1.
Dialectics
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The term dialectic is not synonymous with the term debate. While in theory debaters are not necessarily emotionally invested in their point of view, debates are won through a combination of persuading the opponent, proving ones argument correct, or proving the opponents argument incorrect. Debates do not necessarily require promptly identifying a clear winner or loser, however clear winners are determined by either a judge. The term dialectics is also not synonymous with the term rhetoric, concepts, like logos or rational appeal, pathos or emotional appeal, and ethos or ethical appeal, are intentionally used by rhetoricians to persuade an audience. Socrates favoured truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion, ergo, Socrates valued rationality as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for ones actions. To Socrates, truth, not aretē, was the greater good, therefore, Socrates opposed the Sophists and their teaching of rhetoric as art and as emotional oratory requiring neither logic nor proof. Different forms of reasoning have emerged throughout history from the Indosphere. These forms include the Socratic method, Hindu, Buddhist, Medieval, Hegelian dialectics, Marxist, Talmudic, the purpose of the dialectic method of reasoning is resolution of disagreement through rational discussion, and, ultimately, the search for truth. One way to proceed—the Socratic method—is to show that a given hypothesis leads to a contradiction, thus, another dialectical resolution of disagreement is by denying a presupposition of the contending thesis and antithesis, thereby, proceeding to sublation to synthesis, a third thesis. Fichtean/Hegelian dialectics is based upon four concepts, Everything is transient and finite, gradual changes lead to crises, turning points when one force overcomes its opponent force. The concept of dialectic existed in the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus, hence, the history of the dialectical method is the history of philosophy. In classical philosophy, dialectic is a form of reasoning based upon dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions and counter-propositions. The outcome of such a dialectic might be the refutation of a relevant proposition, or of a synthesis, or a combination of the opposing assertions, or a qualitative improvement of the dialogue. Moreover, the term dialectic owes much of its prestige to its role in the philosophies of Socrates and Plato, Aristotle said that it was the pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno of Elea who invented dialectic, of which the dialogues of Plato are the examples of the Socratic dialectical method. According to Kant, however, the ancient Greeks used the word dialectic to signify the logic of false appearance or semblance, to the Ancients, it was nothing but the logic of illusion. In Platos dialogues and other Socratic dialogues, Socrates attempts to examine someones beliefs, at times even first principles or premises by which we all reason, Socrates typically argues by cross-examining his interlocutors claims and premises in order to draw out a contradiction or inconsistency among them. According to Plato, the detection of error amounts to finding the proof of the antithesis. However, important as this objective is, the aim of Socratic activity seems to be to improve the soul of his interlocutors
2.
Ai Siqi
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Ài Sīqí is the pen name of Li Shengxuan, a Yunnan Mongol Chinese philosopher and author. He was born in Tengchong, Yunnan, later traveling to Hong Kong and he read a great deal of Marxism, including the Communist Manifesto, in Japanese translation. This reading is the root of Ai’s most important works, Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism, in the small tourist town of Heshun in Tengchong County, in western Yunnan Province, China, there is a small museum dedicated to Ai. It is based in his house, where he lived for two years. It contains pictures, personal items and a statue of him in the yard of the compound, Joshua A. Fogel, Ai Siqi, Establishment Intellectual by Joshua A. Fogel, in Merle Goldman, Timothy Cheek, and Carol Lee Hamrin, eds. Chinas Intellectuals and the State, In Search of a New Relationship, Ai Ssu-chis Contribution to the Development of Chinese Marxism. Ai Siqis Reading of the Marxian Notion of Existence Versus Consciousness, journal of Chinese Philosophy 29, 437–456 Китайская философия
3.
Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
4.
Game theory
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Game theory is the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers. Game theory is used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic, computer science. Originally, it addressed zero-sum games, in one persons gains result in losses for the other participants. Today, game theory applies to a range of behavioral relations, and is now an umbrella term for the science of logical decision making in humans, animals. Modern game theory began with the idea regarding the existence of equilibria in two-person zero-sum games. Von Neumanns original proof used Brouwer fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets and his paper was followed by the 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, co-written with Oskar Morgenstern, which considered cooperative games of several players. The second edition of this provided an axiomatic theory of expected utility. This theory was developed extensively in the 1950s by many scholars, Game theory was later explicitly applied to biology in the 1970s, although similar developments go back at least as far as the 1930s. Game theory has been recognized as an important tool in many fields. With the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences going to game theorist Jean Tirole in 2014, John Maynard Smith was awarded the Crafoord Prize for his application of game theory to biology. Early discussions of examples of two-person games occurred long before the rise of modern, the first known discussion of game theory occurred in a letter written by Charles Waldegrave, an active Jacobite, and uncle to James Waldegrave, a British diplomat, in 1713. In this letter, Waldegrave provides a mixed strategy solution to a two-person version of the card game le Her. James Madison made what we now recognize as an analysis of the ways states can be expected to behave under different systems of taxation. In 1913 Ernst Zermelo published Über eine Anwendung der Mengenlehre auf die Theorie des Schachspiels and it proved that the optimal chess strategy is strictly determined. This paved the way for more general theorems, the Danish mathematician Zeuthen proved that the mathematical model had a winning strategy by using Brouwers fixed point theorem. In his 1938 book Applications aux Jeux de Hasard and earlier notes, Borel conjectured that non-existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games would occur, a conjecture that was proved false. Game theory did not really exist as a field until John von Neumann published a paper in 1928. Von Neumanns original proof used Brouwers fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets and his paper was followed by his 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior co-authored with Oskar Morgenstern
