The topic may initially suggest that massive reductionism is pursued with it. Why this is not the case, can be explained as follows: 'Dictatorship of the proletariat', 'bureaucracy' and 'bureaucratization' are key terms through which new aspects, facts and connections of the questions about socialism can be opened again and again.

We challenge the prevalent opinion that consumption does not seem to matter as much as production and defy the fetishism of industrial work. We explore the implications of the premise that under conditions of cognitive capitalism consumption dictates what production does, when and how. We explain that in a post-industrial global society and economy fashion, branding, instant gratification of desires, and ephemeral consumer tastes govern production and consumption. The London riots of August 2011 send us a warning that consumption and (...) cognitive capitalism are asphyxiating in the structures and norms of industrial capitalism that are still in place. (shrink)

In his 1939 essay, “Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us,” John Dewey described democracy as “a way of personal life controlled not merely by faith in human nature in general but by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished.”1 While this may seem an odd definition, it is emblematic of the reconstructive tendency in Dewey’s philosophy. If we are to achieve a truly democratic society, we must reconstruct democracy itself (...) – our personal lives must become more democratic if we are to have hopes for our political institutions. And central to this reconstruction, as Dewey points out in this essay, is a recognition of the roles of communication and education in the interest of democratzing ends. It seems hardly worth mentioning the role played by information technology in our contemporary modes of communication and education, given the centrality of the personal computer and the Internet in our everyday lives. For most of us in this room, and especially for those under the age of 25, it is difficult to remember a time before the home computer, before e-mail and instant messaging. But it is vitally important to bear in mind that the technological advantages of Western life are not universal – large.. (shrink)

One of the most influential recent developments in supposedly radical philosophy is ‘posthumanism’. This can be seen as the successor to ‘deconstructive postmodernism’. In each case, the claim of its proponents has been that cultures are oppressive by virtue of their elitism, and this elitism, fostered by the humanities, is being challenged. In each case, however, these philosophical ideas have served ruling elites by crippling opposition to their efforts to impose markets, concentrate wealth and power and treat everyone and everything (...) as mere instruments in a way that is not only undermining democracy and threatening economic, social and political stability through growing inequality, but is crippling efforts to deal with the global ecological crisis. Philosophers, Nietzsche claimed, are physicians of culture. Why should people claiming to be philosophers, or at least aligned with philosophers, subvert their own calling? In this paper I will suggest that with the expansion of education and the rise of neoliberalism, those involved in education and research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have been proletarianized, and most have accepted this proletarianization. They have been reduced to a fraction of the proletariat - wage-slaves without economic security and therefore dependent on the will of others on whom they are dependent. They are not ordinary wage-slaves, however, but wage-house-slaves, having salaries rather than wages. If, as Marx argued, social being determines consciousness, posthumanism can be understood as the expression of ressentiment of these house-slaves at their condition while simultaneously serving to affirm their superiority to field-slaves while serving their masters. Their work is supported because it provides ideological cover for their masters, the new transnational managerial class or corporatocracy as they expand their power through information technology, while absolving this corporatocracy from responsibility for the consequences of their growing power. In making this claim I will argue that the real target of deconstructionists and posthumanists, although this is now seldom appreciated, has been the humanism of the New Left, a revival of the Radical Enlightenment inspired by Renaissance civic humanism and the German Renaissance. (shrink)

With the desperate usurpation of global spaces under the everexpanding capitalist mode of production, the political struggle still necessitates an emancipatory class politics as aimed by Marx and Engels. This paper will be a synthesis of Marxist geographer David Harvey’s theory of capitalist production of space and MarxEngels’ notion of freedom, and their notion of emancipatory class politics. According to David Harvey, its survival as a system is through its widescale control on the production of spaces. I will first expose (...) the theory of the Marxist geographer David Harvey on how capitalism produces a space through his theory of the capitalist production of space. This necessary strategy of capitalism to own and extend to spaces is essential to its nature to increase capital and profit. According to him, capitalism always needs to expand territories to create new sources of labor, wealth, and new markets. This necessitates obtaining profits to sustain capital accumulation amidst its problem of crises. The spatial ontology of capital will be the springboard showing a possible construction of the type of freedom or emancipation that is necessary in forwarding a class politics of spatiality. In effect, emancipating the place is tied with the classical notion of the liberation of the proletariat. I conceptualize the concept of place as a signifier of the spaces that humanity produces—may it be their home, their work, or geometries of modern life—but have been put under the dictates and design of capital. Thus, I will go back to the classical notion of emancipatory politics of Marx and Engels. This synthesis combines the possibility of emancipatory class politics based on the ontology of the present capitalist production of space. (shrink)

