This book makes four bold claims: 1) life is an ultimate datum, open to philosophical analysis and irreducible to physical reality; hence all materialist-reductionist explanations - most current theories - of life are false. 2) All life presupposes soul (entelechy) without which a being would at best fake life. 3) The concept of life is analogous and the most direct access to life in its irreducibility is gained through consciousness; 4) All life possesses an objective and intrinsic value that needs (...) to be respected, human life possesses beyond this an inviolable dignity. Life and personal life are pure perfections, it being absolutely better to possess (personal) life than not to possess it. Chapter 1: the metaphysical essence and the many meanings of 'life,' as well as its 'transcendental' character. Chapter 2: the irreducibility of biological life, its amazing empirical and philosophically intelligible essential features, and the ways of knowing them. Chapter 3: the immediate evidence and indubitable givenness of mental, conscious life as well as questions of (brain-) death and immortality. Chapter 4: the inviolable objective dignity of personal life and its self-transcendence; a new theory of the fourfold source of human dignity and rights. Chapter 5 (in dialogue-form): methods and results of philosophy versus those of empirical life-sciences. (shrink)

This work is both an introduction to, and a reader in, contemporary hermeneutics. Included are papers by Betti, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Apel and Habermas.

Given the recent interest in the subjective or phenomenal dimension of consciousness it is no wonder that many authors have once more started to speak of the need for pheno- menological considerations. Often however the term ‘phenomenology’ is being used simply as a synonym for ‘folk psychology', and in our article we argue that it would be far more fruitful to turn to the argumentation to be found within the continental tradition inaugurated by Husserl. In order to exemplify this claim, (...) we criticize Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory as well as Strawson's recent contribution in this journal, and argue that a phenomenological analysis of the nature of self-awareness can provide us with a more sophisticated and accurate model for understanding both phenomenal consciousness and the notion of self. (shrink)

We propose that typical schizophrenic delusions develop on the background of preexisting anomalies of self-experience. We argue that disorders of the Self represent the experiential core clinical phenomena of schizophrenia, as was already suggested by the founders of the concept of schizophrenia and elaborated in the phenomenological psychiatric tradition. The article provides detailed descriptions of the pre-psychotic or schizotypal anomalies of self-experience, often illustrated through clinical vignettes. We argue that delusional transformation in the evolution of schizophrenic psychosis reflects a global (...) reorganization of consciousness and existential reorientation, both of which radiate from a fundamental alteration of the Self. We critically address the contemporary cognitive approaches to delusion formation, often finding them inconsistent with the clinical features of schizophrenia or implausible from a phenomenological point of view. (shrink)

Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends in the (...) energy sector. Our paper discusses energy security status and innovations in the energy sector in European Union (EU). We analyze the recent up-to-date developments of the energy policy and exploitation of energy sources, as well as scrutinize the channels of energy streaming to the EU countries and the risks associated with this energy import. Moreover, we argue that the shift to the low-carbon production of energy and the massive deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) might become the key issue in ensuring the energy security and independency of the EU from its external energy supplies. Both RES, distributed energy resources (DER) and “green energy” that will be based on the energy efficiency and the shift to the alternative energy supply might change the energy security status quo for the EU. (shrink)

Although California is often regarded as a regional civilization within the United States of America, this article argues that California justifies being considered a major civilization in itself, indeed the only genuinely 21stcentury civilization, if only because of its top ranking among world economies. The article traces the varied facets of California natural and social history to show the overriding importance of biodiversity as a perennially unifying theme for an understanding of that civilization, and it confronts the varied challenges to (...) this biodiversity that constitute more recent California history and politics. (shrink)

Kevin Starr’s Golden Dreams is the culmination to some forty years of scholarship on the unfolding theme of a “California Dream,” that imaginal component to the growth of the self-identity and increasing international economic power of the most populous state in the American Union. Indeed, the period 1950–1963 that the book meticulously covers forms in many ways the most imposing manifestation of that Dream. This essay reviews the central features of Starr’s account, particularly the infrastructural foundations in transportation, water supply, (...) and higher education realized by a triumvirate of California governors, both Republican and Democrat, who regarded themselves as nonpartisan members of the “Party of California”; the expansion of California’s major cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco; the characteristics of the Silent Generation and the culture of “cool Jazz” that dominated the period; as well as the rise of dissident elements among environmentalists, minorities, and Beats, that foretold the protest period of the 1960s. This essay then asks whether Starr has avoided the larger implications of his own narrative that California from this period on had become in most respects a putative nation-state in its own right. From the global impact of its major media industry—Hollywood—to the continued advances of its economic clout throughout the rest of the century as at times the fifth largest economic entity in the world, California may need to be increasingly regarded as a world civilization in itself rather than as a regional civilization to which Starr’s historical narrative has so far constricted it.Corrigenda:The title of the work in footnote 1, p. 270, should be: “Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915”In footnote 6, p. 274, the title of the last work cited in the note should be: The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s. (shrink)

