orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

Adi Da argues that no solutions currently proposed are sufficient to righten the present unsustainable trajectory of life on Earth, because there is no integrated approach to the ordering of society and use of the planet. The presumption of separateness—manifesting collectively as separate “tribes” vying for control—characterizes human affairs, rather than the prior (“a priori”) unity of existence. The struggle for dominance is the “stave in the wheels” of the Earth-system's inherent capacity to self-correct. A new institution, “the Global Cooperative (...) Forum,” is proposed—invoked by “everybody-all-at-once” (a global populace awakened as a single force, capable of cooperatively effecting global change). (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive (...) and rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Complexity, agency, and time -- The vicissitudes of experience -- Belief, spirituality, and time -- The human predicament -- Capital flows, sovereign decisions, and world resonance machines -- The theorist and the seer.

This collection presents a broad and compelling overview of the most recent work by a world-renowned figure in contemporary thought. The book is in four parts: Koinonia, Polis, Psyche, Logos. The opening section begins with a general introduction to the author's views on being, time, creation, and the imaginary institution of society and continues with reflections on the role of the individual psyche in racist thinking and acting. The second part is a critique of those who now belittle and (...) distort the meaning of May 1968 and other movements of the sixties as well as the French Revolution. In part three, Castoriadis shows how psychoanalysis, like politics, can contribute to the project of individual and collective autonomy and challenges Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, and others in his report on 'The State and Subject Today'. Finally he examines how Aristotle's original aporetic discovery and cover-up of the imagination were repeated by Kant, Freud, Heidegger, and even Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Heikki Patomäki discusses his early work and career up to the Global Financial Crisis. He provides comment on his role as a public intellectual and activist, his diverse academic interests and influences, and the many and varied ways he has contributed to critical realism and critical realism has influenced his work. In Part 2 he discusses his later work, the predicament of humanity and the role of futures studies.

The paper compares Ladyman and Ross’s version of naturalized metaphysics, Rainforest Realism, with the comprehensive scientific metaphysics recently articulated by a physicist, David Deutsch. Major similarities of the two positions are described and discussed, illustrating the relevance of metaphysics to science. However, a failure of consistent naturalism on Deutsch’s part is also identified and criticized: Deutsch promotes the Everettian multiverse interpretation of quantum physics on the basis of a philosophical commitment to classical determinism. Deutsch also fails to appreciate that a (...) broadly realistic attitude to physical theory does not require denying that some important scientific achievements involve using models and their elements as instruments. Both of these errors are traced to an overly strict dichotomy between pure formalism and empirically interpreted content. In quantum mechanics, Bohr’s version of the Copenhagen interpretation fails to be a fully fledged ‘interpretation’ according to currently dominant philosophical opinion. Ladyman and Ross criticize this opinion. The deep structure of the world is arguably not mathematical but statistical, and there is no such thing as ‘purely formal statistics’. The principles of statistics are generalizations of recurrent patterns found in data; and such structuring of data is the core business of both science and its metaphysical unification. Contrary to Deutsch’s claims, Enlightenment optimism about the capacity for limitless expansion of knowledge is compatible with the hypothesis that the world is irreducibly and fundamentally stochastic. Among great philosophers, C. S. Peirce anticipated this hypothesis. Ladyman and Ross’s metaphysics can be re-described in terms of it, as follows: the world is the totality of non-redundant statistics, not of things. (shrink)

In _The World Computer_ Jonathan Beller forcefully demonstrates that the history of commodification generates information itself. Out of the omnipresent calculus imposed by commodification, information emerges historically as a new money form. Investigating its subsequent financialization of daily life and colonization of semiotics, Beller situates the development of myriad systems for quantifying the value of people, objects, and affects as endemic to racial capitalism and computation. Built on oppression and genocide, capital and its technical result as computation manifest as (...) racial formations, as do the machines and software of social mediation that feed racial capitalism and run on social difference. Algorithms, derived from for-profit management strategies, conscript all forms of expression—language, image, music, communication—into the calculus of capital such that even protest may turn a profit. Computational media function for the purpose of extraction rather than ameliorating global crises, and financialize every expressive act, converting each utterance into a wager. Repairing this ecology of exploitation, Beller contends, requires decolonizing information and money, and the scripting of futures wagered by the cultural legacies and claims of those in struggle. (shrink)

