Suchergebnisse

In an article (title not give) by D. Ruben appearing in Critique (1974, 4), a main conclusion was that Marxism must consider incorporating common-sense elements of the foundationalist view & reconsider the rejection of reality as given. Ruben arrives at his conclusion with the unproven proposition that there is a "world-as-it-is-in-itself," which may be known. But this must be established & discussed in relation to historical materialism. Ruben recommends an empiricist epistemology merely because he favors it, & rejects the dialectical relation between thought & reality. He fails to see that concepts & categories change, & goes on to misinterpret Kant. He sees objective & subjective traditions in opposition because he criticizes dialectics on positivistic grounds & then criticizes empiricism on dialectical grounds. Ruben's pure reflections on reality & thought are one-directional & devoid of movement, & therefore, outside the dialectical tradition of Lenin & others. L. Kamel.

This book provides a good overview of philosophical and cognitive approaches to language use and meaning. A synthesis of such approaches leads to a dynamic concept of pragmatic meaning which is on the one hand grounded in cognition and motivated by linguistic and cultural convention and, on the other, creates a framework for studying the interactive and social dimensions of the development of meaning in linguistic communication. Through an experientialist approach based on connectionist models, the author shows that by internalizing pragmatic meaning people become social agents who reproduce, challenge or change their social parameters during interaction. Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition is suitable as a course book in Pragmatics and Semantics and of interest to those concerned with cognitive models and dynamic and social aspects of linguistic communication.

Can empirical data generate consensus about how to regulate firearms? If so, under what conditions? Previously, we presented evidence that individuals' cultural worldviews explain their positions on gun control more powerfully than any other fact about them, including their race or gender, the type of community or region of the country they live in, and even their political ideology or party affiliation. On this basis, we inferred that culture is prior to facts in the gun debate: empirical data can be expected to persuade individuals to change their view on gun policies only after those individuals come to see those policies as compatible with their core cultural commitments. We now respond to critics. Canvassing the psychological literature, we identify the mechanisms that systematically induce individuals to conform their factual beliefs about guns to their culturally grounded moral evaluations of them. To illustrate the strength and practical implications of these dynamics, we develop a series of computer simulations, which show why public beliefs about the efficacy of gun control can be expected to remain highly polarized even in the face of compelling empirical evidence. Finally, we show that the contribution culture makes to cognition could potentially be harnessed to generate broad, cross-cultural consensus: if gun policies can be framed in terms that are expressively compatible with diverse cultural worldviews, the motivation to resist compelling empirical evidence will dissipate, and individuals of diverse cultural persuasions can be expected rapidly to converge in their beliefs about what policies are best. Constructing a new, expressively pluralistic idiom of gun control should therefore be the first priority of policy-makers and -analysts interested in promoting the adoption of sound gun policies.