This paper sets out to account for conflicting interpretations of Rawls’ theory of justice by Marxian critics, by uncovering an unresolved contradiction in the theory between individualist and communitarian values. The contradiction comes to light particularly in the more egalitarian interpretation of Rawls, and can only be overcome by incorporating a fuller theory of the good than that with which Rawls has provided us. It may not be possible to do this without giving up the claim that the theory of (...) justice articulates the considered judgments of all thoughtful persons in our society, irrespective of class or ideology. (shrink)
In this paper I argue for worker self-management of the media, particularly the press. I begin with a general argument for self-management of enterprises. Then I consider and respond to objections to my proposal arising from the distinctive character of media, their social and political functions, and their legal status. I argue that not only would self-management not conflict with the function of enabling citizens to be informed and participate equally in social and political life, but it would enable media (...) to better perform their function than when controlled by either government or concentrated commercial corporations. But self-managed media would require some rethinking of the meaning of press freedom. And self-management would itself need to be supplemented with other measures such as rights of access to ensure equality of freedom of expression. (shrink)
On Saturday, August 26, 1893, thirteen-year-old Edith Low Babson was swimming in her favorite swimming hole on the Annisquam river in her home town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Though she was a strong swimmer, something went wrong, and she drowned. A tragedy like all such. But this drowning had unusual consequences. Edith’s older brother was Roger W. Babson, who grew up to become one of America’s most prominent businessmen of the early twentieth century. A statistician, prolific author, philanthropist, founder of Babson (...) College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and the Prohibition Patry’s Presidential candidate in 1940, Roger Babson was deeply affected by his sister’s death, as he was again many years later, in 1947, by the death of his grandson, Michael, who drowned while saving the life of a companion who had been knocked off of a sailboat in Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire. But Roger Babson was a man of action, not one quietly to acquiesce when confronted by suffering inflicted by a seemingly impersonal and uncaring nature. One year after his grandson’s death, Babson dedicated a significant part of his vast personal wealth to the establishment of the Gravity Research Foundation in New Boston, New Hampshire, which thereafter awarded an annual prize for theoretical research on gravitation, a prize whose winners include the likes of Stephen Hawking. Why? As Babson explained in a pamphlet published by the new foundation, “Gravity: Our Enemy Number One” (Babson 1948), the goal was to alleviate the suffering for which gravity was responsible, the gravity that seized his sister “like a dragon and.. (shrink)
In this paper it is argued that the predominant mode of organization of work in capitalist society undermines the conditions for self-respect and self-esteem. Although no society can guarantee that everyone have self-respect and self-esteem, it is a requirement of justice that a society provide conditions favorable to their development. Worker control is a form of society which can satisfy this requirement, in a manner that is compatible with political democracy and basic liberties, and thus, from the standpoint of justice, (...) is to be preferred to capitalism. (shrink)
This book offers an interpretation of the rise of secular historical thought in nineteenth-century Europe. Instead of characterizing 'historicism' and 'secularization' as fundamental breaks with Europe's religious heritage, they are presented as complex cultural permutations with much continuity; for inherited theological patterns of interpreting experience determined to a large degree the conditions, possibilities, and limitations of the forms of historical imagination realizable by nineteenth-century secular intellectuals. This point is made by examining the thought of the German theologian W. M. L. (...) de Wette and that of the Swiss-German historian Jacob Burckhardt. Burckhardt's meeting with de Wette and his subsequent decision to study history over theology are interpreted as revealing moments in nineteenth-century intellectual history. By examining their encounter, its larger historical context, and the thought of both men, the book demonstrates the centrality of theological concerns and forms of knowledge in the emergence of modern, secular historical consciousness. (shrink)
We discuss our surgical philosophy concerning the subtle interplay between the size of the surgical margin taken and the resultant morbidity from ablative oncological. procedures, which is ever more evident in the treatment of head and neck malignancy. The extent of tissue resection is determined by the "trade off" between cancer control and the perioperative, functional and aesthetic morbidity and mortality of the surgery. We also discuss our dilemmas concerning recent minimally invasive endoscopic microsurgical. techniques for the trans-oral laser removal. (...) or co-ablation of aero-digestive tract tumours, which result in a minimal. surgical margin of oncological clearance. By a process of inductive argument as to the nature of the surgical margin, we consider whether the risks of taking a lesser margin with adjuvant therapy is justified by the attendant gain in reduced surgical morbidity and the possible costs in tumour control. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)
It is argued that anthropologists become moral relativists by mistake typically in two ways: (1) by confusing moral with factual discourse (dubbed the Normativist Fallacy) which derives in turn from a failure to distinguish adequately between direct and indirect discourse in the description of moral systems and preferences; or (2) by confusing definitive with hypothetical statements in descriptive ethics (the Definitivist Fallacy). Two representative arguments illustrating these errors are analyzed and some morals drawn from the results regarding the status of (...) relativist arguments in descriptive ethics and the prerogatives of applied anthropologists. (shrink)