The concept of the world soul is difficult to understand in large part because over the course of history it has been invoked to very different ends and within the frameworks of very different philosophical systems, with very different concepts of the world soul emerging as a result. This volume brings together eleven chapters by leading philosophers in their respective fields that collectively explore the various ways in which this concept has been understood and employed, covering the following (...) philosophical areas: Platonism, Stoicism, Medieval, Indian (Vedāntic), Kabbalah, Renaissance, Early Modern, German Romanticism, German Idealism, American Transcendentalism, and contemporary quantum mechanics and panpsychism theories. In addition, short reflections illuminate the impact the concept of the world soul has had on a small selection of areas outside of philosophy: harmony, biology (spontaneous generation), the music of Henry Purcell, psychoanalysis, and Gaia theories. (shrink)

Concepts of space and time are widely developed in physics. However, there is a considerable lack of biologically plausible theoretical frameworks that can demonstrate how space and time dimensions are implemented in the activity of the most complex life-system – the brain with a mind. Brain activity is organized both temporally and spatially, thus representing space-time in the brain. Critical analysis of recent research on the space-time organization of the brain’s activity pointed to the existence of so-called operational space-time in (...) the brain. This space-time is limited to the execution of brain operations of differing complexity. During each such brain operation a particular short-term spatio-temporal pattern of integrated activity of different brain areas emerges within related operational space-time. At the same time, to have a fully functional human brain one needs to have a subjective mental experience. Current research on the subjective mental experience offers detailed analysis of space-time organization of the mind. According to this research, subjective mental experience (subjective virtual world) has definitive spatial and temporal properties similar to many physical phenomena. Based on systematic review of the propositions and tenets of brain and mind space-time descriptions, our aim in this review essay is to explore the relations between the two. To be precise, we would like to discuss the hypothesis that via the brain operational space-time the mind subjective space-time is connected to otherwise distant physical space-time reality. (shrink)

It is a widely known but little considered fact that Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel were best friends for the last decade and a half of Einstein's life. The two walked home together from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study every day; they shared ideas about physics, philosophy, politics, and the lost world of German science in which they had grown up. By 1949, Gödel had produced a remarkable proof: In any universe described by the Theory of Relativity, time cannot (...) exist . Einstein endorsed this result-reluctantly, since it decisively overthrew the classical world-view to which he was committed. But he could find no way to refute it, and in the half-century since then, neither has anyone else. Even more remarkable than this stunning discovery, however, was what happened afterward: nothing. Cosmologists and philosophers alike have proceeded with their work as if Gödel's proof never existed -one of the greatest scandals of modern intellectual history. A World Without Time is a sweeping, ambitious book, and yet poignant and intimate. It tells the story of two magnificent minds put on the shelf by the scientific fashions of their day, and attempts to rescue from undeserved obscurity the brilliant work they did together. (shrink)

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and teleology are (...) the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

