The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

Die Soncino-Gesellschaft war ein bibliophiler Verein, der sich 1924 in Berlin gründete und bis zu seiner Auflösung 1937 über hundert Publikationen aus vielen Gebieten der jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur herausgegeben hat. Sie versammelte Mitglieder aus allen Strömungen des Judentums unter ihrem Dach und entwickelte sich mit ihrem Anspruch, ästhetische Vorbilder für das jüdische Buch zu geben, zu einem jüdischen Integrationsprojekt. Der Beitrag geht den kulturzionistischen Bruchlinien nach, die sich in der zionistischen Rezeption, dem Streit um die hebräische Bibelausgabe und der (...) Positionierung einiger prominenter Protagonisten der Soncino-Gesellschaft zeigen. Diese Bruchlinien blieben jedoch so marginal, dass sie den bibliophilen Konsens nicht gefährdeten. Im historischen Rückblick kann das Programm der Soncino-Gesellschaft vielmehr als Kanon der deutsch-jüdischen Integration in der Diaspora gelesen werden. (shrink)

Maria mediatrix represents a paradigm of mediality in the Middle Ages. Mary′s power consists in bridging the gap between the celestial sphere and the world, the Christ and mankind. She is full of grace and conveying grace, participating in humanity and divinity by these characteristics. Her influence is based on having given birth to the Christ, accompanied his life until his death on the cross, having suffered and died in her soul with him in love. She incites the individual to (...) follow her on her paths, to love and suffer as she did, to follow the Christ. Her path – if followed – offers the perspective to reach redemption and salvation. But she is also interceding for the sinners. Ascended to heaven and crowned as queen, she is able to change the severity of judgements of her son into mercy. The present article outlines a “mediologic” approach, presenting some developments from the bible to the Middle Ages and giving examples of different ways of Mary′s mediation. The latter are mainly focussed on homilies written by Bernhard de Clairvaux (1090–1153) on the occasion of the feasts of the birth and ascension of Mary and five chapters of the ‘Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit’ by Heinrich Seuse (1295–1366). (shrink)

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account (...) for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data. Key Words: action planning; binding; common coding; event coding; feature integration; perception; perception-action interface. (shrink)

Epistemologists have recently noted a tension between (i) denying access internalism, and (ii) maintaining that rational agents cannot be epistemically akratic, believing claims akin to ‘p, but I shouldn’t believe p’. I bring out the tension, and develop a new way to resolve it. The basic strategy is to say that access internalism is false, but that counterexamples to it are ‘elusive’ in a way that prevents rational agents from suspecting that they themselves are counterexamples to the internalist principles. I (...) argue that this allows us to do justice to the motivations behind both (i) and (ii). And I explain in some detail what a view of evidence that implements this strategy, and makes it independently plausible, might look like. (shrink)

In this paper, a family of paraconsistent propositional logics with constructive negation, constructive implication, and constructive co-implication is introduced. Although some fragments of these logics are known from the literature and although these logics emerge quite naturally, it seems that none of them has been considered so far. A relational possible worlds semantics as well as sound and complete display sequent calculi for the logics under consideration are presented.

1. The problem. The concept of confirmation of an hypothesis by empirical evidence is of fundamental importance in the methodology of empirical science. For, first of all, a sentence cannot even be considered as expressing an empirical hypothesis at all unless it is theoretically capable of confirmation or disconfirmation, i.e. unless the kind of evidence can be characterized whose occurrence would confirm, or disconfirm, the sentence in question. And secondly, the acceptance or rejection of a sentence which does represent an (...) empirical hypothesis is determined, in scientific procedure, by the degree to which it is confirmed by relevant evidence. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the assumption of attention functioning as a means of preventing consciousness from getting overloaded, and also challenges the assumption of any relationships between management of scarce resources and the original biological function of attention. It emphasizes that attention is directly derived from mechanisms governing the control of basic movements. The author establishes the theoretical stage through discussions on the implications of the brain’s preference to stimulus events and action plans in a feature-based manner and processing information through (...) different mechanisms. The chapter also discusses many empirical findings supporting the conception of action planning and action control having the potential to determine perception and attention. (shrink)

