Conference 2008

Overall perspective The attempt to reduce what is truly unique to something else leads to the deification of something or some aspect within creation, normally accompanied by imperialistic “all”-claims such as, “everything is number,” “everything is matter,” “everything is feeling,” “everything is historical” or “everything is is interpretation.” The distortions thus created inevitably result in…

We must love each other or die. – W. H. Auden. The particularly toxic form that individuality has taken in European and Anglo-American culture in this era is substantially underpinned by a conception of mind, self, and soul that would hold these to be internal to the central nervous system of our biological organism. This…

0. Introduction In this paper I want to address the problem of using the notion of “person” or “personhood” in the biomedical ethics. I want to do this in four steps: In the first step I want to argue that there is a need to distinguish between persons and human beings as the medical science…

1. The touchstones of the question: a brief overview The keystone of Aristotelian thought is the distinction between act and potency in every real thing, except for Pure Act itself1. Thus, this duality should also be accounted for in relation to the reality of human being. The following question arises in this context: does the…

1 Introduction We are living in an unique time in the history of humanity. This moment, this turning point, is unprecedented. In order to face the new possibilities of our future it is of utmost importance to be prepared to make wise choices about how will we shape our future as a new technologically enhanced…

As human beings we are living in a world and are subject to a milieu of cultural, institutional, linguistic and behavioral influences; and yet we are constantly striving for some sort of meaning to our existence. To provide some answers to this yearning for meaning, the German Idealist tradition maintained a unified notion of the…

Mankind is yearning for global peace. During the twentieth century a number of international treatises were signed declaring war as illegal in the settlement of disputes like the Covenant of the League of Nations, the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War and the Charter of United Nations. Despite these conventions, there have been wars…

An emergentist world view sets certain challenges to our notion of science and of the kinds of explanations of our world that it seeks. A first is to identify different emergent levels of reality, the living from the non living, the conscious from the non conscious, and within consciousness itself the distinctive emergence of the…

Y a-t-il un homme si stupide qui n’invente au moins quelque signe pour se faire entendre? Y a-t-il une b�te si rus�e, qui ait jamais trouv�? Et qui ne sait que la moindre des inventions est d’ordre sup�rieur � tout ce qui ne fait que suivre?” Jacques Benigne Bossuet: De la Connoissance de Dieu et…

1 Introduction First I wish to extend my thanks to the Metanexus Institute for planning this conference, for locating it in my favorite European country, and in particular for inviting me to be on the program with the person I’ve long believed to be the most sophisticated scholar writing on the free-will problem. In this…