In the approach that sustains this entire essay, besides my own trajectory as a researcher, path moves away from orthodox tradition, more Kantian one, incorporating in Social Theory philosophical line for long time forgotten, by including figures such Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), founding father, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Gilb...

The purpose of the present study was to assess whether presumed variations in people’s values towards intergroup mobility modulate their essentialist beliefs about the groups. Our target population was orthodox Jews, who, on the one hand, value in-group preservation regarding religious affiliation (Jewish or Christian), but on the other, value uni-directional integration regarding religiosity (...

In the ‘false belief’ task (Wimmer and Perner 1983) autistics and three year olds attribute beliefs based on the objective truth of a situation in the world rather than what the person believes on the basis of available information. Several recalcitrant problems in philosophy are based on the same mistake in which philosophers take their own knowledge of the truth rather than the subject’s just...

What is interesting about these challenges is the response, or rather the lack of it, from those in the mainstream of American economics. The recent period has seen the persistence of social problems in the United States that were considered by most economists fifteen years ago as readily solvable within the framework of orthodox economic thinking. It has also seen a moving away from traditiona...

We claim that religious orthodoxy is related to prejudice toward groups that violate important values, i.e., atheists. Moreover, we suggest that expressing prejudice may efficiently reduce the threat posed by this particular group among people who hold high levels, but not low levels, of orthodox belief. We tested these assumptions in an experimental study in which, after being exposed to athei...