“You argue like Carl Schmitt!” This charge has long been considered slanderous within German leftist circles and could have resulted in political ostracism. Today things are somewhat different, but not too much. When Ellen Kennedy first insisted on Schmitt's influence on the Frankfurt School a couple of years ago in Ludwigsburg, she may not have been aware of die problem Schmitt poses in Germany, and thus may have been taken aback by the defensive reactions of, among others, Habermas. Be that (...) as it may, Kennedy should by now know better than to reiterate the thesis. Despite many qualifications, her argument remains that Schmitt's authoritarian political philosophy in the Weimar Republic was implicitly or explicitly inherited by the Frankfurt School. (shrink)

It is necessary to consider medieval Western Neoplatonism as a current of thought inserted in a wide cultural atmosphere where liturgical, theological, aesthetic, and artistic patterns play an important role as elements of a common historical past. In this article the author argues to what extent Neoplatonic concepts (Epiphany, Negative Theology, Theology of Light and Metaphor of Light) derived from Johannes Scotus Eriugena, translator of the Corpus Areopagiticum into latin, relate to the Iconography of Crist-Light or Maiestas domini in a (...) mandorle of light. Writings of various thinkers, paintings from the 12th century and medieval epigraphy are taken as primary sources in order to understand the relationship between Neoplatonism and Iconography in the European Middle Ages. (shrink)

The Elementary Process Theory (EPT) is a collection of seven elementary process-physical principles that describe the individual processes by which interactions have to take place for repulsive gravity to exist. One of the two main problems of the EPT is that there is no proof that the four fundamental interactions (gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak) as we know them can take place in the elementary processes described by the EPT. This paper sets forth the method by which it can be (...) proven that the EPT agrees with the knowledge that derives from the successful predictions of a modern interaction theory T. This determines a fundamentally new research program in theoretical physics. (shrink)

Apoptosis has become a major research area in the biomedical sciences. As there are more than 13,000 papers published annually on the topic, it is impossible to keep track on all developments in the area. The individual aspects of molecular control of apoptosis are well reviewed, but more general, introductory recent reviews into the field are lacking. This review aims to give a brief overview of the field, providing an introduction into the literature for students and newcomers; as it is (...) written for the un‐initiated, wherever possible, review articles will be cited rather than original papers. BioEssays 25:888–896, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that the Elementary Process Theory (EPT) agrees with the knowledge of the physical world obtained from the successful predictions of Special Relativity (SR). For that matter, a recently developed method is applied: a categorical model of the EPT that incorporates SR is fully specified. Ultimate constituents of the universe of the EPT are modeled as point-particles, gamma-rays, or time-like strings, all represented by integrable hyperreal functions on Minkowski space. This proves that the (...) EPT agrees with SR. -/- Edit: this preprint differs significantly from the published chapter. (shrink)

The JTB definition of knowledge has been shown by Gettier to be incomplete: its three conditions are necessary for knowledge, but not sufficient. We argue that the JTB definition can be completed with a very simple fourth condition, namely that the justification for the belief in p must be sufficient to exclude ¬p. It is shown that the resulting JTB+S definition solves the Gettier problem.

It is necessary to consider medieval Western Neoplatonism as a current of thought inserted in a wide cultural atmosphere where liturgical, theological, aesthetic, and artistic patterns play an important role as elements of a common historical past. In this article the author argues to what extent Neoplatonic concepts (Epiphany, Negative Theology, Theology of Light and Metaphor of Light) derived from Johannes Scotus Eriugena, translator of the Corpus Areopagiticum into latin, relate to the Iconography of Crist-Light or Maiestas domini in a (...) mandorle of light. Writings of various thinkers, paintings from the 12th century and medieval epigraphy are taken as primary sources in order to understand the relationship between Neoplatonism and Iconography in the European Middle Ages. (shrink)

Pseudoskepticism, which typically is portraying someone's work as despicable with scientifically unsound polemics, is a modern day threat to the traditional standard of discussion in science and popular science. This essay gives seven tell-tale signs by which pseudoskepticism can be recognized.

Betrifft die Handschrift Cod. 579 der Burgerbibliothek Bern.

Although there are several monistic and dualistic approaches to the mind-body problem on the basis of classical or quantum mechanics, thus far no consensus exists about a solution. Recently, the Elementary Process Theory (EPT) has been developed: this corresponds with a fundamentally new disciplinary matrix for the study of physical reality. The purpose of the present research was to investigate the mind-body problem within this newly developed disciplinary matrix. The main finding is that the idea of a duality of body (...) and mind has to be rejected as an incomplete representation of reality: in the universe of the EPT, man hás to be a trinity of body, spirit and soul, where ‘body’, ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ are names for distinct physical things. The mind is then a mere idea that arises from (self-)experience, but without onto-logical connotation. In addition a mechanism for mental causation, which implies a principle of choice, is rigorously formulated. The main conclusion is that a fundamentally new physicalist approach to the mind-body problem, according to which man has a free will, has been formulated strictly within the language of the EPT. Further physical research is then required to describe how the interaction between body, spirit and soul is to be understood in terms of fundamental interactions. In addition, further philosophical-theological research has to establish whether the presently discussed trinity and the trinities of body, spirit and soul mentioned in the Bible and the Vedic texts are one and the same thing. -/- Edit: a revised version of this preprint has been published as a book chapter. (shrink)

