The research on stem cell-based therapies has greatly expanded in recent years. Our text attempts to seek those religious and ethical challenges that stem cell therapy and research bring into debate. Our thesis is that bioethics can defend its principle without a religious background. We will develop our argumentation on three major points: firstly, a comparison between secular ethics and religious views will clarify why stem cell therapy and research are important from a scientific point of view, addressing the very (...) center of the human being; in our view, being based on secular society, bioethics can answer the challenges of stem cell therapy and research; secondly, following Hans Jonas' perspective on experimenting on humans, we seek to understand the philosophical guidance that sciences dealing with stem cell need; thirdly, we will map the ethical guidelines for clinical translational research that have been adopted by the International Society for Stem Cell Research. . (shrink)

Philosophers of biology have recently been debating about whether random genetic drift is a distinct process from that of natural selection. One camp argues that drift is a process of “indiscriminate sampling” that is logically and ontologically distinct from the “discriminate sampling” process that is natural selection. The other camp argues that, rather than being two autonomous processes, natural selection and drift are just two aspects or facets of a single process. I argue that the two positions involved in this (...) dispute are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, by explicitly taking into account its sources, I argue that two kinds of drift are theoretically possible. The first kind – that I call circumstantial-drift – involves a process of its own, separate from the process of natural selection, or, more specifically, it requires that differences in a circumstantial trait cause differences in reproductive output of biological entities. The second kind – that I label probabilistic-drift – requires no other process than a probabilistic causal relation between a heritable physical trait and reproductive output, i.e. requires only the causal relation on which the work of natural selection could also depend. If both of these kinds of drift are theoretically possible, then neither defining, nor empirically identifying drift need to be zero-sum games. (shrink)

Bioart ‒ a New Challenge in Contemporary Art. Lately, in contemporary art, one can find, more and more often, live animals with the status of artwork. Although animal rights activists consider this a flagrant violation of their most elementary rights, contemporary artists with a wide range of motivation often incorporate the live animal into their work and give it the title of artistic work. Another challenge in contemporary art is biotech art that provides the public with another field of representation (...) that has as main themes its living tissues, cells and nucleus, DNA, bacteria, grafts, patches of tattooed skin, guinea pigs, phosphorescent rabbits, and a wide floral palette. To this trend, several art galleries rallied, that consider the living animal and certain aspects of biotechnological research, artwork, and their exposure as being a natural thing. Moreover, in recent decades, to this new current of bioart, groups of specialists from different fields also joined: biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, jurists, philosophers, and heterogeneous groups of art lovers. The questions addressed to all those who accept and consider this original work of art are the following: Why is the live animal in an exhibition, more aesthetically valuable than when it lives in its natural life or in a zoo, and why is the representation of DNA more relevant in the art gallery than in the laboratory?. Lastly, has BioArt any transformative capabilities on the general public? (shrink)

During the past few decades, fitness-centered and trait-centered definitions of natural selection have coexisted in the philosophical literature. The former render natural selection definitionally dependent on the presence of fitness differences, where “fitness” is understood as a distinct property from actual reproductive success. On the other hand, trait-centered definitions see selection as definitionally dependent on the presence of a causal relation between a trait (not necessarily fitness) and reproductive success. Interestingly, endorsers of these definitions have rarely–and usually only cursorily–critically engaged (...) the views of the other camp. Therefore, a critical comparison of the two kinds of definitions is lacking in the literature. This paper starts filling this void by opening a discussion about which of the two kinds of definition is more appropriate. I first argue that fitness-centered definitions have difficulties in accommodating cases of opposing selection on correlated traits, whereas trait-centered views have no such problems. To do so, I revisit an old argument put forth by Elliott Sober and I show that recent attempts from the fitness-centered camp to reply to Sober’s charge are unsuccessful. I then show that fitness-centered views also have problems with a different type of case, namely opposing selection on a single trait; trait-centered views, on the other hand, may accommodate such cases if, as I propose here, we specify that the causal relation that figures prominently in them is understood as a relation of contributing causation. These arguments suggest that trait-centered definitions of selection are preferable to fitness-centered ones. (shrink)

This paper provides a classification of violent agents according to the manner in which they relate to their own goals. By interpreting Jean-Paul Sartre’s discussion of violence in Notebooks for an Ethics, I show that violent agents may be classified into four categories that I call “defenders of the given order,” “instruments of a higher power,” “mineralized subjects” and, finally, “unchained subjects.” I also show how each of these four categories of violent subjects represents a particular manner of, in Sartre’s (...) words, “refusing time” or, in other terms, of refusing to change or to adjust to the situation one finds oneself in. (shrink)

