This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held (...) that true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

English summary: With his research on early Greek philosophy, Hermann Diels created the definitive works of his era, and his Fragments of the Presocratics remains the standard work on the topic. However, the scholar never published a panorama of his unmatched knowledge. For the first time, a transcript of the lecture in which Diels represented his vision of Hellenic thought is now available. The script from the 1897/98 winter semester documents the oratory and pedagogy of the great Hellenist and (...) was provided by one of his exceptional students, the Munich-based Egyptologist Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. Diels proved himself as a clear-headed thinker discussing the historical course of early proverbial wisdom, the natural and political theory of Plato, and the conceptual precision of Aristotle. Central figures such as Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Democritus are concisely drawn and colored. Thus the text offers an absorbing picture of the origins of theoretical consciousness in Europe. German text. German description: Mit seinen Forschungen zur fruehgriechischen Philosophie hat Hermann Diels Epoche gemacht; seine aFragmente der Vorsokratiker sind weiterhin das Standardwerk zum Thema. Nie jedoch hat der Gelehrte ein Panorama seines unerreichten Wissens veroffentlicht. Erstmals wird nun eine Mitschrift jener Vorlesung zuganglich, in der Diels seine Sicht des hellenischen Denkens darstellte. Das Skript aus dem Wintersemester 1897/98 dokumentiert vorzueglich Sprachkraft und Padagogik des grossen Grazisten; es stammt von einem Ausnahme-Studenten, dem spateren Muenchner Agyptologen Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing.Im historischen Gang von frueher Spruchweisheit bis zur Natur- und Staatslehre Platons und der begrifflichen Prazisionsarbeit des Aristoteles hebt Diels besonders das Fortwirken grosser Denkmuster hervor. Zentrale Gestalten wie Anaximander, Heraklit, Parmenides oder Demokrit sind pragnant und farbig gezeichnet. So bietet der Text ueber seinen fachhistorischen Wert hinaus ein fesselndes Bild der Urspruenge theoretischen Bewusstseins in Europa. (shrink)

Plato’s "Parmenides" presents the modern reader with a puzzle. Noted for being the most difficult of Platonic dialogues, it is also one of the most influential. This new edition of the work includes the Greek text on facing pages, with an English translation by Arnold Hermann in collaboration with Sylvana Chrysakopoulou. Hermann's Introduction provides an overview and commentary aimed at scholars and first time readers alike.

Fascinating illustrations contribute to this illuminating and award-winning account of how and why philosophy emerged and make it a must-read for any inquisitive thinker unsatisfied with prevailing assumptions on this timely and highly relevant subject._ By taking the reader back to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy more than 500 years B.C., the author, with unparalleled insight, tells the story of the Pythagorean quest for otherwordly konwledge -- a tale of cultism, political conspiracies, and bloody uprisings that eventually culminate in (...) tragic failure. The emerging hero is Parmenides, who introduces for the first time a technique for testing the truth of a statement that was not based on physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, but instead relied exclusively on the faculty we humans share with the gods: the ability to reason. "Figures from Anaximander to Zeno, the ruins where they lived and thought, and the paradoxes and thought-experiments they proposed are depicted among the [many] well-chosen color illustrations. The results read like an introductory textbook, but one that has been lovingly written, lavishly laid-out and crisply printed-- making it engaging enough to draw in readers to whom it has not been assigned." - _ Publishers Weekly___ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." - _ Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College___ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." - _ Walter Burkert, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich___ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

