"Knowing how we know" is the subject of this book. Its authors present a new view of cognition that has important social and ethical implications, for, they assert, the only world we humans can have is the one we create together through the actions of our coexistence. Written for a general audience as well as for students, scholars, and scientists and abundantly illustrated with examples from biology, linguistics, and new social and cultural phenomena, this revised edition includes a new afterword (...) by Dr. Varela, in which he discusses the effect the book has had in the years since its first publication. (shrink)

Our purpose in this essay is to introduce new concepts in a wide and recursive view of the systemic consequences of the following biological facts that I and we have presented that can be resumed as: that as living systems we human beings are molecular autopoietic system; that living systems live only as long as they find themselves in a medium that provides them with all the conditions that make the realization of their living possible, that is, in the continuous (...) conservation of their relation of adaptation to the circumstances in which they find themselves; that as a living system exists only in a relation of adaptation with the medium that operates as its ecological niche, its reproduction necessarily occurs as a process of systemic duplication or multiplication of the ecological organism-niche unity that it integrates; that the worlds of doings that we generate as languaging beings in our conversations, explanations, reflections and theories are part of our ecological niche; and that we human beings as living beings that exist in languaging, are biological–cultural beings in which our cultural and our biological manners of existences can be distinguished but cannot be separated. Of the systemic consequences of these biological facts that we consider in this essay, we wish to mention two as the principal: that the diversification of manners of living produced in biological evolution is the result of differential survival in a changing medium through the conservation of adaptation, and not through competitive survival of the best; and that we in our living as languaging human beings are the epistemological fundament of all that we do and know as such. (shrink)

Context: At the conference “The Ethical Meaning of Francisco Varela’s Thought,” which took place on 28 May 2011 in Sassari, Italy, Humberto Maturana, Michel Bitbol, and Pier Luigi Luisi participated in two discussions. Purpose: In this edited transcription of the discussions, the participants talk about several aspects of autopoiesis, the observer, ontology, making distinctions and distinguishing different domains, perception and illusion, and transcendence. Results: The discussions shed light on how constructivist concepts are perceived by individual authors. Concepts such as (...) “transcendence” and “objectivity” are understood in different ways. Constructivist content: The concepts discussed are highly relevant for constructivist approaches. (shrink)

Purpose: To show how is it that that which we connote with notions of self and consciousness are configurations of sensorialities that arise in the flow of our living in recursive coordinations of doings which eventually they guide, and not entities independent of our doings. Approach: Following the consequences of our condition of structure determined systems that do not distinguish in the experience whether what they live is a perception or an illusion. Findings: That we human beings occur as relational (...) dynamics of recursive coordinations of feelings in which self and consciousness occur as configurations of sensorialities in the evanescent continuous present of the the changing flow of our living which they also guide. Practical Implications: Thinking, acting and reflecting in the awareness that self and consciousness are not physical entities or properties. (shrink)

The phenomenon of size constancy is defined as the apparent perceptual invariance of the linear dimensions of a seen object as this approaches the eye or recedes from it. It has been interpreted as resulting from the application by the brain of a size correction, made possible by the subject's apprehension of distance cues present in the image. We present several observations which, by dissociating accommodation from distance of the seen object and by suppressing the optic effects of accommodation on (...) the visual image itself, show that this interpretation is incorrect, and that in fact the size correction of the visual image is a function of the central effort of accommodation, not of the distance of the seen object. (shrink)