Global capitalism is the politico-economic structure that subjects everything to its interests. It creates unimaginable poverty, ecological crisis, the ongoing pandemic, wars without end, and other horrors that humans can inflict against each other. Within this capitalist configuration, an idea and a political movement emerged that seeks to destroy the foundation of this system. Communism is this idea and political movement. The foundation of capitalism that they wanted to dismantle is private bourgeois property. In general, the Bolshevik revolution did destroy (...) that foundation, but this was not enough. It only resulted in the eventual transformation of the party as the collectivized bourgeoisie with its authoritarian state apparatus. It transformed this bourgeois-liberal capitalism into state-run capitalism. The revolutionary class that was supposed to be emancipated, remained as they were in capitalism, producer of the means of subsistence and surplus value. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean that the idea of communism is already dead. It should have been the perfect time to reassess the theoretical foundations of communism and test the ideas of Marx and others in their practical-idealistic form. The production and reproduction of capitalist social relations create everyday consciousness for all capitalist subjects, even to passionate communist revolutionaries. This is how ideology works. But the continuing havoc of global capitalism continues. The Left goes on with their same old traditions. They do not see that precisely ii their unceasing failure is one of the conditions for capitalism and its state apparatus to have the capacity to reinvent itself. In Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slovenian-born philosopher and global thinker Slavoj Zizek said that capitalism is incapable of solving the Covid-19 crisis. In his more than a thousand-page book paradoxically called Less Than Nothing, he said that ‘really existing’ socialism failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism. Can we utilize this Zizekian idea of communism, an idea that generates criticism both to capitalism and 20th-century communism to reinvent communism for it to revitalize its struggle against global capitalism? To answer this question, I employed Critical Theory through the ideas of communism of Zizek. I started with capitalism’s totality. It manifests itself in the world of commodities. Commodities are everywhere and almost in everything. Commodification not only involves things that man uses but humanity herself is commodified. Then I elaborated on the notion of the proletariat because she is the “commodified man” personified. The identification of the proletariat almost exclusively with factory workers is the prevailing idea in the Left movement. I tried to show that the proletariat is the overwhelming majority in every industry. Capitalism, I claim is both producing employment and unemployment. And the unemployed, not only are included as members of the proletarian class, but looking at it objectively, they may play a significant role in the political struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, as I tried to describe in quite a detailed fashion the various industries of capitalism and the sub-groups of the unemployed, it becomes evident that even without mentioning it, the proletariat is the class that almost everyone belongs to, except, as might be expected, the bourgeoisie. -/- Then I mustered the audacity to question Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. I also tried to imagine what will happen to the economic categories in Marx’s Capital in communism. My objective was to identify what is lacking in Marx that may explain the Left’s unending failure. I think I succeeded, although in a very superficial manner, in trying to locate what was missing in Marx’s theory. It was not enough to transform the bourgeois property into public property, but this transformation must stop commodity production itself. Commodity production is this self-perpetuating character of capitalist production. Then it led to further elucidation of the metamorphosis of commodity production to the production of human needs. Another idea is the double negation of the communist revolution. Communism must not only negate the bourgeois class but the proletariat herself. Marx only emphasized the dissolution of the bourgeoisie but failed to relate this dissolution to the proletariat’s self-negation. Absolutely, the significant reduction of working hours is fundamental for communism. This reduction must result from the conscious expansion of the workers' free time. Expanding free time is at the same time reducing time for production. Essentially, this is the process of the self-negation of the proletariat. I also tried to put forward an idea that directly links reform and revolution. They are directly linked with each other because both are communistic. A communist campaign for higher wages is directly involved with the communist expansion of political power. Communist reform becomes revolutionary. Concomitantly, the notion of revolution also changes. The communist revolution, instead of it being a sudden, external, and most often violent event, becomes an internal transformative process and possibly less violent. I concluded by transforming the concepts I think Marx missed into political possibilities. That is why I expounded on the immediate aims Marx and Engels enumerated in the Communist Manifesto and tried to claim the probability of the impossible in the communist struggle for political power and Man’s eventual freedom. -/- Marx's description of factory work creates no illusion about the status of freedom in capitalism. In Capital, he said that “factory work... confiscates every atom of freedom, both bodily and in intellectual activity.” And I think Marx made clear that the only way to freedom is ultimately to destroy capitalism. These words of his in Capital will cast no doubt, “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” And to signify who are those experiencing this unfreedom, Marx and Engels summon the subject of the revolution in their famous lines in the Communist Manifesto and urge them to fight, “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Today is the time for philosophy because it is the age of declining freedom. But the prevailing capitalist structure is necessitating this unfreedom. And for philosophy to become what it is, communism should become philosophy. (shrink)

The Black Panther Party was founded to bridge the radical theorizing that swept college campuses in the mid-1960s and the lumpen proletariat abandoned by the so-called ‘Great Society’. However, shortly thereafter, Newton began to harshly criticize the academic Left in general for their drive to find ‘a set of actions and a set of principles that are easy to identify and are absolute.’ This article reconstructs Newton’s critique of progressive movements grounded primarily in academic debates, as well as his (...) conception of vanguard political theory. Newton’s grasp of revolution as a gradual, open, and above all dialectical process, not only provides a corrective to many dominant academic accounts of the nature of progressive change but, more importantly, it also grounds an emancipatory philosophy that can direct collective struggle, precisely because it remains grounded in the imperfect and internally conflicted lives of those whose freedom is to be won through it. (shrink)

