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Elena Agazzi
Thomas Bach
Wieslaw Bogdanowicz
Hotimir Burger
Corrado Corradi-Dell'Acqua
Gianfausto Dell'Antonio
Erhard Denninger
Nina A. Dmitrieva
Sergio Doplicher
Cinzia Ferrini
Lech Garlicki
Mauro Giacca
Vladimir Glišin
Ivan M. Havel
Daslav Hranueli
Eva Kocziszky
Katalin Neumer
Julian Nida-Rümelin
Ilza Pajeva, Michael Wiese
Alberto Piazza
Telmo Pievani
Alexei Smirnov
Emidio Spinelli
Katepalli R. Sreenivasan
Alice Staskova
Barbara Tomasino, Peter H. Weiss, Gereon R. Fink
Federico Vercellone
Aldo Venturelli
Wilhelm Vossenkuhl
Stefano Zamagni

Elena Agazzi
Measure of things and measuring of the world in scientific exploration and literature

In 1992 German writer W.G. Sebald published a poem meant to be a lyrical triptych entitled Nach der Natur (engl. After Natur, 2002). This extremely fascinating oeuvre covers the span of time between XVth and XXth Century while dealing with the life of German painter Matthias Grünewald, crossing through Georg Wilhelm Steller's biography the expeditions of Danish explorer Vitus Bering, and ending with a Sebald's autobiographical fragment where the author leans his consciousness from the end of World War II to present time. Thus After Nature seems apparently to be a tribute to painting, to scientific genius - blended with the adventure of discovering unknown worlds -, and to the feeling of historical time matured by Sebald's lyrical I. This poem represents indeed the first step of the writer's meditation upon the "natural history of destruction"; a concept widely discussed in his lectures delivered in Zurich in the late autumn of 1997 and printed in the volume Luftkrieg und Literatur (1999). A short analysis of this concept will be offered as an introduction to the paper I am presenting during the conference. Actually my attention will mainly concentrate on the figure and enterprise of Vitus Bering, around whom Austrian writer Konrad Bayer plotted in 1965 a prose entitled Der Kopf des Vitus Bering. As a pastiche of historical and cultural references concerning the most important scientific explorations carried out in the Pacific Ocean between the coasts of Alaska and the Peninsula of Kamchatka, Beyer's experimental work mostly deals with the horror of extermination and devastation brought about by any act of conquest. But the end of Bering - his ship was swept away by a tempest that killed the captain and many mariners - witnesses that all of this may only happen at the cost of solitude and at the risk of life. Beyer's insistence on Vitus Bering's "head"6 is an homage to the concept of genius, but also to the place where Enlightenment and Obscurantism play their match. In my paper I will also refer to Daniel Kehlmann's book Die Vermessung der Welt (2005) devoted to the figures of Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, the mathematician and astronomer who joined an impressive international success. Therefore "measure of things" and "measuring of the world" are the main themes of my contribution.
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Thomas Bach
Botany between speculation and experience: Franz Joseph Schelver's criticism of Linnaeus

At the beginning of the 19th century Linnaeus's concept of plant sexuality was criticized by Franz Joseph Schelver. This criticism is a good example in order to explain the position of the botany between speculation and experience and, in this case, gives information not only about the current dialog between botany and philosophy at that time, but refers also to the criticism of Linnaeus system of plant sexuality formulated by the English Anti-Sexualists in the 18th century, a criticism, that now in the beginning of the 19th century was formulated once again from the natural philosophy, but under different signs.

The English Anti-Sexualists of the 18th century criticized the missing empirical safeguard of the plant sexuality propagated by Linnaeus in particular. With that they found a central point, because Linnaeus bases only on the arguments of his precursors and their observations and experiments mostly. His argumentation is based on the analogy of animal and plant and is even rather deductive and follows scholastic models. One does not find an own or new experimental proof of the opinion represented by himself.

Relevantly in this context is for instance the dissertation Sponsalia plantarum which was published in 1749 in the first volume of his Amoenitates academicae. Linnaeus begins there with the enumeration of different authors (for example Millington, Grew, Camerarius etc.), who pronounced themselves in favour of the sexuality of the plants. As evidence of his contention Linnaeus does not present, however, any new experimental proofs. William Smellie therefore states in his contribution On the Sexuality of Plants in the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1771): "Upon the whole, we must conclude, that the distinction of sexes among vegetables has no foundation in nature: or, at least, that the facts and arguments employed in support of this doctrine, when examined with any degree of philosophical accuracy, are totally insufficient to establish it." Smellie therefore already sees Linnaeus's theory in his Philosophy of Natural Philosophy published in 1790 as "derived from a mistaken analogy".

This analogy of plant and animal is also the starting point of Schelvers criticism (Kritik der Lehre von den Geschlechtern der Pflanzen, 1812), which, however, is published twenty years after Smellie. But now the arrangement shows the difference of the two ways of life and speaks in this respect against the transfer of the sexuality from the animal onto the plant.
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Wieslaw Bogdanowicz
THE PAST OF LIFE: MOLECULAR GENETICS AND THE FUTURE OF PALEONTOLOGY

Under certain conditions small amounts of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) can survive for long periods of time and may be used as substrates in the Polymerase Chain Reaction for the study of phylogeny and population genetics of extinct animals and plants. About 20 years ago, DNA sequences were described from an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra and an ancient Egyptian individual; what made these sequences exceptional was that they were derived from 140- and 2,400-year-old specimens. More recently, ancient DNA (aDNA) has been used to study phylogenetic relationships of protists, fungi, algae, plants, and higher eukaryotes such as extinct horses, cave bears, wooly mammoths, flightless moa birds, and Neanderthals. In the past few years, this approach has been extended to the study of infectious diseases in ancient mummies from Egypt and South America; they suggested a butchery pattern indicative of a human population under resource stress, revealed dietary habits of ancient animals, and helped to understand how climatic change impacts biological diversity. The permafrost in Siberia and Alaska revealed DNA from eight species of mammals as well as 28 families of trees, shrubs, mosses and herbs that populated the Northern Hemisphere up to about 400,000 years ago. These results give scientists unprecedented power to reconstruct ancient ecosystems and track them through time. That is in sharp contrast to research based on fossils, which only provide information about a particular petrified animal or plant. However, the field of aDNA is regularly marred by erroneous reports, which underestimate the extent of contamination within laboratories and samples themselves. For example, aDNA in bones of some primates has a tendency to show damage in a particular region, resulting in misleading genetic data and mistaken conclusions about the animals' origin. On the other hand, it appears that we can use damage cause after death to examine how DNA damage occurs during life - a completely unanticipated, and somewhat ironic result. Evidently, deeper understanding of these processes and the effects of damage on aDNA templates has started to provide a more robust basis for molecular research. DNA sequencing of one of the mitochondrial genes of mouse-eared bats in our laboratory allowed the comparison of aDNA sequences (dating back to ca. 830 years before present) with those of modern bats to assess their genetic relationships. Initial results have revealed surprisingly complex population histories, and indicate that modern studies may give misleading impressions about even the recent evolutionary past.
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Hotimir Burger
Man as the creator of relations. On the example of  Kierkegaard, Marx, Plessner and Cassirer
      