In this essay, our goal is to discover science in Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, lecture notes for his 1935 summer semester course, because, after all, his subject is metaphysica generalis, or ontology, and this could be construed as a theory of the human brain. Here, by means of verbatim quotes from his text, we attempt to show that indeed these lectures can be viewed as suggestion for an objective scientific theory of human perception, the human capacity for deciphering phenomena, (...) ie. hermeneutics in its broadest sense. His added notes from the 1953 edition, all of which are comments, not corrections, imply that he never abandoned these thoughts on metaphysics, despite all of his utterances about a need to overcome it, and their popular interpretations to that effect. In his presentation, he further develops the colorful and intuitive style, an hermeneutic language, that he had created in his earlier work Being and Time. Of human existence he speaks in such expressions as being-there -- ``Dasein" -- and being-in-the-world, the latter term no longer explicit in the 1935 lectures. The lectures can be read as a pre-scientific analysis of how man, being-there, perceives his environment, artfully managing to deal with the manifold challenges posed by the phenomenal structures of the universe. Man attentively recognizes and deciphers their pre-linguistic contents and, while trying to make sense of it all, puts into words his awareness. There are numerous passages in Heidegger's work where he in fairly concrete terms provides us with hints for a perceptive science that, as it turns out and is demonstrated below in this essay, can be explained in terms of recent advances in neuroscience. It would be implausible, even unthinkable, unimaginable, for there not to be found essential agreement between on one hand his philosophical insights gained by hermeneutics of Dasein, into how our brain functions to let us know what's happening & on the other hand, scientific discoveries obtained through anatomy, EEG, fMRI, TMS, electrode implants, etc, of brain structures & functions employed in perception of the momentary scene. A nexus between science and philosophy is provided in Heidegger's definitive treatment of the Logos, here interpreted as a structural version of Platonic forms (Burchard, 2014). This allows for neurolinguistic brain functions to serve as meta-context for Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The logical functions of Dasein's anatomical brain are performed by the logos machine, formerly the human soul, using top-down processing based on a global context, the noumenal cosmos which humans maintain internally. Heidegger's 1942/43 winter semester lectures Parmenides extend in unbroken fashion his 1935 work, proving that he never abandoned, as is widely claimed, his metaphysical avenue of thought. (shrink)

1. T. 1. Häfte, Allgemeine Einleitung in die platonische Philosophie.--1. T., 2. Hälfte. Die Früdialoge -- 2. T., 1. Hälfte. Die Dialogue der Übergangszeit Gorgias, Meno, Euthydem, Menexenus Cratylus -- 2. T., 2. Hälfte. Die Dialogue der literarischen Meisterschaft Phädo, Symposium, Staat und Phädrus --3. T., 1. Hälfte. Die Spätdialoge Theätet, Parmenides, Sophist und Politicus -- 3. T. 2. Hälfte. Die Spätdialoge Philebus, Timäus, Critias und Gesetze .. 4. T. Register.

This celebratory Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprises some 23 articles by friends, former students and colleagues, many of whom first presented their papers at the international "Presocratics and Plato" Symposium in his honor. The conference was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies, Parmenides Publishing, and Starcom AG, with endorsements from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. While Kahn's work reaches far beyond the Presocratics (...) and Plato, it is in these subject areas that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled. The articles contributed to this volume are by some of the most renowned scholars working on these topics today, their breadth and depth bearing witness to his profound impact and influence on the discipline of Ancient Greek Philosophy._ Charles Kahn taught Classics and Philosophy at Columbia University from 1957 to 1965, and has since been teaching in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and had additional Visiting Fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a term as Visiting Professor at Harvard. He is the recipient of several prestigious research grants, from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of _Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and Essays on Being_. His latest book,_Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue_, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. _ Contributors: Julia Annas Sarah Broadie Lesley Brown Tomás Calvo-Martínez Diskin Clay John M. Dillon Dorothea Frede Arnold Hermann Carl A. Huffman Enrique Hülsz Piccone D. M. Hutchinson Paul Kalligas Vassilis Karasmanis Aryeh Kosman Anthony A. Long Richard McKirahan Susan Sauvé Meyer Alexander P.D.Mourelatos Satoshi Ogihara Richard Patterson Christopher J. Rowe David Sedley Richard Sorabji. (shrink)