Many existence propositions in constructive analysis are implied by the lesser limited principle of omniscience LLPO; sometimes one can even show equivalence. It was discovered recently that some existence propositions are equivalent to Bouwer's fan theorem FAN if one additionally assumes that there exists at most one object with the desired property. We are providing a list of conditions being equivalent to FAN, such as a unique version of weak König's lemma. This illuminates the relation between FAN and LLPO. Furthermore, (...) we give a short and elementary proof of the fact that FAN is equivalent to each positive valued function with compact domain having positive infimum. (shrink)

Zum ersten Mal wird hier die Entwicklung der Ideen in der Geographie in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert konsistent aufgezeigt. Die weit verstreute Literatur zu diesem Thema wurde erstmals gebundelt und diskutiert. Die grundlegenden Ideen und Traditionslinien der klassischen Geographie (19./20.Jh.) in Deutschland werden dargestellt: die Auffassung des Mensch-Raum-Verhaltnisses, die zunehmende Akzeptanz differenzierter Raumeinheiten, die Durchsetzung des aufklarerischen und emanzipatorischen "Possibilismus". "Geburtshelfer" in diesem Prozess sind einerseits J. G. Herder, andererseits - uber den franzosischen Geographen Vidal de la Blache (...) - J. J. Rousseau. Aus dem Inhalt: J. G. Herder und die Geographie - "Landschaft" - Das Mensch-Raum-Paradigma - Geode-terminismus - Possibilismus - Kulturen - Entwicklung des chorologischen Paradigmas - Vergleich mit dem franzosischen Geographen Vidal de la Blache - Einflusse Rousseaus - Classical German Geography: an overview in English. (shrink)

This title, which at first sight seems curious, shows Pieper's philosophical work as rooted in the basics. He takes his inspiration from Plato - and his Socrates - and Thomas Aquinas. With them, he is interested in philosophy as pure theory, the theoretical being precisely the non-practical. The philosophizer wants to know what all existence is fundamentally about, what "reality" "really" means. With Plato, Pieper eschews the use of language to convince an audience of anything which is not the truth. (...) If Plato was opposed to the sophists - among them the politicians - Pieper is likewise opposed to discourse that leads to the "use" of philosophy to bolster a totalitarian regime or any political or economic system. A fundamental issue for Pieper is "createdness." He sees this as the fundamental truth of our being - all being - and the fundamental virtue we can practice is the striving to live according to our perception of real truth in any given situation. The strength and attraction of Pieper's writing is its direct and intuitive character which is independent of abstract systematization. He advocates staying in touch with the "real" as we experience it deep within ourselves. Openness to the totality of being - in no matter what context being reveals itself - and the affirmation of all that is founded in this totality are central pillars of all his thinking. Given the "simplicity" of this stance, it is no surprise that much of it is communicated - and successfully - through his gift for illustration by anecdote. Like Plato, this philosopher is a story-teller and, like him, very readable. (shrink)

A model of writing in cognitive development, Understanding the Representational Mind synthesizes the burgeoning literature on the child’s theory of mind to provide an integrated account of children’s understanding of representational and mental processes, which is crucial in their acquisition of our commonsense psychology. Perner describes experimental work on children’s acquisition of a theory of mind and representation, offers a theoretical account of this acquisition, and gives examples of how the increased sophistication in children’s theory of mind improves their understanding (...) of social interaction and how, in the case of autistic children, an impairment results in social ineptitude. He analyzes the concepts of representation and metarepresentation as they appear in current discussion in the philosophy of cognitive science and explains how the unfolding of mental representation enables infants to comprehend change over time, engage in pretence, and use representational systems like pictures and language. Perner goes on to show that around age four children become able to understand the representational nature of pictures and language and to distinguish appearance from reality. Introducing basic distinctions in philosophy of mind for characterizing the mental, Perner discusses differences in how commonsense and cognitive psychology view the mind. Tracing the onset of a commonsense psychology in the social and emotional awareness of early infancy, he reveals how the child begins to take a cognitive, representational view of the mind with repercussions for children’s episodic memory, self control, and their ability to engage in deception. Perner concludes by describing the observed developmental changes as a case of theory change And contrasts his thesis with competing proposals. Josef Perner is Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at Sussex University, Brighton, England. (shrink)

