absolute goodness that is not reducible to betterness. Thomas Nagel speaks of an asymmetry between what is good about life and what is bad about death. But if a person's life is good, that only means it would be better that she should continue living than that she should die. And if a person's death would be bad, that only means it would be worse that she should die than that she should continue living. So there can be no asymmetry. (shrink)

Laws of nature seem to take two forms. Fundamental physics discovers laws that hold without exception, ‘strict laws’, as they are sometimes called; even if some laws of fundamental physics are irreducibly probabilistic, the probabilistic relation is thought not to waver. In the nonfundamental, or special, sciences, matters differ. Laws of such sciences as psychology and economics hold only ceteris paribus – that is, when other things are equal. Sometimes events accord with these ceteris paribus laws (c.p. laws, hereafter), but (...) sometimes the laws are not manifest, as if they have somehow been placed in abeyance: the regular relation indicative of natural law can fail in circumstances where an analogous outcome would effectively refute the assertion of strict law. Many authors have questioned the supposed distinction between strict laws and c.p. laws. The brief against it comprises various considerations: from the complaint that c.p. clauses are void of meaning to the claim that, although understood well enough, they should appear in all law-statements. These two concerns, among others, are addressed in due course, but first, I venture a positive proposal. I contend that there is an important contrast between strict laws and c.p. laws, one that rests on an independent distinction between combinatorial and noncombinatorial nomic principles.2 Instantiations of certain properties, e.g., mass and charge, nomically produce individual forces, or more generally, causal influences,3 in accordance with noncombinatorial.. (shrink)

100 years after creating the Federal Reserve System (FED), whose legality and modus operandi remains questionable, there is time to rethink the national and also international payment system as a whole. The key element of existing economic relationships is the money that makes barter-free exchange possible. But monetary economics is only one aspect of more common political framework designed and established for retention of power. Such egoistic political interest proves its own relevancy and exerts ideological pressure on economic (...) thought that consequently forms economic and political institutions. In an effort to breake a rule, and to end the circuit of capitalistic self-fullfilling prophecy, a different economic model based on joint ownership (userization) is taken into consideration. This manuscript gives explanatory statements on userization and substantiates its advantageous social and environmental appropriateness. (shrink)

(A chapter in the book edited by Ine Gevers, Robot Love: Can We Learn from Robots About Love?) Similarly to the method employed by Marx in his analysis of the capital and to de Saussure’s structuralist explanation of language, I suggest we conceive the categories in question as materially conditioned while resulting into full abstraction in the process of analysis. Thus, instead of theorising in terms of the anthropologically (and philosophically) conditioned phantasm of a “digital subjectivity” or a “cyborg self,” (...) let us radicalise and absolutise the concepts of the material and the ideal (or the mind understood in opposition to the material), arriving to physicality, regardless of whether organic or synthetic, and the automaton of signification as our main two categories of analysis. Therefore, let us also note that the category of “automaton” implies we are not dealing with a form of cognition but rather of language or signification. It is through operation with these categories that we shall postulate the sociopolitical and economic relevance of the cybernetic development for the post-human society and for the post-humanist self. The statement just made refers to a de facto political project, and it is impossible to arrive to results that would represent a fundamental change in relation to the humanist history of civilization/s without resorting to philosophical concepts. (shrink)

Stereotypes within any society have consequences that are sometimes harmful and also affect targeted group of persons or ethnic group in a common way. One of the cultural stereotypes about Efik women is that they hardly believe in ‘…till death do us apart’ promised during monogamous marriage rite, that is, they walk out of marriage when conditions are unbearable. The misinterpretations of some exhortations given to the couples at Efik traditional marriage rite seem to support this claim. For example: ‘Eyen (...) mi nyamkkenyam, nnọ ke ndọ; ebot ebot edi unyam. Mm’ ifonke mendiyak, abang okubomo ikim okuwaha utong’. This exhortation is translated as: ‘I have not sold my child but given her to you in marriage; only goat is for sale. If she is no longer good for you bring her back. Let nothing malevolent happen to her.’ This implies that the life of one’s daughter is priced over marriage. One of the aims of this article is to investigate the context of this statement and how it has shaped people’s perception of marriage among the Efiks in Nigeria. In addition, this paper seeks to deconstruct some of the stereotypical views on Efik traditional marriage with regard to the female gender. Theories of Correspondent Inferences and Attribution in Social Psychology are used in understanding how women in Efik culture respond to marriage. Data from quantitative analysis of questionnaires and oral interviews threw more light on how cultural changes influence marriage institution among the Efiks. The findings of the research show that intermarriage, education, peer group influence, Western religious cultures, socio-economic conditions, etc., have necessitated the reconsideration of stereotypical views on marriage in Efik culture. (shrink)