Why did the white working classes in the United States and elsewhere turn to the far right instead of uniting with the raced and gendered working class to overthrow capitalism? In this paper, I bring core concepts coined by Karl Marx in conversation with Jacques Lacan to show how the far-right exploited desires and fears around subjects' fundamental non-wholeness, which the insecurities of neo-liberal capitalism have heightened, for its political gain. I explain how the far-right offered its followers several unconscious (...) fantasy objects petit a to cover over subjects' non-wholeness: first, the money fetish, which is also at the center of the American Dream, serves to secure the illusion of wholeness on earth; second, religion offers the illusion of wholeness in the sky, producing subjects who endure rather than rebel against their suffering on earth. Finally, it brands the sexed and raced working classes as inferior to uphold the illusion of the white working-class subjects as superior and whole, which further undermines the creation of a revolutionary proletariat. (shrink)

This essay investigates triadic patterns of argument in the thought of Moses Hess. Three kinds of triadic thinking are distinguished: the triadic pattern of three succeeding ages of mankind; the triadic pattern of original unity, fallen or alienated existence, and return to unity on a higher level; and the triad of head, heart and stomach, a symbolism which recurs in the writings of the Young Hegelians. Distinguishing these patterns throws an interesting light on the similarities and differences between the views (...) of Hess and Marx on the role of the proletariat in history. A translation by the author of Hess's "On the Essence of Money" is appended to the essay. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to analyze, clarify, and reconstruct the concept of class consciousness by developing a dialectical account of political agency at work in the concept. I defend a dialectical account of agency, that includes both the way in which individuals come together to form groups, but also the capacity of a collective to transform social conditions. I argue that this account of political agency is necessary in order to understand the possibility of social transformation or change. I trace the (...) development of the relationship between consciousness and agency in the early tradition of Western Marxism, focusing primarily on the account of class consciousness given by Georg Lukács in History and Class Consciousness. Against his account of the world historical agency of a unified proletariat, however, I defend Theodor Adorno’s insistence on nonidentity, and the importance of unreconciled groups in capitalist society. In order to understand these groups, such as the vanguard, party, or proletariat, we must understand the way in which individuals form groups, as well as their inherent collectivity. -/- My account of the political agency at work in the concept of class consciousness is broadly speaking pluralist. I argue that a multiplicity of methodologies is needed in order to arrive at a complete picture of the concept. I defend an account of class consciousness that is neither reductive nor deflationary with respect to other dimensions of social domination. This class forward approach seeks to build intersectional political coalitions in order to undertake revolutionary action. Successful revolutionary social transformation is never guaranteed in advance; however, the concept of class consciousness, reconstructed through the lens of political agency, offers conceptual resources to address the problems of today, for the sake of a better tomorrow. (shrink)

In the 6th century, Paul the Persian used his own pen to write a summary of Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias in the Persian language. Severus Sebokht translated it into Syriac. This book is a transcription and translation of the Syriac manuscript of Paul the Persian's Peri Hermeneias and a comparison of it with Aristotle's original Greek text.

Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition is the only CD-ROM to give you instant facsimile and text access to the 20,000 pages of the philosopher's Nachlass as catalogued by Professor von Wright in his 1982 publication The Wittgenstein Papers. -/- The result of 10 years of academic research and editorial work by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen this electronic edition is the first scholarly resource to apply a uniform, well-documented, consistent set of editorial principles to the writings. (...) The CD-ROM is a joint publication between Oxford University Press and the Wittgenstein Archives and is published in Text & Facsimile and Text Only formats. (shrink)

Growing technological advances in intelligent artifacts and bitter experiences of the past have emphasized the need to use and operate ethics in this field. Accordingly, it is vital to discuss the ethical integrity of having intelligent artifacts. Concerning the method of gathering materials, the current study uses library and documentary research followed by attribution style. Moreover, descriptive analysis is employed in order to analyze data. Explaining and criticizing the opposing views in this field and reviewing the related literature, it is (...) concluded that the proof of the ethical integrity of the intelligent artifacts is possible due to the specific features of these artifacts and their own moral system. (shrink)

Kate Crawford presents AI as “both reflecting and producing social relations and understandings of the world”; or again, as “a form of exercising power, and a way of seeing… as a manifestation of highly organized capital backed by vast systems of extraction and logistics, with supply chains that wrap around the entire planet”. I interpret these material insights through a Marxist understanding of ideology, with reference to Marx/Engels, Guy Debord and Louis Althusser. In the German Ideology, Marx and Engels present (...) ideology as the alienated and alienating discourse of exchange, dissimulating the material forces of production and its science. Guy Debord presents the spectacle as the further representation of capital. The spectacle is a total Weltanschauung, pure appearance, where “whatever appears is good and where what is good, appears.” Above all, the spectacle is ideology, representing “the impoverishment, enslavement and negation of real life”. Louis Althusser presents ideology as essential for the reproduction of labor-power and capital. His notion of “interpellation” explains the subjective uptake of ideology, how we respond, “yes!” to its call. The algorithms of AI are enactments of surplus value generating capital as data. The AI data-world is the spectacle, “the autonomous movement of non-life” (Debord) where the proletariat/consumer is the producer of their own ideological subjection. Is resistance possible? What form might it take? And if AI is understood as ideology, i.e. as a language that obscures the true conditions of real life, then what are those true conditions? What is “real life”? (shrink)