In the real world, there can be constraints on rational decision-making: there can be limitations on what I can know and on what you can know. There can also be constraints on my ability to deliberate or on your ability to deliberate. It is useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be in ideal contexts, for fully informed agents, in an ideal world. But it is also useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation (...) should be in the actual world, in non-ideal contexts, for imperfectly informed agents, especially for big, life-changing decisions. That is, we want to know how to deliberate as best we can, given the real-world limitations on what we can know, and given real-world limitations on how we are able to deliberate. In this paper, our concern is with the norms of rational deliberation in certain, important, non-ideal contexts, where the reasoning occurs from the agent’s first person, subjective point of view. The norms governing the process of deliberation for real people in the sorts of non-ideal contexts we’ll consider need to reflect the way that real agents, with an incomplete grasp on the facts and an imperfect ability to deliberate, can be expected to proceed. Our central contention is that framing and exploring the deliberative process from the first person perspective allows us to uncover and explore important, real-world constraints on boundedly rational agents deliberating from the subjective perspective. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn is viewed as one of the most influential philosophers of science, and this re-release of a classic examination of one of his seminal works reflects his continuing importance. In _World Changes,_ the contributors examine the work of Kuhn from a broad philosophical perspective, comparing earlier logical empiricism and logical positivism with the new philosophy of science inspired by Kuhn in the early 1960s. The nine chapters offer interpretations of his major work _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ and subsequent (...) writings. The introduction outlines the significant concepts of Kuhn's work that are examined and is followed by a brief appraisal of Kuhn by Carl Hempel. The chapters discuss topics that include: a systematic comparison of Kuhn and Carnap viewing similarities and differences; the disputation of absolute truth; rational theory evaluation and comparison; applying theory to observation and the relation of models in a new conceptualization of theory content; and interpreting Kuhn's plurality-of-worlds thesis. The volume also presents four historical papers that speak to Kuhn's views on lexical structures and concept-formation and their antecedents. The afterward, by Kuhn himself, reviews his own philosophical development, his thoughts on the dynamics of scientific growth, and his response to issues raised by the contributors and other interpreters of his work. (shrink)

In A World Not Made for Us, Keith R. Peterson provides a broad reassessment of the field of environmental philosophy, taking a fresh and critical look at three classical problems of environmentalism: the intrinsic value of nature, the need for an ecological worldview, and a new conception of the place of humankind in nature. Peterson makes the case that a genuinely critical environmental philosophy must adopt an ecological materialist conception of the human, a pluralistic value theory that emphasizes the (...) need for value prioritization, and a stratified categorical ontology that affirms the basic principle of human asymmetrical dependence on more-than-human nature. Integrating environmental ethics with the latest work in political ecology, Peterson argues it is important to understanding that the world is not made for us, and that coming to terms with this fact is a condition for survival in future human and more-than-human communities of liberation and solidarity. (shrink)

For centuries, certain moral philosophers have maintained that morality is an illusion, comparable to talking of ghosts or unicorns. These moral skeptics claim that the world simply doesn’t contain the sort of properties (such as moral badness, moral obligation, etc.) necessary to render moral statements true. Even seemingly obvious moral claims, such as" killing innocents is morally wrong" fail to be true. What would lead someone to adopt such a radical viewpoint? Are the arguments in its favor defensible or (...) plausible? What impact would embracing such a view have on one’s practical life? Taking as its point of departure the work of moral philosopher John Mackie (1917-1981), "A World Without Values" is a collection of essays on moral skepticism by leading contemporary philosophers, some of whom are sympathetic to Mackie’s views, some of whom are opposed. Rather than treating moral skepticism as something to dismiss as quickly as possible, this anthology is a comprehensive exploration of the topic, and as such will be a valuable resource for students of moral philosophy at all levels, as well as professionals in the field of meta-ethics. "A World Without Values" presents state-of-the-art arguments that advance the ongoing philosophical debate on several fronts, and will enjoy an important place on any meta-ethicist’s bookshelf for some years to come. (shrink)

What is the world-soul referred to in Schelling’s 1797 treatise? Is he committed to the untenable view that the cosmos is alive? First, I argue that Schelling deploys a strategy pioneered by Maimon: the retrieval, within a post-critical framework, of Platonic and kabbalistic traditions consolidated in the Renaissance. In his essay on the world-soul as hypothesis, however, Maimon’s argument, though motivated by Kant’s interest in Blumenbach, remains pre-critical. Then I offer an interpretation of Schelling’s world-soul as an (...) organizing principle intended to unify organic and non-organic matter, a principle that organizes forces by means of feedback and equilibration, and that is intended to provide the non-teleological basis for evolution into non-living bodies, living bodies, and ultimately conscious agents. According to Schelling’s understanding of Kant’s critical turn, the world-soul is a physicalized version of a Platonic-kabbalistic concept that plays a role within a post-critical, dynamic and evolutionary account of nature. (shrink)

Wild Ideas is a collection of essays that brings a fresh and refreshing perspective to the wilderness paradoxically at the center of our civilization.