Four thinkers occupied with the problem of a man in different  perspectives and horizons have tried to determine the existence and the nature of  a man and his position in the world and history. They have all formulated – we can suppose not knowing each other's statements - almost identical statements about the man as a being of relations.  
     In some way I. Kant also did it. In his Anthropology, he finds that a man cannot become aware of himself in an empirical way and not with the so called internal sens, because he knows himself only as a phenomenon and not as a noumenon. The man has, for his selfcognition, only the thinking that enables him to track his spontaneity and his freedom as the foundation of his self.
      S. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, in his work The sickness unto the death, has                 determined self of the man in consequent words: «The self is the relation, which is in  the relation to himself, or it is this in the relation, what is related to himself.»
          According to K. Marx (in German ideology) only a man is in the relation to the            external world, because only for him a relation as a relation exists: «...the animal is related to nothing, because a relation as a relation for it does not exist.»
    H. Plessner (in The stages of the organic world and the man) comes to an almost identical consclusion as Marx. He says: «For the animal, a corelation as a corelation does not come to its conscience, it stays hidden from it. The animal, however, does stand in this relation, but it doesn't acquire a conprehensible character.»
    In the work of E. Cassirer, this problem is incorporated in his philosophy of the symbolic forms, but for him the specificity of human knowledge is the discovery and the constitution of a new reality through the rise of knowledge from a substantial level to the formal one. It even discovers and constitutes the relation as a relation as a dimension of the human reality
  We can therefore ask: Did these insights open some new perspective and a new horizon in the understanding of a man?
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Corrado Corradi-Dell'Acqua
Neural correlates of egocentric and allocentric body reference frame

Neuropsychological studies suggest that patients with left parietal lesions may show impaired localization of parts of either their own or the examiner's body, despite preserved ability to identify isolated body parts. This deficit, called autotopagnosia, may result from damage to the Body Structural Description (BSD), a visuo-spatial representation which codes the spatial arrangement among parts of a standard body. The studies reported in this presentation sought to investigate both the functional properties and the neural underpinnings of the BSD.
Participants were asked to assess which distance two body parts stimuli had on a video display. Their responses were biased by the distance between the two displayed parts have in the real body, in that the more the depicted parts were distant in the real body the larger the error. This effect shows that the task was not accomplished only relying on scene-based properties of the video display, but also on pre-ordinate information on the body structure. The paradigm was then reproduced with participants taking different postures or having different height. The results confirmed that the spatial information tapped in this task does not rely on the distance among the parts of one's own body, but on a model of the spatial relations among parts of standard body.
The neural underpinnings of the BSD were investigated using fMRI. Participants were shown a body part stimulus and were asked to judge its spatial relation with another body part or a full body. The posterior part of the intraparietal sulcus was found significantly more active during these experimental conditions then when participants had to assess (1) the spatial relation of the body part presented with their own body or (2) the spatial relation between two non-body-part stimuli.
These results show that the posterior part of the IPS processes specifically the information about spatial relationships among parts of a standard body and thereby suggest that damage to this area may underlie autotopagnosia.
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Gianfausto Dell'Antonio
Models of the real word: the language used by quantum mechanics to account for a class of physical phenomena.

Quantum Mechanics is a model which has been constructed to account for a class of experimental  outcomes which were obtained at Planck scale; like any other model,  there is no pretense to  understand "the real world".  
It has many facets and correspondingly several languages are used.
On one hand there are practical applications of the formalism and verification of the predictions of the model; they  are very impressive within the range of phenomena to which the model is  applied. This is true both on the scale of atoms and molecules and, on a more macroscopic scale,  in the  physics of condensed matter where it is able to account for effects (superconductivity,  surface effects, properties of nanostructures..) which are at the basis of most moden technology. And recently it was recognized that Q.M. may have a major influence in information theory.
This is the very important "practical side" of Q.M., computational and predictive. In its most advanced form it makes heavy use of analytic and computational techniques. Its language is pragmatical and it relies on "classical" aspects of  measuring apparatuses.
One the other hand there is "basic Q.M.", "wrapped" in a mathematical (or at least formal) language which is not specific of Q.M.. In this respect its  language is  part of present day mathematics. In its most advanced research structure it has reached a high degree of fragmentation.
Of course there is a large interface between this two aspects, a no-man-land of approximations, of searching for exact solutions of approximate equations and approximate solutions of exact equations, of blackboards on which the atoms are circles and the interactions are lines, of a world of evoking images and similarities, trying to comunicate  intuitions in  everydays language.
This brings us to yet another aspect of Q.M., which is perhaps the one for which it is known and talked about and commented upon by the "general public".
Q.M. is an extremely powerful instrument to organize our  knowledge of phenomena which have an important role also in our technology, and at the same time is a very refined mathematical construction which  has had  much influence in the development of modern mathematics. Therefore Q.M. constitutes an important body of knowledge and is an essential part of our  representation of the world.  
Still this very important structure has an intrinsic weakness which lays in the difficulty to reconcile the axioms on which it is based (and the prescription for making a correspondence berween its symbols and what one measures) and the very definition of the act of observation in an actual experiment. Since Q.M. provides  at the same time a deterministic dynamics and  probabilistic outcomes of a measurement it is bound to lead to intrinsic difficulties in defining  precisely what is an act of measurement (if one assumes that the observer is described within quantum mechanics).
Teaching a first course of Quantum Mechanics to students and even more "explaining" quantum mechanics to a general public is a formidabile exercise in unfolding a model  celebrating its successes, stimulating the imagination of the audience and at the same time giving a structure, avoiding oversimplifications, pointing out difficulties and providing a solid base for practical use.
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Erhard Denninger
Chances of peaceful settlement of conflicts between free and equal people. Some critical remarks on the "theory of discourse".

1. In multicultural or multireligious societies resolving of conflicts more and more consists in producing compatibility of colliding fundamental rights by legislative or administrative decision-making.
We are asking for the qualitative preconditions which are to be complied with, in order for  proceedings to be considered  'legitimate'. The decisive standards will be "rationality" and "procedural justice" ('fairness').
2. One of the main principles of the "theory of discourse of practical reason" (as it has been developed by J.Habermas, K.-O. Apel, R. Alexy, A. Tschentscher and others), taken as a theory of law, is the mutual generation of public and private  autonomy or, in other words, of human rights and the sovereignty of the people (Habermas). Alexy, moreover, calls it 'the basic theory of the democratic state under the  rule of law'.
Our question is, whether this theory may serve better than only as a 'fine wheather' theory.
3. The ideal theory of discourse encounters three fundamental difficulties when being used for law-making and law-justifying discourses ( e.g. concretizing basic rights): the relativity of space and time (1), the necessary limitation of the circle of participants (2) and the limitedness of the "informal compulsion of the better argument"(3).
4. Problems of the theory-of-discourse approach: Exclusion and inclusion by already constituted communities of law; problems of being kept away from discourse, and refusal of discourse.
5.  'Negotiation' instead of 'discourse', and 'compromise' instead of 'consensus' are - from the point of view of the ideal theory of discourse - "weaker" forms. Nevertheless they still may lead to  'just' results, provided that procedural fairness will be guaranteed.
6. Between the 'pure' ideal discourse (which produces normative results of the highest degree of possible generalization) and the use of brute force there exists a number of intermediate stages on the scale from sheer force disguised as law until to power fully justified by law. In the field of International Law this can be exemplified by the scale of measures provided for in Chap. VI and VII of the UN Charter.
7. An ideal-typical conception in communication theory will try to determine those intermediate forms within the categories of 'discourse', 'negotiation' and 'modus vivendi'.
8. In conflicts of fundamental rights and tolerance, which are caused and motivated by religious or cultural differences, the ability and willingness to adopt the opposing viewpoint are particularly underdeveloped. Therefore one of the fundamental preconditions of a successful transition to a 'real' discourse is lacking.
9. This main problem of peacefully founding a civil society Immanuel Kant had seen quite clearly when he accepted even a "people of devils, provided they are able to reason". However, the rationalist answer of the philosopher of the Enlightenment does not reach far enough.
10. Nowadays, negotiations and discourses about generally acceptable contents of human rights guarantees must be undertaken unceasingly and worldwide - but without any guarantee of success.

