In this article we establish the existence of a number of new orbits in the automorphism group of the computably enumerable sets. The degree theoretical aspects of these orbits also are examined.

The starting-point is the distinction between concept and conception. Our conceptions of gold, for instance, are the different understandings we get when we hear the word ‘gold’ whereas the concept of gold consists in the scientific determination of what gold is. It depends on the context whether it is more reasonable to claim a concept or to look for fitting conceptions. By arguing against metaphysical realism and for non-metaphysical realism, I will elaborate on some philosophical reasons for dealing with conceptions (...) instead of concepts of God, and secondly, I will discuss how such conceptions should be critically assessed. (shrink)

This article deals with the philosophical problem of how to conceive reality. The difficulty consists in finding a middle way between the claim that reality is unconceptualised reality and the claim that there is no difference between what is real and what we experience as real. In this regard, the pragmatic tradition in philosophy promises to provide us with some fruitful ideas for steering a path between the two. The author applies some of these ideas in developing a pragmatic realist (...) philosophy of religion which is not reductionist and therefore acceptable for religious as well as non-religious philosophers of religion. First, he gives a very short summary of pragmatism as background to his proposal. Second, in contrast to the notion of realism in the pragmatic tradition he sketches the presuppositions of what is labelled religious or theological realism in present analytic philosophy of religion. Third, he distinguishes between ontological commitments that are metaphysical in character and ontological commitments that are not, drawing on Rudolf Carnap’s idea of the difference between internal and external questions of existence. Fourth, he presents Hilary Putnam’s criticism of a metaphysically realist conception of existence and fifth, Putnam’s defence of what he calls internal realism. Sixth, he puts forward a pragmatic idea of the difference between observational experiences and existential ones in our lives. Finally, he applies this pragmatic philosophy of religion to the question of whether it is reasonable to claim that belief in God presupposes God’s existence. (shrink)

This text is an ambitious intellectual enterprise to build a naturalistic foundation for economics, with vast knowledge of physical, biological, social sciences and philosophy. Readers will discover that approaches and insights emergent in institutional studies, (social)-neuroscience, network theory, ecological economics, bio-culture dualistic evolution, etc. are persuasively placed in a grand unified frame.

Zunächst Pfarrer in Berlin-Charlottenburg, dann Professor für Philosophie in Halle, repräsentiert Eberhard die nachwolffianische deutsche Popularphilosophie, der an praktisch und pädagogisch wirksamer Aufklärung im Zusammenspiel mit den fortschrittlichen politischen und religiösen Kräften lag. In diesen Lehrbüchern repräsentiert Eberhard sich als Aufklärer auf dem philosophischen Niveau der ästhetischen, hermeneutischen und historischen Modifikation des Wolffschen Systems und der neuerlichen Rezeption der Philosophie Leibniz’, zumal der Erkenntnistheorie der 1765 erschienenen „Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain“. Eberhard wurde aufgrund seiner Theorie des (...) Denkens und Empfindens als Schüler Leibniz’ bezeichnet; und er verfasste denn auch eine Leibniz-Biographie. Er hielt zeitlebens an den wolffianischen Standards von Rationalität fest und widersetzte sich nicht nur dem normativen Rekurs auf „Empfindsamkeit“ in Literatur und Religion, sondern auch der sog. Glaubensphilosophie Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis, erst recht der zeitgenössischen Wiederkehr von Okkultismus und Esoterik. Johann August Eberhard, professor of philosophy in Halle, is one of the foremost exponents of the Popularphilosophie of the German Enlightenment. He was a major contributor to Friedrich Nicolai’s "Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek", and advanced unorthodox opinions on religious and political issues. (shrink)

In dieser Untersuchung wird die Instandhaltung technischer Artefakte, neben deren Schaffung und Nutzung die dritte grundlegende Form technischen Handelns, als Teilthema der Technikphilosophie systematisch und umfassend analysiert. Nur durch Instandhaltung können die unermeßlichen und vielfältigen mittels technischer Verfahren erzeugten Werte vor vorzeitigem Verfall und Untergang bewahrt werden. Die Studie erschließt Instandhaltung in phänomenologischer (Grundlagen) und normativer Hinsicht (Instandhaltung und Gesellschaft). Die auf Unumkehrbarkeit des Handelns und ganz allgemein des Geschehens gegründete Endlichkeit seiner Dauer bindet das individuelle technische Artefakt als wesentliches (...) Element in den Verlauf der Allgemein-, Technik-, Kultur-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte ein. (shrink)

A trusted guide into the inner realm where our spirits find strength to master life and live for God. It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Innerland, either for Eberhard Arnold or his readers. It absorbed his energies off and on for most of his adult life--from World War I, when he published the first chapter under the title War: A Call to Inwardness, to 1935, the last year of his life. Packed in metal boxes and buried at (...) night for safekeeping from the Nazis, who raided the author_s study a year before his death (and again a year after it), Innerland was not openly critical of Hitler_s regime. Nevertheless, it attacked the spirits that animated German society: its murderous strains of racism and bigotry, its heady nationalistic fervor, its mindless mass hysteria, and its vulgar materialism. In this sense Innerland stands as starkly opposed to the zeitgeist of our own day as to that of the author_s. At a glance, the focus of Innerland seems to be the cultivation of the spiritual life as an end in itself. Nothing could be more misleading. In fact, to Eberhard Arnold the very thought of encouraging the sort of selfish solitude whereby people seek their own private peace by shutting out the noise and rush of public life around them is anathema. He writes in The Inner Life:_These are times of distress. We cannot retreat, willfully blind to the overwhelming urgency of the tasks pressing on society. We cannot look for inner detachment in an inner and outer isolation...The only justification for withdrawing into the inner self to escape today's confusing, hectic whirl would be that fruitfulness is enriched by it. It is a question of gaining within, through unity with eternal powers, a strength of character ready to be tested in the stream of the world._ Innerland, then, calls us not to passivity, but to action. It invites us to discover the abundance of a life lived for God. It opens our eyes to the possibilities of that _inner land of the invisible where our spirit can find the roots of its strength and thus enable us to press on to the mastery of life we are called to by God._ Only there, says Eberhard Arnold, can our life be placed under the illuminating light of the eternal and seen for what it is. Only there will we find the clarity of vision we need to win the daily battle that is life, and the inner anchor without which we will lose our moorings. (shrink)