The Internet is a physically connected network of computers of different type and capacity located at some distance from each other. The physical connection between the computers is maintained by electronic hardware, a number of sophisticated computer programs with cryptic names and millions of miles of cables. The large capacity computers are usually networked 24-hours a day, while the smaller ones are linked to the net only when their users wish to communicate. Therefore PC users entering the net usually first (...) build up a connection to a high capacity computer and utilize the latter’s 24-hour technical services; thus these computers are called “servers.”. (shrink)

Dr. Laszlo’s hypothesis (2009) is in my opinion appealing on many levels. He proposes that phenomena of apparent transpersonal communication between human beings are due to the intermediary of information-carrying holograms in the reactive quantum vacuum produced by human brain activity. He also suggests that valid information regarding the world in general is available through the same mechanism, on the grounds that all material objects “excite the ground state of the [zero point] fi eld” and produce further such holograms. On (...) this hypothesis we are literally immersed in a sea of information, with the capacity for accessing that information as well as producing more of it by our own thought processes. (shrink)

Illustrates how the theory of evolution can be expanded into a source of social guidance.

A physical theory is a partially interpreted axiomatic formal system, where L is a formal language with some logical, mathematical and physical axioms, and with some derivation rules, and the semantics S is a relationship between the formulas of L and some states of affairs in the physical world. In our ordinary discourse, the formal system L is regarded as an abstract object or structure, the semantics S as something which involves the mental/conceptual realm. This view is of course incompatible (...) with physicalism. How can physical theory be accommodated in a purely physical ontology? The aim of this paper is to outline an account for meaning and truth of physical theory, within the philosophical framework spanned by three doctrines: physicalism, empiricism, and the formalist philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

The book aims to provide a comprehensive, new look at business ethics topics and models from a European perspective. Apart from theoretical arguments and empirical data, case studies and games are used to get closer to real life problematics of business. The book is written by leading business ethics professors of the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS). Chapters of the handbook first describe the central issue and the latest theories and practices. They then introduce new approaches and analyze real (...) world examples. Finally conclusions are provided, which include ethical warning signals, proposals for future research and suggested policy recommendations. (shrink)

This article represents a concerted Laszlo effort. What you will find here is a collection of autobiographical reflections written by Ervin Laszlo that speaks to his involvement with the field of systems thinking and his impact on it, interspersed with comments and illustrative examples on points of special interest. As such, this essay should be read as a reflection piece?one in which a new generation of Laszlos muse on the power and inspiration of the vision that has served as a (...) platform not only for them but for many others in the systems community as well. To understand Ervin Laszlo and his contributions to the systems view of the world, one must place him in context?both ontologically and epistemologically. This narrative will do both, first presenting a chronological overview of his personal history up to the present and subsequently exploring the world of ideas and ideals that he traversed (and continues to traverse with unrelenting momentum). However, this narrative will inevitably be nonlinear, and bits and pieces of his adventure in thought are woven into his chronological development and vice-versa. (shrink)

Adorno describes Bergson and Husserl as the proper originators of philosophical modernity. What is characteristic of the initiatives these thinkers take is, according to him, an essay in breaking out both from the philosophical systems of idealism and from neo-Kantian formalism. It is shown in the present paper that Adorno’s own project to elaborate a negative dialectics can be understood as a continuation, or re-enactment, of this Ausbruchsversuch of his great predecessors. Moreover, in one of his lecture courses given in (...) the early sixties of the last century, Adorno makes it clear that his main philosophical project is mediated by Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian ontology. On the other side, however, the justification of a negative dialectics relies, to a large extent, on a criticism of Bergsonian intuitionism, as well of Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian ontology. The upshot of these conflicting tendencies in Adorno’s later philosophical work is a tragic feature, which, in the present paper, is exhibited and highlighted on the ground of an enquiry into the idea of a spiritual experience put forward by Adorno in one of his lecture courses from the sixties, as well as in the Introduction to his main philosophical work Negative Dialectics. (shrink)

"The Consciousness Revolution is an extrodinary discussion among three of the very finest minds of our time, spirited in its exchange, compassionate in its embrace, brilliant in its clarion call to awaken our conscience and consciousness." Ken Wilber, author of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and One Taste.

In the traditional formalism of quantum mechanics, a simple direct proof of the Spin Geometry Theorem of Penrose is given; and the structure of a model of the ‘space of the quantum directions’, defined in terms of elementary SU-invariant observables of the quantum mechanical systems, is sketched.

