Ulrich Meyer defends a novel theory about the nature of time, and argues against the consensus view that time and space are fundamentally alike. He presents the first comprehensive defense of a 'modal' account, which emphasizes the similarities between times and possible worlds in modal logic, and is easily reconciled with the theory of relativity.

Corporate social responsibility has become of great interest to both researchers and practitioners alike with much discussion on whether the costs outweigh the performance implications. CSR has become a firm strategic tool as firms recognize that the customer value proposition and CSR is integrated with the focus on how to differentiate the firm from the view of the customer. We utilized market orientation theory as our foundation for our research as it explains how organizations adapt to their customer environment to (...) develop competitive advantages. With the current customer focus on CSR, MO assists the field in identifying a possible firm differentiation. Our research found that firms that ranked high on CSR correlated positively to performance. We also found our theoretically developed constructs of firm customer orientation and firm market orientation correlated with the firm adopting CSR. The results also indicated that CSR positively mediates CO and MO to firm performance. As past research had mixed results over the direct relation of MO to performance, our research suggests that CSR may be the missing variable to explain the MO/performance relationship. (shrink)

Acknowledgements Andrea Scarantino, Nicholas Shea, Mark Sprevak, and three anonymous referees provided incisive and constructive comments, for which I am very grateful. In 2012, earlier versions of this paper were delivered in Edinburgh, at the Joint Session in Stirling, and at a workshop on natural information in Aberdeen. I thank participants for their feedback.

The discourse on climate politics so far is an expert and elitist discourse in which peoples, societies, citizens, workers, voters and their interests, views and voices are very much neglected. So, in order to turn climate change politics from its head onto its feet you have to take sociology into account. There is an important background assumption which shares in the general ignorance concerning environmental issues and, paradoxically, this is in corporated in the specialism of environmental sociology itself — this (...) is the category of ‘the environment’. If ‘the environment’ only includes everything which is not human, not social, then the concept is sociologically empty. If the concept includes human action and society, then it is scientifically mistaken and politically suicidal. (shrink)

Toen Ulrich Libbrecht vanaf de jaren 1970 Vlaanderen en Nederland inspireerde met ‘oosterse wijsheid voor de westerse mens’ was dit pionierswerk. Ondertussen heeft de globalisering zich verder voltrokken, is boeddhisme en meditatie geen exotisme meer en is China dichterbij gekomen. Hoe kijkt de filosoof nu tegen deze ontwikkelingen aan? Dit boek is ontstaan uit gesprekken waarin Libbrecht op een meesterlijke wijze oosterse en westerse inzichten integreert tot een nieuw antwoord op actuele vragen en universele thema’s. Hierin benadrukt hij de (...) waarde van natuur, wetenschap en religieus bewustzijn in de betekenis van re-ligare: herverbinden. In dit boek zet hij geen theorie uiteen, maar neemt de lezer mee op de boeiende weg van het denken, doortrokken van ontroering en een rijke levenservaring. (shrink)

Modern science is, to a large extent, a model-building activity. But how are models contructed? How are they related to theories and data? How do they explain complex scientific phenomena, and which role do computer simulations play here? These questions have kept philosophers of science busy for many years, and much work has been done to identify modeling as the central activity of theoretical science. At the same time, these questions have been addressed by methodologically-minded scientists, albeit from a different (...) point of view. While philosophers typically have an eye on general aspects of scientific modeling, scientists typically take their own science as the starting point and are often more concerned with specific methodological problems. There is, however, also much common ground in middle, where philosophers and scientists can engage in a productive dialogue, as the present volume demonstrates. (shrink)

In Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768): Classicist, Hebraist, Enlightenment Radical in Disguise, Ulrich Groetsch offers a vivid portrayal of the Enlightenment radical Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768) and his debt to earlier traditions of scholarship.

There is another hard problem, in addition to the problem of how anything material can have the subjective, first-person phenomenology of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995). It is the problem of how anything material can have freedom. By ‘freedom’ I mean a person’s ability to behave in a purposive, non-random fashion that is not determined by neurophysiological structure and physical law.