In the December 2015 Issue of the Police Journal Sam Poyser and Rebecca Milne addressed the subject of miscarriages of justice. Cold case investigations can address some of these wrongs. The salient points for attention are those just before his sudden death: Milligan was appointed Private Secretary to Jonathan Aitken, the then Minister of Arms in the Conservative government in 1994. The known facts are as follows: 1. Stephen David Wyatt Milligan was found deceased on Tuesday 8th February 1994 at (...) his Chiswick, West London house where he lived alone. His body was found by his secretary Vera Taggart who was told by Julie Kirkbride where a spare key to his London house was kept and who decided to go to his house that day because he was not answering his telephone. Police said he had made one last telephone call on Saturday evening at 9.00pm. 2. Stephen David Wyatt Milligan had been the elected Member of Parliament (‘MP’) for Eastleigh in Hampshire since 1992. 3. The important topics this MP was addressing in 1994 at the time of his death included: (i) rail privatization plans and the impact through job losses on communities, especially his own constituency of Eastleigh; (ii) arms dealings with Saudi Arabia, especially with his previous intelligence gathered as an economics journalist for esteemed publications; (iii) the UK military industry; (iv) homosexuality among senior government Ministers, as revealed by British footballer Fasanu; (v) personal relationship and planned marriage to his fiancée (Julie Kirkbride) who at the time was a political journalist. 4. Stephen Milligan was also appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jonathan Aitken, Arms Minister and this position must have required that he came ‘up to speed’ on international arms trade and indeed its relation to bribery and corruption across jurisdictions. Milligan’s experience and knowledge as a former high-level political and economics journalist must have been of huge benefit to government minister Jonathan Aitken who was later imprisoned for perjury. 5. Regarding Stephen Milligan’s death in 1994, the Guardian newspaper in their immediate obituary said that ‘The death of one of the government's most outspoken and loyal supporters will pose a stiff electoral test for the Tories to surmount. He was on the left of the Tory party - he had even had a brief flirtation with the SDP when it was formed - and was a noted Euro-enthusiast… the death of one of the government's most outspoken and loyal supporters will pose a stiff electoral test for the Tories to surmount. Regarding Stephen Milligan’s sudden and unexpected death in 1994, MP David Willetts (Conservative, Havant) said in March 2015, in his address in the House of Commons. ‘…The inevitable ups and downs and triumphs and disasters of politics are among the great features of this place. There are colleagues in all parts of the House who are tolerant and understanding. There are friendships that keep the downs as well as the ups of politics in perspective. Having entered the House in 1992, I think particularly of two good friends, Judith Chaplin and Stephen Milligan, who both died within two years of being elected; that loss stayed with me for a long time...’ 6. On 28 February 2000, in the House of Commons, at Column 106, Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth) said, on the deaths of Michael Colvin and of Stephen Milligan MP: ‘I knew Michael Colvin for nearly 30 years, from when he was first elected to Hampshire county council. During my time as leader of that council, he and the late former Member of Parliament for Eastleigh, Stephen Milligan, were usually the only Members of Parliament who readily supported the council when necessary. Michael Colvin supported many ventures in the county of Hampshire. He will be missed here, in his constituency, and in Europe, and I stress that Hampshire has lost a staunch supporter. I am sure that the county will at some stage want to record its regret at his death and its deepest appreciation of the part that he played in its life....’ -/- Mike Hancock had, like Stephen Milligan, served on the Select Committee on Defence. It is interesting that he mentioned Stephen Milligan’s support as MP for Eastleigh when Milligan had only been so appointed a couple of years before his sudden death, as compared to 30 years of support from Mike Colvin. 7. Mr Andrew Robathan (for Blaby) said in the House of Commons Hansard Debates on 27 January1997, (Column 62) (on the registering of sex offenders): ‘I remember the death of my honourable friend Stephen Milligan, who represented Eastleigh. The press reports of the time stated that each Metropolitan police station had a police officer in the pay of newspapers. I do not know whether that is true, but I am aware that the police are not renowned for being entirely secure with their information…’ This statement is mischievous and it has been demonstrated time and time again, as being untrue, especially during the recent press inquiry leading to the four-volume Leveson Report, published in November 2012, into phone hacking and the ethics and culture of the UK media, pursuant to section 26 of the Inquiries Act 2005, and ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 29 November 2012, ISBN: 9780102981063, by the Stationery Office Limited on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. In Volume 4 of the 2012 Leveson Report, chapter 4 concluded on the Press Complaints Commission (‘PCC’) and its effectiveness and revealed that the PCC does not initiate its own investigations other than those ‘needed to head off criticism of the press or self-regulation- or to accept complaints from third parties across the board and on a transparent basis… and the report states that ‘the resources of the police are limited’ in terms of being able to fully inspect the Press and media reports. (shrink)

