A connection between Aristotle's syllogistic and the calculus of relations is investigated. Aristotle's and Gergonne's syllogistics are considered as some algebraic structures. It is proved that Gergonne's syllogistic is isomorphic to closed elements algebra of a proper approximation relation algebra. This isomorphism permits to evaluate Gergonne's syllogisms and also Aristotle's syllogisms, laws of conversion and relations in the "square of oppositions" by means of regular computations with Boolean matrices.

Ontology engineering is mainly done by domain experts who are specialists in their domain but have, if at all, limited knowledge in logics, computer science, or analytic philosophy. The literature on formal ontologies and biomedical ontologies is neither suited nor intended to serve as an educational resource that would help domain experts to become good ontologists. Existing educational resources focus rather on ontology tools and languages than on good practice. The purpose of the GoodOD guideline is to pave the road (...) for domain experts who want (or need) to become ontology engineers. It pursues the openly pragmatic approach that ontology engineers only need to know ontology theory to the extent which supports the (measurable) outcome of their work. The GoodOD Guideline builds upon given philosophical and methodological principles as well as preexisting tools and resources. In particular (pragmatic) scientific realism, first order logics and its subset OWL-DL (description logics), set theory, an upper-level ontology with high-level categories and a canonic set of relations, constraints which limit the freedom of choice when building coordinate expressions, the ontology editor Protégé 4, a complete DL reasoner, such as HermIT, ontology design patterns, and naming conventions. -/- Given these precepts the guideline contains all the knowledge to be acquired by a user to be able to solve ontology engineering problems in a foreseeable and non-arbitrary way. The didactic concept is to convey the skills not only by theory but also by practical examples. (shrink)

Computer simulation and thought experiments seem to produce knowledge about the world without intervening in the world. This has called for a comparison between the two methods. However, Chandrasekharan et al. argue that the nature of contemporary science is too complex for using TEs. They suggest CS as the tool for contemporary sciences and conclude that it will replace TEs. In this paper, by discussing a few TEs from the history of science, I show that the replacement thesis about TE (...) is a failure. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the arguments of Chandrasekharan et al. and demonstrates the three distinct aspects of the replacement thesis. The second section examines the argument against TE and shows that they are inadequate to prove the withering of TE from science. The third section discusses Albert Einstein’s Magnet and Conductor TE and demonstrates that replacing such TE with CS yield no advantage. (shrink)

In this article Troels Norager discusses the subject of sacrifice in the context of Kierkegaard's Works of Love and Fear and Trembling. The first section argues that contrary to contemporary attempts to turn Kierkegaard into a phenomenologist of love, Kierkegaard should be regarded as a radical Christian thinker who (partly for biographical reasons) deliberately emphasized the necessity of being willing to sacrifice one's most precious love object. The second part deals with Abraham's dilemma in Genesis 22 and argues, critically surveying (...) the intriguing interpretation proposed by Ingolf Dalferth, that no credible solution to this deeply troubling story is to be found. In the final section the author ponders the contemporary significance of Abraham's sacrifice and briefly points to insights from eminent political philosophers like Rawls and Habermas. This leads to the conclusion that theology should finally be taking leave of Abraham by rejecting Abraham as the 'Father of faith' and as a paradigm to be emulated. Instead, theologians and philosophers of religion are called upon to embrace our post-secular modernity without surrendering to the demands of authoritarian religion. (shrink)

In CR N.S. 10 , 7, I supported L. Purgold's emendation of to in O. T. 230, accepted by Elmsley, wrongly discarded by all editors since, and now omitted even from the apparatus criticus of R. D. Dawe's recent Teubner edition of Sophocles. May I now add that the emendation was also defended, at greater length, by M. Furness in CR 13 , 195–7? The 1899 editor of CR reproduced, at the end of Furness's article, the sueeinct and trenchant Latin (...) in which, in the year 1802, Purgold defended his emendation. (shrink)