Cover -- THE WORLD ON EDGE -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Prelude -- PART 1 Sorting Out Edges -- Preface to Part One -- 1. Borders and Boundaries -- Interlude I A Panoply of Edges -- 2. Edges and Surfaces, Edges and Limits -- Interlude II Cusps, Traces, Veils -- 3. Edges of Places and Events -- Interlude III Frames in/of Painting -- PART 2 Constructed versus Naturally Given Edges -- Preface to Part (...) Two -- 4. Natural versus Artifactual Edges -- 5. Wild Edges -- Interlude IV Listening to Edges in Music -- 6. Landscape Edges -- 7. Intermediate Edges: Parks, Gardens, Neighborhoods, Streets -- PART 3 Edges of Body and Psyche, Earth and Sky -- Preface to Part Three -- 8. At the Edges of My Body -- 9. Being on Edge and Falling Apart -- 10. From Earth's Edge to the Sky and Beyond -- PART 4 Parting Thoughts -- A Last Lesson: Not to Put Too Fine an Edge on Things -- Postlude: Why Edges Matter in Their Very Heterodoxicality -- Epilogue: Life on the Edge of Danger, Disaster, and Doom -- Afterword/Foreword: Thinking Edges, Edges of Thinking -- Index. (shrink)

Book Information World Poverty and Human Rights. World Poverty and Human Rights Thomas Pogge Cambridge Polity Press 2002 vii + 284 Paperback US$28, £18 By Thomas Pogge. Polity Press. Cambridge. Pp. vii + 284. Paperback:US$28, £18.

We address an argument by Floridi (Synthese 168(1):151–178, 2009; 2011a), to the effect that digital and analogue are not features of reality, only of modes of presentation of reality. One can therefore have an informational ontology, like Floridi’s Informational Structural Realism, without commitment to a supposedly digital or analogue world. After introducing the topic in Sect. 1, in Sect. 2 we explain what the proposition expressed by the title of our paper means. In Sect. 3, we describe Floridi’s argument. (...) In the following three sections, we raise three difficulties for it, (i) an objection from intuitions: Floridi’s view is not supported by the intuitions embedded in the scientific views he exploits (Sect. 4); (ii) an objection from mereology: the view is incompatible with the world’s having parts (Sect. 5); (iii) an objection from counting: the view entails that the question of how many things there are doesn’t make sense (Sect. 6). In Sect. 7, we outline two possible ways out for Floridi’s position. Such ways out involve tampering with the logical properties of identity, and this may be bothersome enough. Thus, Floridi’s modus ponens will be our (and most ontologists’) modus tollens. (shrink)

The authors review the historical development of the field, explain what is distinctive about Third World political ecology, and suggest areas for future...

Ifeel that Iam apartof, but separatefrom an 'out there' world. 2. Ifeel that my perception of the world mingles with feelings of past experience. 3. My experienceof the world is selective and purposeful. 4. I am thinking ahead allthe timeintrying...

Brunner, Austin Farrer, W.M. Horton, Pierre Maury.

This handbook provides information on the business case for biodiversity, as well as current biodiversity issues for business, and guidance on corporate biodiversity strategies. The current status of the debate is illustrated by specific case stories, thus providing an opportunity for companies to highlight their renewed commitment to an issue of high importance. The accompanying CD-ROM provides additional biodiversity resources, including extended case studies and lists of the key institutions and sources of information that can help build a company’s capacity (...) for integrating biodiversity into business practice. (shrink)

In every domain of reasoning humans deploy an wide range of intuitive 'theories' about how the world works. So are we alone in trying to make sense of the world by postulating theoretical entities to explain how the world works, or do we share this ability with other species. This is the focus of this new book from Daniel Povinelli.