Background Retraction is a mechanism for alerting readers to unreliable material and other problems in the published scientific and scholarly record. Retracted publications generally remain visible and searchable, but the intention of retraction is to mark them as “removed” from the citable record of scholarship. However, in practice, some retracted articles continue to be treated by researchers and the public as valid content as they are often unaware of the retraction. Research over the past decade has identified a number of (...) factors contributing to the unintentional spread of retracted research. The goal of the Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda (RISRS) project was to develop an actionable agenda for reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science. This included identifying how retraction status could be more thoroughly disseminated, and determining what actions are feasible and relevant for particular stakeholders who play a role in the distribution of knowledge. -/- Methods These recommendations were developed as part of a year-long process that included a scoping review of empirical literature and successive rounds of stakeholder consultation, culminating in a three-part online workshop that brought together a diverse body of 65 stakeholders in October–November 2020 to engage in collaborative problem solving and dialogue. Stakeholders held roles such as publishers, editors, researchers, librarians, standards developers, funding program officers, and technologists and worked for institutions such as universities, governmental agencies, funding organizations, publishing houses, libraries, standards organizations, and technology providers. Workshop discussions were seeded by materials derived from stakeholder interviews (N = 47) and short original discussion pieces contributed by stakeholders. The online workshop resulted in a set of recommendations to address the complexities of retracted research throughout the scholarly communications ecosystem. -/- Results The RISRS recommendations are: (1) Develop a systematic cross-industry approach to ensure the public availability of consistent, standardized, interoperable, and timely information about retractions; (2) Recommend a taxonomy of retraction categories/classifications and corresponding retraction metadata that can be adopted by all stakeholders; (3) Develop best practices for coordinating the retraction process to enable timely, fair, unbiased outcomes; and (4) Educate stakeholders about pre- and post-publication stewardship, including retraction and correction of the scholarly record. -/- Conclusions Our stakeholder engagement study led to 4 recommendations to address inadvertent citation of retracted research, and formation of a working group to develop the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CORREC) Recommended Practice. Further work will be needed to determine how well retractions are currently documented, how retraction of code and datasets impacts related publications, and to identify if retraction metadata (fails to) propagate. Outcomes of all this work should lead to ensuring retracted papers are never cited without awareness of the retraction, and that, in public fora outside of science, retracted papers are not treated as valid scientific outputs. (shrink)

This is Part 1 of an article aimed at defending Marx against orthodox Marxists to reveal the possibilities for overcoming capitalism. It is argued that Marx’s general theory of history as technological determinism along with his call for the dictatorship of the proletariat is inconsistent with his profound insights into alienation and commodity fetishism as the foundations of capitalism. Humanist Marxists focused on the latter in opposition to Orthodox Marxists, but without fully acknowledging this inconsistency and its implications, failed (...) to realize the full potential of Marx’s work. The outcome has been the triumph of “neoliberalism,” effectively a synthesis of the worst aspects of capitalism with Soviet managerialism. Here I argue that eco-Marxists should combine humanistic Marxism with the defence of genuine science to revive a tradition of thought going back to Aleksander Bogdanov and Ernst Bloch, and to Marx himself. However, traditional Marxists’ lack of appreciation of the importance of the “superstructure” has hindered even eco-Marxists from developing the culture required to replace capitalism. In Part 2 I will argue that the call for an “ecological civilization” brings into focus what is required: a realistic vision of the future based on ecological concepts. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to deal with some aspects of Axel Honneth’s reading of reification faced in his 2005 Verdinglichung. Eine Anerkennungstheoretische Studie. To this purpose, I critically analyse the interpretation of Marx by Lukács as it is expressed in Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat. Secondly, I claim that Lukács’ fetishism analysis is grounded in a significant misunderstanding of the core issue of Marx’s Critique of political economy. Furthermore, I suggest that Honneth’s reification concept uncritically (...) accepts, to some extent, the main theses on Marx as they are outlined in Lukács’ text. I conclude by arguing that the Marxian heritage advocated by Honneth is methodologically more deeply linked to Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness than to Marx’s Capital. (shrink)