In CR N.S. 10, 7, I supported L. Purgold's emendation of to in O. T. 230, accepted by Elmsley, wrongly discarded by all editors since, and now omitted even from the apparatus criticus of R. D. Dawe's recent Teubner edition of Sophocles. May I now add that the emendation was also defended, at greater length, by M. Furness in CR 13, 195–7? The 1899 editor of CR reproduced, at the end of Furness's article, the sueeinct and trenchant Latin in which, (...) in the year 1802, Purgold defended his emendation. (shrink)

Theory-ladenness of perception and cognition is pervasive and variable. Emerging maturationally natural perception and cognition, which are on-line, fast, automatic, unconscious, and, by virtue of their selectivity, theoretical in import, if not in form, define normal development. They contrast with off-line, slow, deliberate, conscious perceptual and cognitive judgments that reflective theories, including scientific ones, inform. Although culture tunes MN systems, their emergence and operation do not rely on culturally distinctive inputs. The sciences advance radically counter-intuitive representations that depart drastically from (...) MN systems’ deliverances. Extensive experience with RCI scientific theories can result in a practiced naturalness with their perceptual and cognitive consequences; nevertheless, automatic MN verdicts persistently intrude. Fodor suggests that the uniformity of the biases MN systems introduce can serve as a theory-neutral means for adjudicating scientific disputes. Findings about vision challenge Fodor’s proposal for circumventing problems that MN theory-ladenness presents. These considerations indicate that RCI scientific ideas are difficult to learn, master, and deploy; consequently, the corrective import of science’s social and institutional arrangements plays a critical role in its epistemic stature. (shrink)

"My aim in this paper is to develop an ontology of media operations that is rooted in Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation. I position this media operative ontology in contrast to Bernhard Siegert’s understanding of operative ontology as a cultural technique. Drawing on Wolfgang Ernst, Henri Atlan, and Michel Serres, I argue that Siegert’s position compromises the extra-cultural operationality of technical media, and of techniques more generally, in its bid to redirect media theory from its Kittlerian trajectory. With his theory (...) of information as reception of environmental singularity by a metastable receiver, Simondon provides a mechanism for theorizing how extra-cultural operationality of technical media informs the production of culture and the distinctions upon which it rests, without compromising the alterity of technics. Mein Ziel in diesem Beitrag ist es, eine Ontologie von Medienoperationen zu entwickeln, die auf Gilbert Simondons Theorie der Individuation fußt. Auf der Grundlage von Wolfgang Ernst, Henri Atlan und Michel Serres behaupte ich, dass Siegerts Versuch, die Medientheorie von ihrer Kittlerschen Linie abzulenken, den Stellenwert der außerkulturellen Operationalität technischer Medien und der Techniken im Allgemeinen herabspielt. Mit seiner Theorie der Information als Empfang von umweltlicher Singularität durch einen metastabilen Empfänger bietet Simondon dagegen einen Mechanismus, dank dem theoretisch durchdacht werden kann, wie die außerkulturelle Operationalität der technischen Medien die Kulturproduktion und die Unterscheidungen, auf denen sie beruht, prägt, ohne die Andersheit der Technik zu reduzieren. ". (shrink)

Martin Walser's reflections on German self-identity have made him a controversial author: whereas critics have raised charges of,,literary anti-Semitism", his defenders consider him – as a writer who since the early 1960s has shown a preoccupation with his country's Nazi past – immune to such criticism. Taking both arguments seriously, Matthias N. Lorenz has reviewed Walser's allegedly untenable positions on the Holocaust in his book,,Auschwitz drängt uns auf einen Fleck": Judendarstellung und Auschwitzdiskurs bei Martin Walser. In this essay the author (...) concisely presents the main theses and thoughts of Lorenz's widely discussed Ph.D. dissertation. (shrink)