The paper explicates the stages of the author’s philosophical evolution in the light of Kopnin’s ideas and heritage. Starting from Kopnin’s understanding of dialectical materialism, the author has stated that category transformations of physics has opened from conceptualization of immutability to mutability and then to interaction, evolvement and emergence. He has connected the problem of physical cognition universals with an elaboration of the specific system of tools and methods of identifying, individuating and distinguishing objects from a scientific theory domain. The (...) role of vacuum conception and the idea of existence (actual and potential, observable and nonobservable, virtual and hidden) types were analyzed. In collaboration with S.Crymski heuristic and regulative functions of categories of substance, world as a whole as well as postulates of relativity and absoluteness, and anthropic and self-development principles were singled out. Elaborating Kopnin’s view of scientific theories as a practically effective and relatively true mapping of their domains, the author in collaboration with M. Burgin have originated the unified structure-nominative reconstruction (model) of scientific theory as a knowledge system. According to it, every scientific knowledge system includes hierarchically organized and complex subsystems that partially and separately have been studied by standard, structuralist, operationalist, problem-solving, axiological and other directions of the current philosophy of science. 1) The logico-linguistic subsystem represents and normalizes by means of different, including mathematical, languages and normalizes and logical calculi the knowledge available on objects under study. 2) The model-representing subsystem comprises peculiar to the knowledge system ways of their modeling and understanding. 3) The pragmatic-procedural subsystem contains general and unique to the knowledge system operations, methods, procedures, algorithms and programs. 4) From the viewpoint of the problem-heuristic subsystem, the knowledge system is a unique way of setting and resolving questions, problems, puzzles and tasks of cognition of objects into question. It also includes various heuristics and estimations (truth, consistency, beauty, efficacy, adequacy, heuristicity etc) of components and structures of the knowledge system. 5) The subsystem of links fixes interrelations between above-mentioned components, structures and subsystems of the knowledge system. The structure-nominative reconstruction has been used in the philosophical and comparative case-studies of mathematical, physical, economic, legal, political, pedagogical, social, and sociological theories. It has enlarged the collection of knowledge structures, connected, for instance, with a multitude of theoreticity levels and with an application of numerous mathematical languages. It has deepened the comprehension of relations between the main directions of current philosophy of science. They are interpreted as dealing mainly with isolated subsystems of scientific theory. This reconstruction has disclosed a variety of undetected knowledge structures, associated also, for instance, with principles of symmetry and supersymmetry and with laws of various levels and degrees. In cooperation with the physicist Olexander Gabovich the modified structure-nominative reconstruction is in the processes of development and justification. Ideas and concepts were also in the center of Kopnin’s cognitive activity. The author has suggested and elaborated the triplet model of concepts. According to it, any scientific concept is a dependent on cognitive situation, dynamical, multifunctional state of scientist’s thinking, and available knowledge system. A concept is modeled as being consisted from three interrelated structures. 1) The concept base characterizes objects falling under a concept as well as their properties and relations. In terms of volume and content the logical modeling reveals partially only the concept base. 2) The concept representing part includes structures and means (names, statements, abstract properties, quantitative values of object properties and relations, mathematical equations and their systems, theoretical models etc.) of object representation in the appropriate knowledge system. 3) The linkage unites a structures and procedures that connect components from the abovementioned structures. The partial cases of the triplet model are logical, information, two-tired, standard, exemplar, prototype, knowledge-dependent and other concept models. It has introduced the triplet classification that comprises several hundreds of concept types. Different kinds of fuzziness are distinguished. Even the most precise and exact concepts are fuzzy in some triplet aspect. The notions of relations between real scientific concepts are essentially extended. For example, the definition and strict analysis of such relations between concepts as formalization, quantification, mathematization, generalization, fuzzification, and various kinds of identity are proposed. The concepts «PLANET» and «ELEMENTARY PARTICLE» and some of their metamorphoses were analyzed in triplet terms. The Kopnin’s methodology and epistemology of cognition was being used for creating conception of the philosophy of law as elaborating of understanding, justification, estimating and criticizing legal system. The basic information on the major directions in current Western philosophy of law (legal realism, feminism, criticism, postmodernism, economical analysis of law etc.) is firstly introduced to the Ukrainian audience. The classification of more than fifty directions in modern legal philosophy is suggested. Some results of historical, linguistic, scientometric and philosophic-legal studies of the present state of Ukrainian academic science are given. (shrink)

Methodological critique of the sociological theory "spontaneous cooperation" to explain the revolution in Germany in 1989. This approach represented the german sociologists Dieter Opp and Detlef Pollack. The author reconstructs the two statements. Opp's approach is logically inconsistent. This approach is also unfit for scientific prediction, but Opp says the possibility of prediction is a necessary criterion for a scientific theory. Pollack's systemtheoretical approach ignores the really existing organized resistance of the subversive groups in Leipzig, for example the "Working (...) group for human rights" or the "Working group for Justice". Miracle or surprise chance are scientifically anacceptable models to explain a revolution. Both economically and politically offered the capitalist welfare state more for the workers than the socialism. So people noticed socialism as a system with more work for less prosperity and without civil rights, as a system of "exploitation by inefficiency" (Elsenhans). The author describes the revolution as a result of very effective collaboration between people, who willing to take risks and wanted to emigrate from the GDR to West, and the subversive groups, that could organize the revolutionary resistance. - This is a possible interpretation of the revolution from the interaction of transition-theory and voice-and-exit-theory (Hirschman). (shrink)

The paper applies confirmation theory to a famous statement of economics, the law of demand, which says that ceteris paribus, prices and quantities demanded change in opposite directions. Today's economists do not accept the law unless definite restrictions hold, and have shown little interest in deciding whether or not these restrictions were satisfied empirically. However, Hildenbrand (1994) has provided a new derivation of the law of aggregate demand and used this theoretical advance to devise a test that may be the (...) first rigorous one ever performed on the law. The paper accounts for Hildenbrand's and, in less detail, his predecessors' contributions within the philosophical framework of Hempel (1965) and Glymour (1980). Its salient result is that economists have accepted the "consequence condition", and rejected the "converse consequence condition", and thus implicitly adhered to a Hempelian- Glymourian view of confirmation and testability. (shrink)

