Many developing and transitional countries have grown faster than advanced countries in the past decade, resulting in a shift in the distribution of world income in their favor. China is now the second largest economy in the world, behind the United States and ahead of Japan. As the relative economic weight of China and several others has come to match or exceed that of the middle-ranking G7 economies, the world economy has shifted from “unipolar” toward “multipolar,” less dominated by the (...) G7. How is this change being translated into changes in authority and influence within multilateral organizations like the G20, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund? Alarm bells are ringing in G7 capitals about G7 loss of influence. According to a WikiLeaks cable from the senior U.S. official for the G20 process, from January 2010, “It is remarkable how closely coordinated the BASIC group of countries [Brazil, South Africa, India, China] have become in international fora, taking turns to impede US/eu initiatives and playing the US and EU off against each other.” This essay suggests that the shift in power is much smaller than the headlines or private alarm bells suggest. The United States remains the dominant state, and the G7 states together continue to exercise primacy, but now more fearfully and defensively. China is split between asserting itself as “the wave of the future” and defending itself as too poor to take on global responsibilities. The combination of G7 defensiveness and emerging states’ jealous guarding of sovereignty produces a spirit of Westphalian assertion in international fora, or “every state for itself.” On the assumption that the world economy is in a transitional period, the article suggests reforms in the G20 and the World Bank that would boost their role and legitimacy as multilateral organizations in a more multipolar world. (shrink)

In response to the ravages perpetrated on planet earth by the single-minded pursuit of short-term business bottomline, the author outlines the keynotes of shifting consciousness about economics in the West. She points out the new upsurge of active interest in finer values, including spirituality in business circles. With out a spiritual compass to guide, industrialization has been fostering disvalues. The impact of Eastern reli gions, and their emphasis on the inner self, on American thinking has of late become very strong. (...) The paper also draws atiention to Gandhi's trusteeship concept, and to the successful spiritual experiments done at Nagarjuna Fertilizers Ltd. She, however, has doubts whether business will changes its ways by itself unless something more powerful forces it to do so. (shrink)

In response to the ravages perpetrated on planet earth by the single-minded pursuit of short-term business bottomline, the author outlines the keynotes of shifting consciousness about economics in the West. She points out the new upsurge of active interest in finer values, including spirituality in business circles. With out a spiritual compass to guide, industrialization has been fostering disvalues. The impact of Eastern reli gions, and their emphasis on the inner self, on American thinking has of late become very strong. (...) The paper also draws atiention to Gandhi's trusteeship concept, and to the successful spiritual experiments done at Nagarjuna Fertilizers Ltd. She, however, has doubts whether business will changes its ways by itself unless something more powerful forces it to do so. (shrink)

In response to the ravages perpetrated on planet earth by the single-minded pursuit of short-term business bottomline, the author outlines the keynotes of shifting consciousness about economics in the West. She points out the new upsurge of active interest in finer values, including spirituality in business circles. With out a spiritual compass to guide, industrialization has been fostering disvalues. The impact of Eastern reli gions, and their emphasis on the inner self, on American thinking has of late become very strong. (...) The paper also draws atiention to Gandhi's trusteeship concept, and to the successful spiritual experiments done at Nagarjuna Fertilizers Ltd. She, however, has doubts whether business will changes its ways by itself unless something more powerful forces it to do so. (shrink)

This captivating new book, a milestone in Buddhist and comparative studies, is a compilation of seventeen essays celebrating the work and thought of Nolan Pliny Jacobson. A profoundly motivated interdisciplinary thinker, Jacobson sought to discover, clarify, and synthesize points of similarity among leading thinkers of different Oriental and Western cultures. For almost half a century, he articulated his vision of an emerging world civilization, one in which all people can feel and express their creative, constructive powers for the benefit of (...) others as well as for themselves. Jacobson believed that philosophy and the works of philosophers should be understood as a vital force enriching all civilizational experience. His own philosophic perspective was rooted in the conviction that novelty is the source of all experience and the center of a creativity that lives beyond words, arguments, and rational paradigms. Throughout his career, Jacobson explored Buddhist texts and personalities, spending much time in the Orient, particularly Myanmar and Japan. He also closely studied the works of numerous Western philosophers, including Whitehead, Dewey, Peirce, James, Hartshorne, and Wieman. Jacobson believed that American philosophy and Buddhism concurred in many ways, with the potential to form a powerful basis for the development of a world civilization. The essays in this volume are organized around Jacobson’s activities, publications, and interests. Authored by an impressive selection of scholars, the essays are grouped into four sections—"Historical Context," "Central Issues," "Practical Implications," and "The Japan Emphasis." Hajime Nakamura, Charles Hartshorne, Kenneth K. Inada, Seizo Oho, and numerous others discuss freedom, creativity, and Buddhism’s self-corrective nature, setting forth their reasons for sharing Jacobson’s ideas and visions. (shrink)