Chancen friedlicher Konfliktbewältigung unter Freien und Gleichen. Kritische Anmerkungen zur Diskurstheorie.

1.    In zunehmendem Maße findet Grundrechtskonkretisierung als legislative und administrative Konfliktlösungs-Arbeit statt. Wir fragen nach den qualitativen Voraussetzungen, die erfüllt sein müssen, damit die dabei anzuwendenden Verfahren als "legitim" angesehen werden können. Rationalität und Gerechtigkeit des Verfahrens  und seiner Ergebnisse setzen die entscheidenden Maßstäbe.
2.    Die Diskurstheorie der praktischen Vernunft ( J.Habermas, K.-O. Apel, R. Alexy, A. Tschentscher) , insofern sie von der Gleichursprünglichkeit von Volkssouveränität und Menschenrechten bzw. von öffentlicher und privater Autonomie (Habermas) ausgeht, bietet sich dabei sogar als "Basistheorie des demokratischen Verfassungsstaates" (Alexy) an. Wir fragen, ob sie sich nur als "Schönwetter-Theorie" eignet.
3.    Drei zentralen Schwierigkeiten begegnet die ideale Diskurstheorie, wenn sie für Rechtsbegründungsdiskurse (z.B. Grundrechtskonkretisierungen) praktisch-politisch fruchtbar gemacht werden soll: der Relativität in Zeit und Raum, der notwendigen Begrenzung des Teilnehmerkreises und der Begrenztheit des "zwanglosen Zwangs des besseren Arguments".
4.    Problematik des idealen diskurstheoretischen Ansatzes in Bezug auf Exklusion und Inklusion durch bereits verfasste Rechtsgemeinschaften; Problematik der Diskursfernhaltung und der Diskursverweigerung.
5.    "Verhandlung" statt "Diskurs", "Kompromiss" statt "Konsens" können als diskurstheoretisch "schwächere" Formen bei "fairer" Verfahrensgestaltung doch noch zu "gerechten" Ergebnissen führen.
6.    Zwischen dem "reinen" idealen Diskurs (mit dem höchsten Universalisierungsgrad des normativen Ergebnisses) und der Anwendung schierer Gewalt ( wenngleich in rechtssetzender Absicht) existiert eine Mehrzahl von Zwischenstufen auf dem Weg von bloßem Gewaltrecht zu legitimer Rechtsmacht, was für den völkerrechtlichen Bereich am Beispiel der Kapitel VI und VII der UN-Charta gezeigt werden kann.
7.    Eine kommunikationstheoretisch-idealtypische Begriffsbildung wird die Formen dieses Zwischenreiches in den Kategorien Diskurs, Verhandlung und Modus vivendi abzubilden versuchen.
8.    Bei religiös-kulturell bedingten und motivierten Grundrechts- und Toleranzkonflikten ist die Fähigkeit und die Bereitschaft zur "Perspektiven-Übernahme", als einer der entscheidenden Voraussetzungen zum Übergang in einen „echten“ Diskurs, besonders schwach entwickelt.
9.    Kant hat dieses Grundproblem einer friedlichen Vergesellschaft mit seinem Hinweis auf das "Volk von Teufeln, wenn sie nur Verstand haben" klar gesehen, doch greift seine rationalistische Lösung (epochenbedingt) zu kurz.
10.    Heute sind Verhandlungen und Diskurse über konsensfähige Gehalte von Menschenrechtsgarantien global und unablässig, doch ohne Erfolgsgarantie zu führen.
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Nina A. Dmitrieva
From the Epistemology to the Teaching about Man:
On the 'Anthropological Turn' in Russian Neokantianism

From the very beginning of their Odyssey on labyrinthes of Neokantian ideas the Russian disciples of Cohen and Natorp considered the doctrine of Marburg Neokantianism to be "the philosophy of humanism and enlightenment" (Eug. Spektorsky).
The fact of incompleteness of the "classical" Enlightenment in Russia both in the sphere of philosophy and in sphere of education has determined the most important tasks in the activity of Russian Neokantians: not only teaching of philosophizing, but also formulating of some general theoretical principles of an 'applied philosophy' - pedagogics and then psychology. It should result with necessity - and has resulted - in setting of a problem of man.
The other fact, which has determined the 'anthropological turn' in Russian Neokanianism, is the revolutionary involvement of many Russian Marburgers. Kantian doctrine about autonomy and activity of a cognizing subject proved to be for them a required addition to the revolutionary ideas of social development apprehended by them from Marxist's or anarchist's works, and even - paradoxically - from Leo Tolstoy.
It is possible to consider an article of Otto Buek, a pupil of Cohen, as the earliest experience of a theoretical interpretation of man in Russian Neokantianism. Almost at the same time as he wrote his dissertation (1905) devoted to the proof of the methodological-epistemological community of science and philosophy through the analysis of Faraday's doctrine, he analyzed Tolstoy's doctrine about non-resistance and found in it a new concept of man. According to him the essence of man is "a continuously proceeding revolution" understood as a method.
Boris Pasternak's reflections concerning Cohen's principle of "the unity of man" should be regarded as the next landmark on a way of Russian Neokantianism to man. He thought that this principle and the concept of man can be received only from the point of view of 'Sprachphilosophie', "a critical philosophical history of language's formations".
Another basis of the principle of "the unity of man" was put forward by Sergey Rubinstein. A starting-point was for him Tolstoy's thesis: "the knowledge of the people living an unfair, vain, dissolute life cannot be true". Rubinstein has found an explanation in Cohen's idea that the knowledge is a result not only and not so much of intuition rather than of construction, and the acts of a person on constructing an object determine him, i.e. the subject's content. Therefore Rubinstein proves "the unity of person" by a principle of the creative spontaneous action according to which the person not only "reveals and manifests itself" in his acts, but also "creates and determines itself" in them. The science gives a basis for the social unity because it releases human consciousness "from its subjective conditionality" and creates thereby "a unified common world in which all people can understand each other for the first time".
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Sergio Doplicher
"Mathematics, First Principles in Modern Physics, and possible lessons"