Der Mensch ist fähig zu erkennen. Diese Fähigkeit setzt allerdings seine bio logische Integrität (Ganzheit, Unversehrtheit) voraus. Der Mensch kann außerdem erkennen, daß er erkennt. Erkennen (Kognition) als basale psychologische und somit biologische Funktion steuert seine Handhabung der Welt, und Wissen gibt seinen Handlungen Sicherheit. Objektives Wissen scheint möglich, und die Welt erscheint dadurch planvoll und vorhersagbar. Und doch ist Wissen als Erfahrung etwas Persönliches und Privates, das nicht übertragen werden kann. Das, was man für übertragbar hält, nämlich objektives Wissen, (...) muß immer durch den Hörer geschaffen werden: Der Hörer versteht nur dann, und objektives Wissen erscheint nur dann übertragbar, wenn der Hörer zu verstehen (vor)bereit(et) ist. Kognition als biologische Funktion besteht darin, daß sich die Antwort auf die Frage Was ist Kognition? aus dem Verständnis des Erkennens bzw. des Erkennenden aufgrund der Fähigkeit des letzteren zu erkennen ergeben muß. Eben darin besteht meme Arbeit. Epistemologie Der zentrale Anspruch der Wissenschaft ist Objektivität: sie [die Wissenschaft] ist bestrebt, mit Hilfe einer wohldefinierten Methodologie Aussagen über die Welt zu machen. Gerade in der Basis dieses Anspruches liegt jedoch ihre Schwäche: die apriorische Annahme, daß objektives Wissen eine Beschreibung dessen darstellt, was man weiß. Eine solche Annahme erfordert die Klärung der Fragen Worin be steht Erkennen bzw. Wissen? und Wie erkennen und wissen wir? Biologie a) Das größte Hindernis für das Verständnis der Organisation des Lebendigen liegt darin, daß es nicht möglich ist, sie durch eine Aufzählung ihrer Eigen schaften zu erklären. Sie muß vielmehr als Einheit verstanden werden. (shrink)

An organism is a harmonious closed network of molecular and cellular interactions that produce molecular and cellular transformations and replacements in the continuous realization of its molecular autopoiesis. The processes that we call immunity are dynamics of recovery of that harmony when it is lost as a result of the appearance or intrusion of molecules that do not normally pertain to it, which destroy that harmony, giving rise to what is lived as a disease.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Paradox of Education:A ConversationHumberto R. Maturana and Bernhard PoerksenResponsibility of the TeacherPoerksen: Immanuel Kant writes in his essay Über Pädagogik that the wide field of education is governed by a fundamental paradox. On the one hand, we want free and self-determined individuals to leave our schools; on the other, we impose a syllabus on the future individuals, force them to attend schools, punish their failures, and persecute their (...) noncompliance. There is, if we follow Kant, an inescapable relationship of tension between the goals and the means of educational efforts: They contradict each other. Would you agree?Maturana: No. Education, the commentary of an observer, is the process of transformation resulting from the co-existence with adults. We become the adults we have been living with. This means: If freedom and self-determined thinking are the goals of educational activity, then we have to live together in a way that is supported by the mutual respect for the autonomy of the other. In my view, the paradox formulated by Kant does not exist at all. The way of life, the manner of living together, shapes and transforms people. If you want to teach autonomy and reflection, you cannot use force as a method but must create an open space for communal reflection and action. There must be no contradiction between goals and means.Poerksen: Surely, there must also be constraints? It must be laid down when everybody has to be present, what the task is, who the teacher is, who has authority.Maturana: Compulsion will emerge if the teachers do not succeed in presenting their material in a thrilling way and in making school an attractive place of being together. Their failure will lead to force.Poerksen: The teacher is totally responsible for everything that may happen in school. Is this not an exaggerated claim?Maturana: No. If a teacher behaves respectfully, if he does not intimidate his pupils, if he listens, encourages cooperation and reflection, then a special form of interaction will emerge. The way of living practiced by the teacher, including the goals of teaching, will be the source of profitable learning for the pupils. This also implies that three questions and tasks must be sorted out cooperatively in education. First it seems necessary to me to debate the educational ideal to be chosen—what should the future adults be like when leaving the school one day? Should they be democratically minded and responsibly acting citizens? Or are they to be authoritarian and commandeering hierarchs, lords who feel superior to everyone else? It is then necessary to anchor a way of life in the school that permits acting and thinking according to that ideal. Finally, there is the essential task of preparing the teachers for their job in such a [End Page 25] way as to do justice to the desired goals—to enable them to live what they have to achieve.Poerksen: This would mean that teaching has nothing to do with the stepwise elimination of ignorance, as is commonly thought. The transmission of knowledge is secondary. The primary requirement is a way of life that corresponds with one's ideals, a particular form of living together, out of which the material topics will arise in due course.Maturana: Exactly. The children do not learn mathematics in school; they learn how to live together with a mathematics teacher. Perhaps they will one day carry on this enjoyable and exciting kind of being together independently—and become mathematics teachers or mathematicians themselves. Teachers do not simply transmit some content; they acquaint their pupils with a way of living. In the process, the rules of arithmetic, the laws of physics, or the grammar of a language will be acquired. My claim is: Pupils learn teachers.Poerksen: What about children who systematically refuse to cooperate? What is to be done with them? The classical answer is, of course: bad marks, relegation, exclusion from the winning circles.Maturana: The so-called difficult children about whom teachers keep complaining often only struggle to be seen and accepted, while the whole world expects them to behave in a calculable manner and to adapt to strange demands. Asking... (shrink)

