This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the classical decision problem of mathematical logic and of the role of the classical decision problem in modern computer science. The text presents a revealing analysis of the natural order of decidable and undecidable cases and includes a number of simple proofs and exercises.

Readers of reports on ethical failures by four-star general officers must wonder, “Don’t they have staffs to ensure that the general follows ethics rules?” The Department of Defense publishes robust ethics guidance in several documents; however, a staff’s best efforts to implement this guidance may fail to make an impression on a senior leader who is susceptible to the “Bathsheba syndrome,” an allusion to the biblical account where the prophet Nathan rebuked King David for his moral failings. This paper proposes (...) a methodology to enable senior headquarters staffs to play the role of Nathan in supporting ethical behaviors by high-level officers. It examines the mechanisms that embed ethical behavior within members of those staffs in carrying out their three principal roles of advising, scheduling, and transporting the four-star officer. The authors offer a framework based on an ethical infrastructure of organizational climate that focuses the staff’s daily efforts to mitigate risk across seven ethical “danger areas” that threaten ethical failures by senior officers. (shrink)

This article raises the question of whether standard economics with the general equilibrium model at its core applies situational analysis in a Popperian sense. Contrary to Popper's own view, the authors come to the conclusion that this is not the case. Standard economics fails to represent elements essential to any social situation in an adequate manner. It comprises uncertainty, time and space, social interaction, unintended effects, as well as culture and institutions. The authors suggest, therefore, the socioeconomic context as an (...) alternative approach to analyzing social situations. It consists of four basic elements: (1) dominant worldviews, (2) institutions and technologies, (3) relative prices, and (4) political instruments. The alternative approach was applied with some success to analyzing inter alia problems of unemployment as well as of transformation. (shrink)

Our century thinks scientifically. Nothing would be more plausible than that it has the same relation to the world as does Sein und Zeit. This, however, is not the case. For Heidegger, Science and Technology are essential characteristics of our time. Both are rooted in man insofar as he is a "Will to Will." Scientific man is man as subject. As such he does not wish to see the world the way it appears by itself but rather as a field (...) that may be tilled by him and is preordained for him and his activity. The world as the object of action does not merely come to man as a legacy; instead he violently grasps it and makes it his hunting ground. "Man becomes that Seiende, on which is based all Seiende in the manner of its Being and its Truth". Man of the machine-age does not allow for a world "where Being is as Being." The Subject "sets" its world and therefore has a Welt-bild and Welt-anschauungen, all of these being bifurcations indicating the separation of subject and world. A uniform world is replaced by Ego over against World. In this kind of "world" man makes God in his own image by setting the "world" as the stage for his Welt-anschauung, one which aims at utility and plasticity. Man is the director staging the world of his idea. As the objects which are handled have properties which reflect back on the producer, the directing is all the more dangerous. He who in everything that he thinks and does is staging himself might become the victim of his own production; the world of the calculating man has the character of its producer. "The calculating mind, adapting itself, invents 'values'. Value is the transformation of the Essence of Essence into the quantitative and the gigantic." In Holzwege Heidegger shows that the gigantic is a consequence of the way the subject places himself in the world. The world does not appear as what it is, but as what man makes of it. The world of the machine-age is a world-less world and the "world" as it is described in Sein und Zeit and more so in the essay "Vom Wesen des Grundes" does not appear in it. (shrink)

Physiological investigation has demonstrated that the central nervous system monitors body composition and adjusts energy intake and expenditure to stabilize total adipose tissue mass. Genetic variations in the signalling molecules involved in this regulatory system account for the heritable component of body fat content. The application of molecular techniques to rodent models of Mendelian obesity has resulted in the characterization of five loci at which mutations produce an abnormal accumulation of body fat. The genes at these loci include agouti, which (...) encodes a molecule that antagonizes the binding of alpha melanocyte‐stimulating hormone to its receptor; fat, which encodes carboxypeptidase E; tubby, which encodes a putative phosphodiesterase; obese, which encodes a circulating satiety protein; and diabetes, which encodes the receptor for the obese gene product. A more detailed understanding of the functional interrelationships of these genes should lead to important new insights into the causes and potential therapies for human obesity. (shrink)

In the Consolation of Ontology, Czech poet-philosopher Egon Bondy examines the substantial model of reality — the notion that there is some sort of substance, some "thing", idea, being, or principle that creates, underlies, transcends, or gives meaning to the universe in which we live. He shows how the substantial model, in both its theistic and mechanical materialist versions, is logically untenable and dangerous in its consequences. From there, Bondy shows how the nonsubstantial alternative — prefigured in the thinking (...) of cultures that developed independently of Greece — is simpler and more logically consistent. More importantly, it is free from the negative consequences of the substantial model and instead opens the way toward genuine human freedom, creativity, and responsibility, toward a corresponding and supportive form of social organization, and toward an unclouded understanding of ontological reality. Previously untranslated, the book asks that we leave behind comfortable assumptions and understand how the struggles for a genuinely human future and for ontological clarity presuppose each other and are mutually interdependent. (shrink)

There is sufficient evidence from more recent experiments in psychology that equal retinal stimulus-elements do not lead to equal experiences and reactions except under certain rather specific conditions. An unsophisticated observer will find himself surprised to be able to cover with his own finger a person entering the door of his living room. When the finger is moved to the right or left, thus doing away with the precise retinal coincidence with the person, the observer will soon become unable to (...) recognize intuitively the actual retinal stimulus equality of the two distant things. This usually holds even for the case when he is making every inner effort towards an antagonistic, analytic perceptual attitude of the type which is used by painters or draughtsmen in order to represent the environmental situation in a similar way as it would project itself on a photographic plate or on a retina. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople's relationship between positive and negative affect varies on a continuum from relatively independent to bipolar opposites, with stronger bipolar opposition being termed affective bipolarity. Experiencing more depressive symptoms is associated with increased bipolarity, but the processes underlying this relation are not yet understood. Here, we sought to replicate this link, and to examine the role of two potential mediating mechanisms: emotion regulation ability, and trait brooding. Drawing from the Dynamic Model of Affect, we hypothesised that a poor ability to (...) regulate negative emotion, and the tendency to brood over one's depressed feelings would predict stronger affective bipolarity, and mediate the relationship between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity. To measure affective bipolarity, we calculated within-person affect correlations using two weeks of experience sampling data from a community sample. Mediation analyses indicated that baseline assessments o... (shrink)

Von den Spiralen.--Von den drei Sphären.--Von der Gefahr.--Von der Mitte.--Von den Gründen.--Von der Beliebtheit.--Vom Mythos der Sprache.--Von den Namen.--Von den Farben.--Vom Dichten, Denken, und Deuten.