ExcerptAndrei S. Markovits, The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness. Foreword by Michael Ignatieff. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2021. Pp. 328. The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness is the autobiography of the well-known American political scientist Andrei S. Markovits and was published in 2021 by Central European University Press. After the 328 pages of text in American English, readers will recognize the author’s great fondness not only for analytical political science, sports, Italian opera, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, (...) and the Grateful Dead, but also for different languages—Romanian, Hungarian, German, and English—and will enjoy Markovits’s beautiful style and the many linguistic nuances and subtleties the book offers. (shrink)

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this (...) publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. (shrink)

In 1937, the Japanese economist Kaname Akamatsu discovered specific links between the rise and decline of the global peripheries. Akamatsu’s theory of development describes certain mechanisms whose working results in the narrowing of the gap between the level of development of the economy of developing and developed countries, and, thus, in the re-structuring of the relationships between the global core and the global periphery. Akamatsu developed his model on the basis of his analysis of the economic development of Japan before (...) World War II, with a special emphasis on the development of the Japanese textile industry. Akamatsu’s catch-up development includes three phases: import of goods, organization of the production of previously imported products, and export of those goods. This model proved to be productive for analyzing the development of many other developing countries, especially in East Asia, making the theory of flying geese popular among the economists of these countries, as well as the whole world. The “flying geese” model produces certain swings that may be denoted as Akamatsu waves. Akamatsu waves may be defined as cycles (with a period ranging from 20 to 60 years) that are connected with convergence and divergence of core and periphery of the World System in a way that explains cyclical upward and downward swings (at global and national levels) in the movements of the periphery countries as they catch up with the richer ones. (shrink)

A more and more important role is played by new directions in historical research that study long-term dynamic processes and quantitative changes. This kind of history can hardly develop without the application of mathematical methods. The history is studied more and more as a system of various processes, within which one can detect waves and cycles of different lengths – from a few years to several centuries, or even millennia. This issue is the third collective monograph in the series of (...) History & Mathematics almanacs and it is subtitled Processes and Models of Global Dynamics. The contributions to the almanac present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of global historical, political, economic and demographic processes, as well as their mathematical models. This issue of the almanac consists of two main sections: (I) Analyses of the World Systems and Global Processes, and (II) Models of Economic and Demographic Processes. We hope that this issue of the almanac will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences. (shrink)

Das Lehrbuch, das neuartige Zugänge bietet, die sowohl die Politikgestaltung beeinflussen, als auch der Politikwissenschaft ein komplexes kritisch-rationales Handlungs- und Orientierungswissen bereitstellen. Das Werk eignet sich sowohl für das Selbststudium als auch für den akademischen Unterricht.

Exploration of the political roles firms play in society is a flourishing stream within corporate social responsibility research. However, few empirical studies have examined multiple levels of political CSR at the same time from a critical perspective. We explore both how the motivations of managers and internal organizational practices affect a company’s choice between competing CSR approaches, and how the different CSR programs of corporate and civil society actors compete with each other. We present a qualitative interpretative case study of (...) how a French children’s clothing retailer develops CSR practices in response to accusations of poor working conditions and child labor in its supply chain. The company’s CSR approach consists of superficial practices, such as supplier audits by a cooperative business-organized nongovernmental organization and philanthropic activities, which enable managers to silence more radical alternative models defended by other NGOs, activists, and trade unions. By this approach, the core business model based on exploitative low-cost country sourcing remains intact through self-regulated CSR. Through the case study, we develop a framework of dynamism in competing CSR programs. We discuss the implications of our study for CSR researchers, company managers, and policy makers. (shrink)

Continuous reducibilities are a proven tool in Computable Analysis, and have applications in other fields such as Constructive Mathematics or Reverse Mathematics. We study the order-theoretic properties of several variants of the two most important definitions, and especially introduce suprema for them. The suprema are shown to commutate with several characteristic numbers.

