This response focuses on Balibar’s method of thinking transindividuality through multiple figures, in their similarities as well as their productive differences. His essay ‘Philosophies of the Transindividual: Spinoza, Marx, Freud’ combines the three titular figures in order to better think the multifaceted idea of ‘classical’ transindividuality. Balibar’s method combines the three but nonetheless maintains their dissimilarities as real differences. This response attempts to test or apply that method in two ways. The first application links Balibar’s analysis of Freud’s hypnotic leader (...) with a theme Balibar does not here discuss: wonder’s connection to superstition in Spinoza. At the level of their effects, superstitious wonder and hypnosis are nearly identical transindividual processes which lead to affective mass formation. However, their causes are quite distinct. This response details the similar effects and different causes, then asks the question: does their difference render them irreconcilable or complementary? Given the prominent role Spinoza plays in Balibar’s work, and the strong overall equivalence of wonder and hypnosis, this first application of Balibar’s method of multiple combination likely presents a complementarity rather than a conflict. This response’s second application, attempting to integrate another figure into the transindividual multiple, presents greater difficulties: what role, if any, could Foucault play in Balibar’s transindividuality? With Foucault, the tensions or differences perhaps amount to fundamental and thoroughgoing incompatibilities. However, combining Foucault with ‘classical’ transindividuality potentially extends and deepens each. This response concludes with examples of these problematic tensions as well as possibly fruitful combinations. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary exploration synthesizes the philosophical reflections of Adam Kaiser with empirical insights from popular science to unravel the intricate dynamics of nostalgia, morality, and mass entertainment in a modern world increasingly disconnected from traditional values. Examining the psychological, neurobiological, and cultural aspects, the essay investigates how nostalgia serves as a potent coping mechanism, offering temporary relief from the moral complexities and existential questions of contemporary life. Popular science contributes valuable perspectives from fields such as media psychology, cognitive (...) neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and media ethics, shedding light on the relationship between nostalgia, morality, and human behavior. The essay emphasizes the role of media literacy, group dynamics, and the ethics of nostalgic media production, providing a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted nature of our human experience. The synergy between philosophy and popular science empowers us to navigate the labyrinth of nostalgia, recognizing it as both a reflection of innate psychological mechanisms and a product of societal dynamics. Ultimately, this exploration invites us to embrace the richness of human cognition and culture, acknowledging the enduring quest to understand and reconcile the past with the present. (shrink)

Mass shootings constitute a recurrent and most violent phenomenon in the U.S. and elsewhere. This paper challenges the ready-made, solipsistically contained metanarratives on offer by mainstream media and formal institutions with regard to the psychological antecedents of the perpetrating social actors, while theorizing mass shootings as acts of violence that are systemically inscribed in the foundations of communities. These foundations abide by the logic of sacrifice which is propagated in instances of collective traumatism. It is argued that the (...) cultural trauma that emanates from events of mass shootings, inasmuch as the commemorative events that are performed on regular occasions, constitute re-enactments of the death drive that sustains communities. The cultural analytic deploys against a CDA reading of longitudinal studies on mass shootings, coupled with psychoanalytic discourse analysis, prior to submitting mass shootings to a deconstructive line of reasoning as systemically necessary transcendental violence. Ultimately, it is shown that the intertextual institutional chain that informs the mediatized representation of this social phenomenon merely attains to obliterate and, hence, to propagate cultural traumatism and the sacrificial logic that underpins it. The terms micrometanarrative, parafunction and expropriating ipseity are introduced and operationalized in this context. (shrink)

Why did millions of people respond to the failures of neoliberal capitalism by voting in leaders that further undermine their existence? In this article, I combine the insights of the early Frankfurt School Critical Theory (Theodor W. Adorno) with the insights of psychoanalytic theory (Sigmund Freud) to show how economic factors interact with psychological factors in the rise of the far-right today. The propaganda techniques used by far-right leaders create conditions in masses that are akin to hypnoses. Such techniques induce (...) regressions in far-right followers in which the unconscious predominates, and far-right leaders use to manipulate the masses. To further detail the theoretical framework, I analyze a Trump rally and an interview with a Trump follower. (shrink)

Psychological momentum (PM) is thought to be a force that influences judgment, emotion, and performance. Based on a review of the extant literature, we elucidate two distinct approaches that researchers have adopted in their study of PM: the input-centered approach and the output-centered approach. Consistent with the input-centered approach, we conceptualize PM as a process whereby temporal and contextual PM-like stimuli (i.e., perceptual velocity, perceptual mass, perceptual historicity, and perceptually interconnected timescales)—initially perceived as an impetus—are extrapolated to imagined future (...) outcomes through mental simulation. In turn, and consistent with the output-centered approach, we posit that mental simulation elicits experiential (e.g., perceptual, cognitive, emotional) and behavioral states that govern goal pursuit, and that the pursuit of goals further influences perceptions of self, environment, and action quality. In all, we suggest that PM is interdependently linked to perceptions and behaviors in the sense that PM both influences and is influenced by changes in self-perceptions, environmental perceptions, and behavior, and we conclude by linking the PM construct to recent work on prospection. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines different theories and approaches to mass movements in the historical process and their impact on the condition of Western culture. In the short introduction, the main historical, cultural and philosophical origins of the mass movements from antiquity to present time are described. This paper examines the question why the social and cultural influence of the man of mass is difficult to predict. To answer this question, the author demonstrates the continuing transition (...) from the psychology of the crowd to the structure of mass instinct and collective interaction. The first part exposes general psychological characteristics of the mob according to the ideas of Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931). Le Bon describes masses as emotional, irresponsible, uncritical and conservative, although marks heroism and sacrifice as their positive manifestations. In the second part, the author reflects upon the perspective of Gabriel Tard (1843–1904) on this problem. Tard’s term “public opinion” deals with the representatives who – while living in separation – participate in the mass communication. In the third part, attestations of the mass such as humility, conformism and obsession are investigated based on the ideas of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). The next point of the article is devoted to Jose Ortega y Gasset’s (1883–1955) concept of the revolt of masses. Ortega captures the ambivalence of masses who express the power ambition and indifference to culture. From the point of view of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), masses become terrible, self-satisfied, atomized, unstructured and anonymous. However, Elias Canetti (1905–1994) defines masses as compressed and scattered, closed and open, fast and slow. Yet different parameters of the masses one can find in Siegfried Kracauer’s (1889–1966) writing – namely aesthetics, technicism, ritual. Finally, in the last part, the author appeals to Jean Baudrillard’s (1929–2007) approach to the problem who declares that masses became silent and indistinct. (shrink)

This conceptual paper represents my first attempt to tackle a difficult research problem (at least for me), employing the mindsponge concept facilitated by the BMF analytical approach. These ‘weapons’–as we at AISDL usually call them–have shown usefulness and capabilities to shed light on numerous challenging research problems in social sciences and humanities.