XX century Physics had two revolutions: Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics.
The two theories appear nowadays as the most firmly established
conquests of human mind in their respective original domains, cosmology
and atomic or subatomic physics.
Yet the extension of each to the other's domain, requiring a unified
theory which embodies both, is an open problem.  
If gravitational forces do not play a role and can be disregarded,
(Special) Relativity and Quantum Mechanics do meet in a physical
principle, named Locality, most neatly formulated in the mathematical
frame of noncommutative Operator Algebras. Rather surprisingly, it
implies by itself most of the conceptual structure of Quantum Field
Theory, notably the existence and uniqueness of the collection (group)
of all internal symmetries, not visible directly as symmetries of the
observables, but determined in a rigid way precisely by their
noncommutativity. Such a group determines, via the Yang Mills theory,
the very form of the fundamental interactions, as described by the
Standard Model.
But no such principle linking General Relativity and Gravitation to
Quantum Mechanics is known. Yet the opposite extrema of their domains
actually seem to touch each other in the real world: looking very far
at the borders of the known Universe we see it as it was very long ago,
close to the Big Bang, when its size was close to a point.
However, taking into account both Quantum Mechanics and Classical
General Relativity, we conclude that different spacetime coordinates of
an event must obey Uncertainty Relations, best implemented, as in
Quantum Mechanics, by Noncommutativity.
Thereby, as Spacetime Geometry in the large is linked to gravitation
(and hence to dynamics) by Classical General Relativity, its algebraic
structure in the small (the precise form of Noncommutativity) is linked
to Gravitation as well (and hence to dynamics), by Quantum Mechanics and
General Relativity.
 This motivates recent researches on Quantum Field Theory on Quantum
Spacetime. The natural mathematical frame ought to be the recent field
of Noncommutative Geometry.
We will comment also how the lesson of Quantum Mechanics teaches us
something in general, about the meaning of knowledge and naturalism.
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Cinzia Ferrini
Observation, Law and Organism in Hegel’s Phenomenology.

A recent trend in scholarship has stressed that Hegel criticizes the logical procedures and metaphysical presuppositions of the working scientists's activity of his time, taking issues with their lack of awareness in using mental categories and with the alleged consistency of their way of arguing. The editorial notes to the critical edition of the Phenomenology retrace some of Hegel's contemporaneous scientific sources for his objections to description and classification in natural sciences, his appreciation of new developments in electricity and chemistry, and his critical remarks on the attempt to fix laws for organical forces (sensibility, irritability, reproduction) as well on the scientific status of physiognomy and phrenology, all of which elucidate his allusions in "Observing Reason". In addition, we will show how Hegel took active part in the scientific debate of the time, by publicly siding with some strands of contemporaneous natural science against others. It has been claimed that, in contrast to his mature system, in the Phenomenology Hegel's confrontation with the natural sciences is essentially and necessarily critical, aiming to reveal the partiality, one-sidedness, and inadequacy of various aspects or forms of the cognitive approach to the world typical of the natural sciences, as part of Hegel's dissolution of all of consciousness's forms of externality. In some cases, however, we will show how Hegel supports a debated scientific position by providing it with philosophical justification and foundation, for the phenomenological standpoint allows Hegel to reconstruct the genesis and functions of scientific theories within figures of consciousness which are also necessary and irreplaceable advances toward the concept of absolute knowing). What is more, our analysis reveals that when Hegel: 1. questions the validity of a law-like fixed quantitative scheme, whether presented by a working scientist or a speculative philosopher of nature; 2. vindicates quality, fluidity, dynamical process, purposiveness, and contingency for genuinely knowing organic existence; 3. reacts against the inessentiality, indifference and formality of quantitative schemes which cannot account for relationships or transitions of qualities; 4. and, finally, criticizes the amount of imagination and arbitrareness that lies behind those attempts, he does so not only on the philosophical basis of accounting for self-differentiating and self-maintaining independent natural individuals but also on the natural-scientific reasons and concerns of modern experimental research.
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Lech Garlicki
Rights and Citizenship. European Human Rights Law - Universalism v. Citizenship

1.    The human rights instruments remain quite diversified in the modern world. While their common function is to protect individual rights and liberties irrespective of nationality and/or citizenship, this "universalizing function" is sometimes modified by traditional understanding of a "national state". In brief, there are some basic rights and liberties that must be granted to "everyone", but there are also some other rights and liberties that may be reserved for nationals only or, at least, nationals may enjoy a privileged position in exercise of those rights. The latter group enhances, first of all, political rights and, to some extent, certain social and economic rights.

2.    The European Convention on Human Rights had been drafted as an instrument protecting individual rights of "everyone within the jurisdiction" of the Contracting States. Hence, in principle, nationality/citizenship criterion is irrelevant and, in addition, Article 14 of the Convention prohibits discrimination based on "national origin". However, the written text of the Convention (e. g. Article 16, Article 3 of the Protocol 4, Article 1 of the Protocol 7) as well as the case law of the ECtHR leaves some room for differentiation of the position of "aliens" or "unlawfully resident aliens".

3.    The written text of the Convention addresses mainly rights and liberties of personal and political nature and, at least in regard to the former, it is clear that no classifications based on nationality are permitted. Once, however, the case-law of the ECtHR entered the field of social and economic rights, the nationality/citizenship criterion had to be discussed in a new perspective. The same applies to the so-called "positive obligations" of the State.

4.    Another challenge to the universalism of human rights may result from the doctrine of the national "margin of appreciation". It allows for some regional/national variations in the exercise of certain individual rights, particularly in the area of so-called "cultural margin of appreciation".

5.    Nevertheless, the very existence of the Convention (and of the Court) has contributed towards elimination of citizenship-based-classifications on the area of individual rights and liberties. On the one side, it imposed on the Member States an obligation to respect and to implement the universal standards of the Convention. On the other hand, the Convention has served as an attractive reference for many "new democracies" in their process of constitution-writing.
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Mauro Giacca
Can we regenerate the human body? At the frontiers of biology and medicine

Certainly the most common and yet one of the most intriguing characteristics of most biological organisms including all mammals is their finite life span. While we live most of our lives in very good health and with a high level of independence, we experience a marked morbidity compression toward the end of our life. Aging is commonly characterized as a progressive, generalized impairment of function, resulting in an increasing vulnerability to environmental challenge and a growing risk of disease and death. It is also usually accompanied by a decline in fertility. Thus, aging is associated with major age-related losses in Darwinian fitness, posing the puzzle as to why it has not been more effectively opposed by natural selection. Indeed, it appears remarkable that "after a seemingly miraculous feat of morphogenesis, a complex metazoan should be unable to perform the much simpler task of merely maintaining what is already formed" (G. Williams, 1957).
It appears now progressively clear that aging might be biologically controlled by the progressive loss of capacity of tissue self-regeneration and repair. This capacity is proper of a subset of undifferentiated cells, the so called stem cells, which are able to both proliferate and differentiate into different tissues. The most primitive stem cells are those of the embryo itself, which by definition are totipotent since they can give rise to any tissue of the growing organisms. Further during development, totipotency is lost and cells become progressively committed toward specific lineages. Recent information indicates that multipotent, and perhaps totipotent, stem cells might also persist in various tissues in adult organisms.
The exploitation of this information is of paramount interest in the field of regenerative medicine. Embryonic stem cells derived from embryos, embryonic stem cells obtained through animal cloning and adult stem cells can thus be used for tissue healing and regeneration of virtually all organs, including heart, brain, liver, pancreas and eye. While this possibility is tantalizing for medical applications, it still poses a number of ethical queries, since for the first time in human history man is allowed to toy with the very fundaments of human development.
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Vladimir Glišin
Cloning: from Religion to Science