To speak of emergence in nature is to test a metaphor. Its content may vary, but the challenge is unchanging: to demonstrate something like a spiritual intent in nature, and a relation of nature to spirit. We could flesh out this metaphor by speaking of “Life” as uniting the two: inanimate nature evolving toward a vitality that is fulfilled in spirit. We might use an even grander concept for this unifying purpose: nature and spirit as two aspects of “God.” Or (...) we might see nature and spirit as metaphors for one another, and unite them in that way: “nature as spirit made visible, spirit as invisible nature.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article outlines Francisco de Vitoria's conception of natural law and natural right in an effort to amend a number of interpretations in the academic literature on his political and international thought that misapprehend Vitoria's iusnaturalism. In this view, his use of the Thomist doctrine of natural law and justice lays the foundation for his works on politics, society and international relations since the doctrine itself espouses equality and justice both within the domestic realm and between discrete communities. In (...) an implicit appeal to the link between ethics and politics, his doctrine of natural law, moreover, fulfills a critical and constitutional role by designating justice and the common good as a pattern of order to which power and authority must conform in order to be legitimate. RESUMEN Se esboza la concepción de ley natural y derecho natural de Francisco de Vitoria con el fin de corregir varias de las interpretaciones de su pensamiento político e internacional que se encuentran en la literatura académica y que malentienden el iusnaturalismo de Vitoria. Se argumenta que la utilización que hace Vitoria de la doctrina tomista de ley y derecho natural constituye el fundamento de sus obras sobre política, sociedad y relaciones internacionales ya que dicha doctrina propugna la igualdad y la justicia tanto en el ámbito interno como entre comunidades distintas. Su doctrina sobre la ley natural apela implícitamente al vínculo entre ética y política y desempeña un papel crítico y constitucional al concebir la justicia y el bien común como un patrón de orden al que se deben conformar el poder y la autoridad para obtener legitimidad. (shrink)

This article outlines Francisco de Vitoria’s conception of natural law and natural right in an effort to amend a number of interpretations in the academic literature on his political and international thought that misapprehend Vitoria’s iusnaturalism. In this view, his use of the Thomist doctrine of natural law and justice lays the founda­tion for his works on politics, society and international relations since the doctrine itself espouses equality and justice both within the domestic realm and between discrete communities. In an (...) implicit appeal to the link between ethics and politics, his doctrine of natural law, moreover, fulfills a critical and constitutional role by designating justice and the common good as a pattern of order to which power and authority must conform in order to be legitimate. (shrink)

Purpose: The inspection of the World Wide Web reveals a multitude of speculative, frequently contradictory diagnoses: the dynamic evolution of the media demonstrably correlates with a multitude of competing descriptions. It is the author's attempt and the purpose of this paper to systematize the descriptive approaches from a meta-observer's point of view. Approach: The author takes advantage of a constructivist "philosophy of distinctions" (Heinz von Foerster), employing it as a strategy of presentation and reflection. He starts with some general remarks (...) describing this philosophy of distinctions, then using a number of central guiding differences (e.g., mass communication/individual communication, private/public etc.) as a suitable instrument to systematize a wide variety of descriptions. In the concluding section, he outlines an analytical method of meta-observation and specifies, in an abstract way, tendencies of potential discourse change which can be seen regarding the WWW and the emerging worlds of communication. It is demonstrated in what ways such a method could be helpful in seeking out the changes and the varying assessments of the life-world cyberspace. Conclusion: The author comes to the conclusion that the analytical method of observing distinctions that has been proposed here is capable of continual refinement; its design is sufficiently complex to permit a situation-specific activation and immediate reaction whenever unexpected developmental tendencies emerge and the contours of digital worlds of communication begin to change again and again. (shrink)