Psychological well-being is a major global concern receiving more scholarly attention following the 2008 Great Recession, and it becomes even more relevant in the context of COVID-19 outbreak. In this study, we investigated the impact of economic uncertainty resulting from natural disasters, epidemics, and financial crisis on individuals' mental health. As unemployment rate exponentially increases, individuals are faced with health and economic concerns. Not all society members are affected to the same extent, and marginalized groups, such as those suffering from (...) chronic mental illnesses or low-income families cannot afford the downsizing, mass lay-offs and lack of access to public health services. Psychiatric profession is familiarized with the phenomenon of intolerance of uncertainty (IU), and we examine how this concept is associated with job uncertainty and social identity disturbance. Several studies have formally investigated the effects of IU, but to our knowledge, this is the first research integrating the psychological well-being, job uncertainty and identity disturbance caused by economic breakdown. Literature points to many reported cases of PTSD, anxiety, depression and suicidal tendencies following major social disasters. Yet, we have undertaken to analyze the subjective experiences underlying the self-harming behaviors in an attempt to fill the methodological gap by drawing insights from prominent psychological, sociological and economic theories. We find economic uncertainty to have a positive relation to job uncertainty and identity disturbance, and a negative relationship with psychological well-being. Psychological well-being depends on coherency between both abstract subjective and concrete objective identity, and when these perceptions are inconsistent, cognitive dissonance arises resulting in identity disturbance. We argue that stability is not associated with monetary advantage only, but also with a wide range of other benefits that are crucial for individuals' growth, satisfaction and sense of identity. Therefore, we propose the implementation of social support and public welfare policies to mitigate health risks during the turbulent socio-economic changes. (shrink)

Several authors have recently questioned whether dehumanization is a psychological prerequisite of mass violence. This paper argues that the significance of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism can be understood only if its ideological dimension is taken into account. The author concentrates on Alfred Rosenberg’s racist doctrine and shows that Nazi ideology can be read as a political anthropology that grounds both the belief in the German privilege and the dehumanization of the Jews. This anthropological framework combines biological, (...) cultural and metaphysical aspects. Therefore, it cannot be reduced to biologism. This new reading of Nazi ideology supports three general conclusions: First, the author reveals a complex strategy of dehumanization which is not considered in the current psychological debate. Second, the analysis of the ideological mechanism suggests a model of dehumanization that is more plausible than other psychological models. Third, the author provides evidence that this kind of dehumanization had psychological consequences and hence was an important feature of Nazi reality. (shrink)

The subject of the article is a mass psychology of B.P. Vysheslavtsev. This is a socio-philosophical conception, which created by Vysheslavtsev through the synthesizing of German classical philosophy, neo-Kantianism, Russian religious philosophy and analytical psychology. He developed the mass psychology in close collaboration with C.G. Jung by his direct order. The mass psychology, despite the heterogeneity of its foundations, became an organic continuation of analytical psychology. Moreover, there is reason to suppose that (...) Vysheslavtsev's socio-philosophical and religious ideas influenced all of Jung’s later work. The main method used was a comparative analysis of the ideas of Vysheslavtsev and Jung, as well as a critical interpretation of the original sources, including unpublished archival materials — letters and manuscripts. The novelty lies in the fact that previously the mass psychology of Vysheslavtsev eluded the attention of researchers. This is primarily due to the inaccessibility of sources on this issue, since some of them are either not published and stored in archives, including the Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia University in the City of New York) and C.G. Jung Papers Collection (ETH Zurich University Archive), or was published in rare foreign journals and not translated into Russian. At the same time, without these sources it is difficult to understand not only the evolution of Vysheslavtsev’s views, but also the logic and reasons for the development of Jung’s ideas from the 1940s to his death. Thus, this article is intended to partially replenish these gaps in the history of Russian and European philosophy and psychology. Предметом исследования данной статьи является созданная на основе синтеза немецкой классической философии, неокантианства, русской религиозной философии и аналитической психологии социально-философская концепция Б.П. Вышеславцева, названная им "массовая психология". Данная концепция разрабатывалась в тесном взаимодействии с К.Г. Юнгом, в том числе, по его непосредственному заказу. Массовая психология Вышеславцева, несмотря на разнородность её основ, стала органичным продолжением аналитической психологии. Более того, есть основания полагать, что социально-философские и религиозные идеи Вышеславцева оказали влияние на всё позднее творчество Юнга. В качестве основного метода использовался компаративный анализ идей Вышеславцева и Юнга, а также критическая интерпретация первоисточников, включая неопубликованные архивные материалы - письма и рукописи. Новизна заключается в том, что ранее массовая психология Вышеславцева ускользала от внимания исследователей. Обусловлено это, в первую очередь, труднодоступностью источников по данной проблеме, так как часть из них либо не опубликована и хранится в архивах, в том числе в Бахметьевском архиве Колумбийского университета (Нью-Йорк) и Архиве Юнга (Цюрих), либо была опубликована в редких иностранных изданиях и не переведена на русский язык. Вместе с тем, без данных источников трудно понять не только эволюцию взглядов Вышеславцева, итогом которой стал труд "Кризис индустриальной культуры", но также логику и причины развития представлений Юнга начиная с 1940-х годов и заканчивая его смертью. Тем самым, данная статья призвана отчасти восполнить указанные лакуны в истории русской и европейской философии и психологии. (shrink)

Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairness behavior because moral traits are generally measured through self-report. This experiment focused on day-to-day interpersonal fairness rather than impersonal justice, and fairness was assessed as observed behavior. The experiment investigated whether a self-reported fairness trait would moderate a situational influence on observed fairness behavior, such that individuals with a stronger fairness trait would be less affected by a situational influence than those with a weaker fairness trait. (...) We used an iterated resource game in which participants could withdraw resources as they chose, and we manipulated the number of resources bogus players withdrew. The number of resources participants withdrew was the behavioral measure of fairness. Results confirmed the expected moderation of the unfairness manipulation by a fairness trait on observed behavior. Those reporting a stronger fairness trait were unaffected by the manipulation, whereas those reporting a weaker fairness trait were more strongly influenced. (shrink)

Beginning with Freud’s treatment of identification as an ambivalent process, we explore identification’s polarization between narcissistic idealization and melancholic division. While narcissistic identification can be seen as a strategy adopted by the ego to avoid the educational development of its drives and to maintain itself either in whole or in part in an infantile state, melancholic identification activates a tension between the ego-ideal and the real ego at the expense of the latter. After discussing the ambivalence of identification, we review (...) Freud’s discussion of mass formations as group identifications, arguing that the work of facilitating a productive sublimation of the drives cannot be reduced to a strengthening of the artificial masses represented by social institutions such as the church and the educational system. Instead, the difference between mass formations allowing for collective sublimation and those suffering from narcissistic or melancholic blockages must be found in the productive qualities of the mass itself. In closing, we outline a few ways in which we might begin to understand the political contribution of masses to the maturation of human drives. (shrink)

How Propaganda Became Public Relations pulls back the curtain on propaganda: how it was born, how it works, and how it has masked the bulk of its operations by rebranding itself as public relations. Cory Wimberly uses archival materials and wide variety of sources — Foucault’s work on governmentality, political economy, liberalism, mass psychology, and history — to mount a genealogical challenge to two commonplaces about propaganda. First, modern propaganda did not originate in the state and was never (...) primarily located in the state; instead, it began and flourished as a for-profit service for businesses. Further, propaganda is not focused on public beliefs and does not operate mainly through lies and deceit; propaganda is an apparatus of government that aims to create the publics that will freely undertake the conduct its clients’ desire. Businesses have used propaganda since the early twentieth century to construct the laboring, consuming, and voting publics that they needed to secure and grow their operations. Over that time, corporations have become the most numerous and well-funded apparatuses of government in the West, operating privately and without democratic accountability. Wimberly explains why liberal strategies of resistance have failed and a new focus on creating mass subjectivity through democratic means is essential to countering propaganda. This book offers a sophisticated analysis that will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, Continental philosophy, political communication, the history of capitalism, and the history of public relations. (shrink)

