The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

The present research is a historical perspective on luxury during 1781-1933. The major stake is represented by the response of the ecclesiastical authority to luxury, the rejection/blaming/damning of luxury; subsequently the acceptance of it. We notice here the church's incapacity to stop the 'illegitim' consumption, that kind of consumption which was beyond the possibilities of a common person, and the taxation of luxury - the one who had more than he/she needed had to donate to the Church, meaning to the (...) poor. The secular authority did the same - luxury would be progressively taxed, which led to a certain synchronization between Church and State. We also analyse the link between orthodoxy and consumption from sociological perspective. The excess is perceived as being a sin. That is why the Church undertakes the role of prescriptor/controller of consumption, be it dressing, food etc. We detect here stages in the process of modernizing of the Romanian cultural space, the social changing and stratification. Luxury was a benchmark in social comparison, a reason of frustration, of indignation, of philosophical reflection. Luxury is a key for understanding the struggle between old and new, between ethics promoted by the Church and that of liberalism, about the tension between traditional consumption (home-made, predictable, swimming with the stream) and the one generated by the circulation of goods, by the industrial revolution. (shrink)

Review of În căutarea fericirii. Viaţa familială în spaţiul românesc în sec. XVIII-XX (Looking for happiness. Family life in the Romanian space of the 18th-20th centuries) Coordinators: Ioan Bolovan, Diana Covaci, Daniel Deteşan, Marius Eppel, Elena Crinela Holom (Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2010).

Recensiòn del libro Jacques Ellul de Carlos Díaz.

The ontology of Bohmian mechanics includes both the universal wave function and particles. Proposals for understanding the physical significance of the wave function in this theory have included the idea of regarding it as a physically-real field in its 3N-dimensional space, as well as the idea of regarding it as a law of nature. Here we introduce and explore a third possibility in which the configuration space wave function is simply eliminated—replaced by a set of single-particle pilot-wave fields living in (...) ordinary physical space. Such a re-formulation of the Bohmian pilot-wave theory can exactly reproduce the statistical predictions of ordinary quantum theory. But this comes at the rather high ontological price of introducing an infinite network of interacting potential fields which influence the particles’ motion through the pilot-wave fields. We thus introduce an alternative approach which aims at achieving empirical adequacy with a more modest ontological complexity, and provide some preliminary evidence for optimism regarding the program of trying to replace the configuration space wave function with a set of fields in ordinary physical space. (shrink)

Ilya Schmelzer wrote recently: Nieuwenhuizen argued that there exists some “contextuality loophole” in Bell’s theorem. This claim in unjustified. It is made clear that this arose from attaching a meaning to the title and the content of the paper different from the one intended by Nieuwenhuizen. “Contextual loophole” means only that if the supplementary parameters describing measuring instruments are correctly introduced, Bell and Bell-type inequalities may not be proven. It is also stressed that a hidden variable model suffers from a (...) “contextuality loophole” if it tries to describe different sets of incompatible experiments using a unique probability space and a unique joint probability distribution. (shrink)

The model theoretic concept of truth has thus far been applied mainly to mathematical languages and theories. The paper presents an attempt to apply it to languages of empirical theories. Such an application must do justice to some characteristic features of empirical discourse. The paper outlines the main problems which a model theoretic theory of truth for empirical languages is bound to face and suggests some solutions to those problems.

The model theoretic concept of truth has thus far been applied mainly to mathematical languages and theories. The paper presents an attempt to apply it to languages of empirical theories. Such an application must do justice to some characteristic features of empirical discourse. The paper outlines the main problems which a model theoretic theory of truth for empirical languages is bound to face and suggests some solutions to those problems.

The law of excluded middle is usually considered as intrinsically connected with the realistic standpoint and incompatible with the idealistic position. This is just what Ajdukiewicz claims in his critique of transcendental idealism. The analysis of Ajdukiewicz's argumentation raises the problem of validity of the law of excluded middle for vague (or incomplete) languages. The problem is being solved by differentiating between the logical (or ontological) and the metalogical (or semantical) law of excluded middle: in contrast to the former, the (...) latter is claimed to be invalid for the languages in question, without thereby embracing the idealist position. (shrink)

The law of excluded middle is usually considered as intrinsically connected with the realistic standpoint and incompatible with the idealistic position. This is just what Ajdukiewicz claims in his critique of transcendental idealism. The analysis of Ajdukiewicz's argumentation raises the problem of validity of the law of excluded middle for vague (or incomplete) languages. The problem is being solved by differentiating between the logical (or ontological) and the metalogical (or semantical) law of excluded middle: in contrast to the former, the (...) latter is claimed to be invalid for the languages in question, without thereby embracing the idealist position. (shrink)

As the answer to the question clearly depends on its precise meaning, the paper aims at presenting some explications of the problem and the conclusions entailed by each of them. If mathematical entity is taken in a narrow sense, the answer turns out to be negative; on some broader conceptions, it is positive. Though irreducible to a numerical structure, a scientific domain is identifiable with some set theoretic entity.

The thesis of the inexpressibility of certain kinds of philosophical knowledge, as ascribed to plato, is subjected to an analysis and, in consequence, interpreted in such a way which does not charge plato's position with any kind of mysticism or irrationalism. The interpretation propounded assumes that it is only some vague philosophical ideas that are said to be not expressible in a definite way.

The approach to the meaning of indexicals adopted in this paper is based on the theory known as Montague grammar. Accepting, in general, that kind of theory { especially in its modied version, which is due to Thomason and Kaplan 1 { I point out certain inadequacy in its treatment of the meaning of some indexical expressions and suggest some modication of its theoretical framework in order to avoid that shortcoming.