This study aims to explore the impact of migration as a central event in personal identity, spirituality and religiousness on subjective well-being. The sample was composed of 204 Latin American immigrants living in Israel, with ages ranging from 18 to 80 years (M = 48.76; SD = 15.36) across both sexes (Men = 34.8%; Women = 65.2%). The results show that, when analyzing the effects on Subjective Well-Being (SWB), Positive and Negative Affect, Centrality of Event, Religious Crisis and Spiritual Transcendence (...) present as the most relevant explanatory variables within the models. However, contrary to expectation, the present study identifies positive associations between the centrality of migration and SWB. Motivations for emigration should be explored in further studies as they could be mediating the relationship between centrality of events and subjective well-being. (shrink)

Die Fragestellungen der Metaphysik, so scheint es, sind nicht mehr zeitgemäß. Der Begriff erinnert an abgehobene Systeme ohne jeden Realitätssinn. Dabei gibt es kein Denken ohne Metaphysik. Unter Bezugnahme auf die Traditionen der Phänomenologie und der französischen Philosophie versteht Robert Hugo Ziegler Endlichkeit als eine positive Auszeichnung, während der Begriff der Zeitlichkeit die erste Dimension von Sein beschreibt. Sein grundlegender Beitrag zur Reflexion über Mensch und Welt zeigt, wie sich die Philosophie selbstbewusst einer Erneuerung der Metaphysik stellen kann.

The idea that simplicity matters in science is as old as science itself, with the much cited example of Ockham's Razor, 'entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem': entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. A problem with Ockham's razor is that nearly everybody seems to accept it, but few are able to define its exact meaning and to make it operational in a non-arbitrary way. Using a multidisciplinary perspective including philosophers, mathematicians, econometricians and economists, this 2002 monograph examines simplicity (...) by asking six questions: what is meant by simplicity? How is simplicity measured? Is there an optimum trade-off between simplicity and goodness-of-fit? What is the relation between simplicity and empirical modelling? What is the relation between simplicity and prediction? What is the connection between simplicity and convenience? The book concludes with reflections on simplicity by Nobel Laureates in Economics. (shrink)

The idea that simplicity matters in science is as old as science itself, with the much cited example of Ockham's Razor, 'entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem': entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. A problem with Ockham's razor is that nearly everybody seems to accept it, but few are able to define its exact meaning and to make it operational in a non-arbitrary way. Using a multidisciplinary perspective including philosophers, mathematicians, econometricians and economists, this 2002 monograph examines simplicity (...) by asking six questions: what is meant by simplicity? How is simplicity measured? Is there an optimum trade-off between simplicity and goodness-of-fit? What is the relation between simplicity and empirical modelling? What is the relation between simplicity and prediction? What is the connection between simplicity and convenience? The book concludes with reflections on simplicity by Nobel Laureates in Economics. (shrink)

Wir sind Teil einer Natur, die uns übersteigt - Grund genug, die Natur wieder zum Gegenstand philosophischer Reflexionen zu machen. Durch den Essentialismus-Verdacht schien der Begriff bereits für die Philosophie disqualifiziert. Doch Robert Hugo Ziegler zeigt, gestützt unter anderem auf Lukrez und Spinoza, dass die Natur, sobald man sie ernsthaft ins Auge fasst, alles andere als essentialistisch ist. Er ordnet das philosophische Problem der Natur damit in eine Wiederentdeckung metaphysischer Fragestellungen ein, die er originell vorantreibt - und beweist, dass (...) sich die Philosophie dadurch nicht nur zur bloßen Kommentatorin der Naturwissenschaften machen muss. (shrink)

Nature quality in relation to farming is a complex field. It involves different traditions and interests, different views of what nature is, and different ways of valuing nature. Furthermore there is a general lack of empirical data on many aspects of nature quality in the farmed landscape. In this paper we discuss nature quality from the perspective of organic farming, which has its own values and goals in relation to nature – the Ecologist View of Nature. This is in contrast (...) to the Culturist View characteristic of much conventional agriculture and the Naturalist View characteristic of the traditional biological approach to nature quality. This threefold distinction forms a framework for exploration of nature quality criteria in the farmed landscape. The traditional work on nature quality has mainly focused on biological interests based on a Naturalist View of Nature. In this paper we will explore how criteria for nature quality based on the Ecologist View can be developed and thereby feed into the ongoing discussion of the development of the organic farming practices. We suggest additional criteria for nature quality based on an Ecologist View of Nature: biodiversity, habitat diversity, extent and structure, functional integrity of habitats and agro-ecosystems, landscape integrity, accessibility, and experientiality. The larger set of Naturalist and Ecologist criteria can provide a wider and more balanced basis for developing nature quality indicators that are relevant in the farmed landscapes. This broader approach to nature quality is also expected to benefit the general societal discussions and decisions on farming and nature. (shrink)

From its very inception philosophy has been preoccupied with death, so much so that many philosophers have received the reputation of being somber, melancholic, and morbid in nature. By continuously reflecting on the meaning and nature of death, philosophers have seemingly been shrouded in darkness to such an extent that their contemporaries considered them to be dead long before they met their own demise. While this image of the moribund philosopher can certainly be questioned, the fact remains that many philosophers, (...) and then especially the ancient ones, have insisted that there is an essential relation between philosophical thought and death. A life dedicated to philosophy would, it seems, at the same time imply a life lived in the shadow of death. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: The first part, drawing on Spinoza and Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, develops a broad outline of what might be called a metaphysics of immanence. In the second part, I will propose to understand phenomenology in the context of this metaphysics of immanence and I will point to some methodological and ontological shifts in phenomenological research this metaphysical interpretation might entail.