Modern and contemporary politics of P. R. China contain many elements similar to neo-Nazism if not anti-communist. The derivation from Communist doctrines was a less-known debate inside the CPC party leadership soon after the declaration on the founding of People’s Republic of China - notably between Mao, Zedong and the state leadership which resulted in the criminalization of the first president Liu, Shaoqi. The researcher, as a self-identified cisgender homosexual male and Christian, observed the cultural revisionist developments of the P. (...) R. C. regime from early childhood to date. The article enumerates some elements of the Chinese culture’s characteristics in taming and eliminating psychological and social identity formation that constitutes the regime stability in its dictatorial diplomatic rhetorics. It adopts the Christian theology and queer theology in a Gestalt recombination for the non-identity problem albeit with predominant militarization of religion approaches by the “United Front Working Group” for populist enslavement. The article hypothesizes a receptive psychosocial identity from such population in general, and the similar for Buddhist cultural origins. With the influences of designed propaganda media in media psychology, the political responses in mass psychological phenomena from the suppressed regime is considered to be a reflection on their inner senses of helplessness from the active and reactive failures of identity formation. The amplification of such phenomena is contributed by the nationalism propagandas and a gaslighting technique applied to International relations, which results in subjective Stockholm syndrome in some portions of the population. Relative intersubjectivity and absolute personal identity will be discussed in the conclusions, and its implications to dictatorial politics. (shrink)

Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach, according to which “a more productive framework” for primate communication research should be “pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examines the role of context in shaping the meaning of linguistic utterances”. After distinguishing two different conceptions of pragmatics that advocates of the pragmatics-first approach have implicitly relied on, I argue that neither conception adequately serves the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the origins of human (...) linguistic communication. My main aim in this paper is to motivate–and begin to articulate–an intermediary conception whose scope is narrower than Carnapian pragmatics but broader than Gricean pragmatics. To do so, I first spell out what I take to be the key insight offered by proponents of the Gricean approach concerning the emergence of linguistic communication, namely, its being communication ‘from a psychological point of view’. I then develop this insight using key elements from the anti-Gricean ‘biosemantic’ account of linguistic communication due to Ruth Millikan, Philosophical Perspectives 9, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascedero CA, 1995, Millikan R Varieties of Meaning. Mass.: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Millikan, Beyond concepts: unicepts, language, and natural information, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 2017, and elsewhere). I argue that the intermediary pragmatics-first approach that I propose, which draws on both Gricean and Millikanian resources, would be better equipped to serve the purposes of those who search for potential precursors of human linguistic communication in animal communication. (shrink)

I argue for three conclusions. First, responsibility skeptics are committed to the position that the criminal justice system should adopt a universal nonresponsibility excuse. Second, a universal nonresponsibility excuse would diminish some of our most deeply held values, further dehumanize criminals, exacerbate mass incarceration, and cause an even greater number of innocent people (nonwrongdoers) to be punished. Third, while Saul Smilansky's ‘illusionist’ response to responsibility skeptics – that even if responsibility skepticism is correct, society should maintain a responsibility‐realist/retributivist criminal (...) justice system – is generally compelling, it would not work if a majority of society were to convert, theoretically and psychologically, to responsibility skepticism. In this (highly improbable) scenario, and only in this (highly improbable) scenario, the criminal justice system would need to be reformed in such a way that it aligned with the majority's responsibility‐skeptical beliefs and attitudes. (shrink)

Fear, anger and hopelessness were the most frequent traumatic emotional responses in the general public during the first stage of outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic (N = 1,000). The four most frequent categories of fear were determined: (a) fear of the negative impact on household finances, (b) fear of the negative impact on the household finances of significant others, (c) fear of the unavailability of health care, and (d) fear of an insufficient food supply. The pessimistic (...) communications used by the Czech mass media contributed to intensifying traumatic feelings, fears and psychological distress in the general public during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. The anxious emotional tone of the messages and the presentation of selectively chosen “bad ending stories” contributed to the psychological traumatization of the Czech population. This form of communication was motivated by an effort to reach the broadest audience possible. Older adults were the most affected part of the population because of their isolation and their very limited opportunity to share their worries and emotions with others. The communication used by the Czech mass media during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic is a representative example of a traumatizing form of media communication during an epidemic. (shrink)

Virtues, broadly understood as stable and robust dispositions for certain responses across morally relevant situations, have been a growing topic of interest in psychology. A central topic of discussion has been whether studies showing that situations can strongly influence our responses provide evidence against the existence of virtues (as a kind of stable and robust disposition). In this review, we examine reasons for thinking that the prevailing methods for examining situational influences are limited in their ability to test dispositional (...) stability and robustness; or, then, whether virtues exist. We make the case that these limitations can be addressed by aggregating repeated, cross-situational assessments of environmental, psychological and physiological variables within everyday life—a form of assessment often called ecological momentary assessment (EMA, or experience sampling). We, then, examine how advances in smartphone application (app) technology, and their mass adoption, make these mobile devices an unprecedented vehicle for EMA and, thus, the psychological study of virtue. We, additionally, examine how smartphones might be used for virtue development by promoting changes in thought and behavior within daily life; a technique often called ecological momentary intervention (EMI). While EMA/I have become widely employed since the 1980s for the purposes of understanding and promoting change amongst clinical populations, few EMA/I studies have been devoted to understanding or promoting virtues within non-clinical populations. Further, most EMA/I studies have relied on journaling, PDAs, phone calls and/or text messaging systems. We explore how smartphone app technology provides a means of making EMA a more robust psychological method, EMI a more robust way of promoting positive change, and, as a result, opens up new possibilities for studying and promoting virtues. (shrink)

Why do people persist in commitments that threaten their happiness, security, and comfort? Why do some of our most central, identity-defining commitments resist the effects of reasoning and critical reflection? Drawing on real-life examples, empirical psychology, and philosophical reflection, this book argues that these commitments involve an ethical stance called devotion, which plays a pervasive—but often hidden—role in human life. Devotion typically involves sacralizing certain values, goals, or relationships. To sacralize a value is to treat it as inviolable (trade-offs (...) with ordinary values are forbidden), incontestable (even contemplating such trade-offs is prohibited), and dialectically invulnerable (no rational considerations can disrupt the agent’s commitment to the value). Philosophy of Devotion offers a detailed philosophical account and defense of these features. Devotion and the sacralization of values can be reasonable; indeed, a life involving meaningful, sustained commitment depends on these stances. Without devotion, we risk an existential condition called normative dissipation, in which all of our commitments become etiolated. Yet devotion can easily go wrong, deforming into the individual and group fanaticism that have become pervasive features of modern social life. The book provides an alternative to fanaticism, investigating the way in which we can express non-pathological forms of devotion. We can be devoted through affirmation and through what is termed the deepening move, which treats the agent’s central commitments as systematically inchoate. Each stance enables a wholehearted form of devotion that nevertheless preserves flexibility and openness, avoiding the dangers of fanaticism on the one hand and normative dissipation on the other. -/- (The attached file contains the introductory chapter.). (shrink)

The extreme incidence and prevalence of rage-driven aggression and destructiveness in the United States is without parallel in any other industrialized country in the world. During 2022 alone, there were 647 mass shootings in the U.S. (in each, at least four victims were killed). Unfortunately these many killings comprise only one form of widespread rage in America. This paper seeks to answer why this is happening.

Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place in the web of beliefs or sentences comprising a whole theory or group of theories. It can be contrasted with two other views: atomism and molecularism. Molecularism characterizes meaning and content in terms of relatively small parts of the web in a way that allows many different theories to share those parts. For (...) example, the meaning of 'chase' might be said by a molecularist to be try to catch. Atomism characterizes meaning and content in terms of none of the web; it says that sentences and beliefs have meaning or content independently of their relations to other sentences or beliefs. One major motivation for holism has come from reflections on the natures of confirmation and learning. As Quine (1953) observed, claims about the world are confirmed not individually, but only in conjunction with theories of which they are a part. And typically, one cannot come to understand scientific claims without understanding a significant chunk of the theory of which they are a part. For example, in learning the Newtonian concepts of 'force', 'mass', kinetic energy' and 'momentum', one doesn't learn any definitions of these terms in terms that are understood beforehand, for there are no such definitions. Rather, these theoretical terms were all learned together in conjunction with procedures for solving problems. The major problem with holism is that it threatens to make generalization in psychology virtually impossible. If the content of any state depends on all others, it would be extremely unlikely that any two believers would ever share a state with the same content. Moreover, holism would appear to conflict with our ordinary conception of reasoning. What sentences one accepts influence what one infers. if i accept a sentence and then later reject it, i thereby change the inferential role of that sentence, so the meaning of what i accept wouldn't be the same as what i later reject. but then it would be difficult to understand on this view how one could rationally --or even irrationally!-- change one's mind. and agreement and translation are also problematic for much the same reason. holists have responded (1) by proposing that we should think not in terms of "same/different" meaning but in terms of a gradient of similarity of meaning, (2) by proposing "two factor" theories or (3) by simply accepting the consequence that there is no real difference between changing meanings and changing beliefs. (shrink)

Is shadowboxing an effective form of functional exercise? What physiological and morphological changes result from an exercise program based exclusively on shadowboxing for 3 weeks? To date, no empirical research has focused specifically on addressing these questions. Since mixed martial arts (MMA) is the fastest growing sport in the world, and since boxing and kickboxing fitness classes are among the most popular in gyms and fitness clubs worldwide, the lack of research on shadowboxing and martial arts-based fitness programs in the (...) extant literature is a shortcoming that the present article aims to address. This case study involved a previously sedentary individual engaging in an exercise program based exclusively on shadowboxing for 3 weeks. Body composition and heart rate data were collected before, throughout, and upon completion of the 3-week exercise program to determine the effectiveness of shadowboxing for functional fitness purposes. An original shadowboxing program prepared by an Everlast Master Instructor and NASM Certified Personal Trainer (NASM-CPT) and Performance Enhancement Specialist (NASM-PES) was used for this 3-week period. The original shadowboxing program with goals, techniques, and combinations to work on throughout the 3-week program is included in this article. This case study demonstrates that a 3-week exercise program based exclusively on shadowboxing can increase aerobic capacity, muscle mass, bone mass, basal metabolic rate, and daily calorie intake, and decrease resting heart rate, fat mass, body fat percentage, and visceral fat rating in a previously sedentary individual. The results of this research demonstrate that shadowboxing can be a safe and effective form of exercise leading to morphological and physiological improvements including fat loss and increased aerobic capacity. The results of this research also demonstrate that the Tanita BC-1500 is a reliable tool for individuals to evaluate their own fitness progress over time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual actions. (...) "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

In her book, Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag focuses on metaphors and myths on diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis, which occur in different historical periods. Sontag argues that the metaphors produced related to illness overhaul illness and the things that define illness now have become metaphors produced related to them rather than their concrete and physical aspects. Illness becomes not just an illness, but a phenomenon defined by evil, mystery, fear, evil, madness, passions, wealth and poverty, temporal loginess or (...) speed, and a set of metaphors or myths that are spatially identified with the space. Metaphors and myths turn into means of socially stigmatizing the illness itself rather than giving a meaning to illness. The disease literally turns into a situation that needs to be hidden in order to avoid social stigma. The explanation of mass diseases through metaphors and myths has been seen since ancient times and this understanding of mass diseases continues to exist today. As a matter of fact, the Covid-19 pandemic has also ceased to be the subject of only medical science since it first emerged, and it has turned into an issue that concerns many areas from politics to economics, from sociology to psychology. The metaphors generated on the Covid-19 disease, which we have witnessed its reflections in many areas from the discourses of daily life to the discourse of politicians, from art to literature, have a similar function with the metaphors attributed to diseases like cancer and tuberculosis that Sontag discussed. Covid-19 is not only seen as a disease, but as a disease defined by a series of metaphors such as mysterious, evil, invisible enemy, insidious danger, and democratic virus. The metaphors generated on the disease cause the struggle against the disease itself to be explained with various metaphors. The metaphors derived from Covid-19 such as "invisible enemy" and "biological war" cause the struggle against it to be turned into a military terminology, and the metaphor of "Chinese virus" is a means of social stigmatization / marginalization by racializing the virus directly. This study tackles the issue of how Covid-19, which is the subject of medical science, has become the subject of unscientific myths and metaphors attributed to the disease, and that the disease is perceived through metaphors rather than itself in the context of Susan Sontag's thought. In the study, answers for the questions of what kind of effects appeared due to the stigmatizing power of metaphors derived from the Covid-19 and whether the metaphors are the outcomes of the strategy for coping with the pandemic will be sought. (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)

Being social creatures in a complex world, we do things together. We act jointly. While cooperation, in its broadest sense, can involve merely getting out of each other’s way, or refusing to deceive other people, it is also essential to human nature that it involves more active forms of collaboration and coordination (Tomasello 2009; Sterelny 2012). We collaborate with others in many ordinary activities which, though at times similar to those of other animals, take unique and diverse cultural and psychological (...) forms in human beings. But we also work closely and interactively with each other in more peculiar and flexible practices which are in distinctive ways both species-specific and culturally and historically contingent: from team sports to shared labour, from committee work to mass demonstrations, from dancing to reminiscing together about old times. (shrink)

Thomas Sankara was 33 years old when he seized power in a bloodless coup. During the four years of his governance, he organized adult literacy campaigns and mass vaccination of children, promoted women's rights and fought corruption as well as desertification caused by inappropriate agricultural practices introduced during the colonial period. Within two years, child mortality and illiteracy dropped significantly and vaccination coverage increased. Beyond these quantitative results, Sankara firmly believed that the decolonization of his country started from the (...) formation of the conscience of citizens, from learning to “rely on themselves” – materially and psychologically – and from the abandonment of a logic of technological and financial dependence that generated hunger and debt. To achieve his goals, he launched campaigns to “consume Burkinabè,” to plant trees and preserve rainwater in areas affected by desertification. (shrink)