This paper reviews the fate of the central ideas behind the complementary learning systems (CLS) framework as originally articulated in McClelland, McNaughton, and O’Reilly (1995). This framework explains why the brain requires two differentially specialized learning and memory systems, and it nicely specifies their central properties (i.e., the hippocampus as a sparse, pattern-separated system for rapidly learning episodic memories, and the neocortex as a distributed, overlapping system for gradually integrating across episodes to extract latent semantic structure). We review the application (...) of the CLS framework to a range of important topics, including the following: the basic neural processes of hippocampal memory encoding and recall, conjunctive encoding, human recognition memory, consolidation of initial hippocampal learning in cortex, dynamic modulation of encoding versus recall, and the synergistic interactions between hippocampus and neocortex. Overall, the CLS framework remains a vital theoretical force in the field, with the empirical data over the past 15 years generally confirming its key principles. (shrink)
Computational models of semantic memory exploit information about co-occurrences of words in naturally occurring text to extract information about the meaning of the words that are present in the language. Such models implicitly specify a representation of temporal context. Depending on the model, words are said to have occurred in the same context if they are presented within a moving window, within the same sentence, or within the same document. The temporal context model (TCM), which specifies a particular definition of (...) temporal context, has proved useful in the study of episodic memory. The predictive temporal context model (pTCM) uses the same definition of temporal context to generate semantic memory representations. Taken together pTCM and TCM may prove to be part of a general model of declarative memory. (shrink)
In his landmark monograph, "The Politics of Jesus", John Howard Yoder challenged mainstream Christian social ethics by arguing that the New Testament account of Jesus's founding of a messianic community entails a normative politics, not only for early Christianity but for the contemporary church. This challenge is further elaborated in several important posthumous publications, especially "Preface to Theology", in which Yoder examines the development of early Christology with attention to its political and ethical implications, and "The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited", (...) Yoder's proposal for a renewed Jewish-Christian dialogue around the moral meaning of messianism. This article interprets these writings with reference to a range of critical scholarship on and about Yoder, Yoder and Augustine, and Jewish and Christian messianism, paying particular attention to questions of political ethics. (shrink)
This article argues against two dominant accounts of the nature of nostalgia. These views assume that nostalgia depends, in some way, on comparing a present situation with a past one. However, neither does justice to the full range of recognizably nostalgic experiences available to us – in particular, ‘Proustian’ nostalgia directed at involuntary autobiographical memories. Therefore, the accounts in question fail. I conclude by considering an evaluative puzzle raised by Proustian nostalgia when it is directed at memories that the nostalgist (...) herself regards as non-veridical. (shrink)
Pierre Duhem's often unrecognized influence on twentieth-century philosophy of science is illustrated by an analysis of his significant if also largely unrecognized influence on Albert Einstein. Einstein's first acquaintance with Duhem's La Théorie physique, son objet et sa structure around 1909 is strongly suggested by his close personal and professional relationship with Duhem's German translator, Friedrich Adler. The central role of a Duhemian holistic, underdeterminationist variety of conventionalism in Einstein's thought is examined at length, with special emphasis on Einstein's deployment (...) of Duhemian arguments in his debates with neo-Kantian interpreters of relativity and in his critique of the empiricist doctrines of theory testing advanced by Schlick, Reichenbach, and Carnap. Most striking is Einstein's 1949 criticism of the verificationist conception of meaning from a holistic point of view, anticipating by two years the rather similar, but more famous criticism advanced independently by Quine in Two Dogmas of Empiricism. (shrink)
This article examines a largely neglected theme in Kant scholarship, which concerns the importance of conscience in understanding Kant’s account of moral imputation. It is my contention that conscience, contrary to many traditional interpretations of Kant, plays a central role in grasping the lived experience of moral agency insofar as it brings into light the burden that autonomy places upon us. When approached from this angle, Kant’s account of conscience, far from undermining the coherence of his position, actually bolsters it (...) by showing his sensitivity to the ambiguity that underlies our moral experiences as embodied agents. The reason that conscience plays such a pivotal role for Kant stems from its intermediating function, which serves to reflect both the ontological reality of freedom, as well as that of the summum bonum, the relationship between happiness and virtue. What the Kantian account of conscience attests, then, is that it is only in discerning the limits imposed by our own facticity—our vulnerability as willing beings—that the weight of autonomy can properly reveal itself as the inexorable trial of being free. (shrink)
The isomorphism between relational structures advocated by Palmer corresponds quite closely to Paul Churchland's theory of “state-space semantics,” so much so that one can be used to elucidate problematic areas in the other. The resulting hybrid shows eliminative materialism to be superior to functionalism as a theory of mental phenomena and seems to provide the best ontology for cognitive science.