The term “translation” has three meanings: the practice of the translator, the textual outcome of this practice, and the relationship it creates between texts and languages. In this article, I would like to draw attention to this third aspect, translation as a relation. To do so, I will first propose a historical overview of the first two meanings, as well as of the normative or descriptive aims associated to them. Secondly, I identify three motives for thinking about translation that are (...) primarily concerned with its relational dimension: the lack of a language to speak about the relationship between languages, i.e. about what’s incomparable and what gets subtracted. I conclude this article with the hypothesis that translation as a relation constitutes a refuge event for the plurality of languages. (shrink)

Although machine learning has been successful in recent years and is increasingly being deployed in the sciences, enterprises or administrations, it has rarely been discussed in philosophy beyond the philosophy of mathematics and machine learning. The present contribution addresses the resulting lack of conceptual tools for an epistemological discussion of machine learning by conceiving of deep learning networks as ‘judging machines’ and using the Kantian analysis of judgments for specifying the type of judgment they are capable of. At the center (...) of the argument is the fact that the functionality of deep learning networks is established by training and cannot be explained and justified by reference to a predefined rule-based procedure. Instead, the computational process of a deep learning network is barely explainable and needs further justification, as is shown in reference to the current research literature. Thus, it requires a new form of justification, that is to be specified with the help of Kant’s epistemology. (shrink)

This contribution investigates the idea that an act of signification can be understood in terms of the self-referentiality that is typical of the biological organization. The capacity of a living being to interpret and appreciate its own environment can be understood as being grounded in its ability to perform self-referential experiences. We may call this the living being’s capacity of sense. In any act that generates sense, it is possible to distinguish a process of signification from its outcome, but such (...) a distinction between logical levels inevitably demands an external observer’s point of view. Hence, the concept of ‘subjectivity’ can be defined in terms of an absence of such distinction between logical levels. This absence is considered pivotal both for the self-referential organization of the living and for the generation of sense. A case example from the field of psychotherapy is added to illustrate the distinction as well as the non-distinction between logical levels of description. (shrink)

We define and investigate a family of local–global principles for fields involving both orderings and p-valuations. This family contains the PAC, PRC and PpC fields and exhausts the class of pseudo classically closed fields. We show that the fields satisfying such a local–global principle form an elementary class, admit diophantine definitions of holomorphy domains, and their orderings satisfy the strong approximation property.

Max Horkheimer, the founder of the critical theory of the ‘Frankfurt School’, died in July 1973. In his essay dedicated to this great thinker, sociologist and philosopher, the author attempts to uncover the theoretical roots of this critical thinking in the philosopher's early work. He analyses Horkheimer's early commitment to the cause of the victims of social, economic and political oppression as well as all systems that trample on the freedom and dignity of the individual and that discriminate against and (...) persecute minorities. He also pays special attention to Horkheimer's struggle against the authoritarian state, against totalitarianism as well as anti-Semitism. (shrink)

This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation as this takes place in philosophy. It describes the different perspectives, issues, intuitions, theories and arguments that have emerged. The author shows that the debate has been too heavily influenced by the concerns of a naturalistic philosophy of mind and argues that in order to improve our understanding of biology the attention should be shifted from the study of intuitions to the study of the actual (...) practice of biological inquiry. (shrink)

The work [11] deals with questions of first-order definability in algebraic function fields. In particular, it exhibits new cases in which the field of constant functions is definable, and it investigates the phenomenon of definable transcendental elements. We fix some of its proofs and make additional observations concerning definable closure in these fields.

I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term ‘function’ is used in connection with the study of living organisms, namely: function as activity, function as biological role, function as biological advantage, and function as selected effect. Notion refers to what an item does by itself; refers to the contribution of an item or activity to a complex activity or capacity of an organism; refers to the value for the organism of an item having a (...) certain character rather than another; refers to the way in which a trait acquired and has maintained its current share in the population. The recognition of a separate notion of function as biological advantage solves the problem of the indeterminate reference situation that has been raised against a counterfactual analysis of function, and emphasizes the importance of counterfactual comparison in the explanatory practice of organismal biology. This reveals a neglected problem in the philosophy of biology, namely that of accounting for the insights provided by counterfactual comparison. (shrink)

I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term ‘function’ is used in connection with the study of living organisms, namely: function as activity, function as biological role, function as biological advantage, and function as selected effect. Notion refers to what an item does by itself; refers to the contribution of an item or activity to a complex activity or capacity of an organism; refers to the value for the organism of an item having a (...) certain character rather than another; refers to the way in which a trait acquired and has maintained its current share in the population. The recognition of a separate notion of function as biological advantage solves the problem of the indeterminate reference situation that has been raised against a counterfactual analysis of function, and emphasizes the importance of counterfactual comparison in the explanatory practice of organismal biology. This reveals a neglected problem in the philosophy of biology, namely that of accounting for the insights provided by counterfactual comparison. (shrink)