In my view all behavior is an expression of our evolved psychology and so intimately connected to religion, morals and ethics, if one knows how to look at them. -/- Many will find it strange that I spend little time discussing the topics common to most discussions of religion, but in my view it is essential to first understand the generalities of behavior and this necessitates a good understanding of biology and psychology which are mostly noticeable by their absence in (...) works on religion, politics, history, morals and ethics, etc. In my view most such efforts have no grasp at all of the operation of System 2, the slow cortical functions of the brain which can be equated to linguistic behavior or the mind, and which I call the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought and which I regard as the province of philosophy in the narrow sense. -/- It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (religion, history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. -/- This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and revised to bring them up to date (2019). All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable is spite of the near universal views that religion, politics or technology can save us. See my Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 5th ed (2019), for a detailed exposition of this view. -/- It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality, which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind, rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. No neurophysiology, no metaphysics, no postmodernism, no theology. -/- Along with many, I see it as the basic religious or moral issue of our times that America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century, and now all of it, due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 3 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses at least 1% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness and permits long term planning. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests (which I suggest may be regarded as an unrecognized -- but the commonest and most serious-- psychological problem -- Inclusive Fitness Disorder). This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system, especially now that the Neomarxist Third World Supremacists are taking control of the USA and other Western Democracies, and helping the Seven Sociopaths who run China to succeed in their plan to eliminate peace and freedom and religion worldwide. Hence my concluding essays. Of course, it is an easily defensible point of view that Artificial Intelligence (aka Artificial Stupidity or Artificial Sociopathy) researchers are even more evil than the Democrats and the CCP, and I make brief comments on this as well. -/- Several articles touch on The One Big Happy Family Delusion, i.e., that we are genetically selected for cooperation with everyone, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity, Equality and Religion will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). Again, the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces these delusions. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. -/- I describe versions of this delusion (i.e., that we are basically ‘friendly’ if just given a chance) as it appears in some recent books on sociology/biology/economics. Even Sapolsky’s otherwise excellent “Behave” (2017) embraces leftist politics and group selection and gives space to a discussion of whether humans are innately violent. I end with two essays on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology manifested as the inexorable machinations of System 1. Our psychology, eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa from ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection, natural selection), though of course few grasp this, regardless of whether they are academics or peasants, atheists or fundamentalists. (shrink)

The birth of the African Renaissance was articulated by Cheikh Anta Diop who believed that the challenges of the African continent shall overcome through the confrontation of cultural, scientific and economic renewal. Former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki populated it with an intention of advocating for self-determination, unity, identity, development, and transformation of political and economy of the continent. The envisioned statement was to see Africa as a unitary continent that could fight imperialism and capitalism which were seen (...) as enemies of development from an Africanism perspective. The dream was however not realized due to the influence exerted by the western on other states in Africa and that affected development in Africa. From this premise, the study will start by outlining the African Renaissance quest for unity, followed by how the dream of Mbeki was thwarted away by the suspicion and doubt among the African states and how African Union was seen as an entity to promote Africanism and African Renaissance. From that, the study will suggest a plan that could be implemented to resuscitate the African Renaissance from a development perspective. (shrink)

This study details the political climate and logic priming the termination of Mexican American Studies in elementary and high school programs within the state of Arizona. The author applies conceptual content analysis and intertextuality to decode euphemisms incorporated by opponents of the program. Primary sources by the state’s Attorney General Tom Horne and school board Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal are examined for rationales used in the elimination of a pedagogically empowering program for Latina/o students within Tucson Unified School (...) District. Repetitive paradoxes in arguments against Mexican American Studies are found to have implicitly formed a threat to the majority. Reasoning in public statements by the aforementioned politicians and frames for discussion of the program are concluded to have appealed to mainstream audiences as a decoy from alternative motives of maintaining current power structures with Latina/os subjugated to lower socio-economic statuses compared to White counterparts. (shrink)

We reconstruct the text, that is, we analyse the development of the discussion between Malthus and Ricardo both in the correspondence and in published works, paying special attention to (a) the use of methodological statements, (b) some pragmatic features of the controversy, (c) considerations pertaining to the meta-level of the controversy (assessments of the status of the controversy, of ways of solving it, etc.); then, we reconstruct the co-text, that is, unpublished papers by each opponent that were not made (...) available to the other, records of exchanges between each of these and third parties, etc.; thirdly, we describe the essential features of the context, focusing on events that influenced the course of the controversy; (iv) we draw lessons from our case study on the role of co-text and context, on pragmatic and semantic interpretation, and on "casts of mind”. (shrink)

