This paper examines the capacities of deliberative democracy as a decision-making mechanism in controversies concerning the cultural rights of minorities. It is claimed that existing views of public deliberation leave unanswered the question how to fit, by deliberative means, the cultural needs of culturally different communities into one and the same regulatory framework. The difficulty is that these needs are articulated in culturally specific frames of reference. Consequently, they are not commensurable in terms of their relative importance for the respective (...) communities, and they cannot be referred to in arguments which would be recognized as valid by all the parties in the deliberation. The proposed solution proceeds from the differentiation between ethical-existential (also ethical-political) and moral questions which has been made by J . Habermas in discourse ethics. I explore the possibility of applying to ethical-existential discussion, which articulates a community's cultural needs, the standards of public deliberation, and of developing a quantitative measure of needs. (shrink)

This paper is dealing with a contradiction in the theory and policy of minority rights: on the one hand the claims for such rights are justified by recognizing the value of the cultural identity of minority groups, on the other – the recognition of such a value implies an acceptance of a conservative and isolationist view onminority identities. Characterizing the latter view as essentialist I explore several alternatives for approaching the issue of minority rights in a different way and finally (...) I reach the conclusion that one more convincing method of identifying the cultural needs of minority groups and the rights necessary for satisfying these needs could be the technique of public deliberation. Its application for this purpose could make the negotiating of group-specific rights much more flexible and politically unproblematic than at present. (shrink)

This article has been written in response to the texts by Richard Robson (“In What Sense is Multiculturalism a Form of Communitarianism”), and Slobodan Divjak (“Communitarianism, Multiculturalism and Liberalism”) with which the Balkan Journal of Philosophy (vol. 10, no 2, 2018) started a discussion on the theme Liberal Democracy and Cultural Diversity. I try to contest the position of these two authors–that multiculturalism and communitarianism belong to one and the same paradigm in political philosophy–by pointing out essential liberal normative elements (...) in multiculturalist theory. My main thesis is that in order to clarify the relation between multiculturalism and communitarianism, we have to differentiate between descriptive and normative communitarianism. The latter is guided, in my opinion, by values, which stand in stark contrast with the liberal ones, whilst this is not the case with multiculturalism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the split between two kinds of reasoning – non-public (culturally dependent) and public (characteristic for the procedures of policy design and, more generally, of taking generally binding decisions within the institutions of power). A largely acknowledged problem is that attempts to influence the public policies from the positions of cultural communities cannot be rationally substantiated because the arguments used are in most cases not recognized as valid by the general public, which does (...) not share the particular beliefs and assumptions that guide reasoning in a contextually “embedded” cultural environment. This “barrier” between non-public and public reasoning is hindering the progress of recognizing minority rights and allowing the input of religiously inspired ideas into public life, to say the least. More concretely, my purpose is to point out certain philosophical debates which can provide, in my opinion,theoretical “instruments” that might help reconceptualize the possibilities for communication between the nonpublic and the public domains. I mean first of all, but not only, the theories of political liberalism and deliberative democracy as well as the differentiation between “substantivist” and “procedural” kinds of discourse. (shrink)

The article examines the history of transactional analysis (TA) in Bulgaria. The presentation of the ideas of TA in the literature in the country is traced in historical terms. Emphasis is placed on the use of TA in different fields by different scientists and specialists who use it in these fields. Its institutional history related to the establishment of the Bulgarian Society for Transactional Analysis and the entry of TA in academic world is examined.

Each phenomenon contains variable components, which are conservative. Because of their conservation, they accumulate. Present phenomena contain constituents of phenomena, belonging to the past which form the present and the future, and their dependence on time is an exponential one - S = Sₒe^t-tᵖ. We assume that before and after tₒ = t-tᵖ = 0 the change pertains to phenomena of one type. The dependency is for each defined phenomenon of one and the same type. The concrete aspect of the (...) change S will depend on the type of the phenomenon. We show in our study how in some cosmological phenomena, the exponential dependence on time is present. The processes of radioactive disintegration of atomic nuclei, are also phenomena of this type. We present the real phenomena as a sum of exponents. Each phenomenon originates, develops and is destroyed. In reality most phenomena are formed as a composition of exponential dependencies of the change. (shrink)

