"Ist der Mensch in seinem Denken und Handeln ein geistig freies Wesen oder steht er unter dem Zwange einer rein naturgesetzlichen ehernen Notwendigkeit? Auf wenige Fragen ist so viel Scharfsinn gewendet worden als auf diese. Die Idee der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens hat warme Anhänger wie hartnäckige Gegner in reicher Zahl gefunden. Ein und dasselbe Ding wird hier gleich oft für das kostbarste Gut der Menschheit wie für die ärgste Illusion erklärt." Rudolf Steiner (Gröls-Klassiker - Edition Werke der Weltliteratur).

Decisions in healthcare are made against the background of cultural and philosophical definitions of disease, sickness and illness. These concepts or definitions affect both health policy and research , as well as individual encounters between patients and physicians . It is therefore necessary for evidence-based medicine to consider whether any of the definitions underlying research prior to the hierarchisation of knowledge are indeed compatible with its own epistemological principles.

ABSTRACT This article deals with a cluster of moral problems raised by the new techniques of human fertilisation. It is concerned primarily with the putative rights of embryos brought into being as a by‐product of the practice of in vitro fertilisation. In this connection it investigates the basis for the ascription of rights to entities and asserts the view that consciousness is a pre‐requisite for the possession of rights. It draws attention to the speciesism implicit in attitudes of some of (...) those who have contributed to the debate. It also examines other issues briefly, raising, for example, the question whether children by AID (or by in vitro fertilisation by donor) must be denied access to information about their genetic fathers; and looking at objections to the new techniques based on the so‐called unnaturalness of the procedures involved. (shrink)

Relying on Husserl as well as on the reflections by Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne, Henry on Kandinsky and Deleuze on Bacon, this essay sketches some basic problems that arise in a phenomenological account of non-figurative painting. An investigation of the distinction between phenomenological and pictorial perception, of the transposition of the painter’s mode of perception into a painted image, and of the expressive force of paintings inevitably confronts one with the enigma of the appearing of something invisible. The essay proceeds in (...) three steps. The first step describes pictorial perception in terms of a ‘seeing according to’. Such a mode of perception pays attention to visual ambiguities, to the ‘gaze of things’ and to the conditions of visibility that are ordinarily overlooked. The second step moves on to the issue of the transposition of a pictorial perception in a painted image. Deleuze’s account of “manipulated chance” proves to be very helpful here. In the final step, Henry’s and Deleuze’s emphasis on the painting’s expression of totally invisible ‘forces’ is discussed. (shrink)

APA PsycNET abstract: This is the first volume of a two-volume work on Probability and Induction. Because the writer holds that probability logic is identical with inductive logic, this work is devoted to philosophical problems concerning the nature of probability and inductive reasoning. The author rejects a statistical frequency basis for probability in favor of a logical relation between two statements or propositions. Probability "is the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis (or conclusion) on the basis of some given evidence (...) (or premises)." Furthermore, all principles and theorems of inductive logic are analytic, and the entire system is to be constructed by means of symbolic logic and semantic methods. This means that the author confines himself to the formalistic procedures of word and symbol systems. The resulting sentence or language structures are presumed to separate off logic from all subjectivist or psychological elements. Despite the abstractionism, the claim is made that if an inductive probability system of logic can be constructed it will have its practical application in mathematical statistics, and in various sciences. 16-page bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here is the Rudolf Carnap's famous principle of tolerance by which everyone is free to mix and match the rules of ...

This is identical with the first edition (see 21: 2716) except for the addition of a Supplement containing 5 previously published articles and the bringing of the bibliography (now 73 items) up to date. The 5 added articles present clarifications or modifications of views expressed in the first edition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism's most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature's Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late (...) capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx's ninteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism's blind faith in "natural law." However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and social phenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin's social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question. (shrink)

Since its publication fifty years ago, this work has established itself as a classic. It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises. In 1974 this book was revised and expanded, and since then it has continued to burnish Rudolf Arnheim's reputation as a groundbreaking theoretician in the fields of art and psychology.

From the contents: Philosophie, Politik und Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: zur Frage der Philosophie in Osterreich und Deutschland (B. Smith). - Facts, truths and the ontology of logical realism (H. Hochberg). - Franz Brentano und die Wiederentdeckung der Intentionalitat Richtigstellung herkommlicher Missverstandnisse und Missdeutungen (M. Antonelli). - Erneuerung der Philosophia Perennis: uber die ersten vier Habilitationsthesen Brentanos (W. Sauer). - Confessions of a Meinongian logician (D. Jacquette). - Lewis and Sylvan on noneism (A. Witherall). - What is it to compose a musical (...) work (M.E. Reicher).". (shrink)

This volume provides a valuable discussion of Husserl's lifelong project of the critique of science which makes no attempt to conflate the pre-World War I ...

Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can (...) try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. (shrink)

Architecture and urbanism seem to be »weak« disciplines, constantly struggling for a better understanding of their nature and disciplinary borders. The huge amount of metaphors appearing in the discourse of both not only reference to their creative nature but also indicate their weakness and the missing piece strengthening their own understanding: a definition of space for architecture and of city for urbanism. But using metaphors in this field implies a problem - though metaphors achieve to bring opposites together, there remains (...) the question how literal they can actually become in order to relate to these subjects properly. In this volume, several authors from various fields using different approaches discuss this question. (shrink)

Knapp sechs Jahre nach Rudolf Heinz' sechzigstem Geburtstag und dem auf dieses Ereignis ausgerichteten Erscheinen der Festschrift "Kontiguitäten. Texte-Festival für Rudolf Heinz" (Christoph Weismüller [Hg.] unter Mitarbeit von Ralf Bohn, Wien: Passagen 1997) folgt die Nachbearbeitung der "Kontiguitäten" und deren Produktion. Die Post-Skripts zum Texte-Festival für Rudolf Heinz setzen ein mit den Dokumenten der Feierlichkeit der Festschriftüberreichung: Laudatio, Geburtstagskomposition - inklusive Audio-CD -, Photographien der Festschriftübergabe. Unter dem topos Festschrift-Mechané folgt diesen Initialien die Korrespondenz von Heide Heinz (...) und Christoph Weismüller nebst notwendigen Paraphrasen und Hinweisen. Die Après nehmen einschlägige Kontiguitäts-Effekte auf, die mit der Fertigstellung der Festschrift, der Feierlichkeit der Übergabe, ihrer Distribution und ersten Nachbearbeitungen ihrer Konstitution einhergingen oder diesen folgten. Die Katamnese von Heide Heinz und Rudolf Heinz sowie weitere Korrespondenzen - Heide Heinz mit Ralf Bohn, Doris Dorner, Axel Schünemann; Rudolf Heinz mit Manfred Pohlen - finden sich als Zuträge ein. (shrink)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

Rudolf Arnheim has been known, since the publication of his groundbreaking _Art and Visual Perception_ in 1974, as an authority on the psychological interpretation of the visual arts. Two anniversary volumes celebrate the landmark anniversaries of his works in 2009. In _The Power of the Center_, Arnheim uses a wealth of examples to consider the factors that determine the overall organization of visual form in works of painting, sculpture, and architecture. _The Dynamics of Architectural Form_ explores the unexpected perceptual (...) consequences of architecture with Arnheim's customary clarity and precision. (shrink)

In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book _Film_ by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as _Film as Art._ Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional (...) depth. (shrink)

'My endeavour in these pages is to explain the main features of the method of philosophizing which we, the Vienna Circle, use, and by using try to develop further. It is the method of the logical analysis of science, or more precisely, of the syntactical analysis of scientific language.... The purpose of the book -- as of the lectures -- is to give a first impression of our method and of the direction of our questions and investigations to those who (...) are not yet acquainted with them.' -- From the Preface. (shrink)

A basic system of inductive logic; An axiomatic foundation for the logic of inductive generalization; A survey of inductive systems; On the condition of partial exchangeability; Representation theorems of the de finetti type; De finetti's generalizations of excahngeability; The structure of probabilities defined on first-order languages; A subjectivit's guide to objective chance.

Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can (...) try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. (shrink)

A portrait of scholastic approaches to a qualified disagreement of opinions, focusing on the antagonism of scholastic probabilism and anti-probabilism in the early modern era.

Clear, comprehensive, intermediate introduction to logical languages, applications of symbolic logic to physics, mathematics, biology.

Article III of the U.S. Constitution establishes an independent federal judiciary: federal courts constitute a separate branch of the national government, federal judges enjoy tenure during good behavior, and their salaries cannot be diminished while they hold office. The framers who drafted Article III in 1787 were not working from whole cloth. Rather, they were familiar with the preceding colonial and state practices, including those from New York. This essay provides a case study of New York's judicial history: the Dutch (...) period, 1621-1664; the Ducal proprietary period, 1664-1685; the Royal period, 1685-1776; and the early state period. As will be seen, New York—among the most significant of the original thirteen states—was a state groping towards a new ideal of judicial independence: an ideal that became a reality a decade after its own constitution was enacted in 1777 and at a different level of government. Significantly, the uncertain status of New York's judiciary had profound consequences for the ultimate expression of judicial independence, judicial review. (shrink)

A clarification of Husserl's changing conceptions of imaginary consciousness ( phantasy ) and memory, especially at the level of auto-affective time-consciousness, suggests an interpretation of Freud's concept of the Unconscious. Phenomenology of consciousness can show how it is possible that consciousness can bring to present appearance something unconscious, that is, something foreign or absent to consciousness, without incorporating it into or subordinating it to the conscious present. This phenomenological analysis of Freud's concept of the Unconscious leads to a partial critique (...) of Freud's metapsychological determination of the Unconscious as a simple, internally unperceived representational consciousness. It also suggests an account of how a reproductive inner consciousness can free the subject from the experience of anxiety by allowing for possibilities of self-distanciation and symbolic self-representation that protect the subject from traumatic affection by and through its own instinctual drives. (shrink)

In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book _Film_ by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as _Film as Art._ Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional (...) depth. (shrink)