Whence, then, do my errors arise? Only from the fact that the will is much more ample and farreaching than the understanding, so that I do not restrain it within the same limits but extend it even to those things which I do not understand. Being by its nature indifferent about such matters, it very easily is turned aside from the true and the good and chooses the false and the evil. And thus it happens that I make mistakes and (...) that I sin. (shrink)
One area of business performance of particular interest to both scholars and practitioners is corporate social responsibility. The notion that organizations should be attentive to the needs of constituents other than shareholders has been investigated and vigorously debated for over two decades. This has provoked an especially rich and diverse literature investigating the relationship between business and society. As a result, researchers have urged the study of the profiles and backgrounds of corporate upper echelons in order to better understand this (...) relationship.There is ample evidence that corporations have in recent years increased the proportion of outside directors on their boards. This has been partly in reaction to increased interest in the corporate social responsiveness of business organizations and suggestions that the board of directors could play a unique role in this area. The expectation on the part of practitioners, researchers, and governmental regulators is that outside directors will advocate greater corporate responsiveness to society''s needs by playing a more active role in overseeing managerial decisions. (shrink)
Neo-positivism is dead. Let that imperfect designation stand for the project that dominated and defined the philosophy of science, especially in its Anglophone form, during the fifty or so years following the end of the Second World War. While its critics were many,1 its death was slow, and some think still to find a pulse.2 But die it did in the cul-de-sac into which it was led by its own faulty compass.
Jackendoff's criticisms of the current state of theorization in cognitive neuroscience are defused by recent work on the computational complementarity of the hippocampus and neocortex. Such considerations lead to a grounding of Jackendoff's processing model in the complementary methods of pattern analysis effected by independent component analysis (ICA) and principle component analysis (PCA).
Although many scholars have recognized the pivotal importance that the notion of conscience plays in Hegel’s thought, much of the scholarship surrounding this notion has remained piecemeal. Dean Moyar’s book Hegel’s Conscience breaks new ground on this subject in offering a comprehensive analysis of the indispensable role that conscience plays in Hegel’s philosophy, demonstrating not only its foundational place for Hegel’s approach to ethics, but also the contemporary relevancy of Hegel’s account for understanding the performative character of practical reason. Despite (...) the novelty and intellectual rigor of Moyar’s position, my essay “Translating Convictions into a Clear Conscience” argues that in confining his approach to a “cognitivist” interpretation of conscience, Moyar ends up neglecting the richness and existential depth of Hegel’s discussion. And so although Moyar’s interpretation is clear, succinct, and plausible, it accomplishes this by overlooking much of Hegel’s original phenomenological fidelity to the actual experience of conscience. (shrink)
Such are those thick & gloomie shadows dampe Oft seene in charnel vaults, & sepulchers, Lingering, & sitting by a new made grave, As loath to leave the bodie that it lov'd, & link’t it selfe by carnall sensualtie To a degenerate, & degraded state.