This paper provides a Kantian interpretation of core issues involved in the trial following the terrorist attacks that struck Norway on July 22nd 2011. After a sketch of the controversies surrounding the trial itself, a Kantian theory of why the wrongdoer’s mind struck us as so endlessly disturbed is presented. This Kantian theory, I proceed by arguing, also helps us understand why it was so important to respond to the violence through the legal system and to treat the perpetrator, Anders (...) Behring Breivik, so respectfully before, during, and after the trial. I close by addressing the controversial issue now facing Norway: how capable is the Norwegian legal system to deal with cases involving extreme violence, including as committed by psychologically impaired mass murderers? (shrink)

In this essay, I try to go through the questions and analysis that Judith Butler puts on Althusser’s work—reading fundamentally and almost exclusively the essay on the “Ideological State Apparatus” from 1970, and the relationship she maintains in her reading with the Freud’s concept of repression and the Lacanian “symbolic order”. My central hypothesis is that it is the Foucauldian reading of Freud and Lacan, begun early in 1990 with Gender Trouble, that guides Butler in his interpretation of the Althusserian (...) concept of interpellation understood almost exclusively from the perspective of the “hailing” example that Althusser provides in his essay from 1970. This leads Butler to a reading that I characterize here as biographical—for its obscene reliance on a particular episode in Althusser’s life: the murder of Helène Rytman—and anti-Cartesian, insofar as it attempts reading the ideological readiness of the subject as something beyond the split of the cogito, and materially effected by an ontological repetition. The problem with Judith Butler's concept of repression is its unappealable juridical nature—which is paradoxical for an erudite reader of Michel Foucault—insofar as the agent of repression appears as analogous to the State and therefore it results assimilable with rebellions “melancholic” subjectivity. This conflation of the psychological and the social is conducive to some mass psychologism, which forgets Althusser’s debt to Lacan when elaborating his theory of ideology. I proceed to investigate the origins of this theory in the text “Three Notes on the Theory of Discourses” (1968) and in the recently published Que faire (2018). My tentative conclusion is that there is an idea of supplementary violence (in the Lacanian sense of plus-de-jouir) constitutive of the unconscious in Althusserian theory of ideology that cannot be overlooked, and that is linked to his reading of Freud. (shrink)

This paper develops a new structural psychology, and therein proposes a specific model for the scientific study of consciousness. The presented model uses Earth's geologic history of mass-extinction & recovery (evolutionary dynamics) in determining humanity’s adaptive response (conscious and non-conscious traits). It argues humanity adaptively mirrors Earth’s basic evolutionary dynamics, in a “mythologizing of natural adversity” as foundation for all human knowledge – a process that continues well into the modern era. The intellectual lineage used to develop this (...) model includes: • Evolutionary biology offers a context for this study – answering Chalmers’ “hard question,” • Paleoanthropology defines the circumstance of human emergence from Gaia, • Environmental forces on neurophysiology derive an ambiguous but instructive narrative logic (mythic sensibility), • Psychology tracks humanity’s shift from animal-self to modern creative-self, using work of Hegel > Freud > Jung > Rank > Joseph Campbell > Arnold Mindell as a new structural psychology, • Fractal geometry offers a holographic design for modeling consciousness, • Memetics presents a tool for measuring conscious traits, in a variation of the Hall-Tonna values inventory, • Finally, Structured Opportunistic Thinking, a hybrid of NTL’s T-group, and Pierce’s Power Equity Group Theory, suggests a developmental methodology. This work presents a “general hypothesizing model” of human consciousness, in attempting a science of consciousness. (shrink)

