Modem economics relied on the false presupposition that natural resources are free goods. It gave rise to exaggerated expectations on the side of economists concerning the possibilities of economic growth. I try to interpret the terms of natural resources, sustaining capacity, production from a human-ecological platform. The quantity of natural resources may vary within a large spectrum between absolute abundance and total exhaustion. The support capacity can be raised in different ways. Extensive growth is wrong while technological development is a (...) good way. So, certain technological-market processes aiming at extensive growth must be suppressed, processes that could increase effectivity and technical developments, which would draw new resources into production, should be supported. (shrink)

This letter contains suggestions for editors and software providers to help avoid affiliation bias in the initial and concluding stages of the peer review process. Submission management systems have a responsibility to ensure protection against affiliation bias. This can be achieved by automatically withholding the author’s identity and affiliation information from all editors, including the Editor-in-Chief, until a decision about publication has been made. Journals relying on email-based submissions are in a more difficult situation. Not having external support in confirming (...) the submitting author’s identity, this dilemma can be resolved through the implementation of strict instructions and guidelines concerning manuscript submission and handling. In this case the “human factor” cannot be fully eliminated, while automated processes can only be changed intentionally and with a certain delay. Therefore, with the suggested steps, submission management systems could become a strong guard against unconscious bias while also making conscious bias more difficult to impact the peer review process. (shrink)

Gene-technology was developed in the eighties and stimulated an overmuch heated social debate. Let's think such problems as cloning, transgenic organisms, Human Genom Project, DNA diagnostics and therapy, the geneticalisation of society etc. While the gene manipulation develops rapidly the necessary social control is missing. Regarding the social co-ordination of gene technology, the decision-makers still excessively trust in the institution of market and in the experts' competence.

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.

The paper examines the difference between János Bolyai’s and Lobachevskii’s notion of non-Euclidean parallelism. The examination starts with the summary of a widespread view of historians of mathematics on János Bolyai’s notion of non-Euclidean parallelism used in the first paragraph of his Appendix. After this a novel position of the location and meaning of Bolyai’s term “parallela” in his Appendix is put forward. After that János Bolyai’s Hungarian manuscript, the Commentary on Lobachevskii’s Geometrische Untersuchungen is elaborated in (...) order to see how Bolyai and Lobachevskii’s notions of parallelism differ. The careful examination of the Commentary reveals a seeming incoherence of Bolyai’s translation, and finally the explanation of this incoherence offered by the Received View and that of the novel position will be compared and assessed. L’article examine la différence entre la notion du parallélisme non-Euclidean de János Bolyai et celle de Lobachevskii. Tout d’abord le travail s’occupe de l’opinion répendue parmi les historiens de géometrie (le « Received View » ), selon laquelle János Bolyai précise la notion du parallélisme non-Euclidean dans le premier paragraph de l’Appendix. Ensuite une pointe de vue toute neuve sera présentée concernant la place et le sens du terminus technicus,,paralella” de Bolyai dans l’Appendix. Enfin on va analyser les Commentaires (un manuscrit hongrois) de János Bolyai sur le livre Geometrische Untersuchungen de Lobachevskii àfin de voir jusqu’à quel point la notion de parallelisme de Bolyai se diffère de celle de Lobachevskii. L’analyse bien fondue des Commentaires va nous relever un apparent incohérence de la traduction de Bolyai. On examine et on compare l’opinion répendue dans le vaste public avec la nouvelle interpretation de l’Appendix, et on discute les explications probables de cet incohérence. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a novel reading of Spinoza’s position in his exchangewith Boyle about Boyle’s experiment with nitre. Boyle claimed to have shownthrough experiments that nitre ceased to be nitre after heating. Spinozadisagreed and proposed the alternative hypothesis that nitre has changed itsstate and not its nature. Spinoza’s position was construed in the literature asrational scepticism denying that experiments can yield knowledge ofessences because all sensory experience is underdetermined and open tomultiple interpretations. I argue for an alternative (...) reading of Spinoza’sposition which focuses on Bacon’s notion of crucial instance. According tothis reading, Spinoza did not deny the possibility of knowing byexperimentation whether nitre has changed its nature, he asked for a crucialinstance, i.e. an experiment that would refute the hypothesis that nitre haschanged merely its state. Spinoza’s argumentative strategy shows that,contrary to the mainstream reading, the representational content of sensoryideas can be determined even if it does not represent the essence of theobject: we can know with absolute, rather than merely moral, certaintywhether nitre ceased to be nitre without knowing what nitre is. (shrink)