I argue that sentence contents should be assigned truth-values relative to parameters other than a possible world only if those parameters are fixed by the context of assessment rather than the context of use. Standard counterexamples, including tense, de se attitudes, and knowledge ascriptions, all admit of alternative analyses which do not make use of such parameters. Moreover, allowing such indices greatly complicates the task of defining disagreement, and forces an odd separation between what is true, and what someone (...) has truthfully said. If non-world indices are always fixed by the context of assessment, a characterization of semantic theories as ?relativist? in terms of assessment-sensitivity converges with a characterization in terms of sensitivity to non-world indices. More tentatively, I suggest that even a possible world index, when used in the assignment of truth-values to sentence contents, should be fixed by the context of assessment, not the context of use. This eliminates MacFarlane's category of ?non-indexical contextualism?, and results in a system in which parameters fixed by the context of use are used only in the assignment of contents to linguistic expressions, and parameters used in the assignment of truth-values to contents are uniformly fixed by the context of assessment. (shrink)

I will present and criticise the two theories of truthmaking David Armstrong offers us in Truth and Truthmakers (Armstrong 2004), show to what extent they are incompatible and identify troublemakers for both of them, a notorious – Factualism, the view that the world is a world of states of affairs – and a more recent one – the view that every predication is necessary. Factualism, combined with truthmaker necessitarianism – ‘truthmaking is necessitation’ – leads Armstrong to an all-embracing (...) totality state of affairs that necessitates not only everything that is the case but also everything else – that which is not the case, that which is merely possible or even impossible. All the things so dear to realists – rocks, natural properties, real persons – become mere abstractions from this ontological monster. The view that every predication is necessary does in some sense the opposite: it does away with totality states of affairs and, arguably, also with states of affairs. We have particulars and universals, partially identical and necessarily connected to everything else. Just by the existence of anything, everything is necessitated – the whole world mirrored in every monad. Faced with the choice between these two equally unappealing alternatives, I suggest returning to Armstrong’s more empiricist past: the world is not an all-inclusive One, nor necessitated by every single particular and every single universal, but a plurality of particulars and universals, interconnected by a contingent and internal relation of exemplification. While a close variant, truthmaker essentialism, can perhaps be saved, this means giving up on truthmaker necessitarianism. This, I think, what it takes to steer a clear empiricist course between the Scylla of Spinozist general factness and the Charybdis of a Leibnizian overdose of brute necessities. (shrink)

What happens when we glance around a room? How do we trust what we see in fleeting moments? In The World at a Glance, Edward S. Casey describes how glancing counts for more of human perception than previously imagined. An entire universe is perceived in a glance, but our quick and uncommitted attention prevents examination of these rapid acts and processes. While breaking down this paradox, Casey surveys the glance as an essential way by which we acquaint ourselves with (...) the world. This experiential tour-de-force reveals what happens in a blink of an eye. It will become a landmark study in phenomenology, philosophy, environmental philosophy, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In the tech report Artemov and Yavorskaya [4] an elegant formulation of the first-order logic of proofs was given, FOLP. This logic plays a fundamental role in providing an arithmetic semantics for first-order intuitionistic logic, as was shown. In particular, the tech report proved an arithmetic completeness theorem, and a realization theorem for FOLP. In this paper we provide a possible-world semantics for FOLP, based on the propositional semantics of Fitting [5]. We also give an Mkrtychev semantics. Motivation and (...) intuition for FOLP can be found in Artemov and Yavorskaya [4], and are not fully discussed here.This paper is dedicated to Sergei Artemov, an honored colleague and friend, who has made wonderful things for the rest of us to play with. (shrink)

Journeying through the writings and activism of anti-colonial thinkers, anti-globalization protesters, and queer activists, Rao demonstrates that important currents of Third World protest have long battled against both the international and the domestic, in a manner that combines nationalist and cosmopolitan sensibilities.

The objective of a world-sociology is to elaborate an understanding of the present socio-political constellation that is global in its outlook but sensitive to differences in specific spatio-temporal circumstances and that is based on insights into how this present constellation has been brought about through transformations of preceding socio-political constellations. This is a time-honoured task addressed in ‘classical’ historical sociology, but largely abandoned today because of theoretical and methodological criticism of earlier attempts. This article tries to show how a (...) new approach to this task can be developed: by identifying the elements for such work in recent debates; by outlining the conceptual steps necessary for reconstruction; and finally by sketching the contours of such a new world-sociology in some substance. (shrink)

