Ethics in post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages form the main focus of this volume. The six opening essays tackle such issues as the legitimacy of reinventing medieval customs and ideas, at what point the production and enjoyment of caricaturizing the Middle Ages become inappropriate, how medievalists treat disadvantaged communities, and the tension between political action and ethics in medievalism. The eight subsequent articles then build on this foundation as they concentrate on capitalist motives for melding superficially incompatible narratives in (...) medievalist video games, Dan Brown's use of Dante's Inferno to promote a positivist, transhumanist agenda, disjuncturesfrom medieval literature to medievalist film in portrayals of human sacrifice, the influence of Beowulf on horror films and vice versa, portrayals of war in Beowulf films, socialism in William Morris's translation of Beowulf, bias in Charles Alfred Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, and a medieval source for death in the Harry Potter novels. The volume as a whole invites and informs a much larger discussion on such vital issues as the ethical choices medievalists make, the implications of those choices for their makers, and the impact of those choices on the world around us."--Back cover. (shrink)

It has been argued that Kant's all-consuming efforts to place autonomy at the center of philosophy have had, in the long-run, the unintended effect of leading to the widespread discrediting of philosophy and of undermining the notion of autonomy itself. The result of this 'Copernican revolution' has seemed to many commentators the de-centring, if not the self-destruction, of the autonomous self. In this major reinterpretation of Kant and the post-Kantian response to his critical philosophy, Karl Ameriks argues that such (...) a view of Kant rests on a series of misconceptions. By providing the first systematic study of the underlying structure of the reaction to Kant's critical philosophy in the writings of Reinhold, Fichte and Hegel, Karl Ameriks challenges the presumptions that dominate popular approaches to the concept of freedom, and to the interpretation of the relation between the Enlightenment, Kant and post-Kantian thought. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's work changed the course of modern philosophy; Karl Ameriks examines how. He compares the philosophical system set out in Kant's Critiques with the work of the major philosophers before and after Kant. Individual essays provide case studies in support of Ameriks's thesis that late 18th-century reactions to Kant initiated an "historical turn," after which historical and systematic considerations became joined in a way that fundamentally distinguishes philosophy from science and art.

This book explores the main stages and key concepts in the development of Kant's critical philosophy, from the early 1760s to the 1790s. Karl Ameriks provides a detailed and concise account of the main ways in which the later critical works provide a plausible defense of the conception of humanity's fundamental end that Kant turned to after reading Rousseau in the 1760s. Separate essays are devoted to each of the three Critiques, as well as to earlier notes and lectures (...) and several of Kant's later writings on history and religion. A final section devotes three chapters to post-Kantian developments in German Romanticism, accounts of tragedy up through Nietzsche, and contemporary philosophy. The theme of an elliptical path is shown to be relevant to these writers as well as to many aspects of Kant's own life and work. The topics of the book include fundamental issues in epistemology and metaphysics, with a new defense of the Amerik's 'moderate' interpretation of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

In the 1950s and 1960s, the search for the mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation by biochemists paralleled the description of mitochondrial form by George Palade and Fritiof Sjöstrand using electron microscopy. This paper explores the extent to which biochemists studying oxidative phosphorylation took mitochondrial form into account in the formulation of hypotheses, design of experiments, and interpretation of results. By examining experimental approaches employed by the biochemists studying oxidative phosphorylation, and their interactions with Palade, I suggest that use of mitochondrial form (...) as a guide to experimentation and interpretation varied considerably among investigators. Most notably, Peter Mitchell, whose chemiosmotic hypothesis was ultimately the basis of the correct mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation, incorporated crucial aspects of mitochondrial form into his model that others failed to recognize. I discuss these historical observations in terms of the background and training of the biochemists, as well as a proposed heuristic of form, whose use may increase the possibility that biologically meaningful molecular mechanisms will be discovered. (shrink)

Since Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science was founded 49 years ago and since one of its co-publishers, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), was founded 60 years ago, there have been significant developments in their various cultural contexts—in science, in religion, in culture, in academia, and in the science and religion dialogue. This article is a personal remembrance and reflection that compares the context of IRAS in 1954 when it was first organized with the context (...) of IRAS and Zygon today. It considers the contemporary niche of IRAS in relation to the developments that have occurred over the past 60 years. (shrink)

Beginning with our cosmic ancestors and the 1950s ancestors of Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, this essay highlights the wider, post-World War II cultural context, including other science and religion organizations, in which IRAS was formed. It then considers eight challenges from today's context. From the context of science there are the challenge of scale that leads us to question our place in the scheme of things and can lead to a challenge to morale concerning whether we (...) make any difference; the challenge of human variability that leads to the question whether there is a single human moral nature; and the challenge of detailed explanation that leads to the question of what is the task of theology in relation to detailed scientific explanation. From the religion context there are the challenge of objectivity—studying religion without practicing religion; and the challenge of pluralism and the variety of cultural and religious perspectives. From the context of the growing and diverse science-and-religion enterprise, considered from the perspective of IRAS developed in the first part of this essay, there are the challenges of apologetics and intellectualization. Finally, from the context of our growing, worldwide consumerist culture that is contributing to the radical alteration of the planetary environment, leading to much suffering, there is the challenge of becoming more motivated to act for the long-term global good. (shrink)

In the context of this publication on blindsight, I want to address further the brain processes critically responsible for organizing our conscious experience. As in a previous related publication , I am restricting myself to brain and conscious experience, not the fuller topic of ‘consciousness’ as this might be determined by genetic and environmental factors, nor as it is defined in Eastern traditions and in esoteric Western religion and philosophy. For my thoughts on this broader topic the reader is referred (...) to a recent publication prepared for the centennial celebration of Norbert Wiener's birth. That paper is entitled: ‘What is Mind that the Brain May Order It? (shrink)