Achieving a good clinical trial design increases the likelihood that a trial will take place as planned, including that data will be obtained from a sufficient number of participants, and the total number of participants will be the minimal required to gain the knowledge sought. A good trial design also increases the likelihood that the knowledge sought by the experiment will be forthcoming. Achieving such a design is more than good sense—it is ethically required in experiments when participants are at (...) risk of harm. This paper argues that doing a power analysis effectively contributes to ensuring that a trial design is good. The ethical importance of good trial design has long been recognized for trials in which there is risk of serious harm to participants. However, whether the quality of a trial design, when the risk to participants is only minimal, is an ethical issue is rarely discussed. This paper argues that even in cases when the risk is minimal, the quality of the trial design is an ethical issue, and that this is reflected in the emphasis the Belmont Report places on the importance of the benefit of knowledge gained by society. The paper also argues that good trial design is required for true informed consent. (shrink)
There are many recent historical analogies to the events that began in Tunisia and have spread across the Arab world and beyond. I consider them, and then propose a ‘Machiavellian’ reading, going back to the Florentine’s observation that humankind is made up of those who want to rule and those who desire not to be ruled. I then suggest, by means of an allusion to my recent book, The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks (...) to the French and American Revolutions , that the distinction between politics and anti-politics is crucial for the analysis of the next stages of these revolutions. Finally, with reference to Hannah Arendt’s considerations of civil disobedience, I suggest a means of interpreting the possibilities that are on the horizon. (shrink)
Achieving a good clinical trial design increases the likelihood that a trial will take place as planned, including that data will be obtained from a sufficient number of participants, and the total number of participants will be the minimal required to gain the knowledge sought. A good trial design also increases the likelihood that the knowledge sought by the experiment will be forthcoming. Achieving such a design is more than good sense—it is ethically required in experiments when participants are at (...) risk of harm. This paper argues that doing a power analysis effectively contributes to ensuring that a trial design is good. The ethical importance of good trial design has long been recognized for trials in which there is risk of serious harm to participants. However, whether the quality of a trial design, when the risk to participants is only minimal, is an ethical issue is rarely discussed. This paper argues that even in cases when the risk is minimal, the quality of the trial design is an ethical issue, and that this is reflected in the emphasis the Belmont Report places on the importance of the benefit of knowledge gained by society. The paper also argues that good trial design is required for true informed consent. (shrink)
The Fraenkel-Mostowski method has been widely used to prove independence results among weak versions of the axiom of choice. In this paper it is shown that certain statements cannot be proved by this method. More specifically it is shown that in all Fraenkel-Mostowski models the following hold: 1. The axiom of choice for sets of finite sets implies the axiom of choice for sets of well-orderable sets. 2. The Boolean prime ideal theorem implies a weakened form of Sikorski's theorem.
This book attempts to marry truth-conditional semantics with cognitive linguistics in the church of computational neuroscience. To this end, it examines the truth-conditional meanings of coordinators, quantifiers, and collective predicates as neurophysiological phenomena that are amenable to a neurocomputational analysis. Drawing inspiration from work on visual processing, and especially the simple/complex cell distinction in early vision (V1), we claim that a similar two-layer architecture is sufficient to learn the truth-conditional meanings of the logical coordinators and logical quantifiers. As a prerequisite, (...) much discussion is given over to what a neurologically plausible representation of the meanings of these items would look like. We eventually settle on a representation in terms of correlation, so that, for instance, the semantic input to the universal operators (e.g. and, all)is represented as maximally correlated, while the semantic input to the universal negative operators (e.g. nor, no)is represented as maximally anticorrelated. On the basis this representation, the hypothesis can be offered that the function of the logical operators is to extract an invariant feature from natural situations, that of degree of correlation between parts of the situation. This result sets up an elegant formal analogy to recent models of visual processing, which argue that the function of early vision is to reduce the redundancy inherent in natural images. Computational simulations are designed in which the logical operators are learned by associating their phonological form with some degree of correlation in the inputs, so that the overall function of the system is as a simple kind of pattern recognition. Several learning rules are assayed, especially those of the Hebbian sort, which are the ones with the most neurological support. Learning vector quantization (LVQ) is shown to be a perspicuous and efficient means of learning the patterns that are of interest. We draw a formal parallelism between the initial, competitive layer of LVQ and the simple cell layer in V1, and between the final, linear layer of LVQ and the complex cell layer in V1, in that the initial layers are both selective, while the final layers both generalize. It is also shown how the representations argued for can be used