In his Philosophy of Mind, Hegel treats human sensibility differently in the sections on anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. With the recent revival of Hegel’s work, there has been a lively debate about how to understand the progression from more primitive to more sophisticated human capacities. This paper differentiates three influential readings to that effect – the animals-first, the emancipatory, and the rational-first reading – and argues that they risk misconstruing mental development as a transition from one category of capacities to (...) the other. The transition is rendered in terms of either accumulation, emancipation, or maturation. But this basic picture confuses the capacities characterizing us as a kind of animal, a kind of consciousness, and a conceptually self-conscious being. This paper explains how anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology articulate complementary, but irreducible categories of human capacities. The apparently more basic capacities are abstractable aspects of those that come later in the order of presentation. The distinct kinds of capacities do not stand separately on a three-step ladder of mental development but are aspects of one singular and synchronous development of the human mind. Their particular development is mutually dependent on each other but can be properly accounted for only in distinctive categorial terms. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that patristic theology has resolved the problem of God’s immutability, which is affirmed paradoxically Holy Scripture. This resolution has been achieved through clarifying of the distinction between God’s essence and his uncreated energies. The Eastern Fathers successfully synthesized key theological concepts: the changelessness of God and his dynamic activity in relation to creation. This synthesis is most profoundly articulated in the Palamite doctrine of the uncreated energies. These energies, while emanating from the (...) changeless essence of God, are nevertheless subject to change. According to this teaching, God is a Trinity of Persons who exists on two primary planes: within himself and in his self-revelation, both in the realms of Theologia and Economia. He is unchangeable in essence, yet changeable, alive, active, and ever-new in his providential action of saving the world through his energies. Because he is transcendent, he can be immanent, instilling in the souls who love him a deeper thirst to know and experience him more profoundly.Contribution: The dogmatic formulas in Eastern Christianity are apophatic, antinomic and paradoxical because they encompass essentially contradictory aspects of a living and inexhaustibly rich reality. Thus, by their very nature, dogmas express everything: the infinite and the finite united – without losing their own being in all their dimensions. (shrink)

In Australia, the ethics of the use of animals for scientific purposes are assessed by Animal Ethics Committees that are comprised of the four major parties involved in the animal experimentation debate: veterinarians, scientists using animals, animal welfare representatives and members of the public. AECs are required to assess animal experiments as ethical based on a cost/benefit analysis, suggesting the use of consequentialist ethics. However, people are more likely to use a mixture of frameworks when making ethical decisions. Therefore, we (...) hypothesised that AEC members will make their decisions using argumentation relying on multiple frameworks, including ethical relativism, deontology and emotional ethics; frameworks commonly used in the public debate about animal experimentation. The language used by AEC members, examined using discourse analysis techniques, can indicate which ethical frameworks they rely upon. Using a role playing method, representatives from each of the four AEC categories discussed the ethical value of eight fictional protocols involving animal experimentation. The discussions were recorded and analysed using Nvivo for instances of emotional and ethical language. Data were analysed using ANOVAs and Tukey tests. Emotional language was more common than ethical language (p. (shrink)

Nadie ha logrado explicarme de manera convincente por qué a los soldados de plástico de mi infancia todo el mundo los llamaba "indios". Algunos me dijeron que las figuras que representaban a los indios debían haber sido las más numerosas y populares desde el comienzo y que, por esta razón, el término que los designaba se había extendido a toda esta clase de juguetes. Otros propusieron la hipótesis de que el nombre en cuestión había adquirido tanta aceptación debido a que (...) en aquella época, en Rumanía y en otros países comunistas, los wéstern gozaban de gran éxito. También hubo quienes plantearon la hipótesis de que una elección semejante había sido influenciada por las lecturas de los niños de entonces, orientadas hacia el mundo del Oeste salvaje gracias a las novelas de Karl May y James Fenimore Cooper. (shrink)