Dieses Buch schlägt - unter dem Titel "synthetischer Materialismus" - einen neuen Weg zur Klärung des Geist-Materie-Problems vor. Ausgangspunkt ist die These, dass wir als Betrachter der Welt frei sind, dieselben Gegenstände in unterschiedlich komplexe raum-zeitliche Zusammenhänge einzuordnen, und dass sich daraus unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten der Klassifikation von Gegenständen ergeben können: Wenn wir von "Lebewesen", "Handlungssubjekten" und "Personen" sprechen, und ihnen psychische Phänomene zuschreiben, nutzen wir den Umstand, dass die Konstellationen von Kohlehydraten, Eiweißen, Wasser und Nukleinsäuren, die jene Entitäten auch sind, (...) in einer besonderen Weise mit Teilen ihrer Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft in Verbindung gebracht werden können. Der synthetische Materialismus vermag so zu zeigen, dass es zwischen einem ausschließlich "materialistischen" Verständnis der Welt und jenen Sichtweisen, innerhalb derer wir manche Komplexe von materiellen Phänomenen als Individuen mit ihnen selbst bewussten Empfindungen, Absichten und Überzeugungen verstehen, Übergänge gibt, die methodisch-wissenschaftlich nachvollzogen werden können und die nicht zu nutzen töricht wäre. (shrink)

Este artículo trata de relacionar el teatro posdramático con algunas ideas que Friedrich Nietzsche presenta sobre todo en su primera obra importante, El origen de la tragedia. En concreto se buscan similitudes en el concepto de lo performativo y en un aspecto esencial de la tragedia nietzscheana, el dolor físico. No se pretende establecer una filiación directa entre Nietzsche y el teatro de última actualidad sino llamar la atención sobre una de las consecuencias más recientes de la ruptura estética que (...) él propuso. (shrink)

Resumo O entendimento de Friedrich Nietzsche sobre Friedrich Schiller é bem conhecido e culmina em 1888, na desqualificação que se tem com “Schiller: ou o trompetista moral de Säckingen”. Mas é sabido que suas considerações são contraditórias, mudando com frequência nas diferentes etapas de sua vida produtiva. A monografia de Nicholas Martin marca um ponto de viragem no que diz respeito a este tema, refutando a disseminada compreensão de que somente o jovem Nietzsche teria experimentado admiração por Schiller, depois vindo (...) a assumir distância cada vez maior. A dívida de Nietzsche para com Schiller, segundo Martin, é constante, e manifesta-se sobretudo em sua recepção das cartas estéticas. O que se pretende fazer ver aqui, seguindo a tradição de Wolfgang Riedel, é que o ensaio Sobre a poesia ingênua e sentimental [Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung] é tão ou mais importante neste contexto sobretudo quando dirigimos nosso enfoque para o contexto da crítica cultural. Várias declarações de Nietzsche, por exemplo, formulada em 1870, “não estou em condições de empregar essa terminologia esplendorosamente schilleriana para o inteiro e mais amplo domínio de toda a arte”, confirmam tal suposição, e uma vez que, no mesmo momento de elaboração de O nascimento da tragédia no espírito da música, ele se propõe a “[…] fortalecer o conceito do ingênuo e do sentimental”, tem-se justificada a intenção de relacionar ambas as obras-chave de ambos os Dichterphilosophen [filósofos poetas] do ponto de vista da crítica cultural.Friedrich Nietzsche's opinion about Friedrich Schiller is well known and culminates in 1888 in the disqualification “Schiller: oder der Moral-Trompeter von Säckingen”, but at the same time it is recognized that his considerations are contradictory and that they change in the different moments of his productive life. Nicholas Martin's study from 1996 marks a caesura in this subject by refuting the widespread view that only the young Nietzsche experienced admiration for Schiller and that there was a growing distance afterwards. Nietzsche's debt to Schiller, according to Martin, is constant and is manifested above all in his reception of the aesthetic letters. We would like to demonstrate in the tradition of Wolfgang Riedel that the essay Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung is equally or even more important in this context, especially when it is approached from the standpoint of cultural criticism. Several statements by Nietzsche, such as the one formulated in 1870 “Ich bin nicht im Stande, jene herrliche Schillersche Terminologie auf das ganze weiteste Bereich aller Kunst anzuwenden” confirm this assumption, and when, at the very moment when Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geist der Musik was being prepared, Nietzsche proposed that the “[…] Begriff des Naiven und des Sentimentalistischen ist zu steigern”, the attempt to link both key works of the two Dichterphilosophen from the point of view of cultural criticism is justified. (shrink)