This volume is a Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprised of more than 20 papers presented at the conference "Presocratics and Plato: Festschrift Symposium in Honor of Charles Kahn", 3-7 June 2009. The conference was held at the European Cultural Center of Delphi, Greece, and was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies and Parmenides Publishing, with endorsement from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. Contributors: (...) Julia Annas - University of Arizona; Sarah Broadie - University of St. Andrews; Lesley Brown - University of Oxford; Tomás Calvo-Martínez - Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Diskin Clay - Duke University; John M. Dillon - Trinity College, Dublin; Dorothea Frede - Humbolt University, Berlin; Arnold Hermann - HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies; Carl A. Huffman - DePauw University; Enrique Hülsz Piccone - Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; D.M. Hutchinson - St. Olaf College; Paul Kalligas - National and Kapodistrian University, Athens; Vassilis Karasmanis - National Technical University, Athens; Aryeh Kosman - Haverford College; Anthony A. Long - University of California, Berkeley; Richard McKirahan - Pomona College; Susan Sauvé Meyer - University of Pennsylvania; Alexander P.D. Mourelatos - University of Texas at Austin; Satoshi Ogihara - Tohoku University, Japan; Richard Patterson - Emory University; Christopher J. Rowe - Durham University; David Sedley - University of Cambridge; Richard Sorabji - University of Oxford. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of PhilosophyScott AustinArnold Hermann. To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of Philosophy. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004. Pp. xxx + 374. Cloth, $32.00.Mr. Arnold Hermann could presumably have used his connection with Parmenides Press to publish anything he wanted. Instead, he has put out a sober, bibliographically well aware, thesis (...) about the origin, nature, and motivations of Parmenides' thought, one evolved in dialogue with scholars such as Cordero, McKirahan, and Curd. The resulting monograph, to be the first of three on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's Parmenides, is a legitimate contribution to the field, to be taken very seriously as part of any scholarly bibliography. Best of all, in this reviewer's opinion, is the exploration of Parmenides' legal language and metaphors as they might affect the type of abstract object which can count as subject for the esti, the differences between or among routes and rules of inquiry, the necessity for a Doxa-section, the relationships with Xenophanes and Plato. Less successful, I think, is the attempt to put together a coherent picture out of the hazy evidence on Pythagoras and to distinguish levels of probability within that evidence. Nor, in spite of his praise for Mourelatos's book ("... truly one of the most indispensable works on the Eleatic," 214), does Hermann seem aware (see 189) that the possibility of a pluralistic Eleatic ontology was also present in that book, before it was followed by Curd's book.Hermann's thesis is that Parmenidean philosophy was an answer both to Xenophanes' challenge, to his indication of the limits of our human inquiry—our difference from the gods—and the problem of irrationals in Pythagoreanism. By setting out the rational limits which any purely theoretical inquiry must have, Parmenides intended to show that, in pursuing theory, we can, indeed, think like the gods. (Here excellent use is made of work by Mourelatos and Long.) But by distinguishing theoretical inquiry from empirical inquiry, Parmenides showed the limits of Pythagoreanism, which had been unable to make that distinction. (Units are theoretical entities, but points are empirical, so there are in reality no Pythagorean unit-points; rational numbers are theoretical while irrationals are empirical, and so on.) (Here there are affinities with the recent Popper book.) That is, the Doxa-section, according to Hermann, shows tragically that we do not always think like the gods, especially when we think empirically. Our contemporary science is continuing the inquiry that Parmenides began, but the original Parmenidean philosophy was a methodology about how to inquire into abstract objects, not necessarily a metaphysics, a theory about what those abstract objects are. Here Hermann differs from the standard portrait of Parmenides as theorist of an intelligible world; he thinks that it is Plato who is more responsible than Parmenides for theorizing about which objects correspond to the methodology. (Here he follows Mourelatos and Curd in viewing fragment 2 as setting up types of inquiry rather than types of entity.)One has no quarrel with the claim that Parmenides' originality is at least partly methodological. Yet a methodology whose strictures are this strong was thought, by Plato at least, to require absolute monism; is it an accident that I cannot have a pluralistic ontology without having non-identities between members of pairs of objects, non-identity being an example of saying what is not (fragment 8, lines 36–38)? Does not this particular methodology necessitate a very particular metaphysics? [End Page 481]And, if we do think like the gods, at least at times, are we not then thinking about what is ultimately real, i.e., about a certain type of object? If rules can be given which secure a kind of thought which is exempt from Xenophanean scepticism, do not these rules determine sorts of entities? And, if Pythagoreanism errs in confusing theoretical with empirical entities, must not we ourselves possess the perspective of a god or goddess in order to avoid the confusion?These are some of the questions provoked by this fresh book, which, untrammelled by much scholarly narrowness, is yet capable of contributing much to scholarly... (shrink)

Any account of “what is special about the human brain” (Passingham 2008) must specify the neural basis of our unique ability to produce speech and delineate how these remarkable motor capabilities could have emerged in our hominin ancestors. Clinical data suggest that the basal ganglia provide a platform for the integration of primate-general mechanisms of acoustic communication with the faculty of articulate speech in humans. Furthermore, neurobiological and paleoanthropological data point at a two-stage model of the phylogenetic evolution of this (...) crucial prerequisite of spoken language: (i) monosynaptic refinement of the projections of motor cortex to the brainstem nuclei that steer laryngeal muscles, presumably, as part of a “phylogenetic trend” associated with increasing brain size during hominin evolution; (ii) subsequent vocal-laryngeal elaboration of cortico-basal ganglia circuitries, driven by human-specificFOXP2mutations.;>This concept implies vocal continuity of spoken language evolution at the motor level, elucidating the deep entrenchment of articulate speech into a “nonverbal matrix” (Ingold 1994), which is not accounted for by gestural-origin theories. Moreover, it provides a solution to the question for the adaptive value of the “first word” (Bickerton 2009) since even the earliest and most simple verbal utterances must have increased the versatility of vocal displays afforded by the preceding elaboration of monosynaptic corticobulbar tracts, giving rise to enhanced social cooperation and prestige. At the ontogenetic level, the proposed model assumes age-dependent interactions between the basal ganglia and their cortical targets, similar to vocal learning in some songbirds. In this view, the emergence of articulate speech builds on the “renaissance” of an ancient organizational principle and, hence, may represent an example of “evolutionary tinkering” (Jacob 1977). (shrink)