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and the most important and longest within the last year. Also I have edited them to bring them up to date (2016). The copyright page has the date of this first edition and new editions will be noted there as I edit old articles or add new ones. All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having (...) a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., human ecology and psychology) in school, maybe civilization would have a chance. -/- In my view these articles and reviews have many novel and highly useful elements, in that they use my own version of the recently (ca. 1980’s) developed dual systems view of our brain and behavior to lay out a logical system of rationality (personality, psychology, mind, language, behavior, thought, reasoning, reality etc.) that is sorely lacking in the behavioral sciences (psychology, philosophy, literature, politics, anthropology, history, economics, sociology etc.). The philosophy centers around the two writers I have found the most important, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. -/- Now that I think I understand how the games work I have mostly lost interest in philosophy, which of course is how Wittgenstein said it should be. But since they are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put, it due to the lack of perspicuity of language, the problems run throughout all human discourse, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning principally with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. -/- "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18) -/- Nevertheless, a real understanding of Wittgenstein’s work, and hence of how our psychology functions, is only beginning to spread in the second decade of the 21st century, due especially to P.M.S. Hacker (hereafter H) and Daniele Moyal-Sharrock (hereafter DMS),but also to many others, some of the more prominent of whom I mention in the articles. -/- When I read ‘On Certainty’ a few years ago I characterized it in an Amazon review as the Foundation Stone of Philosophy and Psychology and the most basic document for understanding behavior, and about the same time DMS was writing articles noting that it had solved the millennia old epistemological problem of how we can know anything for certain. I realized that W was the first one to grasp what is now characterized as the two systems or dual systems of thought, and I generated a dual systems (S1 and S2) terminology which I found to be very powerful in describing behavior. I took the small table that John Searle (hereafter S) had been using, expanded it greatly, and found later that it integrated perfectly with the framework being used by various current workers in thinking and reasoning research. -/- Since they were published individually, I have tried to make the book reviews and articles stand by themselves, insofar as possible, and this accounts for the repetition of various sections, notably the table and its explanation. I start with a short article that presents the table of intentionality and briefly describes its terminology and background. Next, is by far the longest article, which attempts a survey of the work of W and S as it relates to the table and so to an understanding or description (not explanation as W insisted) of behavior. -/- The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell On Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is Searle’s The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides Standard Social Science Model. Democracy and equality are wonderful ideals, but without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation and any world that adopts them. The monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we sell our children’s heritage for temporary comforts. -/- The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing every action, and in any case there is no time for the slow, massively integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second ‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the thoughts of System 1) must lead directly to actions. It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves an heuristic for how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it,includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. -/- Thus all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth. -/- My writings are available in updated versions as paperbacks and Kindles on Amazon. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) ASIN B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) ASIN B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) 2nd printing with corrections (Feb 2018) ASIN B0711R5LGX -/- Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) ASIN B07CQVWV9C . (shrink)

The central postulation made in this essay is that the current plight of the Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang province of China is two-pronged in its cause. The first involves a deeply-rooted historical rejection, or at least suspicion, of any religion that is not Chinese in origin and secondly involves a concerted effort on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party to gain greater control over a people group whom it sees as representing a threat to its authority and dominance in (...) the province of Xinjiang. To justify the validity of this statement, this essay will be divided into three distinct parts; the first two parts will explore the historical background and present day context of Islam in China with the aim of clarifying the Chinese worldview on foreign religions and people groups. These will act as important contributions to culminate into the third part which will focus on the current occurrence of sinofication/sinicisation in the Xinjiang province (Ruwitch, 2018) to the detriment of the human rights, religious and cultural liberties, and the very existence of the Uighur Muslim ethnic group (Rahman, 2005). The essay will provide a historical context by explaining the timeline of the presence of Islam across different parts of China where it experienced the most activity and adherence. This particularly includes the southwestern ports where it was brought into the country by Arab traders as well as in the westernmost reaches as a result of being part of the outer edges of different Islamic empires that held territory across Central Asia. The idea that China is suspicious of foreign people, foreign religions, and that the Communist Party considers any group with outside connections to a wider community (such as Christians or the Muslims) to be a threat to the stability of their rule is central to our discussion (NowThis World, 2016). However, we shouldn’t mistake China as being alone in this kind of xenophobia for the evidence of this worldview is pertinent on the continent of Europe currently with significant undertones of its presence in the vote for Brexit in the United Kingdom (Rzepnikowska, 2018) as well as in the rise of the far right in continental Europe (Immerzeel & Muis, 2017; Lazaridis, 2016). Aversion to foreignness is therefore widespread, but it is the way in which an organisation deals with foreignness that is indicative of its approach to diversity and its respect for human rights. The third and final part will act as the climax for the essay as a thorough analysis is conducted on the current affairs of the Communist Party in the Xinjiang province resulting in the plight of the Uighur Muslims. The processes involved in the sinofication of the province will be highlighted with the aim of understanding the range of reasons as to why the Communist Party may be acting in this way by drawing on the current Chinese economic and political landscape. The essay will close by considering the future of the Uighur Muslims and the intentions of the Communist Party for the entire Xinjiang province by analysing the most recent news escaping from the region and as a means to understand the distinction between Islam and Muslims. (shrink)

