A detailed multi-disciplinary analysis of Sudan in the post-colonial era with a consideration of possibilities for the future.

In a time in which an exuberant, trans-classical, non-trivial machine culture redesigns terminologies, remodels logics, produces new evidence, and reorganizes semantic resources, a new, neocybernetic regime of truth is taking shape. Many of our recent self-descriptions and theory formations are coined by our media-technological condition. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of Niklas Luhmann, especially in his inherent narrative of the history of rationality. This essay attempts to reconstruct Luhmann’s redescription of European rationality, especially the media- and (...) machine-historical conditions that remain apparent in Luhmann’s account. The decisive issue is that Luhmann’s history of rationality reveals the technological unconscious of systems theory and indeed the epochal imaginary it belongs to. With the help of the theories of machines developed by von Foerster, Simondon and Günther, Luhmann’s oeuvre must be read as probably the most striking conceptual edifice to emerge from what could be called the 20th-century’s epochal technological shift of meaning. (shrink)

For both Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, providing a philosophical account of the concept of number was a central goal, pursued along similar logicist lines. In the present paper, I want to focus on a particular aspect of their accounts: their definitions, or re-constructions, of the natural numbers as equivalence classes of equinumerous classes. In other words, I want to examine what is often called the ‘Frege-Russell conception of the natural numbers’ or, more briefly, the Frege-Russell numbers. My main concern (...) will be to determine the precise sense in which this conception was, or could be, meant to constitute an analysis. I will be mostly concerned with Frege’s views on the matter; but Russell will come up along the way, for illustration and comparison, as will some recent neo-Fregean suggestions. (shrink)

All thinking is done by our brains. They are also responsible for our feelings of love and hate, and for our ability to make and appreciate art. But there is a popular reluctance to credit the brain with some of these so-called higher functions. We have difficulty associating our appreciation of beauty with electrical impulses propagating down nerve fibres. We don't see love as residing in the organ that is hidden away inside the skull, where it sits, shaped like a (...) boxing glove, grey, motionless, and seemingly inert. Instead, the icon of love is that fist-sized muscle in your chest. (shrink)

Our brains are characterized by sensory pathways that are highly reflexive, allowing higher cortical centres to control neural activity patterns at peripheral sensory areas. This feature is characterized as an internal sketchpad and involves recursive interactions between central symbols and peripheral images. The process is assumed to be the fundamental mechanism underlying most cognitive functions. The paper attempts to portray the beginnings of art and language as natural extensions of these pre-existing internal processes, made possible by the greatly enlarged human (...) prefrontal cortex. It views these highly social activities as originating in subjective, private discourse between the emerging self and its externalized expressions. (shrink)

Cher Monsieur Forsthoff,C’est seulement maintenant que je viens de lire votre article à l’occasion du 70e anniversaire de Carl Schmitt, paru dans Christ und Welt le 17 juillet 1958. Je crois qu’avec cet article vous n’avez rendu service ni à Carl Schmitt ni à vous-même. Mais tous ceux qui ont une attitude critique envers l’œuvre de Carl..