Interdisciplinary courses on science, engineering and society have been successfully established in two cases, at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, and at the University of Hamburg, Germany. In both cases there were institutional and perceptual barriers that had to be overcome in the primarily disciplinary departments. The ingredients of success included a clear vision of interdisciplinary themes and didactics, and the exploitation of institutional opportunities. Haldun M. Ozaktas in Ankara used the dynamics of an accreditation process to establish courses on engineering (...) and society. At the University of Hamburg the introduction of optional courses into all curricula allowed for the establishment of a seminar series on physics and society, as well as on peace education and peace building. Both of these approaches have a weakness in common: the courses can disappear once their initiators have left, unless the interdisciplinary themes are integrated into compulsory core curricula. (shrink)

In a well-known text called ‘The Communist Hypothesis’, first published in 2007, the renowned philosopher Alain Badiou breathed fresh life into the idea of communism as an intellectual representation that provides a critical perspective on existing politics and offers a systemic alternative to capitalism. Now, in the course of this wide-ranging conversation with Peter Engelmann, Alain Badiou explains why he continues to value the idea of communism against the background of current social crises and despite negative historical experiences. From the (...) anticipation of a communism without a state to the problem of the concept of democracy and an analysis of capitalism as a system, the two thinkers discuss the key political issues of our time. Whilst explaining his political philosophy, Badiou also reflects on current socio-political developments such as the turmoil in the Middle East and the situation in China. This compelling dialogue is both a highly topical contribution to the question of how we might organize our societies differently and an accessible introduction to Badiou's philosophical thinking. (shrink)

Since its inception in the 1970's, critical realism has grown to address a broad range of subjects, including economics, philosophy, science, and religion. It has also gone through a number of key evolutions that have changed its direction, and seen it develop into a complex and mature branch of philosophy. Critical Realism: A Brief Introduction, is the first book to look back over the entire field of critical realism in one concise and accessible volume. As the originator and chief exponent (...) of CR, Roy Bhaskar draws from his experience of countless introductory lectures, seminars, workshops and courses to give a definitive and compelling account of this increasingly influential, international and multi-disciplinary approach. Its eight chapters examine the following topics: Transcendental Realism and the Philosophy of Science Critical Naturalism and the Philosophy of Social Science Explanatory Critique and Ethics Language and Critical Discourse Analysis The Development of Critical Realism Interdisciplinarity and Applied Critical Realism Modernity, Theories of Science and Metacritique The Advantages of Critical Realism Everything from the definition of CR and its applicability to the social sciences, to explanations of dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-reality are addressed in detail, making this the essential introduction for students of CR at all levels. (shrink)

Dictionary of Critical Realism fills a vital gap in the literature. The dictionary seeks to redress the problem of accessibility by explaining all the main concepts and key developments. It has more than 500 entires on these themes, with contributions from many leading critical realists, and is thoroughly cross-referenced. However, this text does not stop at the elucidation of concepts. It incorporates surveys of critical realist work and prospects in more than fifty areas of study across the humanities and social (...) sciences, thereby demonstrating the appropriate use and possibilities of the concepts in action."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

What can the manifestations of schizophrenia and other mental disorders reveal about classical notions of philosophy such as thought, perception, self, and rationality? Philosophers, psychiatrists, and clinical psychologists got together to compare notes at Harvard in October 1989, and presented these 16 papers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Sie führt zurück zu etwas, das es im Unterschiede zu dem Nichts tatsächlich gibt, zu dem genuinen Individuum namens "Zeit".

A Karger 'Publishing Highlights 1890-2015' title These three volumes are the revised and enlarged edition of a classic work hailed as bringing a new perspective to knowledge of the mind-brain relationship. In the tradition of highest scholarship, the author uses both neurological and epistemological approaches to provide a unique interpretation of the relationship of brain and consciousness.