Bd. l. Die Sinnenwelt.-- Bd. 2. Die innere Welt.

The internal organization of Belgian governments is described. Several ministerial committees for the preparation of governmental decisions have been institutionalized. The ministers and state secretaries who are members are chosen according the functional competence, region or community association, and party or faction affiliation.A core cabinet for general policy, which is chaired by the prime minister, and in which are represented the most important members of each coalition partner, tends to take over the role of the council of ministers on crucial (...) matters as an instrument of collegial decision-making.This trend does not contribute to the consolidation of the prime minister's power.The existing ministerial committees, one for each community or region, developed into governments.The article deals also with the internal organization-charts and party distribution among members of subunits of the Belgian governments from 1972 to 1981. (shrink)

Anhand des phänomenologischen Begriffs der Auffassung soll die Beziehung von Freudscher Psychoanalyse und Husserlscher Phänomenologie näher bestimmt werden. Dabei wird von einer methodologischen Fragestellung ausgegangen, die sich allerdings notwendig auch zu einer inhaltlich bestimmten Perspektive weiten muss. Die These ist, dass die Phänomenologie sich in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem grundverschiedenen Ansatz der Psychoanalyse selbst genauer verstehen lernt, und zwar vor allem in ihrem Anspruch auf Wissenschaftlichkeit, in ihrer Forderung nach anschaulicher Ausweisung von philosophischer Wahrheit und in der Problematisierung des Subjektbegriffs.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A WAY OF LOOKING AT HEIDEGGER HUGO MEYNELL University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta IN THE FOLLOWING essay I w;ant to examine some of rthe ba1Sic ~deas of Heidegger from SIOmething of a " transcendiental Thomist " pevspective, 1 as represented by Bernard Lonergian's " generalized empirical method." I believe that there are a nlllmber of important insights :to be gained from Heidegger's work but that it contains a (...) fow very perilous oversights as well. To my mind, Heidegger shows with more conviction and power than any other thinker how our anxieties and our trivi1al everyday concerns are apt to shut us out from 1apprehending the deep my;stery of things, and how great art :and poetry, together with a,sustained thinking-through of the nmbure of consciousness :and of the woJ.'11d 1 wihich it reveals, have the power of opening up this mystery to us again.. I ailso agree with Heidegger when he says that the technicaiL fanguages of the scieDJoes and of traditional metaphysics as weH al'le, to a consiiew, one has to dismantle the conceptual appa- :vaitus which we take for granted, an appara;bus wherein the answers are given or presuppos,ed, but the questions al'e never e1q>erienced any more-least of all those aborut orur own nature, desbiny, and state in the wol'l1d. In asking these questions, we must be constantly ·aware of the limitations which aiccrue mom our particular historical sitruation.5 These were not sufficiently taken account of in the dassicaJ. phenomenology of Husserl, with its "transcendental subjectivity " based on an allegedly "d!isintel'ested observer." For all. its determination to 11eturn :to" the things themselves," this phenomerno~ogy did not attend sufficiently to the manner in which its own aims :and IJ[>ocedures we:ve determined historicaUy.6 Husserl, as he himself aJC1knowledged, was very much in the tradition of Descartes, who was trying to find an uns:hakabJe basis for the practice of phll.osophy. But it is just this basis which Heidegger seeks to prut into qruestion.7 We have to a.sk what is the decisiY.e matter for,thinking: "Is it consciousness and its objectivity or is it the Being of beings in its unconcealedness and concealment?" 8 Access to the things themselves is best thought of in true Greek fashion as " aletheia, the unoonceaJ.edness of what is present, iits being revealed, its showing itself." 9 (A,s he quite often does, Heidegger is here making capital out of ·an etymological point; " aletheia," the Greek word for """.t-1.,, • • 1 " i-th. " cealm t),..,ruuu, iI.S eqwv:a1ent to a- e ei,a, non~con · en. So what is basic to truth, irt must be inferred, is not the 00['rectness of assertions, or their cor11espondence with states of a:fiaim, or the :agreement of subjoot and object express1 ed by them; it is the self-showing which is necessary for things if 5 Cf. Krell, "Introduction," 21. 6 Ibid., 13. 7 Cf. Walter Biemel, Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 8-9; Krell, 31. On the alleged errors of Descartes, see BT 123-33. sHeidegger, On Tflrne and Bemg (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 79; Krell, 14. oHeidegger, loc. cit., Krell, 13. 616 HUGO MEYNELL they 1arie to become objects of assertions.at all.10 The £.act is that.rulil (lO!l'respondence, " rudequation "11 or whatev. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FROM EPISTEMOLOGY TO METAPHYSICS WHAT I HOPE to do in what follows is to sketch how one might go about constructing a rational, ritical, and in a sense 'scientific' metaphysics. It goes without saying that a great many current conceptions of ' metaphysics ' are abusive. On one account, ' metaphysics ' is whatever isn't science or common sense, where science and common sense are assumed to be good (...) things. On another, 'metaphysics' consists of an abuse of language which is brought about by a wrenching of it out of its normal context. Again, ' metaphysics ' is supposed to substitute a bloodless dance of categories for the spontaneous outflow of religious feeling, or idolatrous human constructions for the Word of God. However, it seems in general much clearer that metaphysics is to be contemptuously repudiated than exactly what it is. A traditional definition of metaphysics is ' the study of being qua being'. It is perhaps understandable that many should complain, when confronted by such a sententious formula, that such an inquiry is a waste of time, and one had much better get on with the more fruitful business of pursuing one of the particular sciences. (Ezra Pound once remarked that, since the Renaissance, a philosopher had been someone who was too damned lazy to work in a laboratory; and the same may be felt to apply a fortiori to the metaphysician.) And yet there are problems which do not seem to go away, however often it is confidently asserted that they have done so or are about to do so, problems which might be said to be concerned with ' being ' or ' reality ' at a very high level of generality. Those who brush the problems aside may perhaps sometimes be suspected of arbitrarily taking sides on them. For example, the psychological doctrine known as behaviorism is ~05 206 HUGO MEYNELL based on the assumption that all talk about thoughts, feelings, and emotions is in the final analysis reducible to talk about the behavior of organisms. But it is one thing to allow such an assumption to dominate one's work, another to set it clearly, another still to examine and to justify it. If any examination of the account of the relation of mind to matter implied by behaviorism has to be of such generality as to enter the realm of the 'metaphysical ', it would seem to be still worth carrying out, unless indeed we are to accept behaviorism quite uncritically as a dogma. Just the same applies to writing which assumes the existence of non-existence of a Deity. The fact is that every passage of speech or writing which exists, and makes claims as to matters of fact, involves certain assumptions about the ultimate constituents of things, and about the nature and interrelations of appearance, reality, mind, matter, experience, causality, things, properties, events, space, time, God, and so on. Let us call each such set of basic assumptions (including the ones mentioned earlier, that talk about minds is reducible to talk about the behavior of organisms, that there is or is not a God) a 'metaphysic'. Let us say that 'metaphysics ' is an attempt to discuss, and to come to well-founded conclusions on, the question as to whether any such ' metaphysic ' is to be preferred, as more closely approximating to the truth about how things are in the world, to any other. Empiricism, idealism, materialism, critical realism, and naive realism, will at this rate each be a 'metaphysic'; that is to say, each consists of theses about the existence, nature and interrelations of actual or alleged basic constituents of reality like those listed above. Any attempt to discuss the rival merits of any of them, or.to defend any one as more appropriate than the others, will count as ' metaphysics '. The arguments by which Plato, Leibniz, or Hegel established their conclusions about the ultimate nature of things evidently count as ' metaphysics ' according to our conception; and this does seem in conformity with ordinary usage. Perhaps it is obvious that one such 'metaphysic' (say, materialism) is to be preferred to the rest; FROM EPISTEMOLOGY TO METAPHYSICS 207 or at least that another such (say, idealism) should be repudiated ; but it would be as... (shrink)

