Modern thinkers regard logic as a purely formal discipline like number theory, and not to be confused with any empirical discipline such as cognitive psychology, which may seek to characterize how people actually reason. Opposed to this is the traditional view that even a formal logic can be cognitively veridical – descriptive of procedures people actually follow in arriving at their deductive judgments (logic as Laws of Thought). In a cognitively veridical logic, any formal proof that a deductive judgment, intuitively (...) arrived at, is valid should ideally conform to the method the reasoning subject has used to arrive at that judgment. More specifically, it should reveal the actual reckoning process that the reasoning subject more or less consciously carries out when they make a deductive inference. That the common logical words used in everyday reasoning – words such as 'and', 'if,''some', 'is''not,' and 'all'– have fixed positive and negative charges has escaped the notice of modern logic. The present paper shows how, by unconsciously recognizing 'not' and 'all' as 'minus-words', while recognizing 'and', 'some', and 'is' as 'plus words', a child can intuitively reckon, for example, 'not (−) all (−) dogs are (+) friendly' as equivalent to 'some (+) dogs aren't (−) friendly': −(−D+F) = +D−F. (shrink)

Structuralism about mathematical objects and structuralist accounts of physical computation both face indeterminacy objections. For the former, the problem arises for cases such as the complex roots i and \, for which a automorphism can be defined, thus establishing the structural identity of these importantly distinct mathematical objects. In the case of the latter, the problem arises for logical duals such as AND and OR, which have invertible structural profiles :369–400, 2001). This makes their physical implementations indeterminate, in the sense (...) that their structural profiles alone cannot establish whether a given physical component is an AND-gate or an OR-gate. Doherty has recently shown both problems to be analogous, and has argued that computational structuralism is threatened with the absurd conclusion that computational digits might be indiscernible, such that, if structural properties are all that we have to go on, the binary digit 0 must be treated as identical to the binary digit 1. However, we think that a solution to the indiscernibility problem for mathematical structuralists, drawing on the work of David Hilbert, can be adapted for the analogous problem in the computational case, thereby rescuing the structuralist approach to physical computation. (shrink)

As it happened, I became acquainted with E.V. Il'enkov quite late, in the mid- or even the late 1960s. It was only a bit more than ten years before his death that I began to feel at home in his house, was able to visit without calling ahead, and was able to call him by his first name and the familiar "you"—that is, like many, many of not only his true friends but also like-minded thinkers, who became his close acquaintances, (...) most of whom justly considered themselves his pupils … The door would open wide, and Olia, Professor K.I. Salimova, Eval'd's wife and most devoted friend, not at all surprised by the unexpected guest and seemingly even quite happy at his arrival , would try first to draw him into the kitchen and feed him … which she more often than not succeeded in doing. I am not talking about myself: there were always many guests, and this is precisely how they arrived at the Il'enkovs' apartment. Recently, a critic in Literaturnaia gazeta recalled those whom he met in Eval'd's apartment in the 1960s: "This was a tight circle of like-minded thinkers," wrote the critic. "But some of them are no longer with us, while most are far away, beyond our borders." Obviously, he had not been in the house often or had forgotten things over the distance of years. There was no "circle," nor could there have been one—not with this host, not with his lifestyle and way of relating to people. I met a good hundred fine and various people in Eval'd's home: I.N. Korzhavin, V. Davydov, A. Meshcheriakov, S. Vinogradova, N. Dubinin, V. Zinchenko, A. Zinov'ev, Iu. Kamiakin, and … indeed, five pages would not be enough to list the quite famous and the not-quite-so-famous, simply ordinary people with no claim to fame. Nazym Khikmet, A.N. Leont'ev, and B.M. Kedrov were friends of the house … Ever new faces, figures, and words come to mind. I cannot forgive myself: once Eval'd Vasil'evich wanted to take me along to Iurii Liubimov's to read his play Neither God nor Tsar nor Hero … [Ni bog, ni tsar' i ni geroi], but I had some other business, something so important that I do not even remember now what it was, and it is probably not worth remembering. But most likely I was too timid to appear uninvited at the house of a person burning with creativity. The same thing happened with Galich … Eval'd liked especially his song about Zoshchenko. He did not sing it; he narrated it, but in such a way that tears always came to one's eyes. (shrink)

Although Marx dubbed landowners one of the ‘three great classes’ of modern society, the most prominent Marxian and socialist thinkers of capitalism and land over the past century – from Lefebvre to Massey to Harvey – have implicitly or explicitly argued that landowners are not capitalism’s ‘third class’, and that the social relations of land are marginal or contingent to the mode of production as a whole. Through assessing the work of Marxist geographers, political economists, value-form theorists, and others who (...) have dismissed the class-status of landowners and blurred the line between ground rent and interest, this article argues that the theory of the landowning class is fundamental to the understanding of the totality of capitalist social relations, as well as to developing more incisive analyses of struggles around housing, land, and movement today. (shrink)

Its wisdom and sensitivity make Personal Knowledge required reading for epistemologists. By stressing the active components in scientific knowing--appraisal and commitment--Polanyi shows that knowledge is less "objective," more complex, and more widely distributed in nature than is tacitly supposed by most epistemologies. Knowing implies a foundation in skills, a confidence in one's ability to judge beyond the range of well-formulated rules, and a commitment to the existence of an answer to one's questions before the answer is in sight. Like a (...) Platonic dialogue, this book conveys more than it states, and the broad foundation of insight embodied in the examples would support more conceptual superstructure than Polanyi provides. But that serves to make it an instance of its thesis--that we know more than we can now say.--R. F. T. (shrink)

