The paper examines the difference between János Bolyai’s and Lobachevskii’s notion of non-Euclidean parallelism. The examination starts with the summary of a widespread view of historians of mathematics on János Bolyai’s notion of non-Euclidean parallelism used in the first paragraph of his Appendix. After this a novel position of the location and meaning of Bolyai’s term “parallela” in his Appendix is put forward. After that János Bolyai’s Hungarian manuscript, the Commentary on Lobachevskii’s Geometrische Untersuchungen is elaborated in (...) order to see how Bolyai and Lobachevskii’s notions of parallelism differ. The careful examination of the Commentary reveals a seeming incoherence of Bolyai’s translation, and finally the explanation of this incoherence offered by the Received View and that of the novel position will be compared and assessed. L’article examine la différence entre la notion du parallélisme non-Euclidean de János Bolyai et celle de Lobachevskii. Tout d’abord le travail s’occupe de l’opinion répendue parmi les historiens de géometrie (le « Received View » ), selon laquelle János Bolyai précise la notion du parallélisme non-Euclidean dans le premier paragraph de l’Appendix. Ensuite une pointe de vue toute neuve sera présentée concernant la place et le sens du terminus technicus,,paralella” de Bolyai dans l’Appendix. Enfin on va analyser les Commentaires (un manuscrit hongrois) de János Bolyai sur le livre Geometrische Untersuchungen de Lobachevskii àfin de voir jusqu’à quel point la notion de parallelisme de Bolyai se diffère de celle de Lobachevskii. L’analyse bien fondue des Commentaires va nous relever un apparent incohérence de la traduction de Bolyai. On examine et on compare l’opinion répendue dans le vaste public avec la nouvelle interpretation de l’Appendix, et on discute les explications probables de cet incohérence. (shrink)

Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios proposes a paradigm change from the 'systemic VIEW' to 'systems SCIENCE', so as to extend the methodology of conventional science of physics into the domains hitherto beyond the reach of this kind of treatment. The book: I. Identifies the problematic issues in current approaches to the 'systemic or structural view' of parts of the world as opposed to the 'quantitative/qualitative views' of conventional science of physics and the arts whereby introducing the 'third culture'. II. Locates the (...) position of the structural view in the context of 'human intellectual endeavour'. III. Discusses the fundamental questions raised by modelling aspects of human behaviour. IV. Introduces the basic ideas and the symbolism of linguistic modelling which are then applied to turning descriptions of scenarios as a story or narrative into reasoning schemes. V. Describes a methodology of 'problem solving' of which design thinking and the operation of purposive systems are seen as essential ingredients. Problem solving is a universal activity of living in particular human beings through innovation, invention and creativity. Lack of this activity leads to death! Problem solving is regarded as pivotal point which may propel the spread of the modified structural view into social, technical, cultural and educational awareness. VI. Shows the location of aspects of conventional science within the scheme of systems science whereby achieving a 'continuity of the scientific endeavour'. VII. Outlines a teaching scheme for 'linguistic modelling'. Janos Korn explains how a view can be converted into a science which can lead to a possibility of 'organised speculation' or simulation of behaviour, exploring the effects of variation of parameters on performance, and the occurrence of outcomes of operations, beneficial or not, of dynamic structures. Static and dynamic structures are expressed in more rigorous and computable terms so that the results of analysis and design of human activity scenarios could be exposed to at least thought experiments. Linguistic Modelling of Scenarios is an informative read for any professionals, teachers and students of engineering, social science, management, business and production. (shrink)

Inequality causes a variety of social ills, which give egalitarians reasons for concerns of justice. In particular, inequality is deemed to undermine people’s fundamental moral capacity of self-respect. In this paper, we explore the complex relationship between inequality and self-respect from a philosophical and an empirical angle, arguing that a theory of justice should take both into account. To this purpose, we first clarify the normative objection to inequality from the alleged erosion of self-respect. Then, we elaborate on empirical findings (...) showing the crucial role that ‘relative deprivation’ plays in the causal mechanism that connects inequalities to the erosion of self-respect. We conclude that this role is best understood in philosophical terms as a form of deprivation that affects thesignificance that people attach to the value of the choices they make. (shrink)

Philosophy begins and ends in disagreement. Philosophers disagree among themselves in innumerable ways, and this pervasive and permanent dissent is a sign of their inability to solve philosophical problems and establish substantive truths. This raises the question: What should I do with my philosophical beliefs in light of philosophy's epistemic failure? In this open-access book, János Tozsér develops four possible answers into comprehensive metaphilosophical visions and argues that we cannot find peace either by committing ourselves to one of these (...) visions or by abandoning our philosophical beliefs. Tozsér calls this disheartening insight "the experience of breakdown", making the case that philosophy's truth-seeking and justificatory tools are unsuitable for establishing truths. Shedding light on the epistemic status of our philosophical beliefs, Tozsér adopts a broad approach to assess the metaphilosophical visions used by philosophers to interpret their own activity and determine their epistemic self-esteem. Open access was funded by the Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungary. (shrink)

The goal of constructing artificial photosynthetic assemblies is to use sunlight for the generation of hydrogen from water; the hydrogen obtained should be an ideal energy source. The use of surfactant vesicle entrapped‐catalyst coated colloidal semiconductors and sacrificial electron donors for photosensitized water reduction illustrates how chemists mimic photosynthesis.

