Martin Buber believed that life's deepest truth lies in human relationships. In this classic work he puts this belief into practice, applying it to the concrete problems of contemporary society.

Abstract“Sign stimuli” elicit specific patterns of behavior when an organism's motivation is appropriate. In the toad, visually released prey-catching involves orienting toward the prey, approaching, fixating, and snapping. For these action patterns to be selected and released, the prey must be recognized and localized in space. Toads discriminate prey from nonprey by certain spatiotemporal stimulus features. The stimulus-response relations are mediated by innate releasing mechanisms (RMs) with recognition properties partly modifiable by experience. Striato-pretecto-tectal connectivity determines the RM's recognition and localization (...) properties, whereas medialpallio-thalamo-tectal circuitry makes the system sensitive to changes in internal state and to prior history of exposure to stimuli. RMs encode the diverse stimulus conditions referring to the same prey object through different combinations of “specialized” tectal neurons, involving cells selectively tuned to prey features. The prey-selective neurons express the outcome of information processing in functional units consisting of interconnected cells. Excitatory and inhibitory interactions among feature-sensitive tectal and pretectal neurons specify the perceptual operations involved in distinguishing the prey from its background, selecting its features, and discriminating it from predators. Other connections indicate stimulus location. The results of these analyses are transmitted by specialized neurons projecting from the tectum to bulbar/spinal motor systems, providing a sensorimotor interface. Specific combinations of such projective neurons – mediating feature- and space-related messages – form “command releasing systems” that activate corresponding motor pattern generators for appropriate prey-catching action patterns. (shrink)

Consider waiting in lines. On the one hand, they offer an ad hoc illustration of how the scarcity of commodities relates to supply and demand. In this respect, they recall what neoclassical economics posit as the general law of the market. On the other hand, queuing is often referred to as a basic form of social interaction among those who wait. In this perspective, waiting is not about individuals waiting for something, but about waiting together, social gatherings, collectives, or communities. (...) On a more conceptual level, L’empire de la valeur. Refonder l’économie pushes these opposing positions to their extremes and clearly opts for the latter . Rejecting neoclassical frameworks for treating scarcity as a reality prior to exchange it holds that value results from a social process . As indicated by the book’s subtitle, this is not a minor operation. According to André Orléan, economist (Paris School of Economic .. (shrink)

The discovery of “molecular chaperones” has dramatically changed our concept of cellular protein folding. Rather than folding spontaneously, most newly synthesized polypeptide chains seem to acquire their native conformation in a reaction mediated by these versatile helper proteins. Understanding the structure and function of molecular chaperones is likely to yield useful applications for medicine and biotechnology in the future.

In discussing the normative implications of the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics has mostly focused on the duties of doctors to their patients. This focus neglects an important normative dimension of the doctorpatient- relationship, namely the duties of patients to doctors. Only few authors have discussed the content and ground of the moral duties of patients, and each of these accounts are wanting in some way. This paper discusses patients’ duties and argues that patients have a relationship-dependent obligation to cooperate with (...) the doctor, because doctors have a morally justified interest in fulfilling their moral role obligations as doctors, and by not cooperating, patients make it more difficult for doctors to fulfill their moral obligations. In some cases, failing to cooperate might even create an avoidable moral dilemma for the doctor. (shrink)

Let κ < λ be regular uncountable cardinals. Using a finite support iteration (in fact a matrix iteration) of ccc posets we obtain the consistency of b = a = κ < s = λ. If μ is a measurable cardinal and μ < κ < λ, then using similar techniques we obtain the consistency of b = κ < a = s = λ.

We give characterizations for the sentences "Every $\Sigma^1_2$-set is measurable" and "Every $\Delta^1_2$-set is measurable" for various notions of measurability derived from well-known forcing partial orderings.