I bought this thinking anything from Bradford books and MIT must be good. Instead it's a boring, stupid, incompetent, antiscientific and antirational piece of closet creationist trash. Heads should roll at Bradford for this atrocity! If you must then start by reading the last chapter first as he conceals a frank statement of his anti-rationality til the end. I made detailed notes on it as I thought it was a serious work of science and was going to do a long (...) page by page refutation but why bother! The praise from some Science and Nature reviewers shows they did not read it and/or have as little understanding of behavior as Buller. The positive comments from the jacket by Sterelny, Wilson, Sober and Caporael are due to the fact that they all share Buller's retro antirational blank slate views that human nature is due to our culture and the delusion of group selection (see my review of Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth). The first part of the book is dull repeats of basic biology cribbed from intro texts and unrelieved by photos or drawings. Along the way there are some incredibly bizarre takes on the use of language and scientific method. Then you find an attempt to refute some well known studies of stepchild abuse. As you get to the end he lets his anti-science and anti-rationality out in the open, telling us that regardless of whether our behavior is innate we should not investigate it! The fact that our brain is no different from our other organs and it's functions a product of genes and evolution continues to be resisted or just ignored not only by academics but by the general public. Nevertheless the basics of our behavior are as innate as our heartbeat and detailed evidence (for those who have trouble with the obvious) is all around us everywhere we look once our eyes are opened-just watch people doing anything or turn on the tv (or see the huge and rapidly growing scientific literature). Novices can start with Pinker's "The Blank Slate" but there are now dozens of good popular and scientific books on evolutionary psychology and hundreds of articles in the literature of philosophy, psychology, economics etc. The articles in Buss's The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and some at the end of Gazzinaga's The Cognitive Neurosciences 3 are good starting points for the serious reader., and science are all manifestations of our innate psychology (with the minor extensions we call culture and civilization), you can look almost anywhere in literature or life to study our adapted mind except here. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited them to bring them up to date (2017). All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, (...) it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable. -/- It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. Section one starts with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. -/- Since philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. -/- "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18) -/- The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell On Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is the source of the universal blindness described by Searle’s The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides’ Standard Social Science Model. -/- The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing every action, and in any case there is no time for the slow, massively integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second ‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the ‘thoughts’ of System 1) must lead directly to actions. -/- It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. -/- Thus all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens) but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s future. Section one continues with other views of behavior which my reviews attempt to correct and put in context with minimal theory. -/- The next section describes the digital delusions which confuse the language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System one, and so cannot distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines (i.e., computers). The ‘reductionist’ claim is that one can ‘explain’ behavior at a ‘lower’ level, but what actually happens is that one does not explain human behavior but a ‘stand in’ for it. Hence the title of Searle’s classic review of Dennett’s book (“Consciousness Explained”)— “Consciousness Explained Away”. In most contexts ‘reduction’ of higher level emergent behavior to brain functions, biochemistry, or physics is incoherent. Even for chemistry or physics the path is blocked by chaos and uncertainty. Anything can be ‘represented’ by equations, but when they ‘represent’ higher order behavior, it is not clear what the ‘results’ mean. Reductionist metaphysics is a joke but most scientists and philosophers lack the appropriate sense of humor. -/- Another hi-tech delusion is that the we will be saved from the pure evil (selfishness) of System 1 by computers/AI/robotics/ nanotech/genetic engineering created by System 2. The No Free Lunch principal tells us there will be serious and possibly fatal consequences. The adventurous may regard this principle as a higher order emergent expression of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. -/- The last section describes The One Big Happy Family Delusion , i.e., that we are selected for cooperation with everyone and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia. Again the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces it. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we sell our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts greatly exacerbating the problems. -/- I describe versions of this delusion (i.e., that we are basically ‘friendly’ if just given a chance) as it appears in some recent books on sociology/biology/economics. I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology manifested as the inexorable machinations of System 1. Our evolved psychology, eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa ca. 50,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa, to ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), but now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior, this book is about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness. (shrink)