The application of evolutionary perspectives to analyzing sex differences in aggressive behavior and dominance hierarchies has been found useful in multiple areas. We draw attention to the parallel of gender differences in the worsening health status of restructuring societies. Drastic socio-economic changes are interpreted as examples of hierarchy disruption, having differential psychological and behavioral impact on women and men, and leading to different changes in health status.

János Kornai, a distinguished Hungarian economist, began his adult life as an ardent believer in socialism and then became a critic of the communist political and economic system. He lost family members in the Holocaust, contributed to the ideological preparation for the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and became an influential theorist of the post-Soviet economic transition. He has been a journalist, a researcher prohibited from teaching in his home country, and a tenured professor at Harvard. By Force of Thought traces (...) Kornai's lifelong intellectual journey and offers a subjective complement to his academic research.Disenchanted with communism, Kornai published Overcentralization, the first book written by someone living behind the Iron Curtain to be openly critical of Soviet-style economics. Although it was attacked in Hungary, it was hailed by Western economists. The Kornai-Lipták theory on two-level planning captured the attention of mathematical economists. Kornai went on to publish the controversial Anti-Equilibrium, a critique of the general equilibrium theory underpinning mainstream economic analyses of markets, Economics of Shortage, The Road to a Free Economy, and the summary of his lifetime research, The Socialist System. An intellectual emissary between East and West, Kornai commuted between Harvard and Budapest for many years.Kornai's memoir describes his research--including his present-day evaluation of his past work--as well as the social and political environments in which he did his work. The difficulties faced by a critic of central planning in a communist country are made especially vivid by material from newly opened secret police files and informers' reports on his activities. By Force of Thought will be an essential resource for students of economic thought, socialist systems, and postsocialist transition, and for readers interested in Eastern European intellectual life before, during, and after communism. (shrink)

This empirical paper examines individual-level cognitive factors associated with developing an orientation to sustainable development issues among a population of business practitioners from France. Across two studies, we survey 180 financial managers and 83 finance students, as well as 144 managers from other business disciplines and 117 non-finance business students. We consider ability and motivation variables integrated and adapted into a cognitive elaboration model for sustainable decision making. Specifically, we examine the degree of influence of two factors on the ethical (...) sensitivity to sustainability: the moral maturity of the individual, and the perceived moral intensity of a sustainability issue. Our investigation offers insights into how financial managers perceive the importance of sustainability for corporate strategy. (shrink)

Pál Makó was a prominent 18th century Hungarian mathematician and physicist. The paper shows the cultural-historical background of his work as well as the scientific-historical precedents of his life-work. The influence of the milieu of the University of Nagyszombat on his thinking is taken into account as well. Further, the paper sheds light on Makó´s interpretation of Leibniz and Ch. Wolff in his philosophical books and on his adaptation of advanced mathematics as the zenith of his career. Attention is paid (...) also to the methodology of his text-books and scientific and philosophical-historical lessons of his manuscripts. (shrink)

Recent neurophysiological observations are giving rise to the expectation that in the near future genuine biological experiments may contribute more than will premature speculations to the understanding of global and cognitive functions. The classical reflex principle — as the basis of neural functions — has to yield to new ideas, like autopoiesis and/or self-organization, as the basic paradigm in the framework of which the essence of the neural can be better understood. Neural activity starts in the very earliest stages of (...) development well before receptors and afferent input become functional. Under suitable conditions, both in nervous tissue cultures and in embryonic tissue recombination experiments, the conditions of such initial autopoietic activity can be studied. This paper tries to generalize this elementary concept for various neural centers, notably for the spinal segmental apparatus and the cerebral cortex. (shrink)