شنت الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية حربا على العراق عام 2003 بدعوى أن العراق يمتلك أسلحة دمار شامل، ثم تبين للعالم عدم صحة هذه الدعوى، وقال الناس: لقد كذبت الإدارة الأمريكية. كانت نظرية المعرفة التقليدية تنسب المعرفة إلى الذات العارفة الفردية، وتركز على الفاعلين الأفراد وحالاتهم الاعتقادية، مثل "يعتقد أحمد بقضية معينة". أما أن ننسب الحالات المعرفية إلى الجماعات مثل " كذبت الإدارة الأمريكية"، فهذا تحول في الإبستمولوجيا إلى الفاعل الجماعي. إبستمولوجيا الجماعات epistemology of groups حقل فرعي من الإبستمولوجيا الاجتماعية. يهدف إلى (...) استكشاف الخصائص والعمليات المعرفية على مستوى الجماعة. ظهر بصورة واضحة مع مطلع القرن الحادي والعشرين، فعقدت له مؤتمرات وطنية ودولية، وظهرت البحوث والكتب التي تعنى بموضوعاته الأساسية مثل معرفة الجماعة، واعتقاد الجماعة، وتسويغ الجماعة، وفهم الجماعة، وعقلانية الجماعة وموضوعيتها، وفضيلة الجماعة، واختلاف الجماعة، واستقطاب الجماعة، وذكاء الجماعة، وَهَلُمَّ جَرّاً. ويضيف هذا الكتاب إلى المناقشات المتطورة في المعرفة الاجتماعية عامة، ونظرية المعرفة الجماعية خاصة. ويوفر مسارًا يسهل الوصول إليه في موضوع إبستمولوجيا الجماعات، مع فصول منظمة بشكل ملائم ومصطلحات فنية محددة ومفسرة بوضوح. ويطور نظريات لها جاذبية تتجاوز الفلسفة إلى تخصصات مثل الاقتصاد والقانون وعلم النفس الاجتماعي والعلوم السياسية. The United States of America launched a war against Iraq in 2003 claiming that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, then it became clear to the world that this claim was not true, and people said: The American administration lied. The traditional theory of knowledge attributed knowledge to the individual knowing subject, and focused on individual actors and their belief states, such as "Ahmed believes in a certain proposition". As for attributing cognitive states to groups, such as “the American administration lied,” this is a shift in epistemology to the collective actor. The epistemology of groups is a subfield of social epistemology. It aims to explore the characteristics and cognitive processes at the group level. It appeared clearly at the beginning of the twenty-first century, so national and international conferences were held for it, and research and books appeared that deal with its basic topics such as group knowledge, group belief, group justification, group understanding, group rationality, and objectivity, group virtue, group difference, group polarization, and group intelligence, and so on. This book adds to the cutting-edge debates on social epistemology generally, and collective epistemology more specifically. Provides a very accessible path into the topic of an epistemology of groups, with conveniently organized chapters and technical terms clearly defined and explained. Develops theories that have appeal beyond philosophy, for disciplines such as economics, law, social psychology, and political science. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of the relation between political populism and mass media, and how this relation becomes problematic for democratic societies. It focuses on the fact that mass media, due to their purpose and infrastructure, can unintentionally reinforce populist messages. Research findings from communication science and political psychology are used to illustrate how, for example, a combination of mass media agenda setting and motivated reasoning can influence citizens’ political decisions and impair their political autonomy. (...) This poses a particular normative challenge for modern democracies: how to counter these populism-supporting effects within the constraints of democratic legitimacy? After showing how severely limited legal measures to curb populist media effects would be, the paper argues in favour of media competence education as a way of providing future citizens with an epistemic toolkit to navigate the media environment and strengthen their political autonomy. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843): A Philosophy of the Exact Sciences -/- Shortened version of the article of the same name in: Tabula Rasa. Jenenser magazine for critical thinking. 6th of November 1994 edition -/- 1. Biography -/- Jakob Friedrich Fries was born on the 23rd of August, 1773 in Barby on the Elbe. Because Fries' father had little time, on account of his journeying, he gave up both his sons, of whom Jakob Friedrich was the elder, to the Herrnhut Teaching (...) Institution in Niesky in 1778. Fries attended the theological seminar in Niesky in autumn 1792, which lasted for three years. There he (secretly) began to study Kant. The reading of Kant's works led Fries, for the first time, to a deep philosophical satisfaction. His enthusiasm for Kant is to be understood against the background that a considerable measure of Kant's philosophy is based on a firm foundation of what happens in an analogous and similar manner in mathematics. -/- During this period he also read Heinrich Jacobi's novels, as well as works of the awakening classic German literature; in particular Friedrich Schiller's works. In 1795, Fries arrived at Leipzig University to study law. During his time in Leipzig he became acquainted with Fichte's philosophy. In autumn of the same year he moved to Jena to hear Fichte at first hand, but was soon disappointed. -/- During his first sojourn in Jenaer (1796), Fries got to know the chemist A. N. Scherer who was very influenced by the work of the chemist A. L. Lavoisier. Fries discovered, at Scherer's suggestion, the law of stoichiometric composition. Because he felt that his work still need some time before completion, he withdrew as a private tutor to Zofingen (in Switzerland). There Fries worked on his main critical work, and studied Newton's "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica". He remained a lifelong admirer of Newton, whom he praised as a perfectionist of astronomy. Fries saw the final aim of his mathematical natural philosophy in the union of Newton's Principia with Kant's philosophy. -/- With the aim of qualifying as a lecturer, he returned to Jena in 1800. Now Fries was known from his independent writings, such as "Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling" (1st edition in 1803), and "Systems of Philosophy as an Evident Science" (1804). The relationship between G. W. F. Hegel and Fries did not develop favourably. Hegel speaks of "the leader of the superficial army", and at other places he expresses: "he is an extremely narrow-minded bragger". On the other hand, Fries also has an unfavourable take on Hegel. He writes of the "Redundancy of the Hegelistic dialectic" (1828). In his History of Philosophy (1837/40) he writes of Hegel, amongst other things: "Your way of philosophising seems just to give expression to nonsense in the shortest possible way". In this work, Fries appears to argue with Hegel in an objective manner, and expresses a positive attitude to his work. -/- In 1805, Fries was appointed professor for philosophy in Heidelberg. In his time spent in Heidelberg, he married Caroline Erdmann. He also sealed his friendships with W. M. L. de Wette and F. H. Jacobi. Jacobi was amongst the contemporaries who most impressed Fries during this period. In Heidelberg, Fries wrote, amongst other things, his three-volume main work New Critique of Reason (1807). -/- In 1816 Fries returned to Jena. When in 1817 the Wartburg festival took place, Fries was among the guests, and made a small speech. 1819 was the so-called "Great Year" for Fries: His wife Caroline died, and Karl Sand, a member of a student fraternity, and one of Fries' former students stabbed the author August von Kotzebue to death. Fries was punished with a philosophy teaching ban but still received a professorship for physics and mathematics. Only after a period of years, and under restrictions, he was again allowed to read philosophy. From now on, Fries was excluded from political influence. The rest of his life he devoted himself once again to philosophical and natural studies. During this period, he wrote "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and the "History of Philosophy" (1837/40). -/- Fries suffered from a stroke on New Year's Day 1843, and a second stroke, on the 10th of August 1843 ended his life. -/- 2. Fries' Work Fries left an extensive body of work. A look at the subject areas he worked on makes us aware of the universality of his thinking. Amongst these subjects are: Psychic anthropology, psychology, pure philosophy, logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, religious philosophy, aesthetics, natural philosophy, mathematics, physics and medical subjects, to which, e.g., the text "Regarding the optical centre in the eye together with general remarks about the theory of seeing" (1839) bear witness. With popular philosophical writings like the novel "Julius and Evagoras" (1822), or the arabesque "Longing, and a Trip to the Middle of Nowhere" (1820), he tried to make his philosophy accessible to a broader public. Anthropological considerations are shown in the methodical basis of his philosophy, and to this end, he provides the following didactic instruction for the study of his work: "If somebody wishes to study philosophy on the basis of this guide, I would recommend that after studying natural philosophy, a strict study of logic should follow in order to peruse metaphysics and its applied teachings more rapidly, followed by a strict study of criticism, followed once again by a return to an even closer study of metaphysics and its applied teachings." -/- 3. Continuation of Fries' work through the Friesian School -/- Fries' ideas found general acceptance amongst scientists and mathematicians. A large part of the followers of the "Fries School of Thought" had a scientific or mathematical background. Amongst them were biologist Matthias Jakob Schleiden, mathematics and science specialist philosopher Ernst Friedrich Apelt, the zoologist Oscar Schmidt, and the mathematician Oscar Xavier Schlömilch. Between the years 1847 and 1849, the treatises of the "Fries School of Thought", with which the publishers aimed to pursue philosophy according to the model of the natural sciences appeared. In the Kant-Fries philosophy, they saw the realisation of this ideal. The history of the "New Fries School of Thought" began in 1903. It was in this year that the philosopher Leonard Nelson gathered together a small discussion circle in Goettingen. Amongst the founding members of this circle were: A. Rüstow, C. Brinkmann and H. Goesch. In 1904 L. Nelson, A. Rüstow, H. Goesch and the student W. Mecklenburg travelled to Thuringia to find the missing Fries writings. In the same year, G. Hessenberg, K. Kaiser and Nelson published the first pamphlet from their first volume of the "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition". -/- The school set out with the aim of searching for the missing Fries' texts, and re-publishing them with a view to re-opening discussion of Fries' brand of philosophy. The members of the circle met regularly for discussions. Additionally, larger conferences took place, mostly during the holidays. Featuring as speakers were: Otto Apelt, Otto Berg, Paul Bernays, G. Fraenkel, K. Grelling, G. Hessenberg, A. Kronfeld, O. Meyerhof, L. Nelson and R. Otto. On the 1st of March 1913, the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society was founded. Whilst the Fries' school of thought dealt in continuum with the advancement of the Kant-Fries philosophy, the members of the Jakob-Friedrich-Fries society's main task was the dissemination of the Fries' school publications. In May/June, 1914, the organisations took part in their last common conference before the gulf created by the outbreak of the First World War. Several members died during the war. Others returned disabled. The next conference took place in 1919. A second conference followed in 1921. Nevertheless, such intensive work as had been undertaken between 1903 and 1914 was no longer possible. -/- Leonard Nelson died in October 1927. In the 1930's, the 6th and final volume of "Treatises of the Fries School of Thought, New Edition" was published. Franz Oppenheimer, Otto Meyerhof, Minna Specht and Grete Hermann were involved in their publication. -/- 4. About Mathematical Natural Philosophy -/- In 1822, Fries' "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" appeared. Fries rejects the speculative natural philosophy of his time - above all Schelling's natural philosophy. A natural study, founded on speculative philosophy, ceases with its collection, arrangement and order of well-known facts. Only a mathematical natural philosophy can deliver the necessary explanatory reasoning. The basic dictum of his mathematical natural philosophy is: "All natural theories must be definable using purely mathematically determinable reasons of explanation." Fries is of the opinion that science can attain completeness only by the subordination of the empirical facts to the metaphysical categories and mathematical laws. -/- The crux of Fries' natural philosophy is the thought that mathematics must be made fertile for use by the natural sciences. However, pure mathematics displays solely empty abstraction. To be able to apply them to the sensory world, an intermediatory connection is required. Mathematics must be connected to metaphysics. The pure mechanics, consisting of three parts are these: a) A study of geometrical movement, which considers solely the direction of the movement, b) A study of kinematics, which considers velocity in Addition, c) A study of dynamic movement, which also incorporates mass and power, as well as direction and velocity. -/- Of great interest is Fries' natural philosophy in view of its methodology, particularly with regard to the doctrine "leading maxims". Fries calls these "leading maxims" "heuristic", "because they are principal rules for scientific invention". -/- Fries' philosophy found great recognition with Carl Friedrich Gauss, amongst others. Fries asked for Gauss's opinion on his work "An Attempt at a Criticism based on the Principles of the Probability Calculus" (1842). Gauss also provided his opinions on "Mathematical Natural Philosophy" (1822) and on Fries' "History of Philosophy". Gauss acknowledged Fries' philosophy and wrote in a letter to Fries: "I have always had a great predilection for philosophical speculation, and now I am all the more happy to have a reliable teacher in you in the study of the destinies of science, from the most ancient up to the latest times, as I have not always found the desired satisfaction in my own reading of the writings of some of the philosophers. In particular, the writings of several famous (maybe better, so-called famous) philosophers who have appeared since Kant have reminded me of the sieve of a goat-milker, or to use a modern image instead of an old-fashioned one, of Münchhausen's plait, with which he pulled himself from out of the water. These amateurs would not dare make such a confession before their Masters; it would not happen were they were to consider the case upon its merits. I have often regretted not living in your locality, so as to be able to glean much pleasurable entertainment from philosophical verbal discourse." -/- The starting point of the new adoption of Fries was Nelson's article "The critical method and the relation of psychology to philosophy" (1904). Nelson dedicates special attention to Fries' re-interpretation of Kant's deduction concept. Fries awards Kant's criticism the rationale of anthropological idiom, in that he is guided by the idea that one can examine in a psychological way which knowledge we have "a priori", and how this is created, so that we can therefore recognise our own knowledge "a priori" in an empirical way. Fries understands deduction to mean an "awareness residing darkly in us is, and only open to basic metaphysical principles through conscious reflection.". -/- Nelson has pointed to an analogy between Fries' deduction and modern metamathematics. In the same manner, as with the anthropological deduction of the content of the critical investigation into the metaphysical object show, the content of mathematics become, in David Hilbert's view, the object of metamathematics. -/-. (shrink)