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited to bring them up to date (2017). The copyright page has the date of the edition and new editions will be noted there as I edit old articles or add new ones. All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and (...) manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable. The first group of articles attempts to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of the theoretical delusions that are universal. In the next group, I show how these insights apply by reviewing some books in philosophy and psychology. Next I review books on science and religion and finally provide reviews and articles showing how understanding of both science and philosophy gives insight into the tragic delusions destroying the world. People believe that society can be saved by science, religion and politics, so I provide some suggestions as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality, which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind, rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two ii systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. Since philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18) The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell on Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see. We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is the source of the universal blindness described by Searle’s The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides’ Standard Social Science Model. The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing every action, and in any case, there is no time for the slow, massively integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second ‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the ‘thoughts’ of System 1) must lead directly to actions. iii It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. Thus, all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, (or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens), but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s futures. Many of the articles describe the ‘digital delusions’, which confuse the language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System 1, and so cannot distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines (i.e., computers). The ‘reductionist’ claim is that one can ‘explain’ behavior at a ‘lower’ level, but what actually happens is that one does not explain human behavior but a ‘stand in’ for it. Hence the title of Searle’s classic review of Dennett’s book (“Consciousness Explained”)— “Consciousness Explained Away”. In most contexts ‘reduction’ of higher level emergent behavior to brain functions, biochemistry, or physics is incoherent. Also for ‘reduction’ of chemistry or physics, the path is blocked by chaos and uncertainty. Anything can be ‘represented’ by equations, but when they ‘represent’ higher order behavior, it is not clear (and cannot be made clear) what the ‘results’ mean. Reductionist metaphysics is a joke, but most scientists and philosophers lack the appropriate sense of humor. Other digital delusions are that we will be saved from the pure evil (selfishness) of System 1 by computers/AI/robotics/ nanotech/genetic engineering created by System 2. The No Free Lunch principal tells us there will be serious and possibly fatal consequences. The adventurous may regard this principle as a higher order emergent expression of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Hi-tech enthusiasts hugely underestimate the problems iv resulting from unrestrained motherhood, and of course it is neither profitable nor politically correct (and now with third world supremacism dominant, not even possible) to be honest about it. The last section describes various versions of the ‘altruism delusion’ that we are selected for cooperation, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). Again, the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces it. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. I describe versions of this delusion (i.e., that we are basically ‘friendly’ if just given a chance) as it appears in some recent books on sociology/biology/economics. I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology manifested as the inexorable machinations of System 1. Our psychology, eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa from ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection). Many accept the delusion that we are selected for cooperation with people generally (group selection or altruism) and not just our immediate relatives (kin selection or inclusive fitness), so I spend some time in the essays of the last section demolishing this fantasy. One thing rarely mentioned by the group selectionists is the fact that, even were ‘group selection’ possible, selfishness is at least as likely (probably far more likely in most contexts) to be group selected for as altruism. Just try to find examples of true altruism in nature –the fact that we can’t (which we know is not possible if we understand evolution) tells us that its apparent presence in humans is an artefact of modern life concealing the facts, and that it can no more be selected for than the tendency to suicide (which in fact it is). One does not really need science or mathematics to grasp this – it is crushingly obvious that an v organism cannot be selected for behavior that decreases the frequency of its own genes in the next generation. One might also benefit from considering a phenomenon never (in my experience) mentioned by group selectionists -- cancer. No group has as much in common as the (originally) genetically identical cells in our own bodies-a 100 trillion cell clone-- but we are all born with thousands and perhaps millions of cells that have already taken the first step on the path to cancer and generate millions to billions of cancer cells in our life. If we did not die of other things first, we (and perhaps all multicellular organisms) would all die of cancer. Only a massive and hugely complex mechanism built into our genome that represses or derepresses trillions of genes in trillions of cells, and kills and creates billions of cells a second, keeps the majority of us alive long enough to reproduce. One might take this to imply that a just, democratic and enduring society for any kind of entity on any planet in any universe is only a dream, and that no being or power could make it otherwise. It is not only ‘the laws’ of physics that are universal and inescapable, or perhaps we should say that inclusive fitness is a law of physics. The great mystic Osho said that the separation of God and Heaven from Earth and Humankind was the most evil idea that ever entered the Human mind. In the 20th century an even more evil notion arose—that humans are born with rights, rather than having to earn privileges. Thus, every day the population increases by 200,000, who must be provided with resources to grow and space to live, and who soon produce another 200,000 etc. And one almost never hears it noted that what they receive must be taken from those already alive. Their lives diminish those already here in both major obvious and countless subtle ways. Every new baby destroys the earth from the moment of conception. There cannot be human rights without human wrongs. It cannot be more obvious, but one will never see the streets full of protesters against motherhood. America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses about 2% of it’s topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of it’s food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a vi nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. The popular notions supported by the Democratic Party and Third World Supremacists are that Democracy, Diversity, Equality and Social Justice will produce a Utopia in America and the world, but it is clear as crystal that they unavoidably foster selfishness and divisiveness and are producing collapse. Hence my concluding essay “Suicide by Democracy”. The most basic facts, almost never mentioned, are that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. Even the attempt to do this is already bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earth’s capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich. -/- My writings are available as paperbacks and Kindles on Amazon. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) ASIN B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) ASIN B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) 2nd printing with corrections (Feb 2018) ASIN B0711R5LGX -/- Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) ASIN B07CQVWV9C -/- . (shrink)

What is the research for in the society? We may imagine the professionals engaged in these activities, shall we say, university professors, researchers in the public and private institutions, and even the lay inventors at home or in the neighborhood. The research is related with some of knowledge or ideas, which, however, should be creative and original. It is the main function of those professionals, and can develop in dissemination of the findings produced by research. It frontiers the knowledge of (...) humans which enables a better view of world and generates the public welfare. The scholars are often those professionals who are required or in some cases, squeezed to produce an original contribution to the specific field of academy. As the society develops, we now require a scientific knowledge beyond the plain understanding of the nature and society. The scientific knowledge is qualified of some elements, i.e., evidence-based, universal frame to be applied, sense of understanding, pragmatic in comprehension or application, more persuasion on theory, paradigm, typologies, intersubjectivity, empirical relevance and so. It informs a philosophy of humans, makes them conscientious and knowledgeable, as well as enhances a professional performance for not only their field but also other disciplines. For example, the criminal justice system borrows the idea or information confirmed by other disciplines, psychology and sociology notably. What is the Durham rule in the excuse of culpability? The scope of rule could not enjoy a persuasion if not to be supported by the works of psychologists. The scientific knowledge perhaps could recourse its most salient dynamism in coupling with an economic exploitation. A cultivation of knowledge to serve the economic use and its industrialization reveals it’s competitive edge in the society. The kind of concepts, information age, e-technology, and intellectual property rights are leading the present time of narrative as we see routinely. Many new laws, and new concept of e-education or e-government, GMO products as well as the travel of universe in the near future also follow that the updated profile of scientific knowledge on the engineering and natural science contributed to expand our horizon of subsistence. With this crucial importance, the author attempts to file some thoughts on the research and society. (shrink)

