Here, for example, are a few of the doctrinal parallels: Instead of God, the Communists believe in history as a final principle an...d omnipotent judge. They regard "the great task of making history" as the highest activity open to mankind; it is their equivalent for doing God's will on earth. To be cast "into the dustbin of history" is like being cast into hell. Instead of Divine Providence, the Communists believe in the Marxian dialectic as the principle that shapes our lives in society. Since the dialectic consists of three parts--thesis, antithesis, synthesis--it also bears some relation to the Christian Trinity; and it is the subject of quite as many learned disputations. Instead of Divine Grace, they believe in a spirit emanating from the working class; almost by magic it transforms one's doubts and weariness into renewed hope.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have been maintaining that the meaning of the word 'ought' and other moral words is such that a person who uses them commits him...self thereby to a universal rule. This is the thesis of universalizability.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in d...etail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was now at a university in New York, a professor of existential psychology with the not inconsiderable thesis that magic, dread,... and the perception of death were the roots of motivation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absu...rdum of my behaviorism. I disagree with this second point, but I agree with the first. I hold further that the behaviorism approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My general thesis, then, is that concepts and categories pertaining to mental acts can be construed as analogical extensions of Ry...lean concepts and categories pertaining to candid overt speech.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the new science of the twenty-first century, not physical force but spiritual force will lead the way. Mental and spiritual gif...ts will be more in demand than gifts of a physical nature. Extrasensory perception will take precedence over sensory perception. And in this sphere woman will again predominate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of... course, on memory).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »