Was bringt einen Menschen dazu, sich auf das einzulassen, was man "Glauben" nennt, sein Leben also auf anderes zu setzen als auf das, dessen man sich verfügend sicher sein kann? Hermann Pius Siller macht deutlich: In der Theologie ist die Beachtung der eigenen Lebenserfahrung und der Lebenserfahrung des Gesprächspartners unverzichtbar. Für das, was das Wort "Gott" benennen soll, muss eine bestimmte Erfahrung beschrieben werden können. Mit "Gewissen", "Geheimnis" und "reine Gabe" benennt er dabei exemplarisch drei elementare Zugänge (...) zu "letzten Erfahrungen", wie sie im Leben von John Henry Newman, Karl Rahner und Paulus von Tarsus gemacht, gelebt und theologisch durchdacht wurden. Vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwärtigen Gottes- und Kirchenkrise, also der fehlenden Glaubwürdigkeit kirchlicher Rede von Gott in der Gesellschaft, leistet er damit einen wichtigen Beitrag verantworteter, die lebensgeschichtlichen Voraussetzungen berücksichtigender Gottesrede. (shrink)

Attitudes toward repository projects cannot be explained merely on the basis of perceived risks, trust, or technical information. Issues of justice and fairness frequently arise when burdens and benefits are to be allocated. A fair distribution across the various parts of a given territory of the waste to be stored is unlikely to be accomplished as it is contingent on appropriate geological formations and other factors. The process by which the specific distribution is determined and accomplished needs to be taken (...) into account as well. Thus, justice evaluations of both the distributive outcome and the process itself, by which the outcome is accomplished, are likely to affect people’s attitudes toward and acceptance of siting decisions. Data from a number of methodically different studies conducted over the last eight years on site selection in Switzerland suggest that a fair procedure is more essential than a fair distribution to a consensus about the decisions made. As a consequence, even normative assessments of the fairness of a distribution of nuclear waste must consider procedural justice as a valuable indicator, independently of the particular shape of the distribution. However, contextual factors, such as the wider nuclear energy strategy of a country, may compete with procedural fairness in terms of importance. Even though fairness is a requirement it does not guarantee acceptance. It may, however, enhance acceptability from a moral standpoint. (shrink)

Any account of “what is special about the human brain” (Passingham 2008) must specify the neural basis of our unique ability to produce speech and delineate how these remarkable motor capabilities could have emerged in our hominin ancestors. Clinical data suggest that the basal ganglia provide a platform for the integration of primate-general mechanisms of acoustic communication with the faculty of articulate speech in humans. Furthermore, neurobiological and paleoanthropological data point at a two-stage model of the phylogenetic evolution of this (...) crucial prerequisite of spoken language: (i) monosynaptic refinement of the projections of motor cortex to the brainstem nuclei that steer laryngeal muscles, presumably, as part of a “phylogenetic trend” associated with increasing brain size during hominin evolution; (ii) subsequent vocal-laryngeal elaboration of cortico-basal ganglia circuitries, driven by human-specificFOXP2mutations.;>This concept implies vocal continuity of spoken language evolution at the motor level, elucidating the deep entrenchment of articulate speech into a “nonverbal matrix” (Ingold 1994), which is not accounted for by gestural-origin theories. Moreover, it provides a solution to the question for the adaptive value of the “first word” (Bickerton 2009) since even the earliest and most simple verbal utterances must have increased the versatility of vocal displays afforded by the preceding elaboration of monosynaptic corticobulbar tracts, giving rise to enhanced social cooperation and prestige. At the ontogenetic level, the proposed model assumes age-dependent interactions between the basal ganglia and their cortical targets, similar to vocal learning in some songbirds. In this view, the emergence of articulate speech builds on the “renaissance” of an ancient organizational principle and, hence, may represent an example of “evolutionary tinkering” (Jacob 1977). (shrink)

English summary: With his research on early Greek philosophy, Hermann Diels created the definitive works of his era, and his Fragments of the Presocratics remains the standard work on the topic. However, the scholar never published a panorama of his unmatched knowledge. For the first time, a transcript of the lecture in which Diels represented his vision of Hellenic thought is now available. The script from the 1897/98 winter semester documents the oratory and pedagogy of the great Hellenist and (...) was provided by one of his exceptional students, the Munich-based Egyptologist Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. Diels proved himself as a clear-headed thinker discussing the historical course of early proverbial wisdom, the natural and political theory of Plato, and the conceptual precision of Aristotle. Central figures such as Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Democritus are concisely drawn and colored. Thus the text offers an absorbing picture of the origins of theoretical consciousness in Europe. German text. German description: Mit seinen Forschungen zur fruehgriechischen Philosophie hat Hermann Diels Epoche gemacht; seine aFragmente der Vorsokratiker sind weiterhin das Standardwerk zum Thema. Nie jedoch hat der Gelehrte ein Panorama seines unerreichten Wissens veroffentlicht. Erstmals wird nun eine Mitschrift jener Vorlesung zuganglich, in der Diels seine Sicht des hellenischen Denkens darstellte. Das Skript aus dem Wintersemester 1897/98 dokumentiert vorzueglich Sprachkraft und Padagogik des grossen Grazisten; es stammt von einem Ausnahme-Studenten, dem spateren Muenchner Agyptologen Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing.Im historischen Gang von frueher Spruchweisheit bis zur Natur- und Staatslehre Platons und der begrifflichen Prazisionsarbeit des Aristoteles hebt Diels besonders das Fortwirken grosser Denkmuster hervor. Zentrale Gestalten wie Anaximander, Heraklit, Parmenides oder Demokrit sind pragnant und farbig gezeichnet. So bietet der Text ueber seinen fachhistorischen Wert hinaus ein fesselndes Bild der Urspruenge theoretischen Bewusstseins in Europa. (shrink)

Das Gewissen spielt im Leben und Werk von John Henry Newman eine zentrale Rolle. Seine Lehre uber das Gewissen ist im allgemeinen bekannt und anerkannt. Ebenso charakteristisch ist fur ihn aber das Streben nach dem Licht der Wahrheit. Der Autor behandelt in dieser Studie das Verhaltnis von Gewissen und Wahrheit bei Newman: ein Thema, das in dieser Weise in der Newman-Forschung bisher nicht erortert worden ist; ein Thema, das im Kontext der heute um sich greifenden Subjektivierung und Autonomisierung des Gewissens (...) von grundlegender Bedeutung ist.". (shrink)

Conscious existence is the product of a neural brain mechanism, which is largely identical with Immanuel Kant's Oneness Function, a service performed by 200 million neurons in the prefrontal lobe, & makes possible our interior cosmos, the record of our interconnected, or general, experience. Essential for us humans is the well-being of our interior cosmos, or Saint Teresa of Avila's interior castle, in all interactions with each other \& the greater environment. Any disorders of our cosmos are liable to make (...) us fall ill, setting our existence on a path of psychosomatic etiology of a large class of mysterious undiagnosed diseases. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience lead to a wider realm for philosophy to include the science of the Darwinian-evolved computational brain, our inner world producing organ, a non-recursive super- Turing machine combining 100B synapsing-neuron DNA-computers based on the genetic code. The whole system is a logos machine offering a world map for global context, essential for our intentional grasp of opportunities. We start from the observable contrast between the chaotic universe vs. our orderly inner world, the noumenal cosmos. So far, philosophy (...) has been rehearsing our thoughts, our human-internal world, a grand painting of the outer world, how we comprehend subjectively our experience, worked up by the logos machine, but now we seek a wider horizon, how humans understand the world thanks to Darwinian evolution to adapt in response to the metaphysical gap, the chasm between the human animal and its environment, shaping the organism so it can deal with its variable world. This new horizon embraces global context coded in neural structures that support the noumenal cosmos, our inner mental world, for us as denizens of the outer environment. Kant’s inner and outer senses are fundamental ingredients of scientific philosophy. Several sections devoted to Heidegger, his lizard debunked, but his version of the metaphysical gap & his doctrine of the logos praised. Rorty and others of the behaviorist school discussed also. (shrink)

Impressions, energy radiated by phenomena in the momentary environmental scene, enter sensory neurons, creating in afferent nerves a data stream. Following Kant, by our inner sense the mind perceives its own thoughts as it ties together sense data into an internalized scene. The mind, residing in the brain, logically a Language Machine, processes and stores items as coded grammatical entities. Kantian synthetic unity in the linguistic brain is able to deliver our experience of the scene as we appear to see (...) it. Uniquely, the brain records its own history, synthesizing a Movie-in-the-Brain, called the Noumenal Cosmos. Attempting thereby to represent the actual Universe, this makes for a sovereign brain that governs itself. The brain is domicile of an Ego, with its selfhood at stake at all times. Yet, it can know itself only by its actions, in which it appears as an actor in its own movie. Phenomena enter garbled, as confused apparitions, and must be put in good form using top–down feedback control by Ego, so that each movie frame makes rational sense within the overall context of the Noumenal Cosmos. A stack of frames is processed typically in 40 Hz rhythm with 300 ms process time each, for about 12 in the stack at any time. Successive neural centers are processing the stack in the brain assembly line, based on data from increasingly global receptive fields. Ego stitches together the movie frames, but only the top frame is in consciousness for 25 ms. The top frame contains the whole scene where the Ego makes an appearance as the actor that imposes Kantian synthetic unity on the scene, merely an assembly of grammatical texts, in a system-internal coded process language, fitting the scene into the Noumenal Cosmos. But Ego observes Ego only to the extent permitted by the objectivity rule, only what it does and thinks, not its true face. From the Noumenal Cosmos, the Ego receives grammatical messages in the internal sense code. They are integrated into a whole in the reaction of the Ego to the momentary scene. The voluntary nature of Ego’s decisions is explained, based on its ability to code in advance its own actions sequentially in time, as it sees fit with a view to an orderly Noumenal Cosmos, records of code being arranged spatially in neural structures. (shrink)

Wie kaum ein anderes Gefühl ist Mitleid von Unsicherheiten geprägt: Der Begriff »Mitleid« wird widersprüchlich verwendet - aber auch das Gefühl selbst kann schwanken. Dies wirft Fragen der Angemessenheit auf. Georg Sillers genaue Lektüre Ludwig Wittgensteins zeigt, dass solche Unbestimmtheiten jedoch nicht als Defizite gesehen werden müssen: Erstens sind psychologische Begriffe in ihrer Bedeutungsvielfalt Teil unserer Lebensform und damit mehr als die Bezeichnung von Zuständen, zweitens stellt schwankendes Mitleid eine ganz eigene Haltung dar - und zwar häufig die des Respekts. (...) Diese Perspektive ermöglicht neue Zugriffe auf Aristoteles, Nietzsche, Brecht, Arendt sowie die Neuropsychologie - und nicht zuletzt auf Wittgenstein selbst. (shrink)

This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that (...) true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

Throughout the pandemic, the media and scholars have widely discussed increasing social inequality and thereby publicly pointed to often hidden and neglected forms of inequality. However, the “newly” arisen awareness has not yet been put into action to reduce this inequality. Dealing with social inequality implies exploring and confronting social privileges, which are often seen as the other side of inequality. These social constructs, inequality and privilege, are often discussed in light of vulnerability and resilience. This is particularly important in (...) the context of the worldwide coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and efforts to end the pandemic, as both constructs are discussed regarding access to healthcare, vaccination, and education and knowledge, misinformation, social resources, economic resources, and so forth. Minority and/or marginalized groups may be particularly vulnerable to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, resilience factors in these groups may be neglected and underreported. This narrative review aims at illustrating the specific and intertwined aspects of resilience and vulnerability in minority and/or marginalized groups during the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve this, we use an intersectional lens based on recommendations made by Moradi and Grzanka. A total of 48 articles were included in the narrative review. Most of them were commentaries focusing on social inequality, vulnerability, and/or resilience. Based on the dissection of articles at structural, systemic, and individual levels, we propose three hypothesis on vulnerability and resilience in minority and marginalized individuals and groups: social inequality must be considered at a global level; inequality at a global level translates into a vulnerable context for an individual; vulnerability is historically situated: vulnerability is maintained and reinforced by history; strength through collective hardship: vulnerability is not the opposite of resilience but may serve as an aspect of resilience. The conclusions drawn from this review show that we need to include diverse voices to advance concepts, such as vulnerability and resilience, in minority and marginalized groups. Additionally, these concepts are not necessarily in opposition to each other, but vulnerability should be understood as an integral part of resilience. (shrink)

Specialization is an agent of separation, both between competing specialists and between technology and society. Specialization is not an agent of integration. In the problem conception phase of the engineering design process, the emphasis must be on formulating and developing the questions that will frame the ultimate design solution. Using specialists in this phase often leads to biased questions based on the specialists’ areas of expertise. Rather, what is needed is a suspension of commitment to particular solutions and to ask (...) questions without preconceived biases. This study takes a critical look at engineering education as now practiced versus the practice of 40 years ago and concludes with a recommendation for more broadly educating future engineers. (shrink)

Outlines of Metaphysic - dictated portions of the lectures of Hermann Lotze is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1884. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to (...) the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

The current global ecological crises have, inter alia, led to an upsurge in massive migrations, food crises, diseases, pandemics, increased conflict and war especially in African societies. Most of those affected are the small farmers in rural communities who depend on agriculture. This crisis has not only raised concerns about the extent of the damage humans and human activities are causing to the natural environment but has also ignited discussions about the urgent necessity for a change in human behavior and (...) our obligations towards a new agrarian philosophy. In this chapter, I argue that Henry Odera Oruka’s Parental Earth Ethics could be adopted as a new principle of global justice and for grounding global environmental ethics. This principle invites us towards rethinking ecological fairness and global justice. Specifically, I opine that Oruka’s Parental Earth Ethics could be a veritable resource in our search for: (i) promoting global justice in the use and equal distribution of wealth and world resources for the common good and security of all, and (ii) global environmental ethics. It is basically driven by the ethical principle of the human minimum, which ought to inspire us humans to be more ethically and politically responsible in their use and distribution of world resources for the good and security of all. (shrink)

In this essay, our goal is to discover science in Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, lecture notes for his 1935 summer semester course, because, after all, his subject is metaphysica generalis, or ontology, and this could be construed as a theory of the human brain. Here, by means of verbatim quotes from his text, we attempt to show that indeed these lectures can be viewed as suggestion for an objective scientific theory of human perception, the human capacity for deciphering phenomena, (...) ie. hermeneutics in its broadest sense. His added notes from the 1953 edition, all of which are comments, not corrections, imply that he never abandoned these thoughts on metaphysics, despite all of his utterances about a need to overcome it, and their popular interpretations to that effect. In his presentation, he further develops the colorful and intuitive style, an hermeneutic language, that he had created in his earlier work Being and Time. Of human existence he speaks in such expressions as being-there -- ``Dasein" -- and being-in-the-world, the latter term no longer explicit in the 1935 lectures. The lectures can be read as a pre-scientific analysis of how man, being-there, perceives his environment, artfully managing to deal with the manifold challenges posed by the phenomenal structures of the universe. Man attentively recognizes and deciphers their pre-linguistic contents and, while trying to make sense of it all, puts into words his awareness. There are numerous passages in Heidegger's work where he in fairly concrete terms provides us with hints for a perceptive science that, as it turns out and is demonstrated below in this essay, can be explained in terms of recent advances in neuroscience. It would be implausible, even unthinkable, unimaginable, for there not to be found essential agreement between on one hand his philosophical insights gained by hermeneutics of Dasein, into how our brain functions to let us know what's happening & on the other hand, scientific discoveries obtained through anatomy, EEG, fMRI, TMS, electrode implants, etc, of brain structures & functions employed in perception of the momentary scene. A nexus between science and philosophy is provided in Heidegger's definitive treatment of the Logos, here interpreted as a structural version of Platonic forms (Burchard, 2014). This allows for neurolinguistic brain functions to serve as meta-context for Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The logical functions of Dasein's anatomical brain are performed by the logos machine, formerly the human soul, using top-down processing based on a global context, the noumenal cosmos which humans maintain internally. Heidegger's 1942/43 winter semester lectures Parmenides extend in unbroken fashion his 1935 work, proving that he never abandoned, as is widely claimed, his metaphysical avenue of thought. (shrink)

The ancient dualism of a sensible and an intelligible world important in Neoplatonic and medieval philosophy, down to Descartes and Kant, would seem to be supplanted today by a scientific view of mind-in-nature. Here, we revive the old dualism in a modified form, and describe mind as a symbolic language, founded in linguistic recursive computation according to the Church-Turing thesis, constituting a world L that serves the human organism as a map of the Universe U. This methodological distinction of L (...) vs. U helps to understand how and why structures of phenomena come to be opposed to their nature in human thought, a central topic in Heideggerian philosophy. U is uncountable according to Georg Cantor’s set theory but Language L, based on the recursive function system, is countable, and anchored in a Gray Area within U of observable phenomena, typically symbols, prelinguistic structures, genetic-historical records of their origins. Symbols, the phenomena most familiar to mathematicians, are capable of being addressed in L-processing. The Gray Area is the human Environment E, where we can live comfortably, that we manipulate to create our niche within hostile U, with L offering overall competence of the species to survive. The human being is seen in the light of his or her linguistic recursively computational mind. Nature U, by contrast, is the unfathomable abyss of being, infinite labyrinth of darkness, impenetrable and hostile to man. The U-man, biological organism, is a stranger in L-man, the mind-controlled rational person, as expounded by Saint Paul. Noumena can now be seen to reside in L, and are not fully supported by phenomena. Kant’s noumenal cause is the mental L-image of only partly phenomenal causation. Mathematics occurs naturally in pre-linguistic phenomena, including natural laws, which give rise to pure mathematical structures in the world of L. Mathematical foundation within philosophy is reversed to where natural mathematics in the Gray Area of pre-linguistic phenomena can be seen to be a prerequisite for intellectual discourse. Lesser, nonverbal versions of L based on images are shared with animals. (shrink)

Georg Cantor's absolute infinity, the paradoxical Burali-Forti class Ω of all ordinals, is a monstrous non-entity for which being called a "class" is an undeserved dignity. This must be the ultimate vexation for mathematical philosophers who hold on to some residual sense of realism in set theory. By careful use of Ω, we can rescue Georg Cantor's 1899 "proof" sketch of the Well-Ordering Theorem––being generous, considering his declining health. We take the contrapositive of Cantor's suggestion and add Zermelo's choice function. (...) This results in a concise and uncomplicated proof of the Well-Ordering Theorem. (shrink)

Big data represents a significant challenge for the social sciences. From a philosophy-of-science perspective, it is important to reflect on related theories and processes for developing them. In this paper, we start by examining different views on the role of theories in big data-related social research. Then, we try to show how big data is related to standards for evaluating theories. We also outline how big data affects theory- and data-based research approaches and the process of theory building. Discussions include (...) a summary of lines of reasoning, limitations, and a proposal for future developmental steps. (shrink)

In this paper, I make a case for an intercultural philosophy of religion from an African perspective. I focus on the philosophical underpinnings of the various meaningful religious practices and beliefs that give rise to the concepts of God, death and the problem of evil. A philosophical study of African traditional religions, based on anthropological findings across African cultural orientations, gives us a good starting point in understanding African worldviews and religious experiences. It also reveals that the various world religions (...) may all be seen as offering different perspectives on the same reality. Specifically, I argue that traditional African conceptions of God, death and the problem of evil could make significant contributions to global discourses in the philosophy of religion. First, I articulate points of convergence and divergence between African traditional religions with Saint Aquinas’ proofs for God’s existence; Second, I question the phenomenon of death and one’s life’s meaning. And third, I approach the problem of evil and attempt an African solution to the Epicurean dilemma. (shrink)

Dans cet article, je plaide en faveur d'une philosophie interculturelle de la religion dans une perspective africaine. Je me concentre sur les fondements philosophiques des diverses pratiques et croyances religieuses significatives qui donnent lieu aux concepts de Dieu, de la mort et du problème du mal. Une étude philosophique des religions traditionnelles africaines, basée sur des découvertes anthropologiques à travers les orientations culturelles africaines, nous donne un bon point de départ pour comprendre les visions du monde et les expériences religieuses (...) africaines. Elle révèle également que les diverses religions du monde peuvent toutes être considérées comme offrant des perspectives différentes sur la même réalité. Plus précisément, je soutiens que les conceptions africaines traditionnelles de Dieu, de la mort et du problème du mal pourraient apporter des contributions significatives aux discours mondiaux sur la philosophie de la religion. Premièrement, j'articule les points de convergence et de divergence entre les religions traditionnelles africaines et les preuves de l'existence de Dieu apportées par Saint Aquin; deuxièmement, je m'interroge sur le phénomène de la mort et le sens de la vie. Et troisièmement, j'aborde le problème du mal et tente de trouver une solution africaine au dilemme épicurien. (shrink)