Two experiments compared “Red-Green” dichromats’ empirical and metacognized capacities to discriminate basic color categories and to use the corresponding basic color terms. A first experiment used a 102-related-colors set for a pointing task to identify all the stimuli that could be named with each BCT by each R-G dichromat type. In a second experiment, a group of R-G dichromats estimated their difficulty discriminating BCCs-BCTs in a verbal task. The strong coincidences between the results derived from the pointing and the verbal (...) tasks indicated that R-G dichromats have very accurate metacognition about their capacities and limitations in the use of BCTs. Multidimensional scaling solutions derived from both tasks were very similar: BCTs in R-G dichromats were properly represented in 2D MDS solutions that clearly show one chromatic dimension and one achromatic dimension. Important concordances were found between protanopes and deuteranopes. None of these dichromats showed substantial difficulty discriminating the Red-Green pair. So, to name them “R-G” dichromats is misleading considering their empirical capacities and their metacognition. Further reasons to propose the use of the alternative denomination “Brown-Green” dichromats are also discussed. We found some relevant differences between the “Brown-Green” dichromats’ empirical and self-reported difficulties using BCTs. Their metacognition can be considered a “caricature” of their practical difficulties. This caricature omits some difficulties including their problems differentiating “white” and “black” from other BCTs, while they overestimate their limitations in differentiating the most difficult pairs. Individual differences scaling analyses indicated that the metacognition regarding the use of BCTs in “Brown-Green” dichromats, especially deuteranopes, is driven slightly more by the chromatic dimension and driven slightly less by the achromatic dimension, than their practical use of BCTs. We discuss the relevance of our results in the framework of the debate between the linguistic relativity hypothesis and the universal evolution theories. (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s published corpus is vast, and his publications span multiple venues, formats, and languages. For these and other reasons, the corpus is as complex as it is daunting in its scale. Problem: Over the last two decades, bibliographic data on Maturana’s publications had proliferated in terms of available resources, scope of coverage, and accessibility. However, as of 2011 the degree of accessibility was not matched by the inclusiveness, detail, and accuracy of the relatively few dedicated bibliographies upon which most (...) such resources relied. It had become time to update, consolidate, and better validate the core bibliographic data. Method: The five most comprehensive electronic bibliographies were merged and collated. The merged listing was then validated using the available evidence and a three-tiered set of evaluation criteria. Finally, the resultant merged and validated listing was augmented with previously unrecorded entries and data, subject to the same evidentiary constraints and evaluation criteria pertaining to the validation phase. Results: None of the five bibliographies in the starting set was comprehensive. All five contained ambiguities, missing details, discrepancies, and outright errors. The updated and consolidated listing presented here is the largest, most comprehensive, and most accurate compiled to date. Implications: The resultant bibliography offers a more complete and more reliable reference resource to both veteran Maturana scholars and newcomers to his work than previously existing bibliographies. (shrink)

The causal theory of action is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of action as the "standard story" of human action and agency -- the nearest approximation in the field to a theoretical orthodoxy. This volume brings together leading figures working in action theory today to discuss issues relating to the CTA and its applications, which range from experimental philosophy to moral psychology. Some of the contributors defend the theory while others criticize it; some draw from historical sources (...) while others focus on recent developments; some rely on the tools of analytic philosophy while others cite the latest empirical research on human action. All agree, however, on the centrality of the CTA in the philosophy of action. The contributors first consider metaphysical issues, then reasons-explanations of action, and, finally, new directions for thinking about the CTA. They discuss such topics as the tenability of some alternatives to the CTA; basic causal deviance; the etiology of action ; teleologism and anticausalism; and the compatibility of the CTA with theories of embodied cognition. Two contributors engage in an exchange of views on intentional omissions that stretches over four essays, directly responding to each other in their follow-up essays. As the action -oriented perspective becomes more influential in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, this volume offers a long-needed debate over foundational issues. Contributors: Fred Adams, Jesús H. Aguilar, John Bishop, Andrei A. Buckareff, Randolph Clarke, Jennifer Hornsby, Alicia Juarrero, Alfred R. Mele, Michael S. Moore, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Josef Perner, Johannes Roessler, David-Hillel Ruben, Carolina Sartorio, Michael Smith, Rowland Stout The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