This paper discusses Hegel's conception of self-consciousness in the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. It argues that Hegel articulates self-consciousness as a living being's capacity to conceive of itself in light of the life-form it instantiates. I start by critically reassessing the prevalent readings of the Self-Consciousness chapter, each of which focuses on one of three constitutive aspects of self-consciousness: sociality, corporeality or practicality. Second, I reconstruct how the opening of the chapter aims to reveal that the initial (...) rift between the sensory and the conceptual capacities of consciousness is resolved by the unity of consciousness as a life-form. Third, I discuss the specification of this life-form as Geist and argue that, by introducing the notion of Geist, Hegel indicates that the generic capacity of the human being to conceive of itself in light of its life-form always particularizes itself in a conception of human life that determines a historic and social form of life. Fourth, I outline how the master-slave dialectic illustrates the interdependency between sensory and conceptual capacities. Hegel's tale undermines the assumption of a self-contained capacity for reason by displaying how conceptual capacities, actualized by a living being, rely from the outset on objective constraints. I conclude by contending that the Self-Consciousness chapter paves the way for the central role that the idea of life plays in the Logic in exemplifying the objectivity of the concept. (shrink)

In this essay we have highlighted some significant differences between two visions of the human being: an inter- and transdisciplinary visions of the integral man which consider the human as a hypercomplex being, created by a long process of self-poiesis of its natural and cultural history and another scientific utopian/dystopic vision which projects the necessity of the existence of a superintelligent artificial being in the future, the cyborg, which would replace humanity.

Considering the dialectical structure of tragic thought in classical philosophy, one can read Nietzsche’s conception of the tragic in a dialectical way. Reading Nietzsche\'s The Birth of Tragedy in this way is justified, as long as the Apollonian and Dionysian are understood as contrasting impulses who work together in their “reciprocal necessity”. Beginning of the fifth chapter of this book, however, there is a second design of the tragic experience; here Nietzsche emphasizes that Dionysian is the affirmative dimension of the (...) tragic. This non dialectical conception of tragic, as Nietzsche builds it along his work, stresses the non necessity to justify life, the affirmation of life as it is, without deploring and rebuilding it, and without giving it an alien meaning. This conception cancels the negativity which founds the dialectical conception of the tragic, in so far as suffering, vain, and finiteness are no longer seen as opposed to life and in need of an appoint justification: they belong to it. The philosophical task is to ask: of what does the tragic of an absolute affirmation of life consist of, if the dialectic contradiction is repealed. (shrink)

Moods are usually taken to be pre-intentional affective states that tune our experience and cognition. Moreover, moods are sometimes considered to not only accompany cognitive acts, but to be understanding phenomena themselves. The following paper examines the assumption that moods represent a specific interpretative skill. Based upon that view, the semantic content of moods seems to be self-determining and to elude conceptual articulation. By contrast, I defend the thesis that the alleged inarticulable intelligibility of affective experiences is possible only due (...) to its belonging to a comprehensive theoretical horizon. For that purpose, I first analyze Heidegger’s influential account on moods in Being and Time, in order to clarify his claim that moods have their own understanding. Although Heidegger asserts that attuned understanding becomes itself when it is interpreted, he nevertheless rejects conceptual unfolding as a legitimate disclosure of the intelligible content of moods. I amend Heidegger’s account by engaging Hegel’s approach to this topic in his Philosophy of Mind. In this text, Hegel argues that feelings cannot give an account of their purport by feeling alone. Affective states not only manifest the need and urge to express themselves, but they reach their full extent when their meaning is disclosed within the entirety of the mind. It may be the case that affective states cannot always be fully clarified, but, even within a non-cognitivist account of moods, their intelligibility requires our acquaintance with articulated understanding. (shrink)

This paper attempts to put some order among the different notions of pain that are to be found in the Nietzschean philosophical corpus. It tries to show that there is a mutation of the Nietzschean concept of pain, from the notion of pain as evaluation to that of pain as localization of a commotion. Therefore pain is not in itself the source of a reaction, but is actually a consequence of a commotion that a reaction has already addressed by the (...) time of the appearance of pain. A deeper notion of pain is therefore sketched here, one that depicts it as an illusory reaction, destined at separating the global commotion of the organism from its alleged localized cause, thus separating the action from the agent and postponing the facing of the global effect of the commotion. It is for this reason that pain becomes a kind of “matrix” for the understanding of our interior life for Nietzsche, as well as a philosophical indicator of his theoretical adversaries. Finally, the end of this article attempts to show that certain positive indications for a different status of pain might serve as guiding lines for the uncovering of a Nietzschean theory of action. (shrink)

This paper shows that Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative materialism doesn’t offer us the means to account for the ancestral statements that the modern sciences produce, i.e. for the scientific statements about events preceding all forms of life. An analysis of the reasons why Meillassoux thinks that the problem of ancestrality problematizes the contemporary self-evidence of correlationism is first offered. The results of this analysis are then applied to speculative materialism itself and the consequences are not very promising: very much like correlationism, (...) speculative materialism explicitly denies what I call the “generalized version of the realistic assumption of science” and, in so doing, renders scientific ancestral statements de jure unverifiable. Therefore, if correlationism is rendered suspicious by the issue of ancestrality, the same can be said of speculative materialism. (shrink)

Adrian Marino, Cenzura în România - Schitã istoricã introductivã Ed. Aius, Craiova, 2000, 96 p.