Born in Ireland in 1842, Edith O’Gorman immigrated to America where she joined the Sisters of Charity in 1862. In January 1868, O’Gorman left or ‘escaped’ from this convent, and in 1871 she wrote Trials and Persecu tions of Miss Edith O’Gorman which described the cruelty she endured. O’Gorman began to speak against the alleged horrors of convent life, and eventually travelled to England in 1881. This article deals with O’Gorman’s lectures throughout England which attacked sisterhoods. Some individuals, fearing that (...) convents would harm the Protestant character of the Anglican Church, applauded her condemnation of con vents, while others protested and threatened her with violence. (shrink)

The author analyses the development of the views of A. Sirácky from the second half of the 1960s on the role of philosophy and its relationship to the newly established sociology. It was a period, when the most part of the humanities felt themselves free and independent. During the normalisation period this process was violently interrupted. The author's point is, that A. Sirácky as a representative of Slovak intellectual elite also took part in this process, enforced from outside. In spite (...) of certain criticism against Marxist dogmatism he himself in his conception pursued consequently a dogma, according to which both sociology and philosophy are ideological disciplines. (shrink)

Genesis 2:4–25, the story of the creation of man and woman, has received great attention in modern theology. The text indeed contains the most fundamental teaching of the Bible on the relation between man and woman, on sexuality, and on marriage. In this article, however, I attempt to highlight some of the theoretical/philosophical potential of the text. While I accept the main theological teaching of Genesis 2 about the equality of the sexes, I argue that the text goes beyond the (...) mere presentation of this theological doctrine, and provides a structure that allows for a dynamic interplay between the sexes. I contend, furthermore, that this structure and the ensuing dynamics can be interpreted as a subtle treatment of the issue of the same and the other. Finally, I argue that in this way the biblical text can provide a description of the experience of love and an account of human creativity. In other words, it accounts for the possibility of realizing our divine likeness, the divinity of the human. (shrink)

This essay tries to review the main elements of the concept of public reason as presented by John Rawls with reference to his latest book (The Law of Peoples with The Idea of Public Reason Revisited) and simultaneously brings up the arguments for and against this concept that have been put forward by the literature. Many of the arguments presented here are not new, but what this essay aims at is a reassessment of the debate by confronting many of the (...) interpretations and points of view raised around the concept of public reason. Based on the argumentation that if ‘right’ precedes this leaves room for the (different existences of) ‘good’ I propose that public reason ought to be conceived more as a political concept and less of a comprehensive account of morality. (shrink)

One of the most ambitious and sophisticated recent approaches to provide a theory of global health justice is Sridhar Venkatapuram's recent work. In this commentary, we first outline the core idea of Venkatapuram's approach to global health justice. We then argue that one of the most important elements of the account, Venkatapuram's basis of global health duties, is either too weak or assumed implicitly without a robust justification. The more explicit grounding of the duty to protect and promote health capabilities (...) is based on Martha Nussbaum's version of the capability approach. We argue that this foundation gives rise to humanitarian duties rather than duties of justice proper. Venkatapuram's second argument from the social determinants of health thesis is instead a stronger candidate for grounding duties of justice. However, as a justificatory argument, it is only alluded to and has not yet been spelled out sufficiently. We offer plausible justificatory steps to fill this gap and draw some implications for global health action. We believe this both strengthens Venkatapuram's approach and serves to broaden the basis for future action in the area of global health. (shrink)

János Kornai, a distinguished Hungarian economist, began his adult life as an ardent believer in socialism and then became a critic of the communist political and economic system. He lost family members in the Holocaust, contributed to the ideological preparation for the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and became an influential theorist of the post-Soviet economic transition. He has been a journalist, a researcher prohibited from teaching in his home country, and a tenured professor at Harvard. By Force of Thought traces (...) Kornai's lifelong intellectual journey and offers a subjective complement to his academic research.Disenchanted with communism, Kornai published Overcentralization, the first book written by someone living behind the Iron Curtain to be openly critical of Soviet-style economics. Although it was attacked in Hungary, it was hailed by Western economists. The Kornai-Lipták theory on two-level planning captured the attention of mathematical economists. Kornai went on to publish the controversial Anti-Equilibrium, a critique of the general equilibrium theory underpinning mainstream economic analyses of markets, Economics of Shortage, The Road to a Free Economy, and the summary of his lifetime research, The Socialist System. An intellectual emissary between East and West, Kornai commuted between Harvard and Budapest for many years.Kornai's memoir describes his research--including his present-day evaluation of his past work--as well as the social and political environments in which he did his work. The difficulties faced by a critic of central planning in a communist country are made especially vivid by material from newly opened secret police files and informers' reports on his activities. By Force of Thought will be an essential resource for students of economic thought, socialist systems, and postsocialist transition, and for readers interested in Eastern European intellectual life before, during, and after communism. (shrink)

In ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, Berlin wavered between two readings of the concept of positive liberty. In the first one, ‘positive liberty’ is a distinct concept, different from that of ‘negative liberty’. Those who advocate liberty in the negative sense and those who advocate it in the positive sense do not disagree on which interpretation of the same thing – ‘liberty’ – is the correct one; they speak about different things. Both defend valid ideals, although those ideals may not be (...) simultaneously achievable. In the second reading, negative and positive liberty are competing interpretations of the same concept, the defenders of negative liberty being involved in a substantive disagreement with the advocates of positive liberty on what the same term – ‘liberty’ – really means. On this understanding, negative and positive liberty cannot both be valid ideals: one of them (negative liberty) is a genuine value, the other (positive liberty) being nothing but the perversion of it. My article aims to uncover the roots of this ambiguity in unresolved difficulties in Berlin’s account of the history of the ideas of negative and positive liberty and, more importantly, in his conception of value pluralism. (shrink)

Dedication. A version of this paper has been discussed in 2007, in Dunabogdány (Hungary), on the occasion of an informal meeting, organized by Jeff Bernard. It was the last occasion I had the chance to meet him, one of my closest friends during many years, to whose memory I dedicate this essay.

Recent neurophysiological observations are giving rise to the expectation that in the near future genuine biological experiments may contribute more than will premature speculations to the understanding of global and cognitive functions. The classical reflex principle — as the basis of neural functions — has to yield to new ideas, like autopoiesis and/or self-organization, as the basic paradigm in the framework of which the essence of the neural can be better understood. Neural activity starts in the very earliest stages of (...) development well before receptors and afferent input become functional. Under suitable conditions, both in nervous tissue cultures and in embryonic tissue recombination experiments, the conditions of such initial autopoietic activity can be studied. This paper tries to generalize this elementary concept for various neural centers, notably for the spinal segmental apparatus and the cerebral cortex. (shrink)

Die Thematisierung des modernen Verhältnisses zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft ist so ausgerichtet, dass sie von vornherein zu einer Privilegierung der Gesellschaft neigt. Die neuzeitliche sozialphilosophische Diskussion läuft auf eine Zurücknahme des Staates in die Gesellschaft hinaus. An die Stelle der staatlich bestimmten Gesellschaft tritt der gesellschaftlich bestimmte Staat. Die entscheidende Frage ist, wie kann die Gesellschaftlichkeit des Staates begründet werden. Der Staat ist nicht mehr selbstständig, schwebt nicht mehr über der sozialen Wirklichkeit, sondern muss selbst als sozial bestimmt verstanden werden. (...) Die grundsätzliche Frage der neuzeitlichen Sozialphilosophie ist daher: Wie ist der Staat überhaupt möglich? Diese Frage wird durch eine Theorie der Konstitution des Staates beantwortet. (shrink)

This chapter has three aims. Firstly, it elaborates the so-called pragmatic approach to fictionalism. By evoking some classical pragmatic theories of fictive utterances, it gives an account of pragmatic properties responsible for the difference between serious and fictive utterances. The authors argue for the thesis that the pragmatic approach can be applied plausibly to all kinds of fictionalism, that is from instrumentalism to figuralism. Secondly, the authors investigate some consequences of the suggested account for fictionalist theories in general. They show (...) that some more or less known difficulties of fictionalist theories become more serious if one accepts the pragmatic approach. The chapter discusses two of them, namely the problem of entirely fictional discourses and the apparent contradiction between hermeneutic fictionalism and first person authority. Thirdly, the authors investigate the consequences of the pragmatic approach for mental fictionalism in particular. At the end of the paper, they argue that once the pragmatic approach is applied to mental fictionalism, the well-known problem of cognitive suicide becomes especially nagging. They suggest it is highly questionable that mental fictionalism is worth to endorse in the light of these serious difficulties. (shrink)

Health-worker migration, commonly called "medical brain drain", refers to the mass migration of trained and skilled health professionals from low-income to high-income countries. This is currently leaving a significant number of poor countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, with critical staff shortages in the healthcare sector. A broad consensus exists that, where medical brain drain exacerbates such shortages, it is unethical, and this review presents the main arguments underpinning this view. Notwithstanding the general agreement, which policies are justifiable on ethical grounds (...) to tackle brain drain and how best to go about implementing them remains controversial. The review offers a discussion of the specific ethical issues that have to be taken into account when deciding which policy measures to prioritise and suggests a strategy of policy implementation to address medical brain drain as a matter of urgency. (shrink)

This study analyzes key concepts in al-Fārābī’s cosmology and provides a new interpretation of his philosophical development through an analysis of the Greco-Arabic sources and a contextualization of his life and thought in the cultural and intellectual milieu of his time.