Die Thematisierung des modernen Verhältnisses zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft ist so ausgerichtet, dass sie von vornherein zu einer Privilegierung der Gesellschaft neigt. Die neuzeitliche sozialphilosophische Diskussion läuft auf eine Zurücknahme des Staates in die Gesellschaft hinaus. An die Stelle der staatlich bestimmten Gesellschaft tritt der gesellschaftlich bestimmte Staat. Die entscheidende Frage ist, wie kann die Gesellschaftlichkeit des Staates begründet werden. Der Staat ist nicht mehr selbstständig, schwebt nicht mehr über der sozialen Wirklichkeit, sondern muss selbst als sozial bestimmt verstanden werden. (...) Die grundsätzliche Frage der neuzeitlichen Sozialphilosophie ist daher: Wie ist der Staat überhaupt möglich? Diese Frage wird durch eine Theorie der Konstitution des Staates beantwortet. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, based on a comparison of Spinoza's and Descartes‟s discussion of error, that beliefs are affirmations of the content of imagination that is not false in itself, only in relation to the object. This interpretation is an improvement both on the winning ideas reading and on the interpretation reading of beliefs. Contrary to the winning ideas reading it is able to explain belief revision concerning the same representation. Also, it does not need the assumption that I (...) misinterpret my otherwise correct ideas as the interpretation reading would have it. In the first section I will provide a brief overview of the notion of inherence and its role in Spinoza‟s discussion of the status of finite minds. Then by examining the relation between Spinoza‟s and Descartes‟ distinction of representations and attitudes, I show that affirmation can be identified with beliefs in Spinoza. Next, I will take a closer look at the identification of intellect and will and argue that Spinoza's identification of the two is based on the fact that Spinoza sees both as the active aspect of the mind. After that, I analyze Spinoza‟s comments on the different scopes of will and intellect, and argue that beliefs are affirmations of the imaginative content of the idea. Finally, through Spinoza‟s example of the utterance of mathematical error, I present my solution to the problem of inherence of false beliefs. (shrink)

János Kornai, a distinguished Hungarian economist, began his adult life as an ardent believer in socialism and then became a critic of the communist political and economic system. He lost family members in the Holocaust, contributed to the ideological preparation for the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and became an influential theorist of the post-Soviet economic transition. He has been a journalist, a researcher prohibited from teaching in his home country, and a tenured professor at Harvard. By Force of Thought traces (...) Kornai's lifelong intellectual journey and offers a subjective complement to his academic research.Disenchanted with communism, Kornai published Overcentralization, the first book written by someone living behind the Iron Curtain to be openly critical of Soviet-style economics. Although it was attacked in Hungary, it was hailed by Western economists. The Kornai-Lipták theory on two-level planning captured the attention of mathematical economists. Kornai went on to publish the controversial Anti-Equilibrium, a critique of the general equilibrium theory underpinning mainstream economic analyses of markets, Economics of Shortage, The Road to a Free Economy, and the summary of his lifetime research, The Socialist System. An intellectual emissary between East and West, Kornai commuted between Harvard and Budapest for many years.Kornai's memoir describes his research--including his present-day evaluation of his past work--as well as the social and political environments in which he did his work. The difficulties faced by a critic of central planning in a communist country are made especially vivid by material from newly opened secret police files and informers' reports on his activities. By Force of Thought will be an essential resource for students of economic thought, socialist systems, and postsocialist transition, and for readers interested in Eastern European intellectual life before, during, and after communism. (shrink)

According to most medieval thinkers, whenever something causally acts on another thing, God also acts with it. Durand of St.-Pourçain, an early fourteenth-century Dominican philosopher, disagrees. This paper is about a fourteenth-century objection to Durand’s view, which I will call the Fiery Furnace Objection, as formulated by Durand’s contemporary, Peter of Palude. Although Peter of Palude is not usu- ally regarded as a particularly original thinker, this paper calls attention to one of his more interesting controversies with his fellow friar, (...) while it also clarifies how some medieval thinkers understood the broadly speaking Aristotelian conviction that causes and effects are necessarily related. (shrink)

The concept of “acculturation” is closely linked to the history of European colonialism. In spite of all efforts to endow it with a “neutral” or “positive” meaning, the term has never meant anything other than the subjection of indigenous cultures to Western civilization in all its forms.