This article examines the structure of self-consciousness in people with schizophrenia. The findings indicate that our self-experience is not neutral with respect to the metaphysical status of the self and that it is important to attend carefully to the experience of the subject in order to understand schizophrenia. The results also suggest that the variable disruptions in the sense of self-presence, first-person perspective, and the phenomenality of experience in schizophrenics directly affect the minimal self and it may also have implications (...) for the narrative self. (shrink)

It is shown that, relative to Bishop-style constructive mathematics, the boundedness principle BD-N is equivalent both to a general result about the convergence of double sequences and to a particular one about Cauchyness in a semi-metric space.

The author notes that European spiritual culture has provided the world with two great myths: the myth of Jesus Christ and the Promethean myth. These two myths were an early indication of the rise of the hidden predatory spiritual paradigm. As a result of this paradigm (setting), later culture hypertrophically strengthened the human genetic predisposition towards an aggressive adaptive strategy. It is therefore necessary, according to the author, to expose and criticize this predatory paradigm and eventually transform it into a (...) biophilic paradigm. If we want to understand this requirement, we need a higher-order theory, an evolutionary ontological theory of culture. One of the ways of achieving this objective is to weaken and criticize the myth in which the defiant Prometheus acts as an honored civilization hero. In the second part the author briefly introduces his evolutionary-ontological concept of culture. He defends the claim that culture is an artificial system with its own internal information and that two types of order have come into existence within culture in harmony with this information (spiritual culture): 1. strictly information-prescribed structures (specifically the material culture and technology), 2. Spontaneously (through succession) originating structures (especially institutions). If we want to change the orientation of the cultural system, we have to change not only its current information but also its former spiritual setting (paradigm). (shrink)

The Nazis hijacked Germany’s medical establishment and appropriated medical language to hegemonize their ideology. In White Noise, shifting medical information stifles the public into docility. In Nazi Germany the primacy of language and medical authority magnified the importance of academic doctors. The muddling of identities caused complex insecurities and the need for psychological doubles. In White Noise, Professor Gladney is driven by professional insecurities to enact a double in Murray. Through the manipulation of language and medical overreach the U.S., exemplified (...) in the novel White Noise, has become a hypermedicalized society where the spirit of the Hippocratic Oath has eroded. (shrink)

We represent continuous functions on compact intervals by sequences of functions defined on finite sets of rational numbers. We call this an exact representation. This enables us to calculate the values of the function arbitrarily exactly, without roundoff errors. As an application we develop a procedure to transfer an exact representation of an increasing function into an exact representation of the corresponding inverse function.

"One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century, Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is more significant, even more crucial, today than it was when it first appeared more than fifty years ago. This special new edition now also includes his little work The Philosophical Act. Leisure is an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world. Pieper shows that the Greeks (...) and medieval Europeans, understood the great value and importance of leisure. He also points out that religion can be born only in leisure; a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. Pieper maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture; and ourselves. Pieper's message for us is plain. The idolatry of the machine, the worship of mindless know-how, the infantile cult of youth and the common mind; all this points to our peculiar leadership in the drift toward the slave society. Pieper's profound insights are impressive and even formidable. Pieper has subjects involved in everyone's life; he has theses that are so counter to the prevailing trends as to be sensational; and he has a style that is memorably clear and direct." --Publisher. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of a convex tree. We show that the binary expansion for real numbers in the unit interval ) is equivalent to weak König lemma ) for trees having at most two nodes at each level, and we prove that the intermediate value theorem is equivalent to \ for convex trees, in the framework of constructive reverse mathematics.

The Christian idea of man -- The idea of man in general -- The Christian idea of man and St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of virtues -- The true concept of virtue and the hierarchy of virtues -- Prudence -- Justice -- Courage and fear of the Lord -- Discipline and moderation -- Faith, hope, and love -- The distinction between a natural and supernatural ethos.