This book explores three worlds shared by the humans in their collective experiences. It identifies and explores the world of commonsense, the world of religion, and the world of science as three essential dimensions of human experience. The book helps understand that humans can gain comfort and pleasure in commonsense, achieve meaning and purpose from religion, and attain truth and rationality through science. It actively applies theories to and develops theoretical explanations from different domains or situations of human existence. This (...) book is of interest to theorists, researchers, instructors, and students across major academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

In the light of partial (mis)understanding, we examine the thesis that concepts are individuated in terms of possession conditions and show that adherents face a fatal dilemma: Either concept‐individuating possession conditions include cases of partially (mis)understood concepts or not. If yes, possession conditions do not individuate concepts. If no, the thesis is too restricted and lacks a minimally satisfactory level of generalization.

We show that plane hyperbolic geometry, expressed in terms of points and the ternary relation of collinearity alone, cannot be expressed by means of axioms of complexity at most ∀∃∀, but that there is an axiom system, all of whose axioms are ∀∃∀∃ sentences. This remains true for Klingenberg's generalized hyperbolic planes, with arbitrary ordered fields as coordinate fields.

We provide a quantifier-free axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry in a language containing only absolute geometrically meaningful ternary operations (in the sense that they have the same interpretation in Euclidean geometry as well). Each axiom contains at most 4 variables. It is known that there is no axiom system for plane hyperbolic consisting of only prenex 3-variable axioms. Changing one of the axioms, one obtains an axiom system for plane Euclidean geometry, expressed in the same language, all of whose (...) axioms are also at most 4-variable universal sentences. We also provide an axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry in Tarski's language L B which might be the simplest possible one in that language. (shrink)

This article is about reductionism; as a tendency of thought, reductionism tells us that the hole can be explained as the sum of its parts. From this principle, one can deduce that the properties and laws of complex systems can be explained by the laws and properties of simple systems. On the other ..

The story is frequently told about how with the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus (d. 1543) looked beyond the vanity of human self-centeredness and perceived that Earth was just one of several planets revolving around the sun. In doing so, he triggered the modern scientific revolution as people began to look at themselves and their place in the universe in a more objective light.

Since the beginning of the scientific revolution, believers have had to reconcile their beliefs with science. This has always proved difficult. If an all-perfect God created the universe and its physical laws, why would he have to step in to perform miracles and answer prayers? If, as all the evidence indicates, the universe, including humans and their brains, is matter and nothing more, how can we possibly live forever? Theologians try hard, but never come up with satisfactory answers.

Reverse analyses of three proofs of the Sylvester-Gallai theorem lead to three different and incompatible axiom systems. In particular, we show that proofs respecting the purity of the method, using only notions considered to be part of the statement of the theorem to be proved, are not always the simplest, as they may require axioms which proofs using extraneous predicates do not rely upon.

Se presenta la fase inicial de una investigación que trata la despoblación como tema controversial desde una perspectiva interdisciplinar y tratando de identificar el valor de la Historia para el conocimiento de esta temática. Esta primera fase se plantea desde un cuestionario destinado a identificar la percepción del alumnado de Segundo curso de ESO sobre el aprendizaje de la Historia y su relación con temas del presente, su percepción sobre la despoblación y su opinión sobre tópicos. En este artículo se (...) analizan tres preguntas del cuestionario para identificar si existen diferentes percepciones en el ámbito urbano y rural y también entre centros y su ubicación. Mediante un análisis mixto se plantea la detección de diferencias de percepción tanto entre el alumnado de las ciudades de Segovia y Madrid como entre cada uno de los centros. (shrink)

Das Thema dieser Abhandlung ist die Begründung der Giltigkeit von Aussagen, 1. von Erkenntnis, 2. von Normen, 3. von Werturteilen. Giltigkeit bedeutet anerkannt-werdensollen. Dazu muß das Verhältnis von Sollen und Sein in einer neuen Weise bestimmt werden. 1. Die Begründung der Giltigkeit von Aussagen einer Erkenntnis rein gedanklicher Sachverhalte erfolgt durch die Logik bei Festsetzung von Axiomen. Die Aussagen von Wirklichkeitserkenntnis sind teils solche von subjektiven Erlebnissen, teils solche über eine objektive Wirklichkeit. Die Giltigkeitsbegründung erfolgt dadurch, daß die Übereinstimmung des (...) ausgesagten Sachverhaltes mit der Wirklichkeit bei den ersteren unmittelbar, bei den letzteren mittelbar festgestellt wird. Für die Begründung von Aussagen über objektive Wirklichkeit sind außerdem noch zwei Voraussetzungen erforderlich: die einer unbeschränkten Gesetzmäßigkeit und die einer Wirklichkeit außer den Erlebnissen. Die Giltigkeit dieser Voraussetzungen, die über die erlebten Erfahrungen grundsätzlich hinausgehen, beruht auf ihrer Unentbehrlichkeit für eine Theorie, nach der sich die Erlebnisse aus gesetzmäßigen Bedingungen ableiten lassen. 2. Die Giltigkeit von Normen beruht teils auf Festsetzung und ist dann nur eine beschränkt allgemeine, teils auf Bedingungen für die Erreichung von Absichten und kann dann unbeschränkt allgemein sein, wenn die Absichten allgemein sind, wie hinsichtlich der Ordnung, der Grundlage der Logik, und bei der Moral. 3. Die Giltigkeit von Werturteilen, sofern sie unpersönliche sind, wird durch ihre logische Ableitung aus Wertungsgrundsätzen und Tatsachenaussagen begründet. Die Wertungsgrundsätze werden entweder durch Festsetzung aufgestellt, dann haben sie nur eine beschränkte Allgemeingiltigkeit, oder sie werden durch die Konstituenten der Kultur gegeben, dann sind sie unbeschränkt allgemeingiltig. (shrink)

D’Souza claims that near-death experiences (NDE) suggest that consciousness can outlive the breakdown of the body and cannot be explained as the product of dying brains. These experiences can be found in situations where a subject is not near death and have all the characteristics of hallucinations caused by oxygen deprivation. Despite thousands of cases, no one has every come back from an NDE with information that could not have been in their heads originally.

Some nonparametric allocation methods are proposed for use in computer-aided medical diagnostics. It may be expected that the replacement of the widely employed parametric models by these methods leads to more realistic results, because the assumptions which are used by parametric models and which are never fulfilled in practice become unnecessary. The overestimation of the discriminating power arising from the non-fulfillment of parametric assumptions are avoided.

resumed version of a Philosophycal Anthropology, a PhD Thesis.

The dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of the dismantling effects postmodern discourses have within the humanities. Postmodernism's anti-foundationalism, I argue, can only take shape around questions of ultimacy and sacrality in human existence. The dissertation explores the emergence, persistence and metamorphosis of the ultimate and the sacred in art history, modern literature, continental philosophy, and religion. Central figures studied in the work include Mircea Eliade, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Andre Malraux, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Using the axiom system provided by Carsten Augat in [1], it is shown that the only 6-variable statement among the axioms of the axiom system for plane hyperbolic geometry (in Tarski's language L B =), we had provided in [3], is superfluous. The resulting axiom system is the simplest possible one, in the sense that each axiom is a statement in prenex form about at most 5 points, and there is no axiom system consisting entirely of at most 4-variable statements.

1. bd. Allgemeine moralphilosophie.--2. bd. Besondere moralphilosophie.