The period that has begun after the last quarter of the 19th century brings an open conflict between the ‘histori- cal’ aspect of modernity and the ‘aesthetical’ one. The situation raises a question about the modern architectural shape’s dependency on architectonic function. Utility, production, profit become the keywords of the ideology; new social utopias and their reflection on the architecture- for-the masses projects emerge. This leads to the urban alienation of the modern man, in spite of the well-intended architectural functionalism (...) and mechanistic comfort, both of them ideologically uphold in order to ensure an easy livelihood for the proletariat. Thus, the late modernity is constrained to retrieve though eclecticism the very values that has denied itself, the mixing of codes that it ‘performs’ nowadays standing for a new ideology, one of “the ending of ideologies”. (shrink)

Moshe Idel, Cabalistii nocturni Editura Provopress, Cluj-Napoca, 2005, 81 pp.

The Intermediary in the Philosophy of Space: Precariousness, Creation, Freedom. The reflection proposed by this text is the result of a dialogue spread over several years between philosophers and geographers. The best common ground between each other – in the right middle of the road – is undoubtedly the concept of the intermediary, which describes, negatively or affirmatively, the future of our physical, social, conceptual spaces and which speaks to us about discontinuity, hybridization, flow, contiguity, but also vulnerability, counterpowers and (...) freedom. We wanted to show that far from being a concept of the residual, the unassimilable, the incomprehensible or even the irrational, the intermediary is the place of hospitality, the open work of alternative creativity, resistance, or affirmation of those who, excluded from dominant discourses, claim a right to speak and freely participate in social life. (shrink)

Any religion has an ethical component. Thus, the examination of ethical problems is very important for religious studies. Consequentialism is an ethical doctrine according to which a fact is good only if it has good consequences. In order to avoid infinite regression, there is the need for a moral foundation in conformity with the criterion of goodness. The consequentialists proposed various criteria for goodness, such as pleasure, happiness or utility. Any fact will be judged as good only if its consequences (...) belong to the moral basis. The correctness of ethical judgments depends on the analysis of consequence relations. This study takes into account material and strict implication as representations of consequence. Both of them generate ethical paradoxes. If consequence is represented by material implication, according to the Manichean ethics, a fact is either good or bad; there are no neutral ethical facts. If consequence is analyzed by strict implication, the necessary facts will not have a moral value. The present study is to suggest an original solution to these paradoxes. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate, from an interdisciplinary point of view, the concept of parliamentary immunity. The main objective of this inquiry is to identify the historical premises and the political, linguistic, and legal instruments that determined the conceptualization of parliamentary immunity in light of the main intellectual events in Romania and France. Embracing Reinhart Koselleck's working methods, this research will develop _in extenso_ a comparative conceptual analysis based on methodological rigor, emphasizing not only the importance of the concept after (...) its entry into national languages, but also the political usages of the concept and the present understandings of it. (shrink)

Secularism is a very popular topic in social sciences and in theology. Father Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann (1921–1983) addressed this topic and raised many questions, which are still very relevant in today’s Eastern European context. He presented the distinctive vision of the Eastern Church, according to which all the solutions to overcome the actual crisis caused by secularism can be found by rediscovering the Liturgy of the Church as the primary source not only for theology but for all other aspects of (...) church life. Contribution: The present article aims to discuss the whole problematisation related to the impact of secularism on orthodoxy and to present the highly topical solutions that Father Alexander Schmemann proposed for the survival of the Christian Orthodox ethos in the novel conditions of the postmodern world. (shrink)

The study focuses on the theoretical-methodological analysis of the concept of social freedom as a special concept of individual autonomy in relation to the social conditions of its applicability. The aim of the analysis is to reveal and clarify the main political implications and normative claims that result from it for political theory. The thesis is formulated and argued in the article that the philosophical concept of social freedom in its applicability programmatically leads to a model of the politics of (...) emancipation as a process of social transformation and political overcoming of recognized forms of unfreedom, historical forms of social oppression and domination. Social understanding of individual freedom becomes the normative basis of politics as a form of collective activity through which associated individuals govern the social conditions of their lives. By comparing the two basic forms of emancipatory politics – class politics and identity politics – the main problems of such an understanding of politics are discussed. (shrink)