Angesichts anhaltender Diskussionen um die notwendige oder wünschenswerte Förderung von Forschung und Wissenschaft unternimmt das Buch den Versuch, akademische Forschung als ein für demokratische Gesellschaften unverzichtbares Element öffentlicher Debatten und damit der öffentlichen Entscheidungsfindung zu verteidigen. Da Wissenschaft wie Demokratie beide verfahrensorientiert sind, ist ihre historische Verbindung kein Zufall. Vielmehr sind Demokratie und Wissenschaft wechselseitig aufeinander angewiesen. Ökonomisch betrachtet, lässt sich Wissenschaft als ein öffentliches Gut verstehen, das insbesondere für das Funktionieren einer Zivilgesellschaft unverzichtbar ist.

Eighty years after de Broglie’s, and a little more than half a century after Bohm’s seminal papers, the de Broglie–Bohm theory (a.k.a. Bohmian mechanics), which is presumably the simplest theory which explains the orthodox quantum mechanics formalism, has reached an exemplary state of conceptual clarity and mathematical integrity. No other theory of quantum mechanics comes even close. Yet anyone curious enough to walk this road to quantum mechanics is soon being confused by many misleading signposts that have been put up, (...) and not just by its detractors, but unfortunately enough also by some of its proponents. This paper outlines a road map to help navigate ones way. (shrink)

Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy is one of the last great works of English prose to have remained unedited. The present volume inaugurates an authoritative edition of the work, which is being prepared by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. It will be followed by two further volumes of text with textual apparatus, and two volumes of commentary. Burton concentrated a lifetime of inquiry into the Anatomy, describing and analysing melancholy and its causes - devoting especial attention to (...) love and religion - and recording possible cures. Primarily a scholarly study of morbid psychology, it is also a compendium of curious facts and anecdotes, and combines seriousness of purpose with a marked satirical vein. First published in 1621, it was a great success: four more editions were published in Burton's lifetime, in each of which new material was added, and a sixth, containing his final revisions, was published in in 1651, eleven years after his death. The textual complexity and Burton's extraordinary range of reference have hitherto deterred editors: this is the first scholarly edition to appear. The text is based on a complete collation of all six authoritative editions. (shrink)

Im Hörsaal zeigt sich das europäische Philosophieren jederzeit mündlich und beweglich. Viele pilgerten zwischen 1970 und 1984 nach Paris, wo Michel Foucault dreizehn umfangreiche Vorlesungen hielt. Sein Publikum erstaunte vor dem Wechsel an Themen, Texten und Bildern. Foucault sprach über Machtverhältnisse, Strafregime und diskursive Ordnungen, er thematisierte die Sexualität, das Wahrsagen und wie gut zu leben sei. Seine Anekdoten und Geschichten faszinieren noch in den gedruckten Transkriptionen aller 150 Vorlesungsstunden. Der Essay »Foucault im Hörsaal« versucht den Nachvollzug des mündlichen Foucault (...) und testet den Zusammenhang der mündlich vorgetragenen Gedankenentwicklung. Warum taucht dort - und nur dort - die Figur des Ödipus auf? Es gibt viele rote Fäden im Vortrag Foucaults, der explizit experimentierend ist und sich vom Charakter seiner Bücher deutlich absetzt. Foucault hat Vorlesungen eher wie politische Interventionen als lebhafte Ansprachen gestaltet; er adressiert seine Zuhörer als Zeitgenossen mit offenem Erwartungshorizont. -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This book answers questions about secularization: Does it dissolve religion, or transform it into faith in a universally valid value? Is it restricted to the west or can it occur everywhere? Using ideas of Max Weber, the book conceives secularization as a process comparable to the rational development of science and production. What is the value secularization propagates? Sifting historical texts, Steinvorth argues the value is authenticity, to be understood as being true to one's talents developed in activities that are (...) done for their own sake and provide life with meaning, and as unconditionally commanded. How can a value be unconditionally demanded? This question leads to an investigation of the self that combines Kant's ideas on the conditions of the possibility of experience with modern brain science, and to the metaphysical deliberation whether to prefer a world with creatures able to do both good and evil to one without them. It is not enough, however, to point to facts. We rather need to understand what secularization, religion and their possible rationality consist inches Max Weber's sociology of religion has provided us with the conceptual means to do so, which this book develops. Secularization is rediscovered as the same progress of rationality in the sphere of religion that we find in the development of the spheres of science, art, the economy and politics or public affairs. It proves to be the perfection rather than the dissolution of religion - a perfection that consists in recognizing authenticity as the successor of the absolute of religion. (shrink)