I discuss the interpretation of the principle of utility as a factual statement, the relevance of Halévy's interetation of Bentham, and then Bentham's relationship with James Mill and David Ricardo.

Problem statement. Modern marketing requires effective tools to attract and retain customers, as well as improve communication with the audience. In this context, the use of artificial intelligence, in particular, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), can be a promising innovative solution. However, the conclusions about the potential benefits and limitations of using ChatGPT in marketing are ambiguous, due to the little experience gained in this area. The purpose of the study is to assess the potential of using ChatGPT in marketing strategies, (...) to study the opportunities and challenges it presents for improving the efficiency of communication with customers and brand development. The methodological basis of the study is based on modern research on marketing and artificial intelligence and analysis of the results of using ChatGPT in real marketing campaigns. The main hypothesis of the study is the assumption that the use of ChatGPT in marketing can improve the quality of customer service, increase brand engagement, and increase customer loyalty. Summary of the main research material. The study examines the results of using ChatGPT in marketing strategies, in particular in online communications, especially in areas where personal interaction with customers is important. The working hypotheses were confirmed based on the analysis of data and information collected during the study. Possible limitations and challenges related to the implementation of ChatGPT in marketing practices were identified. The originality and practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the analysis helped to reveal the potential of using ChatGPT in marketing strategies and made it possible to formulate recommendations on the optimal use of this technology to attract and retain customers. Conclusions and prospects for further research. The conducted research allowed us to state that the use of ChatGPT in marketing contributes to increasing the efficiency of marketing activities of the enterprise in general and improving communications with customers in particular. Further research may include the development of new algorithms and strategies for the optimal use of artificial intelligence in marketing. (shrink)

In economics, economic value is a measure of the benefit provided by a good or service to an economic agent, and value for money represents an assessment of whether financial or other resources are being used effectively in order to secure such benefit.

Suppose that the members of a group each hold a rational set of judgments on some interconnected questions, and imagine that the group itself has to form a collective, rational set of judgments on those questions. How should it go about dealing with this task? We argue that the question raised is subject to a difficulty that has recently been noticed in discussion of the doctrinal paradox in jurisprudence. And we show that there is a general impossibility theorem that that (...) difficulty illustrates. Our paper describes this impossibility result and provides an exploration of its significance. The result naturally invites comparison with Kenneth Arrow's famous theorem (Arrow, 1963 and 1984; Sen, 1970) and we elaborate that comparison in a companion paper (List and Pettit, 2002). The paper is in four sections. The first section documents the need for various groups to aggregate its members' judgments; the second presents the discursive paradox; the third gives an informal statement of the more general impossibility result; the formal proof is presented in an appendix. The fourth section, finally, discusses some escape routes from that impossibility. (shrink)

The Sure-Thing Principle famously appears in Savage’s axiomatization of Subjective Expected Utility. Yet Savage introduces it only as an informal, overarching dominance condition motivating his separability postulate P2 and his state-independence postulate P3. Once these axioms are introduced, by and large, he does not discuss the principle any more. In this note, we pick up the analysis of the Sure-Thing Principle where Savage left it. In particular, we show that each of P2 and P3 is equivalent to a dominance condition; (...) that they strengthen in different directions a common, basic dominance axiom; and that they can be explicitly combined in a unified dominance condition that is a candidate formal statement for the Sure-Thing Principle. Based on elementary proofs, our results shed light on some of the most fundamental properties of rational choice under uncertainty. In particular they imply, as corollaries, potential simplifications for Savage’s and the Anscombe- Aumann axiomatizations of Subjective Expected Utility. Most surprisingly perhaps, they reveal that in Savage’s axiomatization, P3 can be weakened to a natural strengthening of so-called Obvious Dominance. (shrink)

Real human agents, even when they are rational by everyday standards, sometimes assign different credences to objectively equivalent statements, such as ‘Orwell is a writer’ and ‘E.A. Blair is a writer’, or credences less than 1 to necessarily true statements, such as not-yet-proven theorems of arithmetic. Anna Mahtani calls this the phenomenon of ‘opacity’. Opaque credences seem probabilistically incoherent, which goes against a key modelling assumption of probability theory. I sketch a modelling strategy for capturing opaque credence assignments (...) without abandoning probabilistic coherence. I draw on ideas from judgement-aggregation theory, where we face similar challenges of defining the ‘objects of judgement’. (shrink)