This paper deals with some formal properties of objects that are supposed to be internal to persons, that is, mental structures and mental functions. Depending on the ways of talking about these internal objects, they will appear different. Two types of discourse will be presented, to be called the realist and the nominalist discourses, and for eachdiscourse I will focus upon the construction of `self'.The realist discourse assumes an identity between the person and his construction of himself. I will illustrate (...) this discourse in terms of Descartes' ideas on himself as a `thinking substance'. The nominalist discourse assumes an impossibility to attain this identity, and instead to imply a complementarity between the person and his self-construction. I will illustrate this discourse in terms of the problems both William James and Sartre discerned when a conscious person chases after his own consciousness (termed `judging thought' and `pour-soi' respectively). (shrink)

This paper is concerned with reasonings that purport to explain why certain organisms have certain traits by showing that their actual design is better than contrasting designs. Biologists call such reasonings 'functional explanations'. To avoid confusion with other uses of that phrase, I call them 'design explanations'. This paper discusses the structure of design explanations and how they contribute to scientific understanding. Design explanations are contrastive and often compare real organisms to hypothetical organisms that cannot possibly exist. They are not (...) causal but appeal to functional dependencies between an organism's different traits. These explanations point out that because an organism has certain traits, it cannot be alive if the trait to be explained were replaced by a specified alternative. They can be understood from a mechanistic point of view as revealing the constraints on what mechanisms can be alive. (shrink)

This handbook explores the ways biomedicine and pop culture interact while simultaneously introducing the reader with the tools and ideas behind this new field of enquiry. From comic books to health professionals, from the arts to genetics, from sci-fi to medical education, from TV series to ethics, it offers different entry points to an exciting and central aspect of contemporary culture: how and what we learn about scientific knowledge and its representation in pop culture. Divided into three sections the handbook (...) surveys the basics, the micro-, and the macroaspects of this interaction between specialized knowledge and cultural production: After the introduction of basic concepts of and approaches to the topic from a variety of disciplines, the respective theories and methods are applied in specific case studies. The final section is concerned with larger social and historical trends of the use of biomedical knowledge in popular culture. Presenting over twenty-five original articles from international scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds, this handbook introduces the topic of pop culture and biomedicine to both new and mature researchers alike. The articles, all complete with a rich source of further references, are aimed at being a sincere entry point to researchers and academic educators interested in this somewhat unexplored field of culture and biomedicine. (shrink)

We show that a computable function $f:\mathbb R\rightarrow \mathbb R$ has Luzin’s property if and only if it reflects $\Pi ^1_1$ -randomness, if and only if it reflects $\Delta ^1_1$ -randomness, and if and only if it reflects ${\mathcal {O}}$ -Kurtz randomness, but reflecting Martin–Löf randomness or weak-2-randomness does not suffice. Here a function f is said to reflect a randomness notion R if whenever $f$ is R-random, then x is R-random as well. If additionally f is known to have (...) bounded variation, then we show f has Luzin’s if and only if it reflects weak-2-randomness, and if and only if it reflects $\emptyset '$ -Kurtz randomness. This links classical real analysis with algorithmic randomness. (shrink)

We show that a computable function $f:\mathbb R\rightarrow \mathbb R$ has Luzin’s property if and only if it reflects $\Pi ^1_1$ -randomness, if and only if it reflects $\Delta ^1_1$ -randomness, and if and only if it reflects ${\mathcal {O}}$ -Kurtz randomness, but reflecting Martin–Löf randomness or weak-2-randomness does not suffice. Here a function f is said to reflect a randomness notion R if whenever $f$ is R-random, then x is R-random as well. If additionally f is known to have (...) bounded variation, then we show f has Luzin’s if and only if it reflects weak-2-randomness, and if and only if it reflects $\emptyset '$ -Kurtz randomness. This links classical real analysis with algorithmic randomness. (shrink)

This article deals with a type of functional explanation, viability explanation, that has been overlooked in recent philosophy of science. Viability explanations relate traits of organisms and their environments in terms of what an individual needs to survive and reproduce. I show that viability explanations are neither causal nor historical and that, therefore, they should be accounted for as a distinct type of explanation.