Das Gewissen spielt im Leben und Werk von John Henry Newman eine zentrale Rolle. Seine Lehre uber das Gewissen ist im allgemeinen bekannt und anerkannt. Ebenso charakteristisch ist fur ihn aber das Streben nach dem Licht der Wahrheit. Der Autor behandelt in dieser Studie das Verhaltnis von Gewissen und Wahrheit bei Newman: ein Thema, das in dieser Weise in der Newman-Forschung bisher nicht erortert worden ist; ein Thema, das im Kontext der heute um sich greifenden Subjektivierung und Autonomisierung des Gewissens (...) von grundlegender Bedeutung ist.". (shrink)

Conscious existence is the product of a neural brain mechanism, which is largely identical with Immanuel Kant's Oneness Function, a service performed by 200 million neurons in the prefrontal lobe, & makes possible our interior cosmos, the record of our interconnected, or general, experience. Essential for us humans is the well-being of our interior cosmos, or Saint Teresa of Avila's interior castle, in all interactions with each other \& the greater environment. Any disorders of our cosmos are liable to make (...) us fall ill, setting our existence on a path of psychosomatic etiology of a large class of mysterious undiagnosed diseases. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience lead to a wider realm for philosophy to include the science of the Darwinian-evolved computational brain, our inner world producing organ, a non-recursive super- Turing machine combining 100B synapsing-neuron DNA-computers based on the genetic code. The whole system is a logos machine offering a world map for global context, essential for our intentional grasp of opportunities. We start from the observable contrast between the chaotic universe vs. our orderly inner world, the noumenal cosmos. So far, philosophy (...) has been rehearsing our thoughts, our human-internal world, a grand painting of the outer world, how we comprehend subjectively our experience, worked up by the logos machine, but now we seek a wider horizon, how humans understand the world thanks to Darwinian evolution to adapt in response to the metaphysical gap, the chasm between the human animal and its environment, shaping the organism so it can deal with its variable world. This new horizon embraces global context coded in neural structures that support the noumenal cosmos, our inner mental world, for us as denizens of the outer environment. Kant’s inner and outer senses are fundamental ingredients of scientific philosophy. Several sections devoted to Heidegger, his lizard debunked, but his version of the metaphysical gap & his doctrine of the logos praised. Rorty and others of the behaviorist school discussed also. (shrink)

On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice presents a view of morality that is inspired by the later Wittgenstein. Hermann explores the ethical implications of Wittgenstein's remarks on doubt, justification, rule-following, certainty and training, offering an alternative to interpretations of Wittgenstein's work that view it as being intrinsically ethical. The book scrutinises cases in which doubt and justification do not make sense, and contrasts certain justificatory demands made by philosophers with the role of moral justification in concrete situations. It offers (...) an account of moral certainty, which is linked to a view of moral competence. Contrary to the views propounded by philosophers who emphasise the importance of moral principles, it is argued that moral agency is first and foremost a matter of having certain capacities. The book takes an anti-intellectualist stance and remains close to concrete practices. The practice-based view of morality it endorses has implications for moral education, intercultural moral dialogue and the prospects for moral agreement, change and progress. (shrink)