We show the consistency of ${\frak o} <{\frak d}$ where ${\frak o}$ is the size of the smallest off-branch family, and ${\frak d}$ is as usual the dominating number. We also prove the consistency of ${\frak b} < {\frak a}$ with large continuum. Here, ${\frak b}$ is the unbounding number, and ${\frak a}$ is the almost disjointness number.

Aims to challenge Kant from the point of view of Kierkegaard's interpretation of autonomy.

La crise écologique fait sentir la nécessité d'élaborer une éthique de la nature. Elle provoque l'affrontement, en particulier en Allemagne, d'une tendance philosophique, qui fonde le devoir de l'homme envers la nature sur le propre bien de l'homme, et d'une tendance théologique, qui fonde ce devoir sur l'immanence de Dieu dans la nature. Il semble qu'on puisse trouver chez Simone Weil une autre voie, esthétique, qui éviterait les insuffisances ou les dangers de ces deux tendances: la perception de la beauté (...) du monde, appréhendée comme trace de la présence du Dieu absent. (shrink)

Occidental philosophy tends to subordinate the individual to the general. The mystical marxism of Ernst Bloch seems to value the individual more than does orthodox marxism. This article shows that after all Bloch falls in line with the tendency of occidental philosophy.

Polish translation of "Kleine Geschichte der abendländischen Metaphysik: Von Platon bis Hegel". The history of Western metaphysics is being unfold on the basis of nine outstanding philosophers. For ancient philosophy: Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus; for medieval philosophy: Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham; for the modern period: Descartes, Kant and Hegel. The final chapter outlines some prominent opponents of metaphysics in the 19th/20th Century (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger). Metaphysics being a fundamental philosophical discipline, this book can also be (...) read as an introduction to philosophy as such. (shrink)

The article deals with the question of whether human beings are religious by nature. The answer is based on the idea of relating religion to the structure of human desire understood as essentially a desire for absolute perfection. Religion is defined as a relation to a non-sensual reality superior to the human realm which enables human beings to find orientation in life. The relationship of religion to human desire consists in its being an expression of a natural desire for a (...) perfection extending to the whole of reality. -/- -/- Der Aufsatz befasst sich mit der Frage, ob der Mensch ein von Natur auf Religion angelegtes Wesen ist. Zu ihrer Beantwortung wird das Phänomen der Religion mit der Struktur menschlichen Verlangens als einem grundsätzlichen Verlangen nach Vollkommenheit schlechthin in Verbindung gebracht. Religion wird bestimmt als die Beziehung des Menschen zu einer sich den Sinnen entziehenden, ihm werthaft übergeordneten Wirklichkeit, die Lebensorientierung bietet. Was das Verhältnis zum menschlichen Verlangen betrifft, erweist die so bestimmte Religion sich als Ausdruck einer zur Natur des Menschen gehörigen Sehnsucht nach wirklichkeitsumfassender Vollkommenheit. (shrink)

Der Status quo in zeitgenossischen pluralistischen Gesellschaften konfrontiert die politische Philosophie mit dem Problem, eine Staatslegitimation zu formulieren, die fur alle Burger trotz konfligierender Interessen und Wertvorstellungen uberzeugend ist. Im ersten Teil wird Thomas Hobbes klassische Vertragstheorie, die Spieltheorie sowie James Buchanans okonomische Vertragstheorie kritisch diskutiert. Die im zweiten Teil entworfene kontextbezogene Vertragstheorie analysiert eine Gesellschaft, in der Egoisten, moderate Altruisten und moralische Idealisten interagieren. Sie zeigt, dass ein Verfassungsstaat fur fast alle Burger interessenkompatibel ist, weil er Interaktionsprobleme vermeidet, die (...) im Naturzustand, einem Sklavenstaat, einer Moraldiktatur und einem Minimalstaat auftreten wurden.". (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

Let A[ω]ω be a maximal almost disjoint family and assume P is a forcing notion. Say A is P-indestructible if A is still maximal in any P-generic extension. We investigate P-indestructibility for several classical forcing notions P. In particular, we provide a combinatorial characterization of P-indestructibility and, assuming a fragment of MA, we construct maximal almost disjoint families which are P-indestructible yet Q-destructible for several pairs of forcing notions . We close with a detailed investigation of iterated Sacks indestructibility.