In this article, we introduce and demonstrate the concept-metaphor of broken data. In doing so, we advance critical discussions of digital data by accounting for how data might be in processes of decay, making, repair, re-making and growth, which are inextricable from the ongoing forms of creativity that stem from everyday contingencies and improvisatory human activity. We build and demonstrate our argument through three examples drawn from mundane everyday activity: the incompleteness, inaccuracy and dispersed nature of personal self-tracking data; the (...) data cleaning and repair processes of Big Data analysis and how data can turn into noise and vice versa when they are transduced into sound within practices of music production and sound art. This, we argue is a necessary step for considering the meaning and implications of data as it is increasingly mobilised in ways that impact society and our everyday worlds. (shrink)

We study some aspects of the emergence of _lógos_ from _xáos_ on a basal model of the universe using methods and techniques from algorithmic information and Ramsey theories. Thereby an intrinsic and unusual mixture of meaningful and spurious, emerging laws surfaces. The spurious, emergent laws abound, they can be found almost everywhere. In accord with the ancient Greek theogony one could say that _lógos_, the Gods and the laws of the universe, originate from “the void,„ or from _xáos_, a (...) picture which supports the unresolvable/irreducible lawless hypothesis. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that the “laws„ discovered in science correspond merely to syntactical correlations, are local and not universal. (shrink)

A non-technical introduction to quantum mechanics, the Everett interpretation, and the emergence of spacetime.

When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--indeed, so great that the sum far transcends the parts and represents something utterly new and different--we call that phenomenon emergence. When the chemicals diffusing in the primordial waters came together to form the first living cell, that was emergence. When the activities of the neurons in the brain result in mind, that too is emergence. In The Emergence of Everything, one of the leading scientists involved in the study of (...) complexity, Harold J. Morowitz, takes us on a sweeping tour of the universe, a tour with 28 stops, each one highlighting a particularly important moment of emergence. For instance, Morowitz illuminates the emergence of the stars, the birth of the elements and of the periodic table, and the appearance of solar systems and planets. We look at the emergence of living cells, animals, vertebrates, reptiles, and mammals, leading to the great apes and the appearance of humanity. He also examines tool making, the evolution of language, the invention of agriculture and technology, and the birth of cities. And as he offers these insights into the evolutionary unfolding of our universe, our solar system, and life itself, Morowitz also seeks out the nature of God in the emergent universe, the God posited by Spinoza, Bruno, and Einstein, a God Morowitz argues we can know through a study of the laws of nature. Written by one of our wisest scientists, The Emergence of Everything offers a fascinating new way to look at the universe and the natural world, and it makes an important contribution to the dialogue between science and religion. (shrink)

One key aspect of Phenomenology, i.e. the relationship between consciousness and phenomena, has been described, with regard to when this relationship be-gins to arise, as a co-emergence of the subject and the world. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the theme of emergence may also be found in the philosophy of Mikel Dufrenne. First of all, strictly speaking, what emerges is what manifests itself and exerts influence due to the merging of some proper-ties, although what emerges cannot (...) be reduced to these properties. This dy-namic may be clearly seen in aesthetics, where affective or expressive qualities manifest themselves. Secondly, and more broadly, what emerges is that which begins to take shape from an indistinct, latent background. Hence, the plane of “presence” – a cognitive prereflective dimension of symbiosis with the world – may be understood as a place of originary co-emergence. (shrink)

A lively and approachable meditation on how we can transform our digital lives if we let a little Nietzsche in. Who has not found themselves scrolling endlessly on screens and wondered: am I living or distracting myself from living? In Emergency, Break Glass adapts Friedrich Nietzsche's passionate quest for meaning into a world overwhelmed by "content." Written long before the advent of smartphones, Nietzsche's aphoristic philosophy advocated a fierce mastery of attention, a strict information diet, and a powerful connection to (...) the natural world. Drawing on Nietzsche's work, technology journalist Nate Anderson advocates for a life of goal-oriented, creative exertion as more meaningful than the "frictionless" leisure often promised by our devices. He rejects the simplicity of contemporary prescriptions like reducing screen time in favor of looking deeply at what truly matters to us, then finding ways to make our technological tools serve this vision. With a light touch suffused by humor, Anderson uncovers the impact of this "yes-saying" philosophy on his own life-and perhaps on yours. (shrink)

Marsilio Ficino’s view on ensoulment, which can be extrapolated from his critique of natal astrology, relies on the relations of metaphysical proportion between the different levels of life and being which are central to Platonic philosophy. Drawing primarily on Plotinus, Ficino describes the emergence of life in the embryo as a process in which the World Soul is the true agent. For him, the ‘human nature’ that is present in the developing embryo attracts into the mother’s womb the seed of (...) ‘human nature’ which is present in the World Soul’s vegetative power. Once channelled into the womb, the World Soul’s vegetative power animates the embryo’s body. Now endowed with organic life, the embryo becomes irresistibly attractive to the rational soul, which in this way is drawn down to it and becomes embodied. For Ficino, the moment when ‘rational’ ensoulment happens is completely irrelevant to prefiguring one’s life path, contrary to what was claimed by natal astrology. Nevertheless, it leaves an important mark on one’s physio-psychological makeup. (shrink)

Explores the possiblity and process of evolution beyond the standard and established scientific principles.