This article frames Trump's politics through a genealogy of propaganda, going back to P.T. Barnum in the 19th century and moving through the crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon and the public relations counsel Edward Bernays in the 20th. This genealogy shows how propaganda was developed as a tool by eager professionals who would hire themselves to the elite to control the masses. Trump’s propaganda presents a break in that he has not only removed professionals from control over his propaganda, he (...) has mobilized it as a force against them. His lower and middle class supporters may not materially gain from Trump’s politics, but they get to vent their ressentiment on the professional class and see them too become the targets of propagandistic control. Ultimately, the conflict between working class whites, those without college degrees, and professionals earns little for its participants and occludes the role that elites play in class dynamics in the United States. This article adds substance and context to the claims that Trump’s appeal is anti-professional while showing that the claims that his supporters are ‘voting against their interests’ does not reflect the real psychological benefits many Trumpists get from supporting him. (shrink)

US criminal courts have recently moved toward seeing juveniles as inherently less culpable than their adult counterparts, influenced by a growing mass of neuroscientific and psychological evidence. In support of this trend, this chapter argues that the criminal law’s notion of responsible agency requires both the cognitive capacity to understand one’s actions and the volitional control to conform one’s actions to legal standards. These capacities require, among other things, a minimal working set of executive functions—a suite of mental processes, (...) mainly realized in the prefrontal cortex, such as planning and inhibition—which remain in significant states of immaturity through late adolescence, and in some cases beyond. Drawing on scientific evidence of how these cognitive and volitional capacities develop in the maturing brain, the authors sketch a scalar structure of juvenile responsibility, and suggest some possible directions for reforming the juvenile justice system to reflect this scalar structure. (shrink)

In order to link fine-tuning in physics with spiritual influx, I propose that the highest degree in physics is where ‘ends’ are received in physics. By ends, I refer to what it is that determines the means or causes in physics, and what it is that manages or influences to basis parameters (masses and charge values) of the quantum fields. This is fine-tuning, in the sense that it occurs not just for the whole universe (in the Big Bang, for example), (...) but locally. That is, this fine-tuning is different at each time, and in point in space. Thus this influx can be specific to living organisms, and can occur at all the needed scales and levels in psychology and biology, namely every day and every micros-second of our lives. (shrink)

The article explains my third argument for panpsychism, based on disolving all properties, including dispositional physical properties like mass, energy, and force, into phenomenal properties. I thus reject a dual-property version of panpsychism. I seek to show, contrary to Paul Churchland, that the general panpsychist hypothesis has some explanatory value, and makes a cosmology consisting in comparative psychology possible. The mental life even of so-called physical particles in physics is hypothesized to help explain their behavior.

This peer-reviewed paper intervenes in debates relating to overarching themes that impact upon mass media studies, communication theory and theories of cognition more generally. In particular, the paper discusses issues involving how our ordinary psychological thinking relates to norms of rationality (and how these latter are conceived). In essence, I argue against a dominant approach taken by Christopher Peacocke, that rationality can be grounded in the possession of certain concepts. The article makes a new contribution to the field by (...) arguing against the dominant approach on two grounds: (a) it fails to distinguish between true and false normative commitments; (b) it is empirically unsound. In response, I briefly offer suggestions towards an alternative, and psychologically tractable, account of rational commitment. Presentations of earlier drafts of the paper were given at a seminar at the Centre for Study of Mind and Nature, Oslo, as well as the conference of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology. (shrink)

The paper examines Cosmatos's work to date: the two feature films 'Beyond the Black Rainbow'(2010), and 'Mandy' (2018), and the episode ‘The Viewing’ (2022) from the Netflix series 'Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities'. I argue that Cosmatos's films act as a vernacular critique of popular culture iterations of Nietzsche's Übermensch, and as such addresses the political and psychological anxieties of a mass North American audience. I further argue that Cosmatos is a profoundly psychoanalytical film maker, staging as horror, (...) the subject who has weakened their ego in the name of transcendence, only to find the forces of super-ego and Id causing violent psychotic breakdown. The article takes an interdisciplinary approach to Cosmatos's contextualization (alongside more obvious peers) looking at the work of British artist Dexter Dalwood to help understand the political and philosophical aspects of Cosmatos's output. (shrink)