Gender dysphoria is typically construed as a medical concept. This understanding of gender dysphoria reflects how cisgender people interpret trans experience. This essay proposes an alternative concept of gender dysphoria for critical theory: on this account gender dysphoria is alienation from cisgender forms of life. If the medicalized concept of gender dysphoria tacitly takes for granted, identifies with, and thereby reinforces cisgender patriarchal society, a critical theory of gender dysphoria instead approaches the issue from the perspective of trans people, their (...) lived experiences and social situation, to offer a critique of society. While the medicalized concept of gender dysphoria refers to a ‘distress’ by living in the ‘wrong-body,’ the critical concept of gender dysphoria refers to an alienation as a result of living in the ‘wrong (cisgender patriarchal) society.’ The critical concept of gender dysphoria may become a tool capable of describing the necessary facets of the trans experience to form a political coalition. The paper concludes by claiming that trans subjects are the gendered analogue of Marx’s concept of the proletariat. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the continued circulation and use of retracted science as a complex problem: Multiple stakeholders throughout the publishing ecosystem hold competing perceptions of this problem and its possible solutions. We describe how we used a participatory design process model to co-develop recommendations for addressing this problem with stakeholders in the Alfred P. Sloan-funded project, Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (RISRS). After introducing the four core RISRS recommendations, we discuss how the issue of retraction-related stigma (...) gives rise to recommendation #4, Educate stakeholders about retraction and pre- and post-publication stewardship of the scholarly record. This recommendation is important for training publishing professionals and realizing this recommendation will require further collaborative design work across scholarly communications. We highlight ongoing stakeholder work which is now re-starting the design cycle. We conclude with a discussion of ongoing activities facilitating uptake and refinement of RISRS research and the implementation agenda. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to Laury Naranch’s and Mary Caputi’s discussion of my book Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism (2017). In response to Naranch, I clarify how the political subject-in-outline translates into collective political action through the figure of the Chicana working-class woman. I also explain why the proletariat, more so than the precariat, implies a radical political imaginary if we rethink this concept in the context of my idea of the political subject-in-outline. I also clarify that (...) my chapters on Marx expose how Adorno and Marx have problematic imaginations of the working-class woman, which counter their otherwise radical imaginary. In response to Caputi, I clarify the meaning of capitalism in my book and underline that we need a rigorous critique of capitalism to counter the rise of the Far Right. I also explain why the fluid subject does not have agency and why the subject-in-outline is a better way to theorize transformative feminist agency. I also clarify that my conception of feminist political subjectivity does not assume a privileged vantage point outside power structures. (shrink)

In 1931, Evgeny Pashukanis, the distinguished Soviet jurist, author of “The General Theory of Law and Marxism”, following an invitation to celebrate the centenary of Hegel’s death, published an assay entitled “Hegel, the State and Law” (Гегель. Государство и право) aimed to demistify, through a brief retrospective of Hegelian’s philosophy, its specific use, something achieved through the bourgeois ideology which, at some point in history, abandoned Kantism and its followers to embrace Neo-Hegelianism as a philosophy of domination and social control. (...) In this unpublished text, Pashukanis reflects, from a Marxist and Leninist point of view, on the ability to use Hegel as a bourgeois defense tool, when a particular society, specifically the one from the 1920s to the 1930s, began to be affected by the fear of communism and by the crises that endanger its very survival. From this angle, the capitalist interest - following Pashukanisian interpretation of Hegel - will only develop in the terms of a scientific elimination of all those subversive potentials that the economic crisis is destined to produce, thus reformulating the notions of State and Law which, in between obedience, discipline and defense of the homeland, come to assert the official recognition of the inexorably crushed proletariat in a condition in which all relations of production and social reproduction are transferred to the realm of exploitation, as its definitive subsumption to capital. (shrink)

Background: In the context of globalization, Vietnamese universities, whose primary function is teaching, there is a need to improve research performance. Methods: Based on SSHPA data, an exclusive database of Vietnamese social sciences and humanities researchers’ productivity, between 2008 and 2019 period, this study analyzes the research output of Vietnamese universities in the field of social sciences and humanities. Results: Vietnamese universities have been steadily producing a high volume of publications in the 2008-2019 period, with a peak of 598 articles (...) in 2019. Moreover, many private universities and institutions are also joining the publication race, pushing competitiveness in the country. Conclusions: Solutions to improve both quantity and quality of Vietnamese universities’ research practice in the context of the industrial revolution 4.0 could be applying international criteria in Vietnamese higher education, developing scientific and critical thinking for general and STEM education, and promoting science communication. (shrink)

Development of the world economy bears numerous negative phenomena, and require constant need to rebalance socioeconomic interests of nations, transnational subjects, and individuals. Socialisation is an important and effective tool for balancing social and individual; however, despite socialisation is evolving rapidly, its scientific and practical potential is not duly uncovered. In the article theoretical and methodological foundations of socialisation of economy is surveyed in the context of globalisation, and etymology, explanations, scope, historical phases of development, theoretical aspects and practical forms (...) of use, consequences and prospects are analysed. The term «socialisation» was determined as a multidisciplinary, used in many scientific fields, increasingly involving various areas of research and is understood as inclusion, adaptation and development of human being in society. It was determined that the economy socialisation is implemented in different fields and semantic structures, contains a large number of methodological tools, is involved at all management levels, and is primarily identified with the increasing role of social component in the life of human resources. The assumptions were made about the future transformation of this category in line with the identified predictive trends. (shrink)