Entangled states provide the necessary tools for conceptual tests of quantum mechanics and other alternative theories. These tests include local hidden variables theories, pre- and postselective quantum mechanics, QND measurements, complementarity, and tests of quantum mechanics itself against, e.g., the so-called causal communication constraint. We show how to produce various nonlocal entangled states of multiple cavity fields that are useful for these tests, using cavity QED techniques. First, we discuss the generation of the Bell basis states in two entangled cavities, (...) when there is at most one photon in either of the cavities, and then a straightforward generalization to similar N-cavity states. We then show how to produce a nonlocal entangled state when there is precisely one photon hiding in three cavities. These states can be produced by sending appropriately prepared atoms through the cavities. As applications we briefly review two proposals: one to test quantum mechanics against the causal communication constraint using a two-cavity entangled state and the other to test pre- and postselective quantum mechanics using a three-cavity entangled state. The outcome of the latter experiment can be discussed from the viewpoint of the consistent histories interpretation of quantum mechanics and therefore provides an opportunity to subject quantum cosmological ideas to laboratory tests. Finally, we point out the relation between these schemes and the schemes suggested for quantum computing, teleportation, and quantum copying. (shrink)

Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios proposes a paradigm change from the 'systemic VIEW' to 'systems SCIENCE', so as to extend the methodology of conventional science of physics into the domains hitherto beyond the reach of this kind of treatment. The book: I. Identifies the problematic issues in current approaches to the 'systemic or structural view' of parts of the world as opposed to the 'quantitative/qualitative views' of conventional science of physics and the arts whereby introducing the 'third culture'. II. Locates the (...) position of the structural view in the context of 'human intellectual endeavour'. III. Discusses the fundamental questions raised by modelling aspects of human behaviour. IV. Introduces the basic ideas and the symbolism of linguistic modelling which are then applied to turning descriptions of scenarios as a story or narrative into reasoning schemes. V. Describes a methodology of 'problem solving' of which design thinking and the operation of purposive systems are seen as essential ingredients. Problem solving is a universal activity of living in particular human beings through innovation, invention and creativity. Lack of this activity leads to death! Problem solving is regarded as pivotal point which may propel the spread of the modified structural view into social, technical, cultural and educational awareness. VI. Shows the location of aspects of conventional science within the scheme of systems science whereby achieving a 'continuity of the scientific endeavour'. VII. Outlines a teaching scheme for 'linguistic modelling'. Janos Korn explains how a view can be converted into a science which can lead to a possibility of 'organised speculation' or simulation of behaviour, exploring the effects of variation of parameters on performance, and the occurrence of outcomes of operations, beneficial or not, of dynamic structures. Static and dynamic structures are expressed in more rigorous and computable terms so that the results of analysis and design of human activity scenarios could be exposed to at least thought experiments. Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios is an informative read for any professionals, teachers and students of engineering, social science, management, business and production. (shrink)

This volume contains a collection of articles focusing on the philosophical and theological exchanges between Muslim and Christian intellectuals living in Baghdad during the classical period of Islamic history, when this city was a vibrant center of philosophical, scientific, and literary activity.

The paper deals with some of the contemporary theories of science which see the latter as an organized cognitive activity. On the background of the controversy concerning the nature of rationality and relativism the author underlines the contribution of the sociology of scientific knowledge, showing its role in reconceptualization of the dichotomy between internalism and externalism. His argumentation is in favor of the institutionalist conception of science as a subsystem of society. The problem of the reliability of knowledge is explained (...) in the context of the globalized science: for science to be cognitively successful it is necessary to optimize the institutional mechanisms producing consensus and working as the controlling and corrective mechanisms. (shrink)