According to Tim Crane, “the ’hard problem’ of consciousness is supposed to be the real heart of the mind-body problem in today’s philosophy”. The idea of the problem can be expressed in the following way: Why are the physical processes in our brain accompanied by the qualitative (or phenomenal) feel? The mere qualitative feel or qualia are those to be explained. The originator of the problem’s name is the Australian philosopher David Chalmers who divided the problems of consciousness into the (...) ‘easy’ problems and the ‘hard’ problem. The former are ‘easy’ because they can be functionally explained. The ‘hard’ problem, in its turn, cannot. From this, it follows that the explanation of the hard problem of consciousness must be found elsewhere. Chalmers’ nonreductive theory of consciousness (or naturalistic dualism) is a serious candidate for a such-like explanation. In general, it suggests conscious experience as one of the fundamental features of our world, together with such fundamental world features as mass, charge etc. It is a general overview of David Chalmers’ philosophy of mind that is carrying out in the proposed paper. Key words: the ‘easy’ problems and the ‘hard’ problem of consciousness, the phenomenal and psychological concepts of mind, awareness, experience, something it is like, qualia, supervenience, zombie, naturalistic dualism, the principle of structural coherence, the principle of organizational invariance, the double-aspect theory of information. (shrink)

Once in a great while a series of unintentional mistakes which could go unremarked, reach a mass and a wide distribution. When that occurs these mistakes take on a new life and somehow become established as a canon of 'scholarly' research. In the case of the extant literature in Spinozan academic writing, this has now gone far beyond the tipping point. Virtually all of the commentary, journals, conferences, courses and internet sites, now uniformly speak as one voice. And that (...) voice typically pronounces Spinoza's system to be seriously flawed. This chain of thought reaches back into the mid-years of the Twentieth Century. Meanwhile, there are handful of true Spinoza scholars; Hallett, Harris, McKeon, Roth and Saw, and a few others, who view Spinoza's philosophy as the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of philosophy. They see it for its comprehensive unity of thought, flawless logical presentation and masterful depiction of the entire spectrum of everything which is possible in existence in the entire universe. This, somewhat lengthy paper, sets out to enumerate and detail these egregious errors, to pair them with the corrective which will set the record straight and to move beyond that. A recommendation will be made to replace the shopworn and error prone method of 'comparative analysis' with a new rubric termed simply 'doing philosophy'. Spinoza exhorted us to assiduously avoid exposing the mistakes of others. Being a master of the inner workings of human psychology, he recognized that any form of negativity, typically closes the mind of the person who is exposed to it. But in this case there is no other choice. What is being papered over with this academic blockage and misinformation is Spinoza's brilliant explication of the wonders contained within the agency of the human mind, of how that mind can access the intelligibility of virtually everything in the cosmos and of the potential for humanity to shape its own evolutionary progression as a part of the 'unfolding of everything possible' which is 'Deus sive Natura sive Substantia'. Charles M. Saunders 11/8/2019. (shrink)

The Einstein of the New Age holds forth in his unique and brilliant style on the history of world views and how to put spirit back in our life. If you have the patience to learn his jargon and read slowly there is alot of serious brainfood here. I read this and his Sex, Ecology and Spirituality(1995) with Hofstadter´s famous Godel, Escher, Bach(GEB) written in 1980(both of which I have reviewed here). Wilber´s work has many parallels with GEB, both of (...) them massive works attempting to tie together disparate fields and different views of life. Unlike Hofstadter, who was mainly interested in the nature of intelligence, Wilber does not treat math, music or DNA, and he concentrates on world views that have a spiritual relevance but like Hofstadter he lacks any grasp of the logical structure of rationality, the dual systems of thought or the works of Wittgenstein and Searle, which obviates much of his work. For an account of those see my articles. He spent a vast amount of time working out the relationships between ideas and how they relate to individual and society, spirit and science. If you don´t have the time or patience for the whole book, read Superconsciousness Parts 1 and 2 which are an excellent summary. His shortest book, `The Marriage of Self andSoul is a much easier read that gives you a good idea of his style and purpose. He details alot of intellectual history (philosophy, psychology, religion, ecology, feminism, sociology, etc) and shows where nearly everyone went too far in the direction of Ascent (to the spirit) or Descent (to science,materialism, reductionism or Flatland). He trys to show how to heal the rifts by combining sense and soul (spiritual and material life, science and religion, internal and external, individual and social). Everything is related to everything else (holons in holarchies). The Age of Enlightenment denied the the spirit, the individual and the interior life but developed art, morals and science and led to democracy, feminism, equality and ecology, but this reductionism compressed the intellect and the spirit into the Flatland of science, rationality and materialism. He sees the loss of the spiritual point of view with the Age of Enlightenment as the major factor responsible for the malaise of modern times, but real spirituality or ìntelligent religion (i.e., the quest for enlightenment) as opposed to primitive religion (everything else-see my review of Boyer´s 'Religion Explained') was always rare. It is intelligent religion he sees as the panacea, but it is primitive religion that the masses understand, and it too has only materialistic goals. In sum, in spite of its shortcomings it is still unique and well worth the effort. -/- 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)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research (...) on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing). (shrink)

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect (...) to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns.The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns. (shrink)

From time involved in pair production process, in the photon-photon collision, we consider energy and then mass uncertainty. Taking the latter as the mass of a particle, we repeat pair production process obtaining another mass uncertainty, then another particle mass, and so on. Starting with the heaviest charged elementary particle that is possible using Planck length for electromagnetic mass, we obtain a mass value close to electron mass. It is supposed exactly electron (...) class='Hi'>mass, considering the presence of uncertainties in the process. Then plausible neutrino mass and other particles masses are obtained. (shrink)

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed fifteen people at their high school in Columbine, Colorado. National media dubbed the event a “school shooting.” The term grimly expanded over the next several years to include similar events at army bases, movie theaters, churches, and nightclubs. Today, we commonly use the categories “mass shooter” and “mass shooting” to organize and classify information about gun violence. I will argue that neither category is an effective tool (...) for reducing gun violence and use empirical data to show how these categories perpetuate a moral panic that harms already vulnerable demographics. I conclude that we should instead favor a narrower description of individuals and events, (e.g., “X shot Y people at Z”) because we can talk about all of the relevant cases without contributing the undue harms. (shrink)

I argue that mass produced artifacts are ontologically distinctive. If we think of the making of an artifact as the imposition of a creative intention on to some matter, usually through intentional manipulation of the matter, then in the case of mass production, one could say that there is not enough mind to go around! Batches of mass produced objects will have a distinctive essence, lying in the creative act by which they are made, but within a (...) batch, the objects will be distinct from each other, but not essentially distinct. (shrink)

Are the following propositions true of the colors: No object can be more than one determinable or determinate color all over at the same time (Incompatibility); the colors of objects are mind-independent (Objectivism); and most human observers usually perceive the colors of objects veridically in typical conditions (Veridicality)? One reason to think not is that the empirical literature appears to support the proposition that there is mass perceptual disagreement about the colors of objects amongst human observers in typical conditions (...) (P-Disagreement). In this article, we defend Incompatibility, Objectivism, and Veridicality by calling into question whether the empirical literature really supports P-Disagreement. (shrink)

Recent disclosures suggest that many governments apply indiscriminate mass surveillance technologies that allow them to capture and store a massive amount of communications data belonging to citizens and non-citizens alike. This article argues that traditional liberal critiques of government surveillance that center on an individual right to privacy cannot completely capture the harm that is caused by such surveillance because they ignore its distinctive political dimension. As a complement to standard liberal approaches to privacy, the article develops a critique (...) of surveillance that focuses on the question of political power in the public sphere. (shrink)