Nice i Bergson spadaju medju glavne autore koji ispituju socio-afektivne uslove i istorijsku evoluciju pravde. Ali oni to cine na dva radikalno razlicita nacina, cija nespojivost, kako izgleda, jos nije dovoljno istaknuta: Nice objasnjava pravdu izdvajajuci socio-afektivne elemente koji su se medjusobno povezali da bi proizveli nesto takvo kao sto je "pravda", dok Bergson posmatra evoluciju pravde kao niz razlikovanja u prirodi. To Bergsona navodi da utvrdi temeljno razlikovanje izmedju dve pravde, jedne koja je visa i druge koja je niza, (...) jedne "otvorene" a druge "zatvorene", tamo gde Nice misli da zadovoljava monisticki zahtev postavljajuci jednu jedinu pravdu. Mozda se, ipak, Niceu moze uputiti Bergsonov prigovor da je "iznova sastavio evoluciju od fragmenata onoga sto je evoluiralo", i, bez sumnje, u svakom slucaju treba suprotstaviti Niceov postupak, koji je izvesna "genealogija", Bergsonovom postupku, koji je odista, "geneza". (shrink)

Background: Gait analysis after total ankle replacement and ankle arthrodesis is usually measured barefoot. However, this does not reflect reality. The purpose of this study was to compare patients barefoot and with footwear. Methods: We compared 126 patients (total ankle replacement 28, ankle arthrodesis 57, and tibiotalocalcaneal arthrodesis 41) with 35 healthy controls in three conditions (barefoot, standardized running, and rocker bottom shoes). Minimum follow-up was 2 years. We used dynamic pedobarography and a light gate. Main outcome measures: relative midfoot (...) index, forefoot maximal force, walking speed. Findings: The relative midfoot index decreased in all groups from barefoot to running shoes and again to rocker bottom shoes (p < 0.001). The forefoot maximal force increased wearing shoes (p < 0.001), but there was no difference between running and rocker bottom shoes. Walking speed increased by 0.06 m/s with footwear (p < 0.001). Total ankle replacement and ankle arthrodesis were equal in running shoes but both deviated from healthy controls (total ankle replacement/ankle arthrodesis smaller RMI p = 0.07/0.017; increased forefoot maximal force p = 0.757/0.862; slower walking speed p < 0.001). In rocker bottom shoes, this ranking remained the same except the relative midfoot index merged to similar values. Tibiotalocalcaneal arthrodesis were inferior in both shoes. Interpretation: Runners are beneficial and the benefit is greater for fusions and replacements. Rocker bottom shoes have little added benefit. Total ankle replacement and ankle arthrodesis were equal but inferior to healthy controls. Tibiotalocalcaneal arthrodesis has an inferior outcome. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungSeit seiner Entstehung zeichnet sich das Genre des Zombie-Films durch eine kulturreflexive Komponente aus, die politische Entwicklungen kritisch begleitet. Abseits dieser gesellschaftskritischen Traditionslinie wird in der TV-Serie The Walking Dead eine weitere Ebene der Reflexion eingeführt. Auch wenn hier viele der ästhetischen und narrativen Traditionen des Zombie-Genres aufgegriffen werden, ermöglicht der Seriencharakter einen vertiefenden Blick der Charaktere im Angesicht des apokalyptischen Zerfalls von personalen, familiären und gesellschaftlichen Gewissheiten und Wertestrukturen. Am deutlichsten wird diese Verunsicherung angesichts des Umganges mit dem Tod. (...) Damit reflektiert die Serie auch die zunehmende reale Aushebelung der Gewissheit des Todes durch die Lebenswissenschaften ab den 1960er-Jahren. Die Ausprägungen und Folgen dieses Diskurses werden in The Walking Dead in Form einer Negation biologischer Gewissheiten dramatisch zugespitzt. Somit bietet die Serie nicht nur ein kritisch-reflexives Medium auf die im Umlauf befindlichen Diskurselemente, sondern sie fügt auch neue Perspektiven auf den Tod in der Gesellschaft hinzu. (shrink)