Science and religion are two most influential factors shaping any society.
Through history decisions on human origin  have been made sometimes  on
science, sometimes in ignorance, and sometimes in the absence of real
understanding. In the New Testament for example we  read: “And ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Beautifully said and
not more agreeable. However, based on this assumption one can also  read in the
Bible as follows: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness.... The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living
being. Furthermore. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and
he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and
brought her unto the man.
 Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way. While his mother Mary was
engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant
through the Holy Spirit........ an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream
and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, because the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
Having for centuries (millennia) imbedded in human mind the notion of a
supernatural creator of anything living on our Earth it is then self
understanding  that one should not be surprised that human cloning is such a
highly contentious issue where many have long and emotionally held views.
Whatever the value of their moral teachings, the authors of the Bible did not
know that the Earth is a planet in orbit around the Sun, that the genetic code
is carried by DNA molecules, or that the work of the brain is carried out by
neurons. Unfortunately, a large number of our fellow contemporaries do not seem
to be aware of the afore outlined facts of life either.
However, living in the era when scientists are reducing life to genes and when
molecular biology with every other field of scholarship and science is the
least compatible with spiritual belief,  it  has profound implications for
several critical societal debates: what constitute human life, when life
begins, does human spirit remain beyond scientific inquiry? Therefore, one must
 evaluate the state of the art of human cloning impartially, with utmost
scientific rigor, objectively. Regardless of the fact that the cloning would be
performed for reproductive or therapeutic purposes. We have to evaluate  its
successful probability, feasibility and also to take into account  the
presently acceptable moral and ethical grounds in order to distinguish what
the honest and realistic hopes and, what the hypes are. Unfortunately, the
hypes still prevail.
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Ivan M. Havel
Between Cognitive Science and Phenomenology: Understanding Human Consciousness

Many research themes in contemporary cognitive science are throwing new light on classical philosophical issues of human mind and consciousness. Moreover, and more importantly, they are opening new possibilities of fruitful scholarly communication between philosophy and science. On the philosophical side there has been a lot of work done within the Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy. However, it can be argued that the phenomenological tradition may be even more relevant when human consciousness is at issue. In the contribution I shall be concerned with the latter tradition that is still somewhat less popular within the cognitive science community. In recent studies of consciousness two different views are exposed, one based on the first-person (phenomenal) perspective and the other based on the third-person perspective (typical for the sciences).
    I shall briefly discuss two areas of study that may bring forth possible contact spots between the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective. One such area is neurophenomenology of the late Francisco Varela and his school. Here phenomenological accounts of the structure of experience and their counter parts in cognitive science are related to each through reciprocal constraints. The interesting point of this approach is the strong transdisciplinary interaction between phenomenology (e.g. the present time experience), neuroscience (dynamics of neuronal ensembles), and mathematics (non-linear dynamical systems).
    The second approach to be discussed focuses on human subjective experience of complex episodic situations. Several modalities of such experience may be identified (temporality, spatiality, scene structure, plot, etc.). It appears that liminal or threshold experiences of various modalities provide good examples of contact spots between the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective.
    The following quotation may express the moral of the contribution: "Every good student of cognitive science who is also interested in issues at the level of mental experience, must inescapably attain a level of mastery in phenomenological examination in order to work seriously with first-person accounts." (Varela and Shear, 1999).
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Daslav Hranueli
In silico Design of 'Un-Natural' Natural Products

Polyketides and non-ribosomal peptides are very important compounds for the
pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. Their biosynthesis involves
assembly of simple chemical building blocks into complex chemical structures by
the catalytic activity of polyketide synthases (PKS) or nonribosomal peptide
synthetases (NRPS). There has been a lot of interest in the last few years in
generating new compounds for the production of novel drugs by manipulating the
programming of genes encoding these enzyme complexes in vitro (e.g. the idea of
combinatorial biosynthesis). However, an important barrier to progress is that
most changes made by in vitro methods result in very low yields or no
detectable products. A possible solution to the yield problem would be
generation of novel clusters by homologous recombination in vivo, because this
would favour more closely related gene sequences and should reduce problems
caused by non-functional or incompatible junctions between proteins. An
integral generic program package, CompGen, is under development to model this
process in silico. The heart of CompGen is a specially structured database that
connects the biosynthetic order of synthase/synthetase enzymes to the sequences
of the component polypeptides. The additional linkage to the gene sequences
allows the integration of DNA sequence with product structure. The database
contains sequences of the well-characterised PKS/NRPS clusters to act as
building blocks for the production of novel products. It is easy to add custom
sequences to the database. One function of the program is the ability to
generate virtual recombinants between clusters. This can be done using a
recombination model (with optional parameters) to predict sites for homologous
recombination or by user defined recombination sites (e.g. to model in vitro
genetic manipulation such as module replacement). The program predicts the
chemical structure of the resulting 'un-natural' natural products and allows
them to be inserted into a virtual compound database for molecular modelling
studies. An optional 'reverse genetics' module analyses a given chemical
structure to see if it could be produced by a novel PKS/NRPS synthesis cluster
and suggests the DNA sequence of a suitable cluster based on building blocks
derived from clusters contained in the data base. Overall, CompGen allows in
silico generation of databases of novel chemical compounds that can be used for
in silico screening using PASS or CDD technology. The other integral generic
program package, ClustScan, will recognise and annotate new gene clusters from
microbial genome sequencing projects or in metagenomes of soil and/or marine
microorganisms.
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Eva Kocziszky
The mountains. Geography, geology and poetical imagination around 1800

The discourse between poetry and geology can be exemplified in a special way at its beginnings at the end of the 18th century. In turn-of-the-century the influence of the natural sciences, of geology and geography, the widespread reading of travel literature and the popularity of maps led Stolberg, Goethe, Hölderlin and Günderrode to a new way of writing poetry. The experience of nature remained determined not only by the poetics of the sublime; the poets were also looking for an empirical, scientifically established observation of nature, especially of mountain landscapes. In his travel diary (1786), Count Stolberg mentions his struggle to break with this precast, generalising view and to perceive the Alps in their empirical reality. Similar remarks have been voiced by Goethe. More often than not the landscape bars us from seeing it with our own eyes, therefore scientific observations shall contribute to newly discover the sensuous presence of nature.
In my lecture I would like to outline the mountain experience in poetry around 1800, primarily in Hölderlin's works. There are three aspects that will be taken into particular consideration. The first aspect will be the question of the formation of the mountains in prehistory, which at the same time raises the question of the origin of culture. In this context we will discuss not only geological concepts in their influence upon Hölderlin and Goethe, but also the theosophical conception of Joseph Görres, which in my view has played a defining part. As a second aspect I choose the romantic question of a "theotopography". It will be discussed as a connection between different mountain landscapes like the Himalayas, the Caucasus and the Alps. The third part of my paper will compare the role of Alps with the poetical function of the Etna in Hölderlin's Hymns. These two mountains have determined the poetical imagery of landscape by Hölderlin and exemplify the discourse of geology and poetry in a special richness.
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Katalin Neumer
"The common behaviour of mankind". On a wittgensteinian concept
("Die gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise". Zu einem Wittgensteinschen Begriff)