Post-mortem reproduction is a complex and contested matter attracting attention from a diverse group of scholars and resulting in various responses from a range of countries. Vietnam has been reluctant to deal directly with this matter and has, accordingly, permitted post-mortem reproduction implicitly. First, by analysing Vietnam’s post-mortem reproduction cases, this paper reflects on the manner in which Vietnamese authorities have handled each case in the context of the contemporary legal framework, and it reveals the moral questions arising therefrom. The (...) article then offers an account of Vietnamese social norms as an explanation for the tendency to conduct post-mortem reproduction. In arguing that a deeper and more thorough examination of the moral and ethical reasoning is required, the paper advocates in favour of supportive post-mortem reproduction regulation. In doing so, the paper seeks to reconcile the Vietnamese legal framework and post-mortem reproduction experiences of other countries. The article concludes that Vietnam and countries sharing the similar cultural traits should permit post-mortem reproduction explicitly. This would require full engagement with the ethical and legal issues arising, and careful promulgation of regulations and guidelines based on comparative experiences of a range of countries in handling this matter. (shrink)

This article investigates the specific cultural and collaborative nature of China’s public spaces and how they are formed through performative appropriations. Collective cultural practices as political participation were encouraged during the Mao era when cultural activities played a key role in workers’ education and participation. Since the opening-up period, performance in public space has become widespread in China and creates alternative community spaces that constitute alternatives to capitalist spaces of consumption. Using Habermas’s theory of communicative action, we argue that cultural (...) practices performed in public space create a proletariat public sphere that plays a wider role in governance and China’s democratization. Further, the article examines performative practices in public space. It traces the popular activity of public square dancing through history and counters this research with a parallel study of a much younger skateboarding practice. The two practices are very differently rooted. Yet both practices appear to move through cycles of disruption and appropriation, followed by an affirmation of governmental rule. The studies reveal that western ideas of citizenship and individual leisure are less applicable. Public spaces are largely managed through collaborative practices, whereas contemporary scholarship reaffirms Fei Xiaotong’s description of Chinese society as individuals positioned within a complex network of concentric circles. (shrink)

György Lukács’s Marxist phase is usually associated with his passage from neo-Kantianism to Hegelianism. Nonetheless, Nietzschean influences have been covertly present in Lukács’s philosophical development, particularly in his uncompromising distaste for the bourgeois society and the mediocrity of its quotidian values. A closer glance at Lukács’s corpus discloses that the influence of Nietzsche has been eclipsed by the Hegelian turn in his thought. Lukács hardly ever mentions the weight of Nietzsche on his early thinking, an influence that makes cameo appearances (...) throughout his lifetime writings. During the period of his adherence to a Stalinist approach to communism, his new subjectivity seems to be re-constituted through a disavowal of his earlier romantic anti-capitalism. Implicit in Lukács’s attack on Nietzsche in the Destruction of Reason (1952) is an acerbic reaction to the mute presence of the latter in his earlier thought. Apart from his ignorance of the unreliability of the collection of the Will to Power edited by Peter Gast and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, his battle against the anti-proletariat Nietzsche in the Destruction is waged on a metaphysical, non-historical plain. Lukács’s pre-Marxist works (Soul and Form, On Poverty of Spirit, and The Theory of the Novel) in a sense betray the instance of a writer who writes most of someone where he omits his name. Thus perceived, Lukács’s early corpus lends itself to a symptomatic reading. -/- This essay seeks to extract the Nietzschean undercurrents of Lukács’s work through a reflection on the romantic anti-capitalist tendencies that the young Lukács shared with Nietzsche. For although it may appear that Nietzsche lacked a clear politics, his criticism of the bourgeois ethos as a structure based on debt/guilt [Schuld], and his critique of modern value-system and nihilism paved the way for the emergence of Lukács’s theory of reification. Nietzsche’s category of 'transvaluation of values’ suggests a total transfiguration of reality, a radical rupture with the ordinary state of things, and as such carries within itself a revolutionary promise. Drawing a distinction between political romanticism and romantic politics, I argue that romantic anti-capitalism contains a potential for the latter. The essay further traces the link between Lukács’s ‘romantic politics’ and the persistence of a thought of the tragic (a ‘tragic vision’) in his texts that, despite its temporary decline during his realist period, is undismissable in different constellations of his thought. (shrink)

Our interest here will be limited to decide how we could use the philosophy of Wittgenstein to oppose Marxist theorizations. We will not imply, thus, that Wittgenstein himself made that use or wanted anybody else to make it. Our focus here is not Wittgenstein’s possible intentions against Marxism, but his implications against it. We have found five possible implications of this kind. The first one links his private language argument and Ludwig von Mises’ argument about why Marxists fail in determining (...) prices. The second one goes from that very private language argument to a liberal argument against the dictatorship of proletariat. The third is a skeptical argument for participatory democracy that undermines some of Marx’s ideas about power. Finally, the fourth and fifth implications use Wittgenstein’s philosophy against the Marxist ideas of an essential divide in society and a common human progress, respectively. (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is used (...) to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

I argue against the orthodox view of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification. The view under criticism is: if p is propositionally justified for S in virtue of S's having reason R, and S believes p on the basis of R, then S's belief that p is doxastically justified. I then propose and evaluate alternative accounts of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification, and conclude that we should explain propositional justification in terms of doxastic justification. If correct, this (...) proposal would constitute a significant advance in our understanding of the sources of epistemic justification. (shrink)