The third world war -- Planetary emergency -- The neo-eugenic world state -- Robotics & virtual reality -- The Persian Gulf of the 21st-century -- Aryan Imperium (Iran-Shahr) -- The Indo-European world order.

We discuss the concept of emergence, and try to show that it is one of the most significant issues in the study of complex living systems. We stress particularly that emergent properties possess a specific causal power, which is not reducible to the power of their constituents. The emergence of physiological functions is profoundly related to the self-organized dynamics of biological systems. The increasing complexity of cellular and organismal activity favors the emergence of novelties and the integration of the (...) active parts into an autonomous whole. (shrink)

During and after the Second World War, public intellectuals in Britain and the United States grappled with concerns about the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty, and the decline of the imperial system. Without using the term 'globalization,' they identified a shift toward technological, economic, cultural, and political interconnectedness and developed a 'globalist' ideology to reflect this new postwar reality. The Emergence of Globalism examines the competing visions of world order that shaped these debates and led to the development (...) of globalism as a modern political concept. Shedding critical light on this neglected chapter in the history of political thought, Or Rosenboim describes how a transnational network of globalist thinkers emerged from the traumas of war and expatriation in the 1940s and how their ideas drew widely from political philosophy, geopolitics, economics, imperial thought, constitutional law, theology, and philosophy of science. She presents compelling portraits of Raymond Aron, Owen Lattimore, Lionel Robbins, Barbara Wootton, Friedrich Hayek, Lionel Curtis, Richard McKeon, Michael Polanyi, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Maritain, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. G. Wells, and others. Rosenboim shows how the globalist debate they embarked on sought to balance the tensions between a growing recognition of pluralism on the one hand and an appreciation of the unity of humankind on the other."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

The essays included in this book break new ground in the philosophy of reason by situating rationality - logical theory, ontology, first philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics - in a global context and tapping the global essence of natural reason. The essays formulate and resolve a fundamental problem in the human condition which has not been adequately dealt with: how discourse between two profoundly different worlds is possible. The formulation and solution of this vital human concern requires the clarification of the (...) universal logos in natural reason - the universal logic which is the common ground between worlds. The essays open the way to the emerging frontier of global reason in expanding the foundations of logic, ontology, hermeneutical practice and the discourse of philosophy in a global context. This calls for a paradigm shift in rational practice from egocentric reason to dialogical or global reason. (shrink)

This thesis develops a detailed account of the emergence of for all practical purposes continuous, quasi-classical world histories from the discontinuous, stochastic micro dynamics of Minimal Bohmian Mechanics (MBM). MBM is a non-relativistic quantum theory. It results from excising the guiding equation from standard Bohmian Mechanics (BM) and reinterpreting the quantum equilibrium hypothesis as a stochastic guidance law for the random actualization of configurations of Bohmian particles. On MBM, there are no continuous trajectories linking up individual configurations. Instead, individual configurations (...) are actualized independently of each other, carving out the decoherence-induced branching structure of the universal wave function. Yet, by contrast to the Everett interpretation, branches of the universal wave function are not actualized in parallel, i.e. all at the same time. Rather, world branches, on MBM, are actualized sequentially. -/- For an introduction to MBM, the transition from BM to MBM is described, and their empirical equivalence is established. I present the conditions under which MBM can be classified as a primitive ontology (PO) theory, regarded as crucial for the acceptance of a theory as Bohmian by many proponents of BM. While rendering MBM compatible with the PO approach, it must not fall prey to the problem of communication, arising from the two-space reading of BM. -/- The issue of temporal solipsism, identified by Bell as a serious problem for his “Everett (?) theory” – the historic predecessor of MBM – is discussed. I argue that Barbour’s time capsule approach does not provide a satisfactory solution. In particular, his adopting a more than minimal psychophysical parallelism between brain processes and experience of macroscopic change is argued to be reasonable in light of our current best neuroscience, yet problematic for theories relying solely on time capsules, understood as highly structured, individual, internally static configurations. As a solution, I introduce worlds, and world histories, as key concepts in providing a link between MBM’s micro dynamics and macroscopic phenomena. Worlds, other than time capsules, are coarse-grained regions in phase- or configuration space, defined as sets of possible micro states satisfying a relation of sufficient similarity from a macroscopic perspective, with respect to a given micro state. Hence, worlds may overlap. -/- I argue that worlds thus construed are a reasonable option for replacing the disjoint macro regions of phase space, resulting from the usual way of partitioning phase space in the standard framework of Boltzmannian statistical mechanics. This move solves the issue of discontinuous change of macro variables upon the micro state crossing the boundary between different macro regions. -/- I adapt this move for MBM’s discontinuous micro dynamics in configuration space. Issues revolving around the microscopic-macroscopic distinction, particle identity, impenetrability and haecceity in light of the desideratum of particle number conservation, etc., are discussed. I provide a detailed explanation of how overlapping worlds in MBM form world histories, thereby linking up macroscopically distinct worlds. Thus, the problem of temporal solipsism is resolved in a way that is compatible with a more than minimal psychophysical parallelism. (shrink)