It is relatively consistent with ZFC that every countable $FU_{fin} $ space of weight N₁ is metrizable. This provides a partial answer to a question of G. Gruenhage and P. Szeptycki [GS1].

In his book “Schiller as Philosopher”, Frederick Beiser laments that “contemporary Kant scholars have been intent on ignoring him. If they know anything at all about Schiller, it is only as the author of an epigram satirizing Kant”. Therefore, Beiser calls us “to consider Schiller as a philosopher, to reconstruct and appraise the arguments of his philosophical writings” (Beiser, 2005, p. vii). In this paper, I shall argue that it is Schiller's conception of freedom of the will as “heautonomy” that (...) stands behind his critique and modification of Kant's ethics. However, the systematic significance of Schiller's theory of freedom is not obvious. Its argumentative structure must first be reconstructed—as Beiser has demanded—because it is concealed by an esthetic discourse. A reconstruction of Schiller's theory of freedom shows that he contrasts his concept of heautonomy as individual self‐determination with the Kantian concept of an autonomy or autocracy of reason by the universal moral law. Schiller's own philosophical contribution to the debate on freedom after Kant must therefore not be understood as a mere esthetic balancing and softening of Kant's ethical rigorism. Rather, it shows serious transformations of Kant's approach, which justifies understanding it as a critical step beyond Kant's theory of the autonomy of reason. (shrink)

Den Ausgangspunkt der folgenden Überlegungen bildet das Modell der Gabe von Marcel Mauss, in dem die Verausgabung und Verschwendung von immensen Reichtümern erwähnt wird. Georges Bataille radikalisiert die Thesen von Mauss, der immer wieder auf die Nützlichkeit der Gabe hinweist, wenn er die Bedeutung von Lebensbereichen betont, die jenseits von Kalkül, Produktion, Gewinn und Erhaltung angesiedelt sind. Diese sind Bereiche der Erfahrung eines maximal intensiven Lebens – völlig zweckfrei, völlig dem Augenblick und völlig der Zerstörung hingegeben. Auch die Gabentheorie von (...) Jacques Derrida soll in keiner Beziehung ein Tauschverhältnis, sondern das Gegenteil, nämlich das A-Ökonomische, das Überschießende, die Verausgabung sein. Prototyp einer totalen Verausgabung ist die Sonne und die Sonnenenergie. Die Sonne gibt ohne Kalkulation, ohne Gegenleistung. Die Sonne rechnet nicht und sie erzeugt gleichzeitig ungeheure Energiequanten. Inwiefern kann dieses Modell anthropologische Bedeutung gewinnen? (shrink)

The question of what characterizes feelings of being alive is a puzzling and controversial one. Are we dealing with a unique affective phenomenon or can it be integrated into existing classifications of emotions and moods? What might be the natural basis for such feelings? What could be considered their specifically human dimension? These issues are addressed by researchers from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind and emotions, psychology, and history of art. This volume contains original papers on the topic of (...) feelings of being alive by Fiorella Battaglia, Eva-Maria Engelen, Joerg Fingerhut, Thomas Fuchs, Alice Holzhey-Kunz, Matthias Jung, Tanja Klemm, Riccardo Manzotti, Sabine Marienberg, Matthew Ratcliffe, Arbogast Schmitt, Jan Slaby, and Achim Stephan. (shrink)