In a Mental Imagery Brain-Computer Interface the user has to perform a specific mental task that generates electroencephalography components, which can be translated in commands to control a BCI system. The development of a high-performance MI-BCI requires a long training, lasting several weeks or months, in order to improve the ability of the user to manage his/her mental tasks. This works aims to present the design of a MI-BCI combining mental imaginary and cognitive tasks for a severely motor impaired user, (...) involved in the BCI race of the Cybathlon event, a competition of people with severe motor disability. In the BCI-race, the user becomes a pilot in a virtual race game against up to three other pilots, in which each pilot has to control his/her virtual car by his/her mental tasks. We present all the procedures followed to realize an effective MI-BCI, from the user's first contact with a BCI technology to actually controlling a video-game through her EEG. We defined a multi-stage user-centered training protocol in order to successfully control a BCI, even in a stressful situation, such as that of a competition. We put a specific focus on the human aspects that influenced the long training phase of the system and the participation to the competition. (shrink)

There is a growing focus on public health initiatives that prioritise well-being. The main question of our study is whether this, in its current form, can really represent a new response to the challenges of previous strategies, or whether there is a greater chance that it will essentially reproduce the problems associated with the paradoxical situation of public health. Based on a review, analysis and evaluation of the literature on well-being in public health, we outlined the foundations of a new (...) meta-theory of well-being and a possibility for its social application. In our view, well-being is seen as a social representation of a combination of positive and negative freedom of choice concerning the quality of everyday life, used in a positioning process involving both individual and collective aspects. Health is a particular aspect of the social representation and positioning of well-being, which encompasses aspects of the physical, psychological, social and spiritual functioning of individuals. The well-being meta-theory also opens up the possibility for more effective solutions to the social challenges related to well-being and salutogenetic health. It underscores the importance of the need for a dedicated social subsystem where the goals and organizational culture of the organizations involved are focused on well-being and health promotion. In our study, we consider this to be the Public Well-being System (PWS). (shrink)

Chapter 1 WHY SYSTEMS PHILOSOPHY? Some reasons, for synthetic philosophy generally The persistent theme of this study is the timeliness and the necessity of ...

The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to Fine's interpretation of quantum mechanics and to show how it can solve the EPR-Bell problem. In the real spin-correlation experiments the detection/emission inefficiency is usually ascribed to independent random detection errors, and treated by the “enhancement hypothesis.” In Fine's interpretation the detection inefficiency is an effect not only of the random errors in the analyzer + detector equipment, but is also the manifestation of a pre-settled (hidden) property of the (...) particles. I present one of Fine's 2×2 prism models for the EPR experiment and compare it with the recent experimental results. In the second part of the paper I prove the existence of a wide class of n×n prism models with reasonable detection/emission efficiencies, satisfying the usually required symmetries. Contrary to the common persuasion, the efficiencies in these models do not necessarily tend to zero if n→∞. (shrink)

The story of quantum probability theory and quantum logic begins with von Neumann’s recognition1, that quantum mechanics can be regarded as a kind of “probability theory”, if the subspace lattice L of the system’s Hilbert space H plays the role of event algebra and the ‘tr’-s play the role of probability distributions over these events. This idea had been completed in the Gleason theorem 2.

The article discusses why the notion of infinity is indispensable in contemporary phenomenology. I will heavily rely on some of L(szl) Tengelyi’s ideas, who in his turn uses Marc Richir’s early works on Cantor and Kant. Although – similarly to Richir and Tengelyi – I also examine some of Cantor’s ideas, I concentrate on a different and more fundamental part of his theory than Tengelyi and Richir.

The growth of the modern corporation from local and nationally centered origins to the multinational and then the global level is traced on the one hand to global flows of matter, energy, and information, and on the other to the geographic and political constraints exercised by nation-states. The emergence of the global corporation follows basic laws of evolution applicable to all complex systems, whether in nature or in society. Thus the global corporation is a new but not an anomalous phenomenon (...) on the stage of history. (shrink)

First Published in 1971, Human Values and the Mind of Man examines how value questions have been treated in traditional theories of human nature. The book presents an interdisciplinary dialogue centred around the 'human mind'.