What kind of mental state is episodic memory? I defend the claim that it is, in key part, imagining the past, where the imagining in question is experiential imagining. To remember a past episode is to experientially imagine how things were, in a way controlled by one’s past experience of that episode. Call this the Inclusion View. I motive this view by appeal both to patterns of compatibilities and incompatibilities between various states, and to phenomenology. The bulk of the paper (...) defends the account against four objections. Imagining and remembering seem to differ in whether they are active or passive, in the forms of singular content they involve, in their relations to observation and in their relations to belief. I argue that these differences can be accommodated, and some even explained, once we flesh out what else is involved in episodic memory, in addition to imagining the past. (shrink)

If the Past Hypothesis underlies the arrows of time, what is the status of the Past Hypothesis? In this paper, I examine the role of the Past Hypothesis in the Boltzmannian account and defend the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law of nature. Such a view is known to be compatible with Humeanism about laws, but as I argue it is also supported by a minimal non-Humean "governing'' view. Some worries arise from the non-dynamical and time-dependent (...) character of the Past Hypothesis as a boundary condition, the intrinsic vagueness in its specification, and the nature of the initial probability distribution. I show that these worries do not have much force, and in any case they become less relevant in a new quantum framework for analyzing time's arrows---the Wentaculus. Hence, the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law should be more widely accepted than it is now. (shrink)

“Probably Peirce’s best-known works are the first two articles in a series of six that originally were collectively entitled Illustrations of the Logic of Science and published in Popular Science Monthly from November 1877 through August 1878. The first is entitled ‘The Fixation of Belief’ and the second is entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear.’ In the first of these papers Peirce defended, in a manner consistent with not accepting naive realism, the superiority of the scientific method over other (...) methods of overcoming doubt and ‘fixing belief.’” — Robert Burch, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision) -/- “Pragmatist epistemologies often explore how we can carry out inquiries in a self-controlled and fruitful way. (Where much analytic epistemology centres around the concept of knowledge, considered as an idealised end-point of human thought, pragmatist epistemology centres around the concept of inquiry, considered as the process of knowledge-seeking and how we can improve it.) So pragmatists often provide rich accounts of the capacities or virtues that we must possess in order to inquire well, and the rules or guiding principles that we should adopt. A canonical account is Peirce’s classic early paper ‘The Fixation of Belief‘. Here Peirce states that inquiry is a struggle to replace doubt with “settled belief“, and that the only method of inquiry that can make sense of the fact that at least some of us are disturbed by inconsistent beliefs, and will subsequently reflect upon which methods of fixing belief are correct is the Method of Science, which draws on the Pragmatic Maxim described above. This contrasts with three other methods of fixing belief: i) refusing to consider evidence contrary to one’s favored beliefs (the Method of Tenacity), ii) accepting an institution’s dictates (the Method of Authority), iii) developing the most rationally coherent or elegant-seeming belief-set (the A Priori Method).“ — Catherine Legg, “Pragmatism,” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2021 revision). (shrink)

An overview of the epistemology of perception, covering the nature of justification, immediate justification, the relationship between the metaphysics of perceptual experience and its rational role, the rational role of attention, and cognitive penetrability. The published version will contain a smaller bibliography, due to space constraints in the volume.

The chapter discusses the issue of how we may achieve knowledge of essence. It offers a critical survey of the main theories of knowledge of essence that have been proposed within contemporary debates, particularly by Lowe, Hale, Oderberg, Elder, and Kment.

Recent third person approaches to thought experiments and conceptual analysis through the method of surveys are motivated by and motivate skepticism about the traditional first person method. I argue that such surveys give no good ground for skepticism, that they have some utility, but that they do not represent a fundamentally new way of doing philosophy, that they are liable to considerable methodological difficulties, and that they cannot be substituted for the first person method, since the a priori knowledge which (...) is our object in conceptual analysis can be acquired only from the first person standpoint. (shrink)

Collective imagination has traditionally associated architecture with political and economic power. As a result, when quoting Edward Said: «Modern Western culture is, in large part, the work of exiles, émigrés, refugees», the last people we typically consider are exiled architects. But is the heritage left by exiled architects truly insignificant? Can we find expressions of their spiritual quest, new life experiences, nostalgic feelings, and aesthetic shocks in their works? When does Modernism cease to be a universal language and instead becomes (...) an existential language of the exile – and can they both coexist? The international conference Architects in Exile. Stories of New Spatial Experiences" aims to address these questions. (shrink)

In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded (...) cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a theory of what makes certain influences on visual experiences by prior mental states (including desires, beliefs, moods, and fears) reduce the justificatory force of those experiences. The main idea is that experiences, like beliefs, can have rationally assessable etiologies, and when those etiologies are irrational, the experiences are epistemically downgraded.