Diese Einleitung skizziert neben einigen begrifflichen Vorbemerkungen zwei Themenfelder, nämlich den Müll und eine Gruppe von Menschen, die in der Soziologie „die Überflüssigen“ genannt werden. Einerseits wird deutlich, dass der Müll die Rückseite der materiellen Kultur in ihrer Vielfältigkeit darstellt und dass die Geschichte der materiellen Kultur immer auch eine Geschichte dessen ist, was Menschen hinter sich lassen, wessen sie sich entledigen und was sie entsorgen. Andererseits macht die soziologische Ungleichheitsforschung deutlich, dass die „Überflüssigkeit“ von Menschen in einen Zusammenhang mit (...) dem Problem der sozialen Exklusion und damit mit gezielter Ausgrenzung und funktionaler Ausschließung gebracht werden kann. (shrink)

We investigate which filters onωcan contain towers, that is, a modulo finite descending sequence without any pseudointersection. We prove the following results:Many classical examples of nice tall filters contain no towers.It is consistent that tall analytic P-filters contain towers of arbitrary regular height.It is consistent that all towers generate nonmeager filters, in particular Borel filters do not contain towers.The statement “Every ultrafilter contains towers.” is independent of ZFC.Furthermore, we study many possible logical implications between the existence of towers in filters, (...) inequalities between cardinal invariants of filters $,${\rm{co}}{{\rm{f}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$,${\rm{no}}{{\rm{n}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$, and${\rm{co}}{{\rm{v}}^{\rm{*}}}\left$), and the existence of Luzin type families, that is, if${\cal F}$is a filter then${\cal X} \subseteq {[\omega ]^\omega }$is an${\cal F}$-Luzin family if$\left\{ {X \in {\cal X}:|X \setminus F| = \omega } \right\}$is countable for every$F \in {\cal F}$. (shrink)

This paper tries to argue the thesis that the painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez contains a reflection about art, which deals in the medium of painting with three of the most important problems of aesthetics: the problem of the artist, the artwork and its reception. In order to prove this thesis, the paper analyses the picture with the assumption that Velázquez worked in front of a mirror. Furthermore, the aesthetic problems detected in the painting are developed in terms of (...) a philosophy of art, concluding with the question of how mirroring can be considered a model for the structure of the artwork in general. (shrink)

The notion of an indirect speech act is at the very heart of cognitive pragmatics, yet, after nearly 50 years of orthodox (Searlean) speech act theory, it remains largely unclear how this notion can be explicated in a proper way. In recent years, two debates about indirect speech acts have stood out. First, a debate about the Searlean idea that indirect speech acts constitute a simultaneous realization of a secondary and a primary act. Second, a debate about the reasons for (...) the use of indirect speech acts, in particular about whether this reason is to be seen in strategic advantages and/or observation of politeness demands. In these debates, the original pragmatic conception of sentence types as indicators of illocutionary force seems to have been getting lost. Here, I go back to the seemingly outdated “literal force hypothesis” (see Levinson 1983: 263–264) and point out how it is still relevant for cognitive pragmatics. (shrink)

Leonid Levin showed that every algorithm computing a function has an optimal inverter. Recently, we applied his result in various contexts: existence of optimal acceptors, existence of hard sequences for algorithms and proof systems, proofs of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, analysis of the complexity of the clique problem assuming the nonuniform Exponential Time Hypothesis. We present all these applications here. Even though a simple diagonalization yields Levin’s result, we believe that it is worthwhile to be aware of the explicit result. The (...) purpose of this survey is to convince the reader of our view. (shrink)

Brendle, J., H. Judah and S. Shelah, Combinatorial properties of Hechler forcing, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 59 185–199. Using a notion of rank for Hechler forcing we show: assuming ωV1 = ωL1, there is no real in V[d] which is eventually different from the reals in L[ d], where d is Hechler over V; adding one Hechler real makes the invariants on the left-hand side of Cichoń's diagram equal ω1 and those on the right-hand side equal 2ω and (...) produces a maximal almost disjoint family of subsets of ω of size ω1; there is no perfect set of random reals over V in V[ r][ d], where r is random over V and d Hechler over V[r], thus answering a question of the first and second authors. (shrink)