Walter Benjamin called Felix Noeggerath (1885-1960) the “universal genius” or simply “genius.” In his 1916 treatise “Synthesis and the Concept of System in Philosophy,” Noeggerath offered a reading of Kant’s concept of synthesis in an original and radical manner. He dares to confront thought with the incommensurability of atheoretical Being. The linkage between logic and incommensurability is what he calls rationalism. In contradiction to this claim, any attempt to exclude atheoretical Being from the realm of logic is anti-rationalism. Noeggerath elaborates (...) on this in a penetrating discussion and modification of epistemological positions, especially those of the Marburg School and Hermann Cohen. Noeggerath constructs a notion of the philosophical system with the help of Kant’s three tables of transcendental judgements, categories, and principles in the Critique of Pure Reason. Each of these tables is known to contain 12 individual elements in four groups of three each. For the systematic division, the third group under the title “Relation” is decisive. Noeggerath assigns one systemic part to each kind of relation: “For it is to be connected: the categorical relation with ethics, the hypothetical with logic, and the disjunctive with aesthetics.” As a result the classical sequence, beginning with logic, is changed. “The order of the limbs is: a) ethics, b) logic, c) aesthetics.” In Noeggerath’s logical outline, specific mathematical concepts of meta-geometry play a decisive role. According to him, philosophy can resemble their preciseness in building a viable concept of the infinite. The prerequisite is that philosophy does not itself behave mathematically but proceeds along its own path in critical distance to the “specialized, act-kindred thinking” of the mathematician. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen's Logic of Pure Knowledge and G. W. F. Hegel's Science of Logic each use in their way the means of thought of negation and contradiction to unfold the philosophical dynamic: a fragile interplay between self-endangerment and self-preservation of thought. Here, the proximity and difference of the two authors are extended. The proximity lies in methodological negativism. The difference is in the significance of the principle of continuity. According to Cohen and Hegel as well, thinking proceeds exclusively, as Kant (...) called it, synthetically. The exclusion of contradiction, limited to analytical judgments, has only marginal significance. But the commonality does not eliminate the differences. As Hegel puts it, contradiction is a principle of mediation and finally results in "self-dissolution"; it carries within itself a direction of logical "reconciliation." Per Cohen, contradiction is a principle of "annihilation" of approaches to a determination that threatens any form of "identity." The turn Hegel put in contradiction itself, regarding in it a unity of positivity and negativity, has no direct counterpart in Cohen. Nevertheless, for him, too, the "judgment of contradiction" becomes the active basis of all cognitive thought. By exercising a contradiction-destroying "activity," the judgment of contradiction "protects," indeed "generates," the real possibility of cognition. The annihilation of the non-identical sets free the fundamental "judgment of origin" with which cognition finds its beginning. The principle of continuity taken over from Leibniz corresponds to it. Just this principle has now again no direct correspondence with Hegel. (shrink)

Cohen, Buber, and Rosenzweig were eminent figures in what Buber called a “Jewish renaissance.” I will limit myself to their relation to two basic Jewish concepts: teaching, i.e., the theoretical, theological part of the tradition, and law, i.e., the practical part. Historically, my focus is on those approximately 20 years between Cohen’s 1904 essay on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion in their Interrelation, and Rosenzweig’s 1923 essay The Builders, i.e., his response to Buber’s newly published Speeches on Judaism. Almost all (...) of the main philosophical works of our three authors fall into this period: Cohen’s System of Philosophy (1902-1912), his Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism (1919), Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption (1921), and Buber’s I and Thou (1923). To think, to feel and to do one’s own authentically without excluding oneself from the general culture, or more strongly: to accomplish the general, even the most general at all, precisely in the realization of one’s own, is for all three philosophers the high demand of their Jewish self-interpretation. None of them has devoted his life’s work exclusively to “Jewish” issues, least of all Hermann Cohen. But each of them is under the question of how it is possible to write in German about the general human and just in this to be unambiguously Jewish. (shrink)

The volume is dedicated to the work of Chajim H. Steinthal (1823-1899), who in the second half of the nineteenth century was a prominent philosophical linguist and also an eminent teacher of the "Science of Judaism." Together with Moritz Lazarus he founded the discipline of "Voelkerpsychologie" ("psychology of nations").

In the Fall of 2007, ten neuroscientists published a proposal for an interdisciplinary research initiative, the Decade of the Mind, that would focus on four.

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 1 Heft: 2 Seiten: 298-324.

Protestant documents conceming the status of the human embryo are empirically founded on biological observations and their interpretation. In Germany the beginning of individual human life is the end of the pre-core-state, the British embryo begins at the end of phase of possible sp1itting into twins. Both argue that the once manifest human embryo carries the full human dignity. As definitions thus no Ionger can plead innocent, additional factors of the argument have to be revealed.