The physics literature contains many claims that elementary particles have been observed: such observational claims are, of course, important for the development of existential knowledge. Regarding claimed observations of short-lived unstable particles in particular, the use of the word 'observation' is based on the convention in physics that the observation of a short-lived unstable particle can be claimed when its predicted decay products have been observed with a significance of 5 sigma. This paper, however, shows that this 5 sigma convention (...) is inconsistent with existing concepts of observation by showing that unstable particles with a lifetime of less than 0.01 attosecond are fundamentally unobservable both from the perspective of Fox's recent concepts of direct and indirect observation, and from the perspective of Van Fraassen's notion of observability. This cognitive inaccessibility of parts of the subatomic world has far-reaching implications for physics, not the least of which is that the aforementioned convention is untenable: claims that such short-lived unstable particles have been observed will thus have to be retracted. The main implications are two incompleteness theorems for physics, respectively stating (i) that experiments cannot prove completeness of a physical theory predicting short-lived unstable particles, and (ii) that experiments cannot prove correctness of such a theory|one can at most test its empirical adequacy. On a general note, the conclusion is that the importance of philosophical arguments for particle physics is herewith demonstrated: it is, thus, a widespread misconception that philosophical arguments can be completely avoided. (shrink)

Currently there are at least four sizeable projects going on to establish the gravitational acceleration of massive antiparticles on earth. While general relativity and modern quantum theories strictly forbid any repulsive gravity, it has not yet been established experimentally that gravity is attraction only. With that in mind, the Elementary Process Theory (EPT) is a rather abstract theory that has been developed from the hypothesis that massive antiparticles are repulsed by the gravitational field of a body of ordinary matter: the (...) EPT essentially describes the elementary processes by which the smallest massive systems have to interact with their environments for repulsive gravity to exist. In this paper we model a nonrelativistic, one-component massive system that evolves in time by the processes as described by the EPT in an environment described by classical fields: the main result is a semi-classical model of a process at Planck scale by which a non-relativistic onecomponent system interacts with its environment, such that the interaction has both gravitational and electromagnetic aspects. Some worked-out examples are provided, among which the repulsion of an antineutron by the gravitational field of the earth. The general conclusion is that the semi-classical model of the EPT corresponds to non-relativistic classical mechanics. Further research is aimed at demonstrating that the EPT has a model that reproduces the successful predictions of general relativity. (shrink)

In philosophy of science, several views have been espoused on the meaning of the term 'theory'; among these are the syntactic view and the semantic view. But even after decades of debate, no consensus has been reached on an all-encompassing positively defined view on theories. Here we take that to mean that the outcome of the debate is that such an all-encompassing view is nonexisting. Correspondingly, the purpose of this paper is to present a pluralist view on theories: it is (...) negatively defined, yet it may break the deadlock in the ongoing debate on the meaning of 'theory'. (shrink)

Recently Feferman has outlined a program for the development of a foundation for naive category theory. While Ernst has shown that the resulting axiomatic system is still inconsistent, the purpose of this note is to show that nevertheless some foundation has to be developed before naive category theory can replace axiomatic set theory as a foundational theory for mathematics. It is argued that in naive category theory currently a ‘cookbook recipe’ is used for constructing categories, and it is explicitly shown (...) with a formalized argument that this “foundationless” naive category theory therefore contains a paradox similar to the Russell paradox of naive set theory. (shrink)

The PBR theorem, which implies that the Einsteinian realist view on quantum mechanics (QM) is inconsistent with predictions of the standard Copenhagen view on QM, has been hailed as one of the most important theorems in the foundations of QM. Here we show that the special measurement, used by Pusey et al. to derive the theorem, is nonexisting from the Einsteinian view on QM.

Scientific misconduct is usually assumed to be self-serving. This paper, however, proposes to distinguish between two types of scientific misconduct: ‘type one scientific misconduct’ is self-serving and leads to falsely positive conclusions about one’s own work, while ‘type two scientific misconduct’ is other-harming and leads to falsely negative conclusions about someone else’s work. The focus is then on the latter type, and three known issues are identified as specific forms of such scientific misconduct: biased quality assessment, smear, and officially condoning (...) scientific misconduct. These concern the improper ways how challenges of the prevailing opinion are thwarted in the modern world. The central issue is pseudoskepticism: uttering negative conclusions about someone else’s work that are downright false. It is argued that this may be an emotional response, rather than a calculated strategic action. Recommendations for educative and punitive measures are given to prevent and to deal with these three forms of scientific misconduct. (shrink)

This self-contained letter shows how ψ-epistemic quantum gravity (QG), that is, QG with a ψ-epistemic interpretation of quantum theory, in principle obtains from a deterministic model of the Elementary Process Theory (EPT) that describes an individual process at supersmall (Planck) scale by which a predominantly gravitational interaction takes place. While both ψ-epistemic QG and the model of the EPT remain to be formulated rigorously, this shows how the probabilistic nature of our knowledge of the physical world emerges in a strictly (...) deterministic universe--God does not play dice, it is our knowledge of the outcome of a process that is fundamentally probabilistic. -/- Edit: a completely worked-out and majorly revised version of this letter-type preprint has been published as a book chapter. (shrink)