Frames are a concept in knowledge representation that explains how the receiver, using background information, completes the information conveyed by the sender. This concept is used in different disciplines, most notably in cognitive linguistics and artificial intelligence. This paper argues that frames can serve as the basis for describing mathematical proofs. The usefulness of the concept is illustrated by giving a partial formalisation of proof frames, specifically focusing on induction proofs, and relevant parts of the mathematical theory within which the (...) proofs are conducted; for the latter, we look at natural numbers and trees specifically. (shrink)

This essay applies the concept of “fuzzy thinking” to geopolitics, using a curious turn of phrase in a 1914 policy paper (“the Islamic-Israelite world”) to explore paradoxes of German strategy in World War I. To find the origins of this phrase, the article explores the language of prewar Orientalism, especially the potent German variety that was notoriously neglected by Edward Said in his 1979 study decrying Orientalism as the handmaiden of European imperialism. But many prominent German Orientalists were also ignored (...) in Robert Irwin's recent book-length critique of Said's Orientalism, despite the centrality of the German case to Irwin's argument. Just as Said ignored scholarly titans of the German-speaking world such as Carl Heinrich Becker, Ignaz Goldziher, and Theodore Nöldeke — presumably because Germany, unlike France and Britain, never colonized Islamic lands in the Middle East — so, too, did Irwin ignore more worldly German Orientalists such as Max von Oppenheim and Curt Prüfer, whose covert activities on behalf of Berlin did not fit his own counterthesis that Orientalism, pace Said, “in its most important aspect was founded upon academic drudgery.” The “hack” German Orientalists who concocted a Turco-German “jihad” against the Entente Powers in World War I — accompanied by a simultaneous plan to unleash Zionism to destroy tsarist Russia — may not have been scholars of the highest caliber, which helps explain how they could tolerate a fuzzy phrase like “the Islamic-Israelite world.” The essay concludes that, nevertheless, we may learn from and even be inspired by their ideas, however illusory these proved to be in practice. (shrink)

What are the characteristics to be included in a fruitful definition of democracy? More important still, which of the features commonly considered democratic had better be excluded from the dinning characteristics?

In today’s multi-cultural world and global economy, attention is often focused on the diversity of cultural values and practices and the need for management approaches to take these differing cultural environments into account. While there is much to be valued in this approach, the focus is often on how to navigate through distinct cultural practices in order to achieve a singular business aim, which falls within the current neoliberal paradigm of global trade. In addition, by focusing on differences in cultural (...) practices, rather than on similarities in underlying values, this approach fails to utilize an important way to achieve a greater degree of global integration in management. Despite striking cultural differences, it is possible to identify some enduring values that underlie what often appear to be quite discrete value paradigms, especially by looking at value paradigms that have endured for centuries, even millennia. This paper proposes to explore the values embedded in two such value paradigms or religious traditions, zen buddhism and Judaism, describing crucial core values in each and comparing and contrasting their ethical frameworks, in order to be able to evaluate their utility in today’s world and especially their significance for creating a more holistic, inclusive, and responsible management framework. The paper will begin by explicating the set of foundational values in each religious tradition. For example, zen buddhism, especially as expressed by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhan Hanh, utilizes the concepts of engaged mindfulness and inter-being to demonstrate the ways in which all global issues are linked together, and the collective responsibility that all humans bear for the state of our planet and the beings who live on it. This approach is inherently holistic and inclusive, and requires a management approach that takes into account the moral responsibility that we all carry. Likewise, the Jewish tradition, while using quite different terminology, also lays out a holistic and inclusive moral vision. Key concepts include the values of Tikkum Olam, to repair the world, and Tsedakah, which literally means justice or righteousness, but is commonly used to indicate charitable giving. The first value, to repair the world, emphasizes the collective moral responsibility to heal whatever damage has been done to the world in order to make the it a better place for all. It does not matter who has done the damage; what matters is each person’s obligation to improve the status quo, under the assumption that all our fates are linked together. The second value, justice and charity, is also considered to be a moral obligation, not simply a voluntary act of charity. The emphasis here is on anonymous giving, done in order to help others and without any expectation of receiving some benefit, such as positive publicity. As a moral obligation, it is not something that one should benefit from. Thus, the concept of tsekakah also emphasizes the inter-connectedness of all humanity. In addition, in the Torah, there are a series of rules about how to deal with others in business as well as the obligation, during harvest-time, to leave some grain in the fields for the less fortunate. In all, we see a focus on being mindful of others, on seeing our fates as interconnected, as in zen buddhism. The last section of the paper will explore some of the ways in which these moral imperatives can be utilized to undergird and buttress a more holistic, inclusive and responsible management approach. Some management models already include moral imperatives, such as corporal social responsibility, and this section will explore in greater detail how the above concepts have been more fully integrated into current management models. (shrink)