Does the modern age have a specific attitude to the world, a way to make sense of the myriad stimuli that impinge on human organisms or, as I call it, a metaphysics? This book claims it has. It shows that what crucially changed Europe from the 16th century on was the spreading idea that things are best done for their own sake, for goals inherent in an activity, such as the goal of telling a good story or having a lively (...) chat, inheres in the telling or chatting itself. (shrink)

This study confronts the current crisis of churches. In critical and creative conversation with the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), Ulrich Schmiedel argues that churches need to be "elasticized" in order to engage the "other." Examining contested concepts of religiosity, community, and identity, Schmiedel explores how the closure of church against the sociological "other" corresponds to the closure of church against the theological "other." Taking trust as a central category, he advocates for a turn in the interpretation of Christianity-from (...) "propositional possession" to "performative project," so that the identity of Christianity is "done" rather than "described." Through explorations of classical and contemporary scholarship in philosophy, sociology, and theology, Schmiedel retrieves Troeltsch's interdisciplinary thinking for use in relation to the controversies that encircle the construction of community today. The study opens up innovative and instructive approaches to the investigation of the practices of Christianity, past and present. Eventually, church emerges as a "work in movement," continually constituted through encounters with the sociological and the theological "other.". (shrink)

Der interdisziplinäre "Wiener Kreis" (der "Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung", des "Logischen Empirismus") entstand um Moritz Schlick im Wien der Zwischenkriegszeit. Er ist bis heute nicht nur in den exakten Wissenschaften und der analytischen Philosophie allgegenwärtig. Er hat darüber hinaus Forschungsfelder wie Ökonomie, Architektur (Werkbund und Bauhaus), Psychologie (Gestalttheorie) oder moderner Literatur mitbestimmt. Seine Wirkung reicht von sozialen Reformbewegungen (Siedlerbewegung) bis in die Kunst der Neuen Sachlichkeit.

Wie konnen wir in einer Welt mit unterschiedlichen Erfahrungen, Uberzeugungen und Werten friedlich uberleben? Mit seinem Buch Projekt Weltethos begann Hans Kung 1990 ein Gesprach, das bis heute anhalt. Schon lange vor den grossen Herausforderungen der Globalisierung, der digitalen Transformation und der Konflikte im Zuge der weltweiten Migrationsbewegungen vertraute der Tubinger Theologe auf die grundlegende Kooperationsfahigkeit der Menschen. Heute wird sein Gedanke in einer Fulle von Zugangen entfaltet: von der Friedensforschung zur Finanzwirtschaft, von der Vertrauensbildung in der Wirtschaft bis zur (...) Kunstlichen Intelligenz, von Lernprogrammen bis zu Fragen von Nachhaltigkeit und Klimawandel. Die Weltethos-Idee bleibt daher auch und gerade fur das 21. Jahrhundert ein fruchtbarer Impuls. Aus diesem Grund diskutieren prominente Stimmen aus Glaube, Kirche und Wissenschaft uber die grundlegenden Werte und Fundamente unserer Gesellschaft."-- Back cover. (shrink)

An image of God that isn't true -- The God of creation -- The God of no use -- The God of our imagination -- The God of thunder -- The God of terror -- The God of surrender -- The God of intimacy -- The God of consolation -- The God of incarnation -- The God of rebirth -- The adventurous God.