Impressions, energy radiated by phenomena in the momentary environmental scene, enter sensory neurons, creating in afferent nerves a data stream. Following Kant, by our inner sense the mind perceives its own thoughts as it ties together sense data into an internalized scene. The mind, residing in the brain, logically a Language Machine, processes and stores items as coded grammatical entities. Kantian synthetic unity in the linguistic brain is able to deliver our experience of the scene as we appear to see (...) it. Uniquely, the brain records its own history, synthesizing a Movie-in-the-Brain, called the Noumenal Cosmos. Attempting thereby to represent the actual Universe, this makes for a sovereign brain that governs itself. The brain is domicile of an Ego, with its selfhood at stake at all times. Yet, it can know itself only by its actions, in which it appears as an actor in its own movie. Phenomena enter garbled, as confused apparitions, and must be put in good form using top–down feedback control by Ego, so that each movie frame makes rational sense within the overall context of the Noumenal Cosmos. A stack of frames is processed typically in 40 Hz rhythm with 300 ms process time each, for about 12 in the stack at any time. Successive neural centers are processing the stack in the brain assembly line, based on data from increasingly global receptive fields. Ego stitches together the movie frames, but only the top frame is in consciousness for 25 ms. The top frame contains the whole scene where the Ego makes an appearance as the actor that imposes Kantian synthetic unity on the scene, merely an assembly of grammatical texts, in a system-internal coded process language, fitting the scene into the Noumenal Cosmos. But Ego observes Ego only to the extent permitted by the objectivity rule, only what it does and thinks, not its true face. From the Noumenal Cosmos, the Ego receives grammatical messages in the internal sense code. They are integrated into a whole in the reaction of the Ego to the momentary scene. The voluntary nature of Ego’s decisions is explained, based on its ability to code in advance its own actions sequentially in time, as it sees fit with a view to an orderly Noumenal Cosmos, records of code being arranged spatially in neural structures. (shrink)

Outlines of Metaphysic - dictated portions of the lectures of Hermann Lotze is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1884. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to (...) the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

The ancient dualism of a sensible and an intelligible world important in Neoplatonic and medieval philosophy, down to Descartes and Kant, would seem to be supplanted today by a scientific view of mind-in-nature. Here, we revive the old dualism in a modified form, and describe mind as a symbolic language, founded in linguistic recursive computation according to the Church-Turing thesis, constituting a world L that serves the human organism as a map of the Universe U. This methodological distinction of L (...) vs. U helps to understand how and why structures of phenomena come to be opposed to their nature in human thought, a central topic in Heideggerian philosophy. U is uncountable according to Georg Cantor’s set theory but Language L, based on the recursive function system, is countable, and anchored in a Gray Area within U of observable phenomena, typically symbols, prelinguistic structures, genetic-historical records of their origins. Symbols, the phenomena most familiar to mathematicians, are capable of being addressed in L-processing. The Gray Area is the human Environment E, where we can live comfortably, that we manipulate to create our niche within hostile U, with L offering overall competence of the species to survive. The human being is seen in the light of his or her linguistic recursively computational mind. Nature U, by contrast, is the unfathomable abyss of being, infinite labyrinth of darkness, impenetrable and hostile to man. The U-man, biological organism, is a stranger in L-man, the mind-controlled rational person, as expounded by Saint Paul. Noumena can now be seen to reside in L, and are not fully supported by phenomena. Kant’s noumenal cause is the mental L-image of only partly phenomenal causation. Mathematics occurs naturally in pre-linguistic phenomena, including natural laws, which give rise to pure mathematical structures in the world of L. Mathematical foundation within philosophy is reversed to where natural mathematics in the Gray Area of pre-linguistic phenomena can be seen to be a prerequisite for intellectual discourse. Lesser, nonverbal versions of L based on images are shared with animals. (shrink)

Georg Cantor's absolute infinity, the paradoxical Burali-Forti class Ω of all ordinals, is a monstrous non-entity for which being called a "class" is an undeserved dignity. This must be the ultimate vexation for mathematical philosophers who hold on to some residual sense of realism in set theory. By careful use of Ω, we can rescue Georg Cantor's 1899 "proof" sketch of the Well-Ordering Theorem––being generous, considering his declining health. We take the contrapositive of Cantor's suggestion and add Zermelo's choice function. (...) This results in a concise and uncomplicated proof of the Well-Ordering Theorem. (shrink)

"This is the first English translation of Pilo Albertelli's seminal translation of the work of Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides. It is a work that is cited and listed by leading philosophy scholars, acknowledging the importance of the original Albertelli Italian translation"--.

Big data represents a significant challenge for the social sciences. From a philosophy-of-science perspective, it is important to reflect on related theories and processes for developing them. In this paper, we start by examining different views on the role of theories in big data-related social research. Then, we try to show how big data is related to standards for evaluating theories. We also outline how big data affects theory- and data-based research approaches and the process of theory building. Discussions include (...) a summary of lines of reasoning, limitations, and a proposal for future developmental steps. (shrink)

Placing Parmenides in his proper historical context by taking seriously the impact of Persian Zoroastrianism on his developing monoism, Henn supplies precise interpretation of the most difficult and vexing of Parmenides's fragments, while...

This new edition of Aristotle s De interpretatione provides an improved text compared to the 1949 Oxford edition, based upon an evaluation of the seven earliest surviving medieval manuscripts as well as many translations and commentaries from late antiquity. A text-critical apparatus provides information about the different readings.".