A 'no-ownership' or 'no-self theory' holds that there is no proper subject of experience; the ownership of experience can only be accounted for by invoking a sub-personal entity. In the recent self-versus-no-self debate, it is widely assumed that the no- referent view of 'I', which is closely associated with Wittgenstein and G. E. M. Anscombe, implies a no-ownership theory of experience. I spell out this assumption with regard to both non-reflective and reflective consciousness and show that it is false. If (...) the so-called 'self' is an individual, the person, nothing more is required for the ownership of sensations than the non-reflective experiencing, undergoing, or suffering of them, whereas the sense of 'ownership' of reflective consciousness varies according to the type of 'I'-thought in question. Ownership of 'I'-thoughts about one's own actions, for one thing, is a matter of being able to fit future actions to them or answer questions as to why one is doing what one does. (shrink)

: This article aims: 1) to review several, key, earlier studies of Josiah Royce's relations to Asian thinkers (mainly Indian); 2) to discover through a survey of Royce's writings how widely and deeply Royce familiarized himself with, and employed Hindu, Buddhist, and other Asian traditions; and, 3) to measure how relevant Royce's most mature philosophy (1912–1916) is for the currently needed inter-cultural, inter-religious, and inter-faith dialogues. Parts One and Two supply foundations which reveal Royce's lifelong commitment to open "windows" to (...) Eastern thought, in order to dialogue with Asian thinkers and invite other Westerners to do the same. The article climaxes in Part Three by revealing the relevance of the late Royce's "philosophy of the 'Spirit,' his "philosophical pneumatology." I trace ten of its implied positions, significant for contemporary philosophers of religion and theologians. I conclude by showing that Royce's "philosophy of the 'Spirit"' and its implied positions are all rooted in Royce's view of a "middle faith." Such a faith supports his view of the "invisible church," his "Beloved Community of all "Christians"—"Christians" taken in his wider sense of "all genuine loyalists who are members of a Beloved Community.". (shrink)