How can a different worldview, an alien culture be understood? Concerning this question two opposite ideas can be found in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. On the one hand he keeps emphasizing that in lack of a common system of standards there can be no arguments taken as valid by both parties thus no rational discussion is possible between people belonging to diverse worldviews. The attempted discussions are, according to him, like religious controversies in which "each man declares the other a fool and heretic" (OC 611, MS 176:74r). On the other hand he refers to the "common behaviour of mankind" and the "natural history of human beings" which, in Rudolf Haller's opinion, can be taken as "worldview-transcendent grounds". In my talk an attempt will be made to clear up the meaning of the first concept.
As a matter of fact, I have already tackled this problem in an earlier paper:
" 'Die gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise'. Das Verstehen des anderen in Wittgensteins Spätphilosophie". In: Katalin Neumer, Die Relativität der Grenzen. Studien zur Philosophie Wittgensteins (= Studien zur Österreichischen Philosophie, ed. Rudolf Haller, vol. XXIX). Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: 2000, pp. 49-82.
Link of the article:
http://www.phil-inst.hu/~neumer/honlap_htm/hauptseite/Neumer_2.pdf
At that time, however, I had only the printed material and not the Bergen Electronic Edition of Wittgenstein's writings at my disposal. Now I intend to reconsider my earlier reading in the light of the whole corpus and to offer a new interpretation.
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Julian Nida-Rümelin
Gründe und Lebenswelt

Das Spiel des Gründe-Gebens und -Nehmens ist tief in unsere Lebenswelt eingelassen daraus resultieren für die Teilnehmer dieser Lebenswelt normative Verbindlichkeiten. Die normative Verbindlichkeit ist nicht aus den Prinzipien und Kriterien einer bestimmten ethischen Theorie ableitbar. Das Spiel des lebensweltlichen Begründens ist selbst eine Quelle der Normativität. Dies in Frage zu stellen oder praktisch zu hintergehen ist nicht ohne die bizarre Konsequenz möglich, sich dadurch selbst als verlässlichen Dialog- und Interaktionspartner auszuschließen. Dennoch bedeutet die lebensweltliche Verankerung dieser normativen Verbindlichkeit nicht, dass diese keiner rationalen Kritik unterzogen werden könnte.

Im ersten Teil wird ein Verständnis von Gründen entwickelt. Es zeigt sich dabei der notwendig interpersonale Charakter von Gründen, aber ebenso, dass es zwischen theoretischen und praktischen Gründen keinen prinzipiellen Unterschied gibt. Insbesondere wird deutlich, dass praktische Gründe nicht als ein Komplex aus Wunsch und diesem eine praktische Richtung gebender Überzeugung aufzufassen sind.Der zweite Teil erläutert, dass die Lebenswelt Kriterien der Adäquatheit für Äußerungen und Reaktionen auf Äußerungen vorgibt. Damit ist unsere lebensweltliche Sprachpraxis normativ konstituiert und bringt somit für ihre Teilnehmer moralische Verpflichtungen mit sich. Dass die primäre Quelle von Normativität in der lebensweltlichen Sprach- und Interaktionspraxis zu suchen ist, führt aber nicht zum Verschwinden des kritischen Potentials normativer Ethik und zu einer bloß quietistischen Beschreibung unserer Sprachspiele. Dies wird im dritten Teil unter Bezugnahme auf die Notwendigkeit innerlebensweltlicher Kohärenz gezeigt. Denn personale Integrität verlangt nach Kohärenz diese zieht - wenn in der Lebenswelt etablierte Regeln miteinander kollidieren - Deliberationen über diese Regeln und ggf. deren Kritik und Anpassung nach sich.
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Ilza Pajeva, Michael Wiese
MODELING OF DRUGS: POSSIBILITIES, LIMITATIONS, EXAMPLES

The process of drug discovery is time consuming and expensive. It takes about 15 years for a drug to reach the general public and one in about 10 000 of the compounds prepared is ever used. According to the recent data the average cost per marketed drug is about 500 million Euros. Modern approaches in drug studies include computer-aided drug design (CADD) which aims to optimize the process so that the cost and time for the new drug development to be reduced. It aims as well better understanding of the underlying phenomena of the drug action and their relation to the drug structure.

The main steps in the new drug development will be shortly discussed to outline the right place of the CADD methods. The basis of the ligand-receptor interactions will be presented and the principle of complementarity illustrated on particular examples. The main CADD approaches will be described depending on the information available: (i) the 3D structure of the target molecule is unknown; (ii) the 3D structure of the target molecule is unknown, but there are data about the structures of related or isofunctional proteins; (iii) the 3D structure of the target is known. The approaches will be illustrated with particular results from QSAR (Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships) and modeling studies of different drugs and compounds related to P-glycoprotein associated multidrug resistance in tumor cells. The limitations will be discussed in relation to alternative binding modes of the drugs.

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La teoria dell'evoluzione è rappresentata oggi da un programma di ricerca composito, dotato di un "nucleo" centrale neodarwiniano esteso e di una "cintura" di assunzioni ausiliarie in via di affinamento. Il dato emblematico che leggiamo infatti negli sviluppi novecenteschi della teoria dell'evoluzione è che si è dimostrato, grazie all'opera dei fondatori della genetica delle popolazioni - fra gli altri, Ronald A. Fisher, John B. Scott Haldane, Sewall Wright e Theodosius Dobzhansky - che la selezione naturale era un meccanismo corretto, e indispensabile per comprendere la trasformazione delle specie, anche in assenza della conoscenza esatta dei meccanismi di ereditarietà all'interno degli organismi. Oggi a quel nucleo vanno aggiunti altri "motori" di cambiamento, come la deriva genetica, la migrazione e il complesso dei fenomeni macroevolutivi che si manifestano su larga scala. Anche le assunzioni ausiliarie della Sintesi Moderna - relative ai ritmi, ai livelli e ai vincoli dell'evoluzione - sono in corso di trasformazione e stanno transitando da una forma tendenzialmente riduzionista e funzionalista tipica della "prima Sintesi" a una forma più pluralista e strutturalista che potremmo abbozzare come "nuova sintesi". Gli sviluppi della genomica evoluzionistica, della biologia evolutiva dello sviluppo e della paleontologia possono essere efficacemente inquadrati in questa cornice. Ne risulta che è infondato parlare di più teorie dell'evoluzione o di un superamento dell'impianto esplicativo neodarwiniano. Si prefigura piuttosto la corroborazione di quella visione del processo evoluzionistico che Stephen J. Gould aveva definito in modo suggestivo come "darwinismo esteso" o "pluralismo darwiniano".
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Alberto Piazza
DARWIN AND MENDEL: THE STORY OF A MISSED CONNECTION

