Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume II presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues. Imre Lakatos had (...) an influence out of all proportion to the length of his philosophical career. This collection exhibits and confirms the originality, range and the essential unity of his work. It demonstrates too the force and spirit he brought to every issue with which he engaged, from his most abstract mathematical work to his passionate 'Letter to the director of the LSE'. Lakatos' ideas are now the focus of widespread and increasing interest, and these volumes should make possible for the first time their study as a whole and their proper assessment. (shrink)

Imre Lakatos' philosophical and scientific papers are published here in two volumes. Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume 2 presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues.

Imre Lakatos; II—Criticism and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 69, Issue 1, 1 June 1969, Page.

Proofs and Refutations is essential reading for all those interested in the methodology, the philosophy and the history of mathematics. Much of the book takes the form of a discussion between a teacher and his students. They propose various solutions to some mathematical problems and investigate the strengths and weaknesses of these solutions. Their discussion raises some philosophical problems and some problems about the nature of mathematical discovery or creativity. Imre Lakatos is concerned throughout to combat the classical picture (...) of mathematical development as a steady accumulation of established truths. He shows that mathematics grows instead through a richer, more dramatic process of the successive improvement of creative hypotheses by attempts to 'prove' them and by criticism of these attempts: the logic of proofs and refutations. (shrink)

This text, excerpted from a “diary novel” by Imre Kertész, appeared in both Hungarian and German in 2014. Now suffering with an advanced stage of Parkinson's disease, the author considers it the last work that he will be able to complete.

Phenomenologists call for the abandoning of all philosophical theorizing in favor of a descriptive study of the "things themselves" as they are given. On its face, such a study of appearances would appear to have little to contribute to ontology, traditionally understood as the science of being and its most fundamental categories. But phenomenologists have not hesitated to draw ontological conclusions from their phenomenological investigations. Phenomenology and its ontological pretensions have come under attack, however, from philosophers of a wide variety (...) of persuasions . ;The project of this dissertation is to re-examine the relationship of phenomenology, conceived as a philosophical method, to ontology. I proceed by undertaking systematic critical examinations of the attempts of thee central figures in the phenomenological tradition to arrive at categorial ontological results upon the basis of phenomenological investigations. At issue are Brentano's descriptive psychological studies of so-called mental phenomena in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , Husserl's static transcendental phenomenological study of the structures of pure consciousness in Ideas I, II, and III, and Sartre's phenomenological ontology of consciousness in Being and Nothingness. For each of these cases, I attempt to ascertain the precise way in which the application of phenomenological methods gives rise to specific ontological claims or "results". In none of these cases, I argue, does the thinker in question succeed in producing ontological assertions in a sufficiently phenomenological fashion. All, that is, depart to some extent from the phenomenological ideal of an ontology arrived at in accordance with an unprejudiced examination and description of "the things themselves". In the final chapter I ask whether the particular failures of these thinkers to have formulated ontological claims in a phenomenologically satisfactory manner implies the general failure of all phenomenological approaches to ontology. I argue that while principled reasons can be given why a truly phenomenological ontology must remain an unattainable ideal, it is an ideal that philosophers ought not abandon. (shrink)

This book examines Tangut translations of secular Chinese texts excavated from the ruins of Khara-khoto. After providing an overview of Tangut history and an introduction to the emergence of the field of Tangut studies, it presents four case studies grouped around different themes. A central concern of the book is the phenomenon of Tangut appropriation of Chinese written culture through translation and the reasons behind this.

According to Russell’s famous Gray’s Elegy argument within “On Denoting”, Frege’s distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung is problematic when applied to a denoting phrase like ‘the first line of Gray’s Elegy’, which denotes a linguistic expression: ‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’. The author shows that Russell’s Gray’s Elegy argument involves imprecision in the use of quotation marks as well as the unwarranted identification of an expression’s meaning with the expression itself.

Institutions are a kind of social infrastructure that facilitates – or hinders – human co-ordination and allocation of resources. Thus they function as a rationality context, which simultaneously emerges from and governs human interactions. Business institutions, as they are related to human expectations, should promote the values of their stakeholders and, consequently, they are subjects of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting procedures. Ethical institutions make the good of their stakeholder groups part of the institution’s own good. They have (...) a clear vision and picture of integrity throughout the institution which is owned and embodied by top management, over time. Such a practice presumes that business institutions, e.g. corporations, are social cultures with character, which can exercise good or bad influence, depending on goals, policies structures, strategies that formalize relations among the individuals who build up corporations. For developing an ethical culture, corporations need a large scale of instruments as codes of ethics and other kinds of support structures throughout the organization to insure their adequate communication, oversight, enforcement, adjudication, and review. Between all these instruments, a special role could be played by the ethics officer and the ethics committee, ethics trainings, ethics audits but also by the implementation of responsibility and participatory decision making at lower levels in the organisation. (shrink)

v. 1. The methodology of scientific research programmes.--v. 2. Mathematics, science, and epistemology.

