Images are objects of work in the laboratory. On its face, this work is achieved through talk Yet the talk attached to these images makes reference to other images, which are drawn from varcous environments. In this article, four such environments are identified: the domain of laboratory practice; the context of invisible physical reactions; the future image as it will appear in publication; and the domain of case precedents and reference scenarios from the field. The work of image analysis brings (...) the outside of the image into it and takes the inside out. Thus it can be seen that images are not just taken, they are designed and made. (shrink)

Utopian imagination and the principle of hope have fallen on hard times. It has become almost a commonplace that utopian visions are obsolete. The present state of world affairs seems to paralyze utopian thinking. In an age of worldwide exploitation and destruction of nature (the greenhouse effect), epidemic diseases (AIDS), and Bush's “War on Terror,” the future of mankind appears bleak and apocalyptic images dominate our imagination. Especially the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, if that was supposed to be (...) a utopia at all, has shattered all dreams of century-old social utopias. Utopia is draped in a mourning veil,…. (shrink)

We introduce a new Turing machine based concept of time complexity for functions on computable metric spaces. It generalizes the ordinary complexity of word functions and the complexity of real functions studied by Ko [19] et al. Although this definition of TIME as the maximum of a generally infinite family of numbers looks straightforward, at first glance, examples for which this maximum exists seem to be very rare. It is the main purpose of this paper to prove that, nevertheless, the (...) definition has a large number of important applications. Using the framework of TTE [40], we introduce computable metric spaces and computability on the compact subsets. We prove that every computable metric space has a c-proper c-admissible representation. We prove that Turing machine time complexity of a function computable relative to c-admissible c-proper representations has a computable bound on every computable compact subset. We prove that computably compact computable metric spaces have concise c-proper c-admissible representations and show by examples that many canonical representations are of this kind. Finally, we compare our definition with a similar one by Labhalla et al. [22]. Several examples illustrate the concepts. By these results natural and realistic definitions of computational complexity are now available for a variety of numerical problems such as image processing, integration, continuous Fourier transform or wave propagation. (shrink)

The riddle of how to democratize the multi-level polity of the EU is answered by pointing to the empirical impact of an unfolding European public sphere. It is argued that there is a self-constituting dynamic of a European public sphere which abets the coupling of transnational spaces of communication with the institutional integration of the EU. From this perspective, democracy is not external to the EU, it is already part of the logic of European institution-building and governance and is fostered (...) by collective learning processes in which definitions of the collective good as well as conditions for appropriate forms of political participation are negotiated. In discussing the case of the EU’s constitutional reform, a theory of democratic functionalism is proposed which accounts for this specific form of democratization of the EU. (shrink)

We report an experiment on two treatments of an ultimatum minigame. In one treatment, responders’ reactions are hidden to proposers. We observe high rejection rates reflecting responders’ intrinsic resistance to unfairness. In the second treatment, proposers are informed, allowing for dynamic effects over eight rounds of play. The higher rejection rates can be attributed to responders’ provision of a public good: Punishment creates a group reputation for being “tough” and effectively “educate” proposers. Since rejection rates with informed proposers drop to (...) the level of the treatment with non-informed proposers, the hypothesis of responder’s enjoyment of overt punishment is not supported. (shrink)

Book OLIVEIRA, Irene Dias de. Religião e as teias do multiculturalismo. São Paulo: Fonte Editorial, 2015. 97p. ISBN 978-85-68252-55-0.

Ralf Dahrendorf (1929-2009) established modern sociology as a normal science in the traditional university in post-war Germany. After ten years as a Full Professor, he joins the German liberal party, then in opposition. He stands successfully in a regional and then a national election (Landtag, Bundestag). He serves as junior minister under chancellor Willy Brandt and becomes a European commissioner less than a year later. Upon his resignation from the European Commission, he makes the UK his home and becomes a (...) British subject, becomes knighted and later appointed Lord. The second half of his life, as an intellectual amid the powers and a liaison between England and the continent, as a self-described 'straddler', may have been even greater in importance than the first, with his meteoric rise as a highly visible professor of sociology and as German politician of national prominence. His analysis of society and democracy in Germany, though dated (1965) appears still for the most part as valid. Historically, his own elite positions mark transition periods in the process of generational change. (shrink)