The roots of the Lvov-Warsaw School can be traced back to Aristotle himself. But in later times we better put them into thinking GW Leibniz and who somehow inherited many of these ways of thinking, such as the philosopher and mathematician Bernhard Bolzano. Since he would pass the key figure of Franz Brentano, who had as one of his disciples to Kazimierz Twardowski, which starts with the brilliant Polish school of mathematics and philosophy dealt with. Among them, one of (...) the most interesting thinkers must be Jan Lukasiewicz, the father of many-valued logic.Jan Łukasiewicz began teaching at the University of Lvov, and then at Warsaw, but after World War II must to continue in Dublin. Some questions may be very astonishing in the CV of Łukasiewicz. For instance, that a firstly Polish Minister of Education in Paderewski cabinet, into the new Polish Republic, and also Rector for two times at Warsaw University, was awarded with a Doctorate ‘Honoris Causa’ in spring 1936, at University of Münster, into the maximum of effervescency of Nazism in Germany. The explanation must be their good relation with a very good friend, the former theologian, and then logician, Heinrich Schölz, who was the first Chairman of Mathematical Logic in German universities.Łukasiewicz firstly studied Law, and then Mathematics and Philosophy in Lvov. His doctoral supervisor was Kazimierz Twardowski, and in 1902 he obtain his Ph. D. title with a very special mention: ‘sub auspiciis Imperatoris’. Also he received a doctorate ring with diamonds from the Kaiser of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph I.From 1902, Łukasiewicz was employed as a private teacher, and also as a desk in the Universitary Library of Lvov. So it was until 1904 when he obtained a scholarship to study abroad. He defends his ‘Habilitationschrift’ in 1906, entitled “Analysis and construction of the concept of cause”. This permits to give university courses. His first lectures were on the Algebra of Logic, according to the recent translation to Polish of this book of the French logician Louis Couturat.Between 1902 and 1906, Lukasiewicz continued his studies in the universities of Berlin and Leuwen. In 1906, by his ‘Habilitationschrift’, he obtain the qualification as university professor at Lvov. And the, in 1911, he was appointed as associate professor in his ‘alma mater’.Jan Łukasiewicz was also very active in historical research on logic, giving a new and up-to-date interpretation of Aristotle’s syllogism and of the Stoics’ propositional calculus. According to Scholz, the better pages on history of logic are due to him. And also, as Arianna Betti says, “Jan Lukasiewicz is first and foremost associated with the rejection of the Principle of Bivalence and the discovery of Many-Valued Logic.”The discovery of MVL by Lukasiewicz was in 1918, a little earlier than Emil Leon Post. According to Jan Wolenski, “although Post’s remarks were parenthetical and extremely condensed, Lukasiewicz explained his intuitions and motivations carefully and at length. He was guided by considerations about future contingents and the concept of possibility”. So, he introduces, firstly, three-valued logic, then four-valued logic, generalized to logics with an arbitrary finite number of veritative values, and finally, to logics with a countably infinite-valued number of such values.Very noteworthy is his treatment of the history of logic in the light of the new formal logic. Thus, not only he addressed the issue of future contingents departing from Aristotle, but also put in value logic of the Stoics, at least so far taken. In fact, Heinrich Scholz said, rightly, that Lukasiewicz had written the most lucid pages on the history of logic. (shrink)

First, we discuss issues raised with respect to the Theory of Event Coding (TEC)'s scope, that is, its limitations and possible extensions. Then, we address the issue of specificity, that is, the widespread concern that TEC is too unspecified and, therefore, too vague in a number of important respects. Finally, we elaborate on our views about TEC's relations to other important frameworks and approaches in the field like stages models, ecological approaches, and the two-visual-pathways model. Footnotes1 We acknowledge the precedence (...) of both Freud¹s Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) and Neisser¹s Stimulus Information and Its Vicissitudes (a term Neisser borrowed from Freud for his monograph “Cognitive psychology,” 1967). (shrink)

Over the past ten years, the community researching connexive logics is rapidly growing and a number of papers have been published. However, when it comes to the terminology used in connexive logic, it seems to be not without problems. In this introduction, we aim at making a contribution towards both unifying and reducing the terminology. We hope that this can help making it easier to survey and access the field from outside the community of connexive logicians. Along the way, we (...) will make clear the context to which the papers in this special issue on Frontiers of Connexive Logic belong and contribute. (shrink)

In his first summer lecture at Berkeley in 1914, Josiah Royce, American philosopher of community, confessed as follows.

It is shown that the constructive four-valued logic N4 can be faithfully embedded into the modal logic S4. This embedding is used to obtain complete, cut-free display sequent calculi for N4 and C4, the modal logic of consistency over N4. C4 is a natural monotonic base system for semantics-based non-monotonic reasoning.

First published in 1938. The aim of this book is to expound Kant’s _Critique of Judgement _by interpreting all the details in the light of what Kant himself declares to be his fundamental problem. _A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Judgement _provides an excellent introduction to Kant’s third critique, and will be of interest to students of philosophy.

The paper provides a uniform Gentzen-style proof-theoretic framework for various subsystems of classical predicate logic. In particular, predicate logics obtained by adopting van Behthem''s modal perspective on first-order logic are considered. The Gentzen systems for these logics augment Belnap''s display logic by introduction rules for the existential and the universal quantifier. These rules for x and x are analogous to the display introduction rules for the modal operators and and do not themselves allow the Barcan formula or its converse to (...) be derived. En route from the minimal modal predicate logic to full first-order logic, axiomatic extensions are captured by purely structural sequent rules. (shrink)

In den 1860er Jahren entwarf der Zoologe Ernst Haeckel die wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung des Monismus, die er in einer Vielzahl popularwissenschaftlicher Schriften mit grossem Erfolg verbreitete. Auf der Grundlage der Darwinschen Theorie rief er die Biologie zur neuen Leitwissenschaft aus und postulierte die Einheit von Natur und Kultur. Seither galt Haeckel vielen als der deutsche Darwin, der die Gottesebenbildlichkeit des Menschen sowie die Schopfungstheologie zu Grabe getragen und so dem modernen Weltbild zum Durchbruch verholfen habe. Infolgedessen wurden die naturtheologischen und pantheistischen (...) Zuge des Monismus lange Zeit vernachlassigt. Demgegenuber formuliert Bernhard Kleeberg die These, dass gerade diese nicht-darwinistischen Elemente das monistische Denken nachdrucklich bestimmt haben. Anhand der wesentlichen Schriften Haeckels sowie an Auszugen aus seiner Korrespondenz rekonstruiert der Autor Genese und Kernaussagen des Monismus. Es wird deutlich, dass auch Haeckels Naturphilosophie letztlich im Banne romantischer und naturtheologischer Deutungsmuster steht. (shrink)

This edited volume offers a new approach to understanding social conventions by way of Martin Heidegger. It connects the philosopher's conceptions of the anyone, everydayness, and authenticity with an analysis and critique of social normativity. Heidegger’s account of the anyone is ambiguous. Some see it as a good description of human sociality, others think of it as an important critique of modern mass society. This volume seeks to understand this ambiguity as reflecting the tension between the constitutive function of conventions (...) for human action and the critical aspects of conformism. It argues that Heidegger’s anyone should neither be reduced to its pejorative nor its constitutive dimension. Rather, the concept could show how power and norms function. This volume would be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy and the social sciences who wish to investigate the social applications of the works of Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

The present article examines the philosophical temperaments of James and Royce, as well as the kind and development of their philosophical styles. After surveying their stances toward the universe, attitudes toward the more, and their openness to other philosophers’ ideas and critiques, this article focuses on the streams of philosophical thought from which James and Royce chose to “drink”-British, German, Asian, and the work of logicians. Some evidence is drawn from their correspondence and places of study. Their philosophical styles, despite (...) many common traits, differed in ageric tone, use of dichotomies, and frequency of reduplicative expressions, here called “double-barreled shotgun expressions.” Clearly, this research constitutes only one piece in the full mosaic of the increasingly studied James-Royce relationship. (shrink)

Josiah Royce (1855-1916), philosopher of community, taught that social consciousness arises from ego-alter contrasts and is guided by taboos and, before George H. Mead, by reciprocal gestures. A major Roycean contribution was his five conditions for coexperiencing consciousness of genuine community. Related to Freud (via Putnam), Royce did early work on “identification theory” and helped midwife psychotherapy’s birth in America. Contrasting with William James’s basic differentiation of consciousness according to the quality of its contents (feeling, thought, and conduct), Royce preferred (...) a norm of increasing self-agency (shown in sensitivity, docility, and initiative). The temperaments of James as artist and of Royce as rational interpreter differentiated their approaches to psychology. (shrink)