Argues that truth, moral right, political right, and aesthetic value may be understood as arising out of a naturalist account of humanity, if naturalism is rightly conceived.

Biochemists investigating the problem of the vitamins in the early years of the twentieth century were working without an object, as such. Although they had developed a fairly elaborate idea of the character of the ‘vitamine’ and its role in metabolism, vitamins were not yet biochemical objects, but rather ‘functional ascriptions’ and ‘explanatory devices’. I suggest that an early instance of the changing status of the object of the ‘vitamins’ can be found in their stabilization, through the course of World (...) War I, as bio-political objects for the British and Allied war effort. Vitamins emerged as players, active agents, in Britain’s wartime bio-political problems of food distribution and population health and because of this they became increasingly real as bio-political objects, even prior to their isolation as bio-chemical molecules. I suggest that the materiality of our biology has agency in the development of political regimes and schemes. (shrink)

In " Re-Emergence" he explores the question of conscious properties arising from brute, unthinking matter, making the case that there is no equally plausible non-emergent alternative.

The model of world order has changed dramatically in the postwar era from the bipolarity between the US and Soviet Russia that characterized the Cold War, to a period of unipolarity after the fall...

The symmetrization postulates of quantum mechanics (symmetry for bosons, antisymmetry for fermions) are usually taken to entail that quantum particles of the same kind (e.g., electrons) are all in exactly the same state and therefore indistinguishable in the strongest possible sense. These symmetrization postulates possess a general validity that survives the classical limit, and the conclusion seems therefore unavoidable that even classical particles of the same kind must all be in the same state—in clear conflict with what we know about (...) classical particles. In this article we analyze the origin of this paradox. We shall argue that in the classical limit classical particles emerge, as new entities that do not correspond to the “particle indices” defined in quantum mechanics. Put differently, we show that the quantum mechanical symmetrization postulates do not pertain to particles, as we know them from classical physics, but rather to indices that have a merely formal significance. This conclusion raises the question of whether many discussions in the literature about the status of identical quantum particles have not been misguided. (shrink)

The paper aims to show how Japanese theoretical physics groups emerged between the First and Second World Wars. First, it will be argued that by the early 1930s the Japanese physics community had been predominantly inclined towards experimental physics and that several academic, cultural, and social factors had worked for the maintenance of this status quo. Next, how the situation slowly changed during the early 1930s, and how the young theoretical physicists successfully established a bridgehead during the mid-1930s will be (...) analysed. Four different elements are suggested: the dazzling success of quantum mechanics and its spread in the West; the dominance of experimental physics and its effect on the university system; cultural/social influence; and the emergence of the research network. (shrink)

Are evolution and creation irreconcilably opposed? Is 'intelligent design' theory an unhappy compromise? Is there another way of approaching the present-day divide between religious and so-called secular views of the origins of life? Jacob Klapwijk offers a philosophical analysis of the relation of evolutionary biology to religion, and addresses the question of whether the evolution of life is exclusively a matter of chance or is better understood as including the notion of purpose. Writing from a Christian point of view, he (...) criticizes creationism and intelligent design theory as well as opposing reductive naturalism. He offers an alternative to both and an attempt to bridge the gap between them, via the idea of 'emergent evolution'. In this theory the process of evolution has an emergent or innovative character resulting in a living world of ingenious, multifaceted complexity. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 101-103.