We present a description of the Stern–Gerlach type experiments using only the concepts of classical electrodynamics and the Newton’s equations of motion. The quantization of the projections of the spin (or the projections of the magnetic dipole) is not introduced in our calculations. The main characteristic of our approach is a quantitative analysis of the motion of the magnetic atoms at the entrance of the magnetic field region. This study reveals a mechanism which modifies continuously the orientation of the magnetic (...) dipole of the atom in a very short time interval, at the entrance of the magnetic field region. The mechanism is based on the conservation of the total energy associated with a magnetic dipole which moves in a non uniform magnetic field generated by an electromagnet. A detailed quantitative comparison with the (1922) Stern–Gerlach experiment and the didactical (1967) experiment by J.R. Zacharias is presented. We conclude, contrary to the original Stern–Gerlach statement, that the classical explanations are not ruled out by the experimental data. (shrink)

Este es un ensayo homenaje a Ernesto Sábato, quien además de un connotado novelista fue un acérrimo crítico de la ciencia moderna y contemporánea, al plantear que reducir toda la realidad a las matemáticas ha favorecido la deshumanización y maquinización de la naturaleza y del hombre. Sin embargo, la tesis que se defiende aquí es que Sábato no fue igualmente perspicaz previendo de qué forma la Inteligencia Artificial clásica podría representar el pináculo de la deshumanización del hombre, pues esta considera (...) que la mente y la inteligencia de este como funciones de una simple máquina programada, i.e., como un producto de engranajes sintáctico-matemáticos cuya implementación material es ajena a los contextos. En efecto, la etapa final de la deshumanización denunciada por Sábato no podría haber ocurrido sin que se hubiese considerado que la propia mente no es más que una computadora, es decir, una máquina programada. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Radical Constructivism and Radical Constructedness: Luhmann’s Sociology of Semantics, Organizations, and Self-Organization” by Loet Leydesdorff. > Upshot: My focus is upon the uneasy relation of “person/culture,” a relation that any serious consideration of the important work of Luhmann cannot gloss over. The author indeed tackles this issue, but perhaps a fuller consideration of the work of Humberto Maturana sheds light on the argument.

Context: In 1974, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela published De Máquinas y Seres Vivos Autopoiesis: La organización de lo vivo in Santiago, Chile as a little book. A second edition of this publication was proposed in 1994, and the present document is a recent translation of Maturana’s reflections “twenty years after.” Problem: The book clearly enunciates what it means to say that living systems are molecular autopoietic systems, and this Preface reflects on the shift of understanding from earlier notions (...) of self-referred or auto-referred systems to the concept of autopoiesis. Implications: The Preface describes the systemic quality that is human living and human sense-making. It marks what we can retrospectively see as the bridge between the explicitly biological studies of Maturana (and Varela), and the later, more anthropological and therapeutic work of Maturana with Gerda Verden-Zöller between 1989 and 1994 and, especially, with Ximena Dávila Yáñez since the year 1999. Results: The underlying understanding implicit in this document outlines in great clarity the implications of Maturana’s fundamental insights. It presents both a logical and passionately argued case for mutual respect, grounded in scientific findings in biology. The Preface is a clear vision of why Maturana’s work has been so influential for reflexivity and constructivism. (shrink)

An approach which has the purpose to catch what characterizes the specificity of a living system, pointing out what makes it different with respect to physical and artificial systems, needs to find a new point of view – new descriptive modalities. In particular it needs to be able to describe not only the single processes which can be observed in an organism, but what integrates them in a unitary system. In order to do so, it is necessary to consider a (...) higher level of description which takes into consideration the relations between these processes, that is the organization rather than the structure of the system. Once on this level of analysis we can focus on an abstract relational order that does not belong to the individual components and does not show itself as a pattern, but is realized and maintained in the continuous flux of processes of transformation of the constituents. Using Tibor Ganti’s words we call it “Order in the Nothing”. In order to explain this approach we analyse the historical path that generated the distinction between organization and structure and produced its most mature theoretical expression in the autopoietic biology of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. We then briefly analyse Robert Rosen’s (M,R)-Systems, a formal model conceptually built with the aim to catch the organization of living beings, and which can be considered coherent with the autopoietic theory. In conclusion we will propose some remarks on these relational descriptions, pointing out their limits and their possible developments with respect to the structural thermodynamical description. -/- . (shrink)

In Autopoiesis and Cognition, Humberto R. Maturana and Franscico J. Varela state that “the way an autopoietic system maintains its identity depends on its particular way of being autopoietic, that is, on its particular structure, different classes of autopoietic systems have different classes of ontogenies”. With this in mind, in this article I develop how this conception of autopoietic systems is both present in, and operates through, Wynter’s employment of space and place, poetry, and wonder.