to draw the traditionally-recognized inferences arising from coordination and quantification, and why the inference of subalternacy breaks down for collective predicates. Finally, the analogies between early vision and the logical operators allow us to advance the claim of cognitive linguistics that language is not processed by proprietary algorithms, but rather by algorithms that are general to the entire brain. Thus in the debate between objectivist and experiential metaphysics, this book falls squarely into the camp of the latter. Yet it does so by means of a rigorous formal, mathematical, and neurological exposition – in contradiction of the experiential claim that formal analysis has no place in the understanding of cognition. To make our own counter-claim as explicit as possible, we present a sketch of the LVQ structure in terms of mereotopology, in which the initial layer of the network performs topological operations, while the final layer performs mereological operations. The book is meant to be self-contained, in the sense that it does not assume any prior knowledge of any of the many areas that are touched upon. It therefore contains mini-summaries of biological visual processing, especially the retinocortical and ventral /what?/ parvocellular pathways computational models of neural signaling, and in particular the reduction of the Hodgkin-Huxley equations to the connectionist and integrate-and-fire neurons Hebbian learning rules and the elaboration of learning vector quantization the linguistic pathway in the left hemisphere memory and the hippocampus truth-conditional vs. image-schematic semantics objectivist vs. experiential metaphysics and mereotopology. All of the simulations are implemented in MATLAB, and the code is available from the book’s website. • The discovery of several algorithmic similarities between visison and semantics. • The support of all of this by means of simulations, and the packaging of all of this in a coherent theoretical framework. (shrink)
My article utilizes the insights of F. W. J. Schelling’s work on aesthetics to explain the unique appeal of cave painting for people of the Upper Paleolithic,focusing mostly on the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux. Schelling argues that the unique value of artistic practices comes in the way they reconcile agents withtheir deepest ontological contradictions, namely, the tension between biological necessity and human freedom. I argue that the cave paintings of Chauvet andLascaux fit well with Schelling’s approach and his insight (...) that art seeks to reveal the contradictory capacities of self-conscious beings in a state of fundamentalattunement rather than in discordance and disharmony. My contention is that in taking this approach, whereby aesthetic practices engender an intuition of theabsolute identity between nature and mind, we can better explain why the practice of cave painting endured for over twenty-thousand years as one common styleof artistic practice. (shrink)
O artigo busca refletir sobre as eleições de 2004 nos EUA, colocando-as em seu contexto histórico e filosófico, de forma a revisitar as origens revolucionárias do pensamento político americano em uma análise fenomenológica que desvela em que sentido a democracia pode ser dita radical. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Democracia. Eleições. Pensamento politico. Revolução americana. ABSTRACT The article tries to reflect on the 2004 US elections by putting them in historical and philosophical context, so as to recast the revolutionary origins of the American (...) political thought in a phenomenological analysis that unveils in which sense democracy may be said to be radical. KEY WORDS – American revolution. Democracy. Elections. Political thought. (shrink)
Barry Commoner has argued that the environmental failure of modern technology is due in large part to the reductionistic character ofmodern science, especially its biological component where the reductionist approach has triumphed in molecular biology. I claim, first, that Commoner has confused reduction in the sense of the reduction of one theory to another with what is better called analysis, or the strategy of breaking a whoie into its parts in order to understand the properties of the whole, this latter (...) being the actual target of his attack. I then argue that his criticisms of molecular biology fail since each of the properties of the cell which he claims cannot be understood in an analytic fashion, such as reproduction, development and inheritance, can be so understood, and that, in fact, each of his putatively nonanalytic accounts of these properties is the result of analysis. Similarly, Commoner’s claim that ecosystenls possess properties that cannot be understood analytically is refuted by comparing ecosystems with automobiles, which Commoner acknowledges are susceptible to analysis, and by showing that there are no essential differences between the two. FinaIly, l observe that while it is false that ecosystems canna! be understood in analytic terms, it is true that they are not usually thus understood, and that the explanation for this is not that scientists subscribe to amistaken philosophy, but that our social institutions for the teaching and application of science do not adequately stress the importance of exploring the connections between the parts of such complex wholes. (shrink)
My paper utilizes the insights of F.W.J Schelling’s work on aesthetics to explain the unique appeal and power that aesthetic experience held for people of the Upper Paleolithic. This appeal is revealed most dramatically in the cave paintings of Chauvet and Lascaux. According to Schelling, genuine artistic activity expresses a fusion of the unconscious (der Bewußtlosen) and the symbolic (die Symbolik), which is irreducible to any other experience or product. This fusion creates a unique experience of self-transcendence and reintegration that (...) affirms the continuity between consciousness and the natural world. Consequently, genuine aesthetic products never have any simple pragmatic or utilitarian motive, but result from reconciling the deepest contradictions of the human experience. I argue that it is this experience of continuity and re-integration that is captured in the cave paintings of Chauvet and Lascaux, and which confirms the irreducible power of the aesthetic. (shrink)