Each phenomenon contains variable components, which are conservative. Because of their conservation, they accumulate. Present phenomena contain constituents of phenomena, belonging to the past which form the present and the future, and their dependence on time is an exponential one - S = Sₒe^t-tᵖ. We assume that before and after tₒ = t-tᵖ = 0 the change pertains to phenomena of one type. The dependency is for each defined phenomenon of one and the same type. The concrete aspect of the (...) change S will depend on the type of the phenomenon. We show in our study how in some cosmological phenomena, the exponential dependence on time is present. The processes of radioactive disintegration of atomic nuclei, are also phenomena of this type. We present the real phenomena as a sum of exponents. Each phenomenon originates, develops and is destroyed. In reality most phenomena are formed as a composition of exponential dependencies of the change. (shrink)

The is the Editorial of the 2015 JPBMB Special Issue on Integral Biomathics: Life Sciences, Mathematics and Phenomenological Philosophy.

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more fact-oriented (...) and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

Perhaps the most distinct question in science throughout the ages has been the one of perceivable reality, treated both in physics and philosophy. Reality is acting upon us, and we, and life in general, are acting upon reality. Potentiality, found both in quantum reality and in the activity of life, plays a key role. In quantum reality observation turns potentiality into reality. Again, life computes possibilities in various ways based on past actions, and acts on the basis of these computations. (...) This book is about a new approach to biology. Its subtitle suggests a perpetual movement and interplay between two elusive aspects of modern science — reality/matter and potentiality/mind, between physics and biology — both captured and triggered by mathematics — to understand and explain emergence, development and life all the way up to consciousness. But what is the real/potential difference between living and non-living matter? How does time in potentiality differ from time in reality? What we need to understand these differences is an integrative approach. This book contemplates how to encircle life to obtain a formal system, equivalent to the ones in physics. Integral Biomathics attempts to explore the interplay between reality and potentiality. (shrink)

The idea about this special issue came from a paper published as an updated and upridged version of an older memorial lecture given by Brian D. Josephson and Michael Conrad at the Gujarat Vidyapith University in Ahmedabad, India on March 2, 1984. The title of this paper was “Uniting Eastern Philosophy and Western Science” (1992). We thought that this topic deserves to be revisited after 25 years to demonstrate to the scientific community which new insights and achievements were attained in (...) this fairly broad field during this period. (shrink)

This is the editorial to the special edition of Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology on the role engagement with Eastern traditions of thought could play in the advancement of science generally and biology and the science of mind in particular.

The idea behind this special theme journal issue was to continue the work we have started with the INBIOSA initiative (www.inbiosa.eu) and our small inter-disciplinary scientific community. The result of this EU funded project was a white paper (Simeonov et al., 2012a) defining a new direction for future research in theoretical biology we called Integral Biomathics and a volume (Simeonov et al., 2012b) with contributions from two workshops and our first international conference in this field in 2011. The initial impulse (...) for this effort was given a year earlier by a publication of one of the guest editors of this issue (Simeonov, 2010) in this journal. This time we wish to provide a broader forum and more space to elaborate in detail some of the most interesting concepts we have encountered in our discussions, as well as to invite some new contributions of particular interest in the field. Another goal we had in mind was to collect and review as many provocative perspectives as possible on the same key topic we are interested before making a decision to follow a more focused notion that would lead to a funded research program. Therefore we welcomed the generous suggestion of Professor Denis Noble, FRS, who is also editor of this journal to prepare a special theme issue entitled: “Can biology create a profoundly new mathematics and computation?” It has taken a while to invite and collect the contributions. Most of them had a couple of revision cycles and adjustments after having been thoroughly discussed with colleagues, incl. the editors of this issue. We think that the result we have obtained at the end is a satisfactory one, since we succeeded to integrate a diversity of original, but sometimes controversial and mutually excluding concepts organized within chapters of a self-contained volume. The task of compiling all this was not easy at all. Despite our efforts to position the articles of different authors and themes in a way allowing their easy comprehension and relation to each other within the individual chapters, some of them still require a sort of introduction to dissolve possible ambiguities. This is what we are going to do in the following few paragraphs with the hope that the reader (and some of the authors) would excuse our failures. (shrink)

Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun. London: Routledge-Curzon. (611 pages). ISBN 0-7007-1186-4 Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 5, Edition 1 April 2005.

Книгата предлага някои оригинални идеи по вечни философски въпроси, които вълнуват човешката мисъл от древността досега.