Explains Popper's views on natural and social science, ranging in Part I from metaphysical considerations to his interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, and in Part II from the errors of historicism and holism to the roles of theoretical models, institutions, traditions and history.

More is known about the pervasiveness of college cheating than reasons why students cheat. This article reports the results of a study that applied the theory of reasoned action and partial least squares methodology to analyze the responses of 144 students to a survey on cheating behavior. Approximately 60% of the business students and 64% of the non-business students admitted to such behavior. Among cheaters, a "desire to get ahead" was the most important motivating factor - a surprising result given (...) the comprehensive set of factors tested in the study. Among non-cheaters, the presence of a "moral anchor" such as an ethical professor was most important. The article also includes a set of important caveats that might limit this study and suggests some avenues for further study. (shrink)

Critical food scholars have argued that activists’ political ideologies and environmental values are important influences on their food justice projects. However, this body of work has given little attention to religion and spirituality even though religious studies scholars maintain that religious values affect environmental and social action. Bringing together these perspectives considers the way religious values and meaning making intersect with actions toward food justice outside of traditionally religious spaces. This paper draws on qualitative research, including a dozen interviews and (...) 11 months of participant observation, at Franklinton Farms, a nonprofit urban farm in Columbus, Ohio. I demonstrate that Franklinton Farms team members reference diverse religious values and practices when explaining the meaning and significance of their farming. In addition, I argue that they renegotiate their religious values in light of the injustices they see in the food system. By examining religion and spirituality within a secular food space, this paper sheds light on an underexplored influence on whether and how alternative food spaces realize food justice. (shrink)