In recent decades few moral concepts have suffered as much neglect at the hands of ethicists as the notion of conscience. My paper argues that this neglect is largely in reaction to an ‘authoritarian’ conception of conscience that is outdated and based on a naïve faculty psychology. When construed in terms of a narrative of self-integration, in which conscience designates our struggle to balance the affective and cognitive dimensions of moral experience, its neglect appears unjustified. It is my contention that (...) the phenomenon of conscience discloses the experience of moral agency in a way that is highly instructive, and that we miss a valuable window into moral behavior by ignoring it. In order to make this case I argue that the most serious criticisms of conscience—that it has no justifiablemoral criteria, clear distinguishing ‘identity,’ or motivating power—are leveled against a largely obsolete and essentialist reading of conscience. Once we see that ‘having a conscience’ refers to how people contend with the multiple moral warrants that anchor their own sense of accountability, and not some timeless moral intuition, the indispensability of the concept becomes clear. (shrink)
The Advanced Methods series is intented for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and established research scientists. Titles in the series are designed to cover current important areas of research in life sciences, and include both theoretical background and detailed protocols. The aim is to give researchers sufficient theory, supported by references, to take the given protocols and adapt them to their particular experimental systems. Unbiased Stereology , Second Edition expands the comprehensive practical first edition guide to 3-D measurements in microscopy using stereological (...) methods by adding a section on 2-D stereology, or "Petri-metrics". There is also an additional chapter on single-object stereology, which permits the measurement of total volume, surface and feature length of single arbitrary objects. The book is intended to lead the reader logically through a self-teaching course, with illustrative exercises at each stage. The techniques described have become benchmark methods in toxicology and neuroscience; the use of inferior methods often leading to missed or spurious results. (shrink)
Chapter 1: "Reason for Hope (in the Post-modern World)" by Michael J. Murray Chapter 2: "Theistic Arguments" by William C. Davis Chapter 3: "A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine- Tuning Design Argument" by Robin Collins Chapter 4: "God, Evil and Suffering" by Daniel Howard Snyder Chapter 5: "Arguments for Atheism" by John O'Leary Hawthorne Chapter 6: "Faith and Reason" by Caleb Miller Chapter 7: "Religious Pluralism" by Timothy O'Connor Chapter 8: "Eastern Religions" by (...) Robin Collins Chapter 9: "Divine Providence and Human Freedom" by Scott A. Davison Chapter 10: "The Incarnation and the Trinity" by Thomas D. Senor Chapter 11: "The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting" by Trenton Merricks Chapter 12: "Heaven and Hell" by Michael J. Murray Chapter 13: "Religion and Science" by W. Christopher Stewart Chapter 14: "Miracles and Christian Theism" by J. A. Cover Chapter 15: "Christianity and Ethics" by Frances Howard-Snyder Chapter 16: "The Authority of Scripture" by Douglas Blount.. (shrink)
PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy addresses the very issue of political correctness and the current skirmishes in the culture wars. It includes statements from many of our leading contemporary public intellectuals, including Joan Wallach Scott, Michael Be;rube;, Bruce Robbins, Henry Giroux, and Gerald Graff. The collection marks a watershed in the debate about "pc" in that it presents serious considerations and analyses of the factors, causes, and consequences of the culture wars. Carefully examining the construction of (...) "pc," PC Wars analyses political correctness by focusing on the mass media, class politics, and the ideology of managerial democracy. It places the disputes around "pc" in the context of contemporary developments in critical and cultural theory and the current backlash against theory, manifested in the recent attacks on Marxism, feminism and deconstruction. The book also scrutinizes the undercurrents of anti-intellectualism and anti-professionalism which have tended to create a fertile ground for the "pc" hysteria. Offering much more than slogans and slinging arrows, PC Wars provides a spirited and critical look at the reaction, ideology, and political forces that have coalesced around the term. Contributors: Michael Be;rube;, Reed Way Dasenbrock, Frank Farmer, Henry Giroux, Gerald Graff, Darlene Hantzis and Devoney Looser, John S. Howard and James M. Lang, Tom Lewis, James Neilson, Christopher Newfield, Richard Ohmann, Burce Robbins, Barry Sarchett, Joan W. Scott, Michael Sprinker, Jeffrey Williams. (shrink)
What are we to make of the "Parecon" phenomenon? MichaelAlbert's book made it to number thirteen on Amazon.com a few days after some on-line promotion.1 Eight of the twelve Amazon.com reviewers (when I last checked) had given the book five stars. It has been, or is being, translated into Arabic, Bengali, Telagu, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.2 The book has been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, who says it "merits close (...) attention, debate and action," by Arundhati Roy, who calls it "a brave argument for a much needed alternative economic vision," by Ben Bagdikian, who finds it "a compelling book for our times," and by Howard Zinn, who sees it as "a thoughtful, profound meditation on what a good society can be like."3 Yet it is a terrible book. (shrink)