In this first paperback edition, a new introduction by Tom Burke establishes the ongoing importance of Sleeper's analysis of the integrity of Dewey's work and ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.1 (2006) 35-53 [Access article in PDF] "Truth Is What Works": Francisco J. Varela on Cognitive Science, Buddhism, the Inseparability of Subject and Object, and the Exaggerations of Constructivism—A Conversation Francisco J. Varela Bernhard Poerksen Institut für Journalistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft Universität Hamburg Francisco J. Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Santiago de Chile, obtained his doctorate 1970 at Harvard University with a dissertation on the (...) insect eye, and worked there for some time in the laboratory of Torsten Wiesel, the later Nobel Laureate for medicine. From his scientific beginnings as a researcher in biology, he not only studied and practiced biology but, resisting the dominating mainstream, pursued a research program that ignored and broke down traditional disciplinary boundaries. This research program is best characterized as experimental epistemology, a concept introduced by the neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren S. McCulloch. Francisco J. Varela's great aspiration was to examine and answer the philosophical ur-question of cognition with scientific precision and with the help of the best possible theoretical framework. [End Page 35]Having obtained his doctorate, he went back to Chile to work as a professor of biology together with Humberto R. Maturana. He contributed to the writing of the theory of autopoiesis, which was to cause a furor in the world of science as a universally applicable explanatory model. After the overthrow of Allende and the installation of the dictatorship by the putsch general Pinochet, Francisco J. Varela first escaped to Costa Rica, then became a professor at the American University of Colorado and University of New York, and finally returned in 1980 to the University of Chile in Santiago for five years. Temporary positions as guest professor for neurobiology, philosophy, and cognitive science in Germany, Switzerland, and France led him to Paris in the end, where he worked as research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique until his death on May 28, 2001.In his research work embracing cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and immunology, Francisco J. Varela, constantly inspired by his fundamental interest in the key questions of epistemology, gave the epistemological debate a new orientation. In his thinking he refuses to accept the strict separation of subject and object, of knower and known, which as a rule unites realists and constructivists alike. Francisco J. Varela rejects the fundamental dualism dividing mind and world, which had shaped Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings. He does not subscribe to the idea that human individuals can invent their own realities—blindly and arbitrarily, and without experiencing any resistance from the external world and all other things given. He equally distances himself, however, from the diametrically opposite position that overstates the eigenpower of the world of objects. The external world and all other things given cannot determine what happens in an organism. Varela's claim is that individual and world create each other. The Computational Model of the Mind Poerksen: The ancient key questions of philosophy are at the center of modern cognitive science. What is the essence of the mind? Do our conceptions represent a given world, which is independent from our minds? What is the formative power of external objects over our perceptions? How does cognition function? The search for an adequate answer and an improved understanding of the human mind has led many cognitive scientists to entertain the assumption that the brain is actually a kind of computer. Memory is taken to be a store. Thinking and perceiving are understood as data processing in the sense that an independent external world is computationally transformed into symbols and represented in the organism in this manner. You are very critical of this view. Why?Varela: If the brain is considered as a kind of computer, then cognitive research is limited to discovering certain self-sufficient shapes—the symbols—together with the rules [End Page 36] governing them—the programs. But this search for symbols and programs will never be profitable because it... (shrink)

This book provides a collection of sources, many of them fragmentary and previously scattered and hard to access, for the development of Peripatetic philosophy in the later Hellenistic period and the early Roman Empire. It also supplies the background against which the first commentator on Aristotle from whom extensive material survives, Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. AD 200), developed his interpretations which continue to be influential even today. Many of the passages are here translated into English for the first time, (...) including the whole of the summary of Peripatetic ethics attributed to 'Arius Didymus'. (shrink)