We propose a new approach to describe quantum mechanics as a manifestation of non-Euclidean geometry. In particular, we construct a new geometrical space that we shall call Qwist. A Qwist space has a extra scalar degree of freedom that ultimately will be identified with quantum effects. The geometrical properties of Qwist allow us to formulate a geometrical version of the uncertainty principle. This relativistic uncertainty relation unifies the position-momentum and time-energy uncertainty principles in a unique relation that recover both of (...) them in the non-relativistic limit. (shrink)

Proceeding from dinamism's strategy, Russia's civilization tasks of strategy of new monistic (ontology) traditions are revealed. These tasks represent connected with each other problems: the Problem of Education having the ontology load from the Way's nature (Fatherland-East); the Problem of the Federalism having theontology load of the System (Motherland-West).

In examining Kant's Foundations for the Metaphysics of Morals, Duncan contrasts his own, Critical interpretation with the Ethical interpretation which is far more common. His principal contention is that the Foundations is not an exposition of Kant's ethical views but a "partial critique of practical reason"; Kant's object "is to understand the nature of morality and to state its principle, that is, the principle which describes what morality is." The net effect of this approach is to take the emphasis away (...) from the categorical imperative as a criterion of morality and to place it on parts of the Foundations which are inherently stronger, particularly on Sections I and III. At the same time it brings the Foundations closer to the first and second Critiques and makes it a sounder and more thoroughly Kantian work.--R. F. T. (shrink)

"I...brought out my wife to see this silhouette... made on the clean concrete by the oil dropping out of the engine... and we all remarked that this was 'the Christ'." But when the newspapers took their pictures, Mr. Baillie remarked it was a pity that the picture had not been taken the day before, when it had been so perfect.--R. F. T.

A non-technical exposition of the proof and related questions in the foundations of mathematics is presented here. The work is built around the authors' study which appeared in Scientific American.--R. F. T.

Bergson, Frazer, Freud, James, and Whitehead meet in this entertaining dialogue on metaphysics, religion, and love. Desire and fulfillment are the themes which bring the speakers and subjects together, and although differences among the men are glossed over, the similarities which are brought out sustain an interesting discussion. --R. F. T.

A reprint of the 1901 first edition. Albée's history traces two phases of Utilitarianism: "First, the gradual development of the theory in the direction of formal consistency down to about the beginning of the nineteenth century; and secondly, the later development, often at the expense of formal consistency, but always in the direction of doing justice to the concrete moral ideals which had been partly lost sight of in the earlier, more abstract form of the theory". The school is traced (...) from Cumberland to Sidgwick.--R. F. T. (shrink)

In this revised edition of his 1934 work, Kraft takes up the themes of authority and scientific method, concluding that the Geisteswissenschaften are not a homogeneous group and hence have no single method or principles.--R. F. T.

The acquisition by the Bodleian Library in 1948 of the Lovelace papers has made possible a number of historically oriented papers on Locke and his philosophy, e.g., J. Yolton's John Locke and the Way of Ideas, J. W. Gough's, Locke's Political Philosophy, and W. v.Leyden's publication of the Essays on the Law of Nature. Cranston's biography is a distinguished addition to this list: it makes full use of the source material and is as thorough as one could ask in revealing (...) the concerns--especially political concerns --of Locke's life. It is rather less satisfactory in its treatment of his epistemological development. --R. F. T. (shrink)

Based largely on popular scientific, psychological, and anthropological material, this essay attempts to unify the facts of experience and morality in terms of an underlying spiritual medium. This medium is variously identified with God, pure consciousness, and Brahman.--R. F. T.

As fascinating as its title, this "study in medieval political theology" explores the origins and significance of the concept that the King "has in him two Bodies, viz., a body natural, and a Body politic. His body natural is a Body mortal, subject to all Infirmities that come by Nature or Accident... But his Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or handled, consisting of Policy and Government..." In Professor Kantorwicz's sure hands the fiction of the king's two (...) bodies becomes a focal point for a wide-ranging study of medieval theology and political thought, and the center of a microcosm in which we can observe man's universal activity of borrowing concepts from one discipline to deal with changing situations in another.--R. F. T. (shrink)

"Pure" capitalism is the remedy for the country's ills, Kelso holds. Its chief ingredients are distribution of the proceeds of labor according to ownership of the means of production, and a broadening of the ownership base.--R. F. T.

The interest of Roman philosophy, Clarke says in his Preface to this work, "lies not so much in the originality or intrinsic value of the doctrines held as in the fact that particular men held them, and in the relation of the doctrines to the political and literary activities of their adherents." The study is remarkable for its breadth of coverage rather than for penetration into the coherence or merit of the schools he discusses.--R. F. T.

The editor's historical and critical introduction to the Letter is quite good--particularly for readers unfamiliar with British politics of the period. German and English texts are printed on facing pages.--R. F. T.

A dime-novel dust cover and misleading title disguise this work on the desires lying at the basis of ethics.--R. F. T.

This spirited work is better Milton than ontology, cosmology and physics. Milton drew on many sources for the cosmic imagery of Paradise Lost, but he did not unite the traditions thoroughly. Curry is rather too kind to Milton, calling him syncretic when he is merely eclectic.--R.F.T.