This paper argues that the contextual approach to natural selection does not offer an estimation of the contributions of individual and group selection to evolutionary change in multi-level selection scenarios, and that this is so because the term “group selection”, as defined by the contextual approach, does not refer to a process taking place at the group level. In the contextual analysis framework, this term simply denotes an evolutionary change that takes place due to the fact that, overall, individual types (...) do not share similar contexts or environments, and the only way to claim that such an evolutionary change is a result of selection is by admitting that “group selection” is in fact a kind of frequency-dependent selection, i.e. a selection process taking place at the individual level. Therefore, under the names “individual selection” and “group selection”, the contextual approach actually isolates two aspects of the relation between individual types and their environment, and not two distinct levels of selection. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify two general positions with respect to the relationship between environment and natural selection. These positions consist in claiming that selective claims need and, respectively, need not be relativized to homogenous environments. I then show that adopting one or the other position makes a difference with respect to the way in which the effects of selection are to be measured in certain cases in which the focal population is distributed over heterogeneous environments. Moreover, I show that (...) these two positions lead to two different interpretations—the Pricean and contextualist ones—of a type of selection scenarios in which multiple groups varying in properties affect the change in the metapopulation mean of individual-level traits. Showing that these two interpretations stem from different attitudes towards environmental homogeneity allows me to argue: that, unlike the Pricean interpretation, the contextualist interpretation can only claim that drift or selection is responsible for the change in frequency of the focal trait in a given metapopulation if details about whether or not group formation is random are specified; that the traditional main objection against the Pricean interpretation—consisting in arguing that the latter takes certain side-effects of individual selection to be effects of group selection—is unconvincing. This leads me to suggest that the ongoing debate about which of the two interpretations is preferable should concentrate on different issues than previously thought. (shrink)

There is surprisingly little philosophical work on conceptually spelling out the difference between the traits on which natural selection may be said to act (e.g. “having a high running speed”) and mere circumstantial traits (e.g. “happening to be in the path of a forest fire”). I label this issue the “selectable traits problem” and, in this paper, I propose a solution for it. I first show that, contrary to our first intuition, simply equating selectable traits with heritable ones is not (...) an adequate solution. I then go on to argue that two recent philosophical solutions to this problem—due to Peter Godfrey-Smith and Pierrick Bourrat—are unconvincing because they cannot accommodate frequency-dependent selection. The way out of this difficulty is, I argue, to accept that extrinsic properties dependent on relations between intrinsic properties of the population members should also count as selectable traits. I then show that my proposal is legitimized by more than the simple accommodation of frequency-dependent selection. (shrink)

In the last decades, there has been a far-reaching debate about whether reason is a natural power of the human animal or a socio-historical achievement. This paper brings out and criticizes two paradigmatic views of reason entangled in that dilemma: the substantive view which construes reason as a primitive power possessing the basic forms of intelligibility; and the derivative view which traces back reason to non-rational, natural-historic processes. I approach the issue by discussing how Aristotle addresses the underlying predicament in (...) Metaphysics Theta. The predicament persuades us to overdetermine or underdetermine our natural potentiality for reason because it ignores what I call Aristotle's main insight: the understanding from which rational capacities are exercised is acquired by undertaking appropriate activities. The measure of rational capacities is neither merely naturally determined nor merely socio-historically inherited but relies on the engagement with the things falling under the purview of the pertaining activities. We must recover this Aristotelian insight, I argue, to avoid succumbing to either the substantive or the derivative view of reason. (shrink)

This paper outlines a hypothesis regarding the close connection between two problems in Georges Canguilhem’s work. The first problem is that of Canguilhem’s insistence to include considerations about natural selection in his work and of the role that this notion could play therein. The second problem consists in Canguilhem’s tendency to often use the term “life” as the subject of his sentences, even though this tendency may seem to at least partially contradict some of the central theses advanced in his (...) philosophy. This paper attempts to show that these two problems should not be viewed as being isolated from one another, that there is a strong connection between the two and that a certain interpretation of the first one allows us to make sense of the second. To put it otherwise, the aim of this paper is to show that a particular interpretation of the role of natural selection in Canguilhem’s work could help explain why “life” plays the role of a preferred grammatical subject in his writings. (shrink)