La lecture des documents modernes (rapports techniques des ingénieurs grecs et français et cartes minières de la Compagnie Française des Mines du Laurium, élaborés lors de la reprise des travaux miniers à Camariza du Laurium au xixe s.) qui décrivent les restes des travaux miniers antiques à Camariza, qu’il s’agisse des terres accumulées en quantités considérables au fur et à mesure de l’extraction (haldes), des plynites rejetées au cours de la concentration ou des scories issues de la fusion, permet de (...) localiser en ce lieu la Maronée antique, ainsi baptisée par analogie avec la Maronée de Thrace. Ils nous livrent même une image étonnamment précise de ces travaux pionniers, réellement gigantesques, très précisément aux puits miniers Hilarion N° 1, Serpieri N° 1, Jean Baptiste N° 1. Les rapports relatifs au puits Jean Baptiste N° 1 mettent particulièrement en exergue l’antique extraction des veines à une profondeur d’à peine 28 m et la présence d’un riche gisement de plomb argentifère à 76 m, sur une longueur de 500 m et une épaisseur de 2 à 8 m, qui est, très probablement, le fameux « contact » repéré en 483 av. J.‑C. (shrink)

Drawing on American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce›s »phaneroscopy«, and particularly on its point of disjunction from more orthodox phenomenology concerning the status and necessity of reception, this article argues that today’s databases phenomenalize the aesthetic dimension of worldly sensibility. Although database phenomenalizing explicitly substitutes for the phenomenalizing performed by consciousness on standard accounts of phenomenology, the important point is that it does so without severing contact with human experience. What is ultimately at stake here is the status of the phenomenon (...) itself: insofar as it hosts the self-manifestation of the world without necessarily manifesting it to anyone or anything, the phenomenon can be disjoined from its subjective anchoring in consciousness (or any of its avatars) and ascribed to the operationality of worldly sensibility itself. Gestützt auf die sog. »phaneroscopy« des amerikanischen Philosophen Charles Sanders Peirce und insbesondere auf ihre Differenz zur orthodoxeren Phänomenologie in Bezug auf den Status und die Notwendigkeit der Rezeption argumentiert dieser Beitrag, dass die heutigen Datenbanken die ästhetische Dimension weltlicher Sinnlichkeit phänomenalisieren. Auch wenn die Phänomenalisierung durch Datenbanken diejenige durch Bewusstsein explizit ersetzt, bleibt es bedeutsam, dass dies geschieht, ohne den Kontakt mit menschlicher Erfahrung abzubrechen. Worum es letztlich geht, ist der Status des Phänomens selbst: Insoweit es die Selbst-Manifestation der Welt beherbergt, ohne sie notwendigerweise für irgendjemand oder irgendetwas zu manifestieren, kann das Phänomen von seiner subjektiven Verankerung im Bewusstsein (oder jedem seiner Avatare) gelöst werden und der Operationalität weltlicher Sensibilität selbst zugeschrieben werden. (shrink)

Biography of Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1895-1986, Indian philosopher.

Life and works of Vācaspatimiśra, fl. 976-1000, Hindu philosopher; with special reference to his contribution to the Advaita school.

Study of Śivasvarodaya, work on yoga; includes original Sanskrit text with English translation.

In this paper, I explore the links between liberal political theory and the evaluative nature of medical classification, arguing for stronger recognition of those links in a liberal model of medical practice. All judgments of medical or psychiatric "dysfunction," I argue, are fundamentally evaluative, reflecting our collective willingness or reluctance to tolerate and/or accommodate the conditions in question. Illness, then, is "socially constructed." But the relativist worries that this loaded phrase evokes are unfounded; patients, doctors, and communities will agree in (...) the vast majority of cases about what counts as illness. Where they cannot come to agreement, however, we are faced with precisely the sort of dispute about values and ways of life that the institutions of the liberal state are designed to accommodate. I accordingly sketch a model of medical practice, based loosely on Jürgen Habermas's political theories, designed to maximize both our awareness and our understanding of these disputes. (shrink)