‘Adams worlds’ are possible worlds that contain no creature whose life is not worth living or whose life is overall worse than in any other possible world in which it would have existed. Creating an Adams world involves no wrongdoing or unkindness towards creatures on the part of the creator. I argue that the notion of an Adams world is of little value in theodicy. Theists are not only committed to thinking that this world was created (...) without wrongdoing or unkindness but also must rule out the possibility that the world might have been better had God not existed. Nor is there much reason, independent of the availability of a satisfactory theodicy, for believing that the actual world is an Adams world. The need for a theodicy constructed along Leibnizian lines, incorporating the claim that this world is the best possible, is thus reinforced. (shrink)

The notion of world government is anathema to most political theorists. This is the case due to the arguments that a world government is infeasible, undesirable and unnecessary. This threef...

This paper summarised the main arguments presented in "Consciousness, brain and the physical world" Philosophical Psychology (1990) to introduce a symposium on that paper. This was the first symposium on Velmans' Reflexive Model of Perception (the departure point for Reflexive Monism). This summary of the 1990 paper was followed by three critiques (by Robert Rentoul, Norman Wetherick, and Grant Gillett) followed by two replies. At the time of this upload (25 years later) many of the points in the 1991 (...) paper have become common currency, however some of the confusions about the implications of the reflexive model persist, so the discussion continues to have contemporary relevance. See academia.edu link for the entire symposium. (shrink)

The contemporary world is characterised by the pervasive presence of digital technologies that play a part in almost every aspect of our life. An urgent and much-debated issue consists in evaluating the repercussions of these technologies on our human condition. In this paper, I tackle this issue from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. I argue that phenomenology offers a contribution to our understanding of the implications of digital technologies, in the light of its analysis of the essential structures of (...) human experience, and especially of its corporeal grounding. In the light of this analysis, it is possible to investigate the ways in which these essential structures are affected by digital technologies. In particular, it is possible to highlight the ways in which some digital technologies involve a process of disembodiment or simply a superficial embodiment of experience. (shrink)

Kantian transcendental philosophy has shown that we can never decide the question of whether or not the world is infinite in space and time, because, in the field of appearance, the world as a totality of concordant experience "does not exist as [an unconditioned] whole, either of infinite or of finite magnitude."1 However, appearances are encountered in a world, in which one aspect of a thing always invites us to consider others, indicating thereby a road to infinity. (...) According to a discovery of transcendental phenomenology, every single thing contains in itself "a continuum of appearances," which exhibits an "all-sided infinity."2From this an important consequence can be drawn: although the world as a physical .. (shrink)

In place of traditional approaches in environmental ethics, I suggest an improved approach, with respect to the goal of improving the condition of the natural environment, called 'world mediation' through the use of Hannah Arendt's theory of the vita activa . This approach focuses on the relationship between human made worlds and nature, from which a theory of value is suggested. Intrinsic value theory and nature-culture monism are both criticized for an insufficient attention paid toward the human-nature relationship.

This paper is an attempt to argue that there existed a very prominent view of signs and signification in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe which can help us to understand several puzzling aspects of baroque culture. This view, called here "pansemioticism," constituted a fundamental part of the baroque conception of the world. After sketching the content and importance of pansemioticism, I will show how it can help us to understand the (from a modern perspective) rather puzzling concept of the (...) polymath, or polyhistor, which constituted the ideal of the baroque scientist. In this context I will also discuss a seventeenth century phenomenon essentially connected with polyhistorism, namely that of the early modem polyhistorical collections, the Wunderkamnmern. Since such a study needs a clearly determined focal point, we will concentrate on the last three quarters of the seventeenth century and will mainly discuss works by German authors of the time. (shrink)

Husserl proceeds to show how a world-representation emerges from our world-experience, and how an idea of the world plays a role in the expansion of world-representations. He also draws our attention to the appropriation of other world-representations in a process of adjustment and compensation leading to intersubjective world-representations, and offers an analysis of the status of world-representations within transcendental phenomenology. In this article I will underline the relevance of Husserl’s concept of horizonedness to (...) the characterization of the three levels of world-experience, worldrepresentation, and the world as an idea. In getting clear on this relevance several points must be emphasized. (shrink)