In accordance with the general title, Ricœur's main concern is to develop a philosophy of the will. The overall character of this philosophy is quickly ascertained: as the Introduction makes abundantly clear, Ricœur's thought is firmly rooted in phenomenology. Indeed one might wish to regard this partisanship as Ricœur's motive for choosing the will as his central topic: could his work be an attempt to cope with a problem that has to date resisted satisfactory phenomenological treatment? Husserl's phenomenology is geared (...) to a theoretical, receptive, and perceptual type of subject, and doubts arise as to the practicability of his methodological devices when extended to the will. Although, for a philosopher like Ricœur, Husserl's phenomenological discipline of inspection and description remains an indispensable asset of philosophical method, it seems that, in studying the will, we cannot practice phenomenological reduction, since this would eliminate what is constitutive for willing: an Other opposed to me, something not reducible to mere meaning as posited by consciousness. When Husserl tries to account for willing, he accordingly transforms the phenomenon into an account of value predicates correlated to acts of the subject. (shrink)

On November 21, 1994, Werner Marx passed away peacefully in the place he loved so well, his apartment in the Schloß in Bollschweil. Professor Marx was born in 1910 in Mulheim, Germany. He studied law and philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg, and Bonn before completing his state examination and doctorate in law in 1933. In the same year, he was removed from civil service and from an apprentice judgeship by the Nazis. After this, he emigrated first to Palestine and then in (...) 1938 to New York, where he took up academic studies again. After receiving an M.A. in economics, he completed the Ph.D. in philosophy, working with Kurt Reizler and Karl Löwith at the German University in Exile, later to become the New School for Social Research, and writing a dissertation on Aristotle’s ontology. During this period, he renewed his interest in Hegel and German Idealism, and also in Heidegger’s critique of the tradition and attempts to make “another beginning” in philosophy. Marx began teaching at the New School in 1949. After the appearance of his classic study, Heidegger and the Tradition, he was named successor to the Husserl-Heidegger chair in philosophy and director of Philosophical Seminar I in Freiburg, which he held from 1964 until his retirement in 1979. He also served as Director of the Husserl-Archives in Freiburg until his death. (shrink)

The article argues that the ‘crisis of Europe’, triggered by market and governance dysfunctionalities (summarized as the Euro crisis), represents a ‘critical moment’ in the evolution of a European society. This society so far does not offer much resistance to such critical moments which is due to its incapacity to form a demos capable of acting together. The existing European society – and this is the basic claim – is nothing but the sum of individuals living in ‘sub-European’ (mainly national) (...) groups. The evolution triggered by this critical situation opens pathways to turn these peoples of Europe into something more than being a sum of peoples governed by supranational bureaucracies. To decipher such processes a model is presented using Hirschman’s idea of exit, voice and loyalty as mechanisms to generate social ties. Two points arise as crucial. The first is the observation that national societies which continue to provide foundational claims for people have turned into interest groups in the context of the European Union. This undermines not only the ontological nationalism still dominating the self-presentation of national societies in Europe, but it also offers evolutionary paths towards a society beyond national foundational claims in Europe. Yet it also provokes reactive processes such as the return to the self-contained nation (or even ethnic group). This is the core of the crisis of Europe. The systemic crises of the state and the market in Europe are speeding up an evolutionary process of people-making, the outcome of which could be either the regression to a people with foundational identities or to a people without foundational identities. The latter will be described as a postnational society, which would make an emerging European society the first really modern society. (shrink)

The article situates the issue of the public sphere as a phenomenon that is historically bound and culturally specific. According to this point of view, the Western practices and the Western way of thinking about the public sphere appear as a historically particular way of dealing with the more general phenomenon which is the creation of a social bond beyond the family. Looking at the self-contradictory effects of the ‘modern’ Western public sphere, the question is asked whether the public association (...) of self-interested or self-governing individuals might have to be theorized as a partial and insufficient solution to the social bond. A comparative perspective shows that it is not individuals but cultural forms that link people in the public sphere. They do so by providing a narrative basis of discourses and/or markets that in the self-understanding of modernity shape social life. (shrink)

T. 1. Philologische Untersuchungen zu den Brahmasūtra-Kommemtaren des Śaṅkara und des Bhāskara.

Ubiquitous Computing bezeichnet keine konkrete Technologie, sondern eine informatische Vision allgegenwärtiger Datenverarbeitung und Nutzung informatischer Systeme, bei der es weder nennenswerte Bedienungsanforderungen noch Hardwarebelastungen für den Nutzer gibt. Ubiquitäre Systeme agieren quasi unsichtbar im Hintergrund unseres Handlungsfeldes. Die bisherigen Realisierungen sind in unterschiedlichen informatischen und nachrichtentechnischen Technologien konkretisiert.