Gödel’s Natural Deduction

This is a companion to a paper by the authors entitled “Gödel on deduction”, which examined the links between some philosophical views ascribed to Gödel and general proof theory. When writing that other paper, the authors were not acquainted with a system of natural deduction that Gödel presented with the help of Gentzen’s sequents, which amounts to Ja?kowski’s natural deduction system of 1934, and which may be found in Gödel’s unpublished notes for the elementary logic course he gave in 1939 at the University of Notre Dame. Here one finds a presentation of this system of Gödel accompanied by a brief reexamination in the light of the notes of some points concerning his interest in sequents made in the preceding paper. This is preceded by a brief summary of Gödel’s Notre Dame course, and is followed by comments concerning Gödel’s natural deduction system.     

Uncovering a New Moral Dilemma of Economic Optimization in Biotechnological Processing

The trend of emerging biorefineries is to process the harvest as efficiently as possible and without any waste. From the most valuable phytomass, refined medicines, enzymes, dyes and other special reactants are created. Functional foods, food ingredients, oils, alcohol, solvents, plastics, fillers and a wide variety of other chemical products follow. After being treated with nutrient recovery techniques (for fertilizer production), biofuels or soil improvers are produced from the leftovers. Economic optimization algorithms have confirmed that such complex biorefineries can be financially viable only when a high degree of feedstock concentration is included. Because the plant material is extremely voluminous before processing, the farming intensity of special plants increases in the nearest vicinity of agglomerations where the biorefineries are built for logistical reasons. Interdisciplinary analyses revealed that these optimization measures lead to significantly increased pollen levels in neighbouring urban areas and subsequently an increased risk of allergies, respectively costs to the national health system. A new moral dilemma between the shareholder’s profit and public interest was uncovered and subjected to disputation.     

Computerized cognitive training during physical inactivity improves executive functioning in older adults

The hippocampus is closely tied to spatial navigation, a central component in cognitive functioning, and critically involved in age-associated cognitive decline and dementia. This study evaluated a novel, cognitive computerized spatial navigation training (CSNT) program targeting the hippocampus, with expectation of mitigating possible cognitive decline with bed rest (BR). During a 14-day BR study with 16 healthy, older men (mean age = 60 ± 3, range = 55–65 years), half received CSNT for 12 days in 50-min sessions and half were controls (watching documentaries). This design uniquely controlled diet, sleep, and other personal and environmental activities. Although there were no cognitive declines in controls post-BR, CSNT participants demonstrated significant increases in executive/attention ability and processing speed, and continued spatial navigation testing showed improvement to 400 days post-BR. This intervention may prove useful to mitigate cognitive declines known to occur in long periods of immobilization and could have broader implications in protecting against age-related cognitive decline.     

Traumatization of group leaders in their work with displaced persons

Displaced persons are a special, threatened group of people, participants in this war, who were suddenly forced to abandon their homes. The majority of them were, overnight, left without anything they had, some even without their closest family. They all have one thing in common: they have all lost so much. Work with such people is directed toward overcoming their feelings of loss and abandonment and preventing psychical decompensation. Groups of displaced persons temporarily sheltered in the Rijeka region have been observed to be markedly regressed, with increased sensitivity, a low degree of tolerance, great demands on society and strongly expressed projective tendencies. Therapists suffer personal traumatization in working with displaced persons. This paper describes the reactions and feelings of group leaders caused by manifestations of group dynamics in different phases of exile.     

Fluctuating maximal God

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - This paper explores a variety of perfect being theism that combines Yujin Nagasawa’s maximal God thesis with the view that God is not...     

Trauma and Religiousness

Victims of traumatic events who experience re-traumatization often develop a highly ambivalent relationship to God and all religiosity as extremely conflictual. On the one hand, they may choose to blame God for not having protected them, for having left them to feel so alone, for having been indifferent to them or they may even turn their wrath upon God, as the source of cruelty. Often though, the traumas experienced by individuals prompt them to turn to God and religion in search of help. This gives reason for the need of new and up-to-date research that can help elucidate why some people choose to seek help in religion and others turn away from it.     

Reciprocal Associations between Parenting Challenges and Parents' Personality Development in Young and Middle Adulthood

Having children affects many aspects of people's lives. However, it remains unclear to what degree the challenges that come along with having children are associated with parents' personality development. We addressed this question in two studies by investigating the relationship between parenting challenges and personality development in mothers of newborns (Study 1, N = 556) and the reciprocal associations between (mastering) parenting challenges and personality development in parents of adolescents (Study 2, N = 548 mothers and 460 fathers). In Study 1, we found the stress of having a newborn baby to be associated with declines in maternal Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability. Parenting challenges were also related to personality development in parents of adolescent children in Study 2, with parent–child conflict being reciprocally associated with decreases in Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability. Mastering parenting challenges in the form of high parenting self‐efficacy, on the other hand, was found to be associated with increases in Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability, and vice versa. In sum, our results suggest that mastering the challenges associated with the social role of parenthood is one of the mechanisms underlying personality development in young and middle adulthood. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Between ideology and pragmatism: polemic on the civil rights of Christians in the socialist Slovenia of the 1970s

In this article I discuss the controversy concerning the rights of believers which developed among younger theologians, some laymen and some representatives of the faithful on the one hand, and communist politicians and Marxist theorists on the other, in Slovenia in the 1970s. In comparison with other socialist countries, the level of religious freedoms in multireligious Yugoslavia was relatively high; the same can be said about the country’s relations with the Holy See, with which diplomatic relations at the highest level were restored in 1970. The controversy opened key questions about the relationship between Marxism and atheism under Yugoslav self-management socialism and touched some of the basic ideological postulates on which the League of Communists (LC) built its social engagement. Demands for greater equality for believers were rejected as unfounded in the vast majority of cases and did not trigger a change in the established understanding of religion by the ruling communist party. However, the awareness of everyday discrimination against believers in their public life spread amongst the younger generation of more liberal-oriented communist leaders. At a time when the Yugoslav party was preparing for the difficult period following the imminent death of President Tito and in this period was counting on the loyalty of believers, communist leaders were willing to condemn the most outstanding examples of ‘sectarianism’, of which there was no scarcity in the ranks of the LC, while at the same time a change in programming principles in regard to religion remained out of the question. The prevailing conviction remained that religion would die out of its own accord, but that in the meantime it was necessary to ensure full equality for nonbelievers and believers alike.