Gregor Mendel provided half the foundations of modern biology. Charles Darwin
provided the other half. For Darwin produced the first truly plausible theory
of evolution “by means of natural selection”, an idea which came
into the world with the force of revelation. Darwin, who was his own best
critic, perceived the two most important flaws in his evolutionary thesis.
First, he had no plausible mechanism of heredity, nothing to convincingly
explain how “like begets like” and yet give rise to variations: in
fact without biological variations natural selection cannot act. Secondly, his
ideas were unquantified. He was aware of his mathematical deficiency at a very
early stage.
The first of these great problems, the mystery of heredity, was solved within a
few years (1866). But although Mendel had many good friends, he did not seem to
be able to gain their serious attention. Darwin certainly did. He leaned
heavily on the great geologist Charles Lyell, as well as on Thomas Henry
Huxley, Joseph Hooker and many others at the same time supportive but sharp:
contrast Mendel’s dismal correspondence with Carl Naegeli. So it was that
Darwinian evolution emerged as the great obsession of the late nineteenth
century while Mendel’s genetics was left to become the science of the
twentieth century.
Mendel’s genetics and Darwin’s ideas on evolution fit together
beautifully. Oddly, however, when Mendel’s ideas on heredity were first
rediscovered, they were felt to be at odds with Darwin’s theory . The
problem was (or was perceived to be) that Mendel’s rules were based on
patterns of inheritance of simple characters which (in the modern terminology)
were coded by single genes, of the kind “all or none”. But Darwin
has stressed that the characters of all organisms tend to change gradually,
step by step, over many millions of years. The answer to this apparent
contradiction now seems obvious and would have been obvious to Mendel, if he
had lived long enough to be consulted. Mendel deliberately set out to study
very simple, single-gene characters because these alone would give clear
results that could be analysed statistically. But he also knew very well that
most characters in most organisms do not have an all-or-none nature. Most are
in modern terms “polygenic”, i.e. coded by a series of genes which
cooperate and interact. A polygenic character can change gradually as the
generations pass simply by changing one gene at a time. So there is no
irresolvable conflict. Indeed there is no conflict at all.
All this became obvious during the first decades of the twentieth century and by
the1940s Mendel’s genetics was fully reconciled with Darwin’s idea
of evolution by natural selection. Such a reconciliation is known as the
“Modern Synthesis” or “Neodarwinism”: it can properly
be seen as one of the intellectual triumphs of the past century even if its
true significance seems under-appreciated, at least by non-biologists:
scientists are usually more impressed by quantum theory and non-scientists are
more impressed by their philosophical implications.
Mendel made a thorough study of Darwin’s books. From his notes one can
suppose that he did not see any conflict between his theory and his own. But we
also have no detailed knowledge of how Mendel understood the individual steps
of Darwin’s theory, particularly the concept of descent with
modification. Whatever the case, he was firmly against the Darwin’s
theory of pangenesis, according to which new species arose through the action
of the environment: and he (Mendel) was proven to be definitely right.
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Telmo Pievani

Punctuated Equilibria, Hierarchical Theory of Evolution and Evo-Devo will be
presented as three case studies of a supposed extension of the neo-darwinian
structure of the theory of evolution. This structure is well represented as a
progressive “Scientific Research Program”, according to Imre
Lakatos’ standard definition. We currently see an extended neo-darwinian
hard-core (variation, natural selection, genetic drift, migration and
macro-evolutionary effects), surrounded by a protective belt of auxiliary
assumptions. Our hypothesis is that these assumptions are passing from a
restrictive frame (gradualism, geno-centric view, adaptationism) to a
pluralistic frame (multiple patterns about rhythms, units and factors of
biological evolution).
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Alexei Smirnov
Neutrinos: Discovering new physics world

Establishing non-zero neutrino mass and mixing is one of the major
discoveries in particle physics in the recent years.
Non-zero neutrino masses and mixing are considered
as the first direct evidence of new physics beyond the Standard model.
Phenomenological consequences of this discovery as well as possible
implications for fundamental theory will be presented.
Future programs of research and possible developments of the
neutrino technologies will be outlined.
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Emidio Spinelli
Existence, evolution, and order of the world in Hans Jonas: unanswered questions?

This paper focuses on the text of a short but important conference held by Hans Jonas at Columbia University (New York, 5 March, 1970). It seeks to reconstruct his view about some important questions, which might be defined 'metaphysical' from a specifically philosophical point of view, but which derive in fact from a deep confrontation with perspectives and solutions advanced by modern and contemporary physics as well as life sciences. Taking as his starting-point - or even as an indisputable datum, at least from Laplace, who is here his main polemical target - the central role of the scientific enterprise (also in its technological implications) and of a radically materialistic-mechanistic explanation of the world and its evolution, Jonas tries to show the inadequacy of this approach. His analysis refers to the distinctive picture of physical reality provided by recent, widely accepted models from thermodynamics, and especially from the controversial concept of entropy, and also to the distinctive epistemological status of biology. The biological side of contemporary science appears to transcend any mechanistic and deterministic perspective; according to Jonas, biology (or better a new 'philosophy of biology') should take into consideration other factors, including, for example, the principles of interest, of concern, of responsibility, and, in a word, of spiritual factors, since all of these aspects are decisive in order to clarify the boundaries and the exact components of our organic life. Within this comprehensive perspective on our humanity, we are clearly "questioning beings" and it thus becomes legitimate to raise again questions about God, its existence, its function within the evolution of the world and its order, while never forgetting that any question of this kind is (and must remain) an "unanswered question" - the object of (more or less risky) philosophical hypotheses, though certainly not of proofs.
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Katepalli R. Sreenivasan
In the limit of vanishing viscosity

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Alice Staskova
Der Dichter als "transscendentaler Arzt"

Ausgehend von Novalis´ Bestimmung der Poesie als der „große[n] Kunst der Construction der transscendentalen Gesundheit“ sowie des Poeten als „transscendentale[r] Arzt“ soll die Vorstellung des Schriftstellers als eines Diagnostikers und Therapeuten der Menschheit bzw. Gesellschaft verfolgt werden. Exemplarisch werden Wirksamkeitsstrategien untersucht, die in seiner Ästhetik Friedrich Schiller entwarf. Kunsttheorie, die sich an bestimmten propositionalen Formen des Wissens orientiert, suggeriert hier eine zutiefst ambivalente Charakteristik des Kunstwerks als pharmakon. Dieses Beispiel der nicht unproblematischen, dafür aber desto spannenden Annäherung der Literatur bzw. ihrer Bildlichkeit an die Wissenschaft und deren Begrifflichkeit stellt eine mögliche Ausprägung der Beziehung zwischen Kunst und gesellschaftlicher Praxis dar.
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Barbara Tomasino, Peter H. Weiss, Gereon R. Fink
Action Words in the Primary Motor Cortex