Originally published in 1991, The New Evolutionary Paradigm provides an innovative and cross disciplinary look at evolution. While Darwin's theory of evolution was originally restricted to the life sciences, in recent years the same principles have been applied successfully to historical, social and natural sciences. The papers included in The New Evolutionary Paradigm analyse the facts, observations, and accumulated data from the significance of a general evolution theory cannot be overemphasised; a new understanding of the cosmos and man's relationship to (...) it could lead to the systemization of the irreversible change that takes place in society and nature. This book will appeal to scientists, sociologists and those interested in transdisciplinary evolution theories. (shrink)

What is consciousness? Conventional thinking tells us it is the images, sensations, thoughts, and feelings produced by the brain. When the neurons in the brain stop firing, consciousness ceases to be. But does it?

This paper outlines a new conative theory of blame. I argue that the best-known conative approaches to blame (Scanlon 1998, 2008, Sher 2006a) misrepresent the cognitive and dispositional components of blame. Section 1 argues, against Scanlon and Sher, that blaming involves the judgment that an act or state is the fault of the blamed. I also propose an alternative dispositional condition on which blaming only occurs if it matters to the blamer whether the blamed gets the punishment that she deserves. (...) In Section 2, I discuss objections to judgment-based accounts of blame (that they cannot tell the difference between blaming and judging to be blameworthy, that they cannot explain why blame is often accompanied by emotion, and that they cannot make sense of irrational blame), and I argue that my proposal can handle all of them. (shrink)

This chapter enters into a debate with the analytic theory of action, especially the version developed by Donald Davidson, who makes it clear that the upsurge of a desire to perform a specific action is a natural event that is causally responsible for the action in question. The narrative interpretation of selfhood was initiated by Hannah Arendt. Selfhood is certainly assured on a passive and affective plane. Edmund Husserl maintains that in the passive sphere, a self is constituted preceding active (...) reflection. As Paul Ricœur clearly determines, the complicity with reality entails a ‘decentred self’ that is strictly opposed to the self-centred, self-controlled, and self-assured ego of modern philosophy. Emmanuel Levinas never accepted Wittgenstein's constraint on philosophy to remain silent with regard to the ‘unsayable’. (shrink)

I will argue that the ontological doctrine of physicalism inevitably entails the denial that there is anything conceptual in logic and mathematics. The elements of a formal system, even if they are tagged by suggestive names, are merely meaningless parts of a physically existing machinery, which have nothing to do with concepts, because they have nothing to do with the actual things. The only situation in which they can become meaning-carriers is when they are involved in a physical theory. But (...) in this role they refer to elements of the physical reality, i.e. they represent a physical concept. “Mathematical concepts” are just idols, that philosophy can completely deny and physics can completely ignore. (shrink)

This article focuses on the concept of worldviews, arguing that a change in managerial worldviews is the key lever for addressing the social and global challenges facing humanity. We draw from a new synthesis of science and spirituality, with the addition of “other ways of knowing” that go beyond rational-empirical analysis, to suggest that what we call Quantum Worldviews are capable of generating the prosocial and pro-environmental behavior consistent with humanistic management. Using the yin-yang symbol as a metaphor, we suggest (...) that a transformation in consciousness, at the level of the paradigmatic assumptions held by managers about the nature of reality, can be understood through adult development theory. We also go beyond the metaphor to propose a quantum worldview based on a more literal interpretation of quantum science to fundamentally re-conceptualize what it means to be human, drawing on quantum research that suggests ontological wholeness and interdependence of all. Quantum Worldviews can help leaders, and the various systems of which they are a part, transition to a new science-based consciousness - long intuited by indigenous and nonwestern spiritual leaders - of an interconnected and dynamically coherent world. We identify a variety of practices that give managers a direct experience of Oneness, changing who they are at the deepest level of self-concept. Our research suggests that only when using such practices, and in sufficient numbers, will business leaders become agents of world benefit with the collective influence to bring about meaningful solutions to climate change and other wicked problems—in other words, needed system transformation. (shrink)

Anticipated by several thinkers of the Western philosophical tradition over a long period of time, the theory of narrative identity was ultimately put forward in the 1980s by philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre, Paul Ricoeur, Charles Taylor, David Carr and others. In the present paper, an attempt is made to give a survey of the process in which this theory was integrated into contemporary philosophy during the last two and a half decades. It is pointed out that, even in analytic philosophy, (...) the narrative conception of the self came to a certain break-through, but it is equally shown how it increasingly became the target of fundamental objections and how it led to most instructive controverses. The main thesis that underlies the entire survey is that the present state of discussion concerning the narrative view of the self bestows a new actuality upon the Ricoeurian version of the theory. (shrink)