: Philosophers in the analytic and phenomenological traditions have interpreted Brentano's intentionality thesis, and his empirical psychology more generally, in significantly different ways. Disregarding Brentano's distinctive psychological method, analytic philosophers have typically read him as a philosopher of mind, and his intentionality thesis as a contribution to the Cartesian project of clarifying the distinction between the mental and the physical. Phenomenologists, while more attentive to his method, tended to read Brentano as merely Òon the wayÓ to a truly phenomenological approach. (...) I offer a third reading of Brentano thesis, one that attends to both the motivating concerns and the distinctive methodological features of his psychological project. (shrink)

La géométrie non euclidienne fut non seulement un bouleversement sans précédent dans l'histoire des mathématiques, mais également une bouffée d'air pur pour les partisans d'une "vérité sans les dogmes". Par ce "non" augmentatif, elle affirmait l'existence d'un en-dehors de l'Être, vingt-quatre siècles après le Parménide de Platon, et plaçait, more geometrico, la philosophie dans l'espace de la spiritualité occidentale, ouvrant la voie à la liberté dans le domaine des sciences rigoureuses. C'est aux implications philosophiques de cette révolution mathématique qu'est consacré (...) l'essai d'Imre Toth, qui étudie également certains aspects de la pensée de Gottlob Frege, farouche adversaire de la géométrie non euclidienne, pour en démontrer les impasses et les fourvoiements. (shrink)

Isolated habitats can be compared and ranked by comparing their interior-to-edge ratio (I/E). We would like to show here that results based on ranking by I/E ratio sometimes contradict Diamond's rule, which ranks the most rounded habitat (i.e. most compact) as the best one. The reason for this contradiction is the frequently overlooked size dependence of the I/E. Being the interior-to-edge ratio size dependent, from a given set of habitats of different sizes, compact shaped (rounded) habitats might have worse I/E (...) ratios than elongated or irregular ones. (shrink)

Destined to be classic: a tale from the Buddhist sutras told in the memorable and engaging rhyming verse in the tradition of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. Children and their parents will both love it, and be encouraged. Illustrated in a style that brings both humor and tradition, by the renowned and award-winning illustrator of Wisdom's Illustrated Lotus Sutra, and many other books. I See You, Buddha will help children (and their parents) difficulty with patience and learn to see the (...) good in everyone-including themselves! I See You, Buddha is based on a chapter in the Lotus Sutra, one of the most influential Buddhist texts worldwide-a classical scripture that has inspired a whole genre of works, especially in Japan, known as Lotus Literature. The Lotus Sutra teaches the Way of the Bodhisattva-beings engaged in compassionate, enlightened activity in the service of all-by offering examples of what this activity might look like in the world. One such model in the text is Bodhisattva Never Disrespectful (or Never Disparaging), who, despite troubling encounters with and even harsh treatment from others, bows down respectfully to everyone, recognizing their Buddha Nature and honoring their own journeys along the bodhisattva path to enlightenment-whether they know they're future Buddhas or not! (shrink)

It seems that German culture is especially favorable to philosophical reflection on technology. In fact, it seems that in Germany have been published more books on this topic as elsewhere in Europe altogether. Philosophy of technology in Germany concentrates very strongly on ethics. Efforts have been made in order to develop a set of basic values for engineers, to give a reasonable background to them, to make ethics useful for technology assessment, etc. The detailed structure of responsibility, the ethical evaluation (...) of long term effects and an advisory role for ethicians may be seen as central points in this kind of debates. (shrink)

The work that helped to determine Paul Feyerabend's fame and notoriety, Against Method,stemmed from Imre Lakatos's challenge: "In 1970 Imre cornered me at a party. 'Paul,' he said, 'you have such strange ideas.

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

It is said that all philosophy is nothing other than a commentary on Plato.Maybe.But was not Plato himself a commentary on Parmenides, Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, and the Sophists, not to mention Socrates?And conversely, too, the Commentary on Aristotle composed by St Thomas was not the personal philosophy of Thomas Aquinas? Or then again, do Proclus’ Commentarii in primum Euclidis Elementorum librum not embody a new and original neoplatonic philosophy of mathematics?