Processing sentences or verbs describing actions has been shown to activate, in addition to "classic" language areas, the motor and pre-motor cortex in a somatotopic fashion. However, the role of M1 in tasks involving action words remains controversial. "Embodied cognition" refers also to mental simulation. Thus, processing action words might result in M1 activation because action words could trigger motor simulation. In a fMRI study we investigated the influence of the secondary tasks (letter detection versus explicit motor imagery) on the neural activity in M1 during the processing of motor and non-motor phrases. Subjects silently read short motor and non motor-related phrases and performed a secondary task (mental imager or letter detection). A differential left M1 activity in the task by stimulus interaction with enhanced M1 activation for imagery in the presence of motor phrases (vs. non-motor phrases) compared to letter detection of motor vs. non-motor phrases was found. In another study, we investigated whether sub-threshold TMS of the hand area of the left hemisphere may differentially modulate subjects' performance during different cognitive operations using identical action related verbs. Right-handed subjects silently read hand-action-related verbs presented in the infinitive form (e.g., "to screw") and performed three different tasks: (i) silent reading alone, (ii) motor imagery, and (iii) frequency judgments. For control, TMS was also delivered to the vertex. M1-TMS differentially modulated task performance: there was a significant facilitatory effect of M1-TMS for the imagery task only, with subjects responding about 10% faster (compared to vertex-TMS). In contrast, response times for silent reading and frequency judgments were unaffected by M1-TMS. The "embodied cognition" theory in language, argues that we can understand others' actions through the observation-execution matching system, thus using our embodied experience of the world. In this context subjects might process action words by mapping the representation of the corresponding action word onto his/her motor representations, simulating the corresponding movement.
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Federico Vercellone
Theologie und Säkularisation der Schönheit in der deutschen Frühromantik

Die deutsche Romantik zeugt von einer tiefen Krise des Schönheitsideals, welches das späte 18. und beginnende 19. Jahrhundert in nicht selten widersprüchlichen Formen durchzog. Die Krise zeigte sich an Verweisen auf die unvergängliche Aktualität jenes Ideals (das Schöne), die sich indes als Bedürfnis nach etwas Unerreichbarem  erwiesen, von der Unmöglichkeit kündeten, sich im Hier und Jetzt der Gegenwart das Bedeutungssystem der Schönheit zu eigen zu machen, in dem weit mehr mitschwang, als eine bloß ästhetische Motivation. Man könnte sogar behaupten, dass das umstrittenste und schwächste der Transzendentalien, das Schöne, am Anfang des deutschen Idealismus wesentlich mit zwei weiteren, weitaus mächtigeren von ihnen, nämlich dem Wahren und Guten, verknüpft und somit die antike Dimension der Schönheit, ihre vorwiegend kosmische und erst in zweiter Linie künstlerische Natur erneut unterstrichen wurde.
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Aldo Venturelli
Current frontiers between scientific knowledge and humanities. New perspectives

Some of the main problems affecting the contemporary society present an interconnection of several elements with a particular emphasis on the cultural factors which play a key-role. If we consider problems as ageing, climatic change and even the complex question of the relation between Western and Islamic countries (and the list might well be longer), we always find out these interrelated phenomena which are difficult to be properly taken into consideration.
Even the simple definition of such kind of cultural elements implies serious difficulties as far as the traditional subjects and even the interdisciplinary dialogue are concerned. For instance a foreign languages expert could be hardly an expert of integration nor he could become it by means of a simple dialogue with the sociologist, the psychologist or the jurist.
The problem we are dealing with implies the reorganization of the traditional disciplinary structure which should be encouraged by means of clarity of methods.
On the basis of the experiences acquired by the German-Italian Centre Villa Vigoni, the present contribution aims at illustrating some operational opportunities in order to allow this disciplinary reorganization between Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences.
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Wilhelm Vossenkuhl
Problems of Distributive Justice

My paper will offer a brief survey of the Rawlsian account of distributive justice with special reference to the Difference Principle (DP). I will argue that DP does not solve the problems it is meant to solve. The main reason for its inaptness lies behind a lack of clarity in the Rawlsian account of goods and values to be distributed. In order to distribute goods we first have to clarify their nature. Due to their nature they may be comparable, dispensable, indispensable, incomparable, indivisible, divisible or else. The most interesting and valuable goods like, e.g., individual liberty, equality, personal integrity, safety etc., are both indispensable, and indivisible. Their distribution cannot be handled like the distribution of divisible and dispensable goods where inequalities can easily and directly be compensated by, e.g., transfer payments. This lack of direct compensations is a major obstacle if some of the most valuable goods are not equally accessible by all members of a society. A second obstacle occurs when we consider the unequal distribution of indivisible goods like individual liberties and social equality caused indirectly by unequal access to divisible goods like legal, educational or health institutions. If those inequalities are to be overcome or at least partly alleviated and lessened it has to be seen how these divisible goods are valuated against the earlier mentioned indivisible goods by different social groups. If, e.g., the least advantaged groups value divisible goods like income, food and labour higher than indivisible goods like equal access to social institutions it will be hard to balance their interests and invest into an equal distribution of the most fundamental indivisible goods in their own interest. At this point paternalism lurks. A further problem arises under conditions of negative economic growth where divisible goods have to be redistributed in order to overcome the most immediate hardships of inequality for the least advantaged social groups like, e.g., unemployed. The problem here is how a just distribution of losses is possible. The paper tries to offer an account of distributive justice, which can be applied to the difficulties mentioned.
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Stefano Zamagni
Individuals and Community: New Social and Economic Philosophy

There are two different ways of understanding the relationship between the economic - which we can broadly call market - and the social, spheres that are confronting each other  today.
    On the one hand, there are those who see the extension of the market and the logic of efficiency associated with it as the solution to all social diseases. On the other hand, there are those who see the advancement of the markets as a threat to civil life and therefore fight to protect themselves against it. The first view considers the enterprise as an asocial institution.  By engendering a distorted interpretation of liberal thought, this view isolates the social dimension as a separate entity from the mechanics of the market, which is visualized as an ethically and socially neutral institution.  The market is required to be efficient, create wealth, and make the "pie" bigger and bigger. Solidarity begins exactly where the market leaves off, providing criteria for political action in order to divide the pie and share its "slices" among individuals, or else intervening in those folds of society that are still not covered by the market.
    At the opposite end of the spectrum, we find the approach that sees enterprise as being essentially "antisocial." Members of today's "no global movement" constitute the most visible expression of this ideology. Such a vision has among its mentors authors such as K. Marx and K. Polanyi. The market is a place where the mighty exploit the weak. As Polanyi puts it, the letter's advancement quickens "society's desertification."  Markets threaten society.  Thus it is incumbent upon civil society to take action and protect itself from markets, before its logic totally erodes authentically human manifestations such as friendship,  trust, non-instrumental reciprocity, and love. While it certainly grasps some of the dynamics involved in today's markets, such a vision tends to regard the market in general, and the economy as a whole, as dehumanizing per se and destructive to the "social capital" that is indispensable to real economic progress.  
    These two conceptions have passed into the political discourse and are polarizing the current discussion concerning the role of the market in society.  In full harmony with the spirit - of classical liberalism, the first conception visualizes the market as the means to resolving the political problem.  The other conception sees the market as a necessary evil; i.e., as an unavoidable institution that is nevertheless quintessentially evil, so much so that the state must be called in to protect its citizens.  
    The tradition of civil economy offers us a radically different viewpoint than either of these two conceptions. Summarily, the central idea in civil economy - is that it sees human sociability and reciprocity as core elements of normal economic life. They are neither parallel to, nor prior to or subsequent to, normal economic life. Civil economy shows us that principles other than profit and instrumental exchange can find a place within the economic activity itself.  Thus, civil economy goes beyond the first vision, which sees markets and the economy as ethically neutral places based solely on the principle of the exchange of equivalents.  It says economic activity can be either civilizing or uncivilizing, depending on whether or not these other principles are present.
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