This paper argues that Jean-Paul Sartre’s discussion of violence from his Notebooks for an ethics constitutes an attempt to go beyond an instrumental view of violence. An “instrumental view of violence” essentially assumes that violent behavior is a form of pragmatic behavior whose distinguishing feature consists in the kind of means one employs for reaching one’s goals (violent behavior resorting to means that are harmful for others, whereas non-violent behavior does not). For his part, Sartre attempts to provide a stronger (...) demarcation between violent and pragmatic behaviors. First, violent behavior is, for Sartre, not necessarily characterized by the use of particular means, but by a particular manner of using means, one that involves a certain “forcing” or “straining” of the means. Second, I argue that, according to Sartre, in contrast with pragmatic behavior, violent behavior involves a modification of one’s attitude towards one’s goals. Three such modified attitudes with respect to one’s goals are detailed here, namely the non-productive attitude (the assumption that the goal is not to be produced or that it is not to be produced by means that are under our control), the counter-productive attitude (the exacerbation of one’s proximate goal at the expense of more distant goals) and the anti-productive attitude (the active refusal of one’s previously set goal). Moreover, I show that Sartre’s view that violence involves the “straining” of one’s means is undergirded by his idea that violent behavior presupposes the modification of one’s attitude with respect to one’s goals. (shrink)

Ethical debate about the use of animals in science is argued within different ethical frameworks; mainly utilitarianism, deontology, relativism or emotional ethics, with some debaters preferring particular frameworks. Stakeholders to the debate are veterinarians, scientists using animals, animal welfare groups and the general public. To estimate the balance of ethical frameworks used, we ran a discourse analysis of written texts by each stakeholder . The discourse analysis targeted the description of animals, instances of emotional language and language associated with utilitarianism, (...) deontology and relativism. Frequencies were compared using ANOVAs and Tukey tests. All stakeholders used words associated with all frameworks but emotional language was the most used followed by utilitarian , relativist and deontological language. Emotional language was used in texts from the general public more than in texts from veterinarians and scientists and animal welfare representatives . Animals were mainly described in a utilitarian way , more frequently by scientists than the general public . All stakeholders preferentially used negative emotional language when referring to animals than positive , and all stakeholders prioritised human interests over animals . Not surprisingly, a mixture of ethical frameworks were used to assess the ethics of animal experimentation. However, the language used in texts from animal welfare groups and the general public suggest that those two groups preferentially build arguments with emotion rather than utilitarianism, a framework that is privileged by veterinarians and scientists since they primarily use animals. (shrink)

The \\)-Robertson–Walker spacetime is under investigation. With the derived Hamilton operator, we are solving the Wheeler–De Witt Equation and its Schrödinger-like extension, for physically important forms of the effective potential. The closed form solutions, expressed in terms of Heun’s functions, allow us to comment on the occurrence of Universe from highly probable quantum states.

Motivated by the recent wave of investigations on plane domain wall spacetimes with nontrivial topologies, the present paper deals with (probably) the most simple source field configuration which can generate a spatially planary symmetric static spacetime, namely a minimally coupled massless scalar field that depends only upon a spacelike coordinate. z. It is shown that the corresponding exact solutions (ℳ. g±) are algebraically special, type D-[S-3T] (in11), and represent globally pathologic spacetimes with a G4-group of motion acting on R2 × (...) R orbits. In spite of the model simplicity, these Φ-generated worlds possess naked timelike singularities (reached within a finite universal time by normal nonspacelike geodesics). are completely free of Cauchy surfaces, and contain, in the t-leveled sections, points that cannot be joined by C1-trajectory images of oblique non-spacelike geodesies. Finally, we comment on the possibility of deriving from (ℳ, g±) two other physically interesting Φ-generated” spacetimes by appropriate joining conditions in the (z=0)-plane. (shrink)

L'éthique bachelardienne est une éthique simple, mais pas du tout simpliste : l'homme du théorème est complété par l'homme du poème. Mais si l'éthique est une direction de la pensée qui doit maîtriser notre avenir, la poétique est la source ontologique de cette pensée. C'est-à-dire, la liberté de rêver doit être à l'origine de la liberté créatrice de la pensée ou de l'homme des théorèmes. En fait, il ne s'agit pas d'une éthique fermée dans les modèles artificiels d'une pensée techniciste, (...) mais toujours d'une éthique soutenue, à l'origine, par une poétique de la pensée ouverte. (shrink)

Istvan Kiraly V., Moartea si experienta muririi. In(tro)spectie metafizica si filosofico-aplicata Editura Casa Cartii de Stiinta, Cluj-Napoca 2002, 154 p.