In this volume, Karl Ameriks explores 'Kantian subjects' in three senses. In Part I, he first clarifies the most distinctive features-such as freedom and autonomy-of Kant's notion of what it is for us to be a subject. Other chapters then consider related 'subjects' that are basic topics in other parts of Kant's philosophy, such as his notions of necessity and history. Part II examines the ways in which many of us, as 'late modern,' have been highly influenced by Kant's (...) philosophy and its indirect effect on our self-conception through successive generations of post-Kantians, such as Hegel and Schelling, and early Romantic writers such as Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis, thus making us 'Kantian subjects' in a new historical sense. By defending the fundamentals of Kant's ethics in reaction to some of the latest scholarship in the opening chapters, Ameriks offers an extensive argument that Hölderlin expresses a valuable philosophical position that is much closer to Kant than has generally been recognized. He also argues that it was necessary for Kant's position to be supplemented by the new conception, introduced by the post-Kantians, of philosophy as fundamentally historical, and that this conception has had a growing influence on the most interesting strands of Anglophone as well as Continental philosophy. -/- . (shrink)

This volume brings together those papers of mine which may be of interest not only to various specialists but also to philosophers. Many of my writings in mathematics were motivated by epistemological considerations; some papers originated in the critique of certain views that at one time dominated the discussions of the Vienna Cirele; others grew out of problems in teaching fundamental ideas of mathematics; sti II others were occasioned by personal relations with economists. Hence a wide range of subjects will (...) be discussed: epistemology, logic, basic concepts of pure and applied mathematics, philosophical ideas resulting from geometric studies, mathematical didactics and, finally, economics. The papers also span a period of more than fifty years. What unifies the various parts of the book is the spirit of searching for the elarification of basic concepts and methods and of articulating hidden ideas and tacit procedures. Part 1 ineludes papers published about 1930 which expound an idea that Carnap, after a short period of opposition in the Cirele, fully adopted ; and, under the name "Princip/e of To/erance", he eloquently formulated it in great generality in his book, Logica/ Syntax of Language, through which it was widely disseminated. "The New Logic" in Chapter 1 furthermore ineludes the first report to a larger public of Godel's epochal discovery presented among the great logic results of ali time. Chapter 2 is a translation of an often quoted 1930 paper presenting a detailed exposition and critique of intuitionism. (shrink)

The rapid development of physics, the result of observations made and ideas introduced within the last few decades, has brought about a change in the whole system of physical concepts. This fact is common knowledge, and has already attracted the attention of philosophers. It is less well known that geometry too has had its crises, and undergone a reconstruction. For centuries, so-called “geometrical intuition” was used as a method of proof. In geometrical demonstrations, certain steps were allowed because they were (...) “self-evident,” because the correctness of the conclusion was “shown by the adjoined diagram,” etc. A crisis occurred in geometry because such intuition proved to be untrustworthy. Many of the propositions regarded as self-evident or based upon the consideration of diagrams turned out to be false. And so Euclidean geometry was reconstructed by methods free from all intuitive elements and strictly logical in nature. Moreover, for more than a century, various other geometries have been devised purely as logical constructions. Since they start with assumptions different from those of Euclid, and lead to conclusions partly in contradiction with his theorems, they are called “non-Euclidean.” Nevertheless, each one of these geometries is a closed system of propositions exempt from contradiction. Recently, some of them have even found application in physics. (shrink)

Attempting to answer the question "what is a variable?," menger discusses the following topics: (1) numerical variables and variables in the sense of the logicians, (2) variable quantities, (3) scientific variable quantities, (4) functions, And (5) variable quantities and functions in pure and applied analysis. (staff).

This article extends the Humean example of evolutionary stakeholder theory introduced in Kline and McDermott (2019). In that article, it was established that the Cost of Service Regulation (COSR) rules created by regulatory commissions, courts, and legislation was an example of evolutionary stakeholder theory. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decision in the Hope Natural Gas case established that it was not the method, but the result reach that was important. If the result reach balanced the interests of stakeholders then the outcome (...) was just and reasonable. Kline and McDermott (2019) also established that the COSR process was rather robust in terms of stakeholder participation. The purpose of this article is to extend the analysis to examine one of the most turbulent periods in COSR's history: the Post‐OPEC oil crisis of the 1970s–1980s. The effects of this period called into question the efficacy of the COSR process and led, as evolutionary stakeholder theory predicts, to a series of engagements by stakeholders to modify the rules of the process to achieve a better balance in the publics' interest. While adjudicatory in nature, the COSR process enabled cooperative solutions to redress the imbalances created by the OPEC oil shocks, improvements in information gathering, processing and decision‐making were all products of the evolutionary stakeholder process that regulators engaged in with stakeholders. (shrink)

Die Arbeit fragt den Anfangen psychologischer Begriffsbildung nach: In den Bestimmungen der Asthetik um 1800 stellt sich der Gestaltbegriff als Einheit von Form und Inhalt, von Begriff und Natur solchermassen vor, dass erkennendes Subjekt und Erscheinungswelt versohnt scheinen; jene, von Kants -asthetischer Urteilskraft- sich herleitende Illusion erscheint in ihrer asthetisch-naturphilosophischen (Goethe-Schelling-Carus) und psychologisch-asthetischen Version (Reinhold-Fichte-Schiller-Niethammer) in einem jeweils entsprechenden Begriff erzieherisch-vorauszusetzender menschlicher Natur und figuriert in - individuelles Verhalten und die Gesetze der Natur versohnenden- Bildern -subjektiver Totalitat-.".