This distinction has sometimes been read as purely epistemic, resting not on things, but on our knowledge of them: there is one world, not two, though it may be apprehended in two ways. But this view is patently at odds with the text. Knowledge and opinion are δυνάμεις, "faculties," to be distinguished and defined by their objects, no less than by the state of mind they produce, and Plato clearly states that the fallibility and unclearness of opinion is rooted in (...) the relative unreality of opinables. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in disruption of work and other social activities of so many people. Some were forced to stay at home and many decided to stay at home for fear of being infected with the virus. This phenomenon brought different reactions and even mental stress to many people. However, there were people who turned this kind of tragedy into creative work. This paper discusses the experiences and insights of known plant lovers in Digos City, Davao del Sur (...) Philippines. Digos City is one of the heavily affected places during the series of earthquakes that jolted Davao del Sur last year. While people are still recovering, COVID-19 added an additional burden to the residents. In this paper, we argue that their decision to focus on gardening was not only to fight boredom and to divert their attention during lockdown but this was their way of maintaining their well-being by participating in the on-going work of creation and recreation and to rise from the tragedy. We further argue that it might be good that this creative work will go beyond home gardening and beyond pots and slowly extend to creative work for environmental protection and preservation through more active engagements into reforestation activities. (shrink)

I argue against a standard conception of classification, according to which concepts classify by drawing boundaries. This conception cannot properly account for "higher-order vagueness." I discuss in detail claims by Crispin Wright about "definitely," and its connection with higher-order vagueness. Contrary to Wright, I argue that the line between definite cases of red and borderline ones is not sharp. I suggest a new conception of classification: many concepts classify without drawing boundaries; they are boundaryless. Within this picture, there are no (...) orders of vagueness, though the phenomena which suggest the description "higher-order vagueness" are real enough. (shrink)

During the sixties, a most curious symbiosis took hold between Heinz von Foerster then the Director of a top-notch and lavishly funded US laboratory [Biological Computer Laboratory, 1958–1975] and the Chilean neuroscientist Humberto R. Maturana professor at the Universidad de Chile. The chance encounter between them triggered a long-lasting friendship and a fundamental change in our understanding of Systems Science. In particular the contributions of Biology of Cognition and Autopoiesis are important to understand this change and the years 1968–1973 (...) are particularly relevant. In this period, Maturana published, as a Technical Report of BCL, the foundational document The Neurophysiology of Cognition. Later, in 1973, the book De Maquinas y Seres Vivos put forward the notion of Autopoietic Systems. Also, between 1971 and 1973, the Allende government tried to cybernitize the Chilean economy with the SYNCO project. In that project, Maturana and von Foerster played a role by teaching Cybernetics to the engineers and administrators of this technological dream. During this same time, Cybernetics was important in Chile and Professors Maturana and von Foerster although not directly involved in the day-to-day running of SYNCO were important in that unique effort. When a military coup deposed Allende and sent Chile into a tailspin of right-wing retribution, von Foerster, a foreigner who loved Chile and its people, did his outmost to assure the safety of many people involved in this unique Latin American Cybernetics dream. (shrink)

One area in which the moral philosopher might say something useful for the thinking of economists is that of welfare economics – not by improving formalizations or criticizing proofs as to conditions necessary or sufficient for an optimum situation, much less by suggesting what particular state of society would be optimal. Rather, he can do this by pointing out some distinctions, by suggesting how some terms used by economists can profitably be defined, and by questioning some assumptions which seem to (...) lie behind the thinking of some economists. The following discussion is aimed along these lines. The main goal of the argument will be to produce helpful definitions of “increase the welfare of an individual” and “increase social welfare.”. (shrink)

Parkinson schreibt, es sei nicht klar, daß Alexander selbst von Geburt an Merkmale oder Zeichen des Ortes seines zukünftigen Todes in sich getragen haben müsse, weil der vollständige Begriff von Alexander den Begriff des in Babylon Sterbens enthält. Die vorliegende Interpretation des Prinzips der Vorherbestimmtheit der Geschichte verdeutlicht dies mit Hilfe der bildlichen Ausdrücke, Pläne und Dispositionen und mit Hilfe einer aristotelischen Unterscheidung zwischen "going to be" und "will be" , fur welche ein formaler chronologischer Apparat ausgearbeitet ist. Die Arbeit (...) gibt ebenfalls Einblick in den Gedanken, daB die Gegenwart schwanger mit der Zukunft ist, und antwortet auf Reschers Kritik, daß Leibniz' Metaphysik von Grund auf statisch sei. (shrink)