Evolution in the sense of the new paradigm embraces not only the emergence of biological species but also development in the cosmos and in history. It means ?grand synthesis,? or general theory of evolution. Its roots lie in the search for meaning that inspired systematic thought since its inception: its historical antecedents go back to the Ionian natural philosophers. Today the evolutionary paradigm frames invariant scientific concepts that appear in specific transformations in the physical, the biological, and the human and (...) social disciplines. The new general laws of evolution exhibit overarching orders that encompass nature as well as humanity and respond to a perennial search for unity and meaning in experience. (shrink)

In the philosophy of art, one of the most important debates concerns the so-called ‘cognitive value’ of literature. The main question is phrased in various ways. Can literary narratives provide knowledge? Can readers learn from works of literature? Most of the discussants agree on an affirmative answer, but it is contested what the relevant notions of truth and knowledge are and whether this knowledge and learning influence aesthetic or literary value. The issue takes on a wider, not only philosophical, importance (...) as it is one of the central tenets of humanistic education that art and literature are valuable not only because the pleasure they afford. This paper offers a new line of argument in departing from propositional truth, arguing that literary narratives provide aesthetically significant knowledge, however, this knowledge cannot be captured in propositional form. My position depends crucially on Frank Jackson's influential knowledge argument. The paper describes a modified ‘What Mary Didn't Read’ case. In doing so, it is argued that the knowledge literary works provide should be understood as a type of experiential knowing of ‘what it is like’ analogous to what Mary acquires in the original case of seeing a new colour for the first time. (shrink)

If physicalism is true, everything is physical. In other words, everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. Accordingly, if there are logical/mathematical facts, they must be necessitated by the physical facts of the world. The aim of this paper is to clarify what logical/mathematical facts actually are and how these facts can be accommodated in a purely physical world.

From the cutting edge of science and living spirituality: a guide to understanding our identity and purpose in the world • Outlines the new understanding of matter and mind coming to light at the cutting edge of physics and consciousness research • Explains how we can evolve consciously, become connected with each other, and flourish on this planet • Includes contributions from Maria Sagi, Kingsley L. Dennis, Emanuel Kuntzelman, Dawna Jones, Shamik Desai, Garry Jacobs, and John R. Audette For the (...) outdated mainstream paradigm the world is a giant mechanism functioning in accordance with known and knowable laws and regularities. The new paradigm emerging in science offers a different concept: The world is an interconnected, coherent whole, and it is informed by a cosmic intelligence. This is not a finite, mechanistic-material world. It is a consciousness-infused whole-system world. We are conscious beings who emerge and co-evolve as complex, cosmic-intelligence in-formed vibrations in the Akashic Field of the universe. Ervin Laszlo and his collaborators from the forefront of science, cosmology, and spirituality show how the re-discovery of who we are and why we are here integrates seamlessly with the wisdom traditions as well as with the new emerging worldview in the sciences, revealing a way forward for humanity on this planet. They explain how we have reached a point of critical incoherence and tell us that to save ourselves, our environment, and society, we need a critical mass of people to consciously evolve a new thinking. Offering a guidepost to orient this evolution, Laszlo examines the nature of consciousness in the universe, showing how our bodies and minds act as transmitters of consciousness from the intelligence of the cosmos and how understanding science’s new concept of the world enables us to re-discover our identity and our purpose in our world. With bold vision and forward thinking, Laszlo and his contributors Maria Sagi, Kingsley L. Dennis, Emanuel Kuntzelman, Dawna Jones, Shamik Desai, Garry Jacobs, and John R. Audette outline the new idea of the world and of ourselves in the world. They help us discover how we can overcome these divisive times and blossom into a new era of peace, coherence, connection, and global wellbeing. (shrink)

The Business Ethics Center of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences organized a Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit on September 15–17, 2000 in Budapest, Hungary. The Summit was sponsored by the Community of European Management Schools and Procter & Gamble.The main function of the Summit was to provide a forum for leading American and European scholars to explore the background theories and value bases of business ethics from the perspective of the 21st century. The participants reflected on the state of the (...) art of business ethics as it has been practised in the USA and Europe; however, the future of business ethics as a discipline was the main focus of the Summit. Since business ethics is closely related to business and capitalism, some considerations of the 21st century economic, political, and social reality were presented too. The paper is based on and composed from the abstracts provided by the participants of the Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit. The abstract booklet can be obtained from Laszlo Zsolnai, the Convenor of the Summit. (shrink)