In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it occurs perception, (...) and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions. (shrink)

In this paper, I claim that the personal/subpersonal distinction is first and foremost a distinction between two kinds of psychological theory or explanation: it is only in this form that we can understand why the distinction was first introduced, and how it continues to earn its keep. I go on to examine the different ontological commitments that might lead us from the primary distinction between personal and subpersonal explanations to a derivative distinction between personal and subpersonal states. I argue that (...) on one of the most common metaphysical interpretations of the explanatory distinction, talk of a distinction between personal and subpersonal states simply makes no sense. When people insist on applying the personal/subpersonal terminology to psychological states, I allow that they are often making a genuine distinction, but one that it is best understood in terms of Stich's (1978) distinction between doxastic and subdoxastic states. I end the paper by considering some other common misinterpretations of the personal/subpersonal distinction, such as those involving consciousness, normativity, or autonomy. (shrink)

The fallacy fallacy is either the misdiagnosis of fallacy or the supposition that the conclusion of a fallacy must be a falsehood. This paper explores the relevance of these and related errors of reasoning for the appraisal of arguments, especially within virtue theories of argumentation. In particular, the fallacy fallacy exemplifies the Owl of Minerva problem, whereby tools devised to understand a norm make possible new ways of violating the norm. Fallacies are such tools and so are vices. Hence a (...) similar problem arises with argumentative vices. Fortunately, both instances of the problem have a common remedy. (shrink)

Does phenomenal force, the distinctive phenomenology attributed to perceptual experience, really form an integral part of the latter? If not, what implications does it have for perceptual justification? In this paper, I first argue for a metacognitive account, according to which phenomenal force constitutes a separate, metacognitive state. This account opens up a previously unexplored path for challenging phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism, which has been a prominent theory of perceptual justification over the past two decades. Moreover, I investigate several alternative (...) possibilities in which phenomenal force might still be deemed as significant, but ultimately demonstrate that its epistemic role remains marginal at best. (shrink)

My replies to Errol Lord, Adam Pautz, and Peter Railton's commentaries on The Rationality of Perception (2017).

This book argues that there is a joint in nature between seeing and thinking, perception, and cognition. Perception is constitutively iconic, nonconceptual, and nonpropositional, whereas cognition does not have these properties constitutively. The book does not appeal to “intuitions,” as is common in philosophy, but to empirical evidence, including experiments in neuroscience and psychology. The book argues that cognition affects perception, i.e., that perception is cognitively penetrable, but that this does not impugn the joint in nature. A key part of (...) the argument is that we perceive not only low-level properties like colors, shapes, and textures but also high-level properties such as faces and causation. Along the way, the book explains the difference between perception and perceptual memory, the differences between format and content, and whether perception is probabilistic despite our lack of awareness of probabilistic properties. The book argues for perceptual categories that are not concepts, that perception need not be singular, that perceptual attribution and perceptual discrimination are equally fundamental, and that basic features of the mind known as “core cognition” are not a third category in between perception and cognition. The chapter on consciousness leverages these results to argue against some of the most widely accepted theories of consciousness. Although only one chapter is about consciousness, much of the rest of the book repurposes work on consciousness to isolate the scientific basis of perception. (shrink)

For many years emotion theory has been characterized by a dichotomy between the head and the body. In the golden years of cognitivism, during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, emotion theory focused on the cognitive antecedents of emotion, the so-called “appraisal processes.” Bodily events were seen largely as byproducts of cognition, and as too unspecific to contribute to the variety of emotion experience. Cognition was conceptualized as an abstract, intellectual, “heady” process separate from bodily events. Although current emotion theory has moved (...) beyond this disembodied stance by conceiving of emotions as involving both cognitive processes (perception, attention, and evaluation) and bodily events (arousal, behavior, and facial expressions), the legacy of cognitivism persists in the tendency to treat cognitive and bodily events as separate constituents of emotion. Thus the cognitive aspects of emotion are supposedly distinct and separate from the bodily ones. This separation indicates that cognitivism’s disembodied conception of cognition continues to shape the way emotion theorists conceptualize emotion. (shrink)

The Newman problem is a fundamental problem that threatens to undermine structural assumptions and structural theories throughout philosophy and science. Here, we consider the problem in the context of consciousness science. We introduce and discuss the problem, and explain why it is detrimental not only to structuralist assumptions, but also to theories of consciousness, if left unconsidered. However, we show that if phenomenal spaces, and mathematical structures of conscious experience more generally, are understood in the right way, the Newman problem (...) does not arise. The upshot of our paper is that consciousness science needs to be careful in which definition of structure to consider, but if it is, the Newman problem disappears. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue for the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is the basis of epistemic justification. More precisely, I argue for the thesis of phenomenal mentalism, according to which epistemic facts about which doxastic attitudes one has justification to hold are determined by non-epistemic facts about one’s phenomenally individuated mental states. I begin by providing intuitive motivations for phenomenal mentalism and then proceed to sketch a more theoretical line of argument according to which phenomenal mentalism provides the best explanation (...) of the independently motivated thesis of access internalism. The result is a theory of epistemic justification that brings intuition and theory into reflective equilibrium. (shrink)