I wonder how to approach the questions of being and nothing when they are posed to us in all seriousness. In cultural and philosophical history, several conceptions of being and nothing and several ways of solving these questions have appeared. We can find six main ways: the Eleatic (Parmenidean) way of the identity of being and thought, wonder at the fullness of being, which excludes any nothingness, the way through paradoxes, skeptical reticence, recourse to non-classical logics, and the path of spiritual insight into the mysterious interweaving of being and nothing in everything we do, think and speak. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages. I am trying to show that the last way is the most promising, but only if we overlook how being and nothingness are constantly simultaneously and intertwiningly given to us.

Although the idea of harmony is one of the basic Confucian ideas, two of its key classic authors, Mengzi and Xunzi, emphasised either the ethical-personal or socio-political aspects, respectively, and this contrast was only maintained and deepened in later Chinese history. The socio-political considerations of harmony often considers an ideal state of community to be static, with social and ethical states being preserved, rather than dynamic. On the other hand, personal and spiritual harmony was valued by artists and autonomous thinkers, which often found themselves in conflict with the state. However, an open conflict between these two lines of thought very seldom if at all appeared in traditional China, and thus the differences often remained implicit. A self-cultivated individual without external social support was condemned to social isolation and personal defeat. Even among contemporary Chinese Marxist politicians and theorists, the idea of a “harmonious society” follows Xunzi’s rather legalist emphasis, even if (in Marx view) the term “social harmony” stands for some surface phenomena of seemingly harmonious societal interrelationship, covering up the brutal reality of social and economic contradictions. I argue that not only in China, but also elsewhere, a better balance is needed between the personal and the social ideas of harmony. However, manifesting harmony can become something worthwhile only if it becomes a part of a broader project, namely that of active solidarity based on the reciprocal and universal cultivation of personal dignity and virtuous humaneness.

In the contemporary (Western) literature on mindfulness many authors present it as only a mental practice, which may bring one to a more successful and effective working of the mind, as well as different kinds of mental concentration. However, at least in part of Buddhist literature mindfulness is taken as an inseparable part of the Eightfold Way, and not as a means to achieve a separate mental aim. Another important emphasis of Mahayana Buddhism is that mindfulness does not aim at something new, but instead leads our awareness towards a deeper origin, which has already been present with us. While the initial form of mindfulness clings to various methods and achievements, the higher form lies bare in the present moment, always ready to reveal itself. When we are ready to let go of all that we achieve and do, we can surrender our being to the here and now.

The article examines the possibility of providing a synthesis of humanness and rationality in the modern world, and considers whether, and how, Chinese philosophical thought in general and Confucian tradition in particular might help us in this endeavour. Chinese philosophical tradition broadly construes rationality as the ability of the human "heart mind" (xin) to engage in wise deliberation, clever discussion, and proper conduct carried out in accordance with the highest virtues of the gentleman. This conception is much more in tune with holistic views of reasonableness than with ideas about rationality that have become rooted in the Western philosophical tradition. In the context of Chinese culture, especially Confucianism, reasonableness is firmly associated with distinct forms of argumentation, primarily with those of analogical inference, metaphor use, and paradigmatic behavioural models which cannot be expressed within the framework of logical ( deductive or inductive) reasoning. By focusing on Mencius's method of "extending" innate human virtues ( humanness, righteousness, dignity, and wisdom) from their paradigmatic cases to parallel cases from everyday life, it is possible to get a better insight into the idea of cultivating and practicing reasonableness conceived as a synthesis of humanness and rationality. There seems to be no internal conflict between our self-interests and our morality; on the contrary, actual morality and actual reasonableness emerge against the backdrop of the dynamic interplay between our striving for self-realization and our moral orientation.

Govorim o možnosti sinteze človečnosti in racionalnosti v sodobnem svetu ter se sprašujem, ali in kako nam pri tem prizadevanju lahko pomaga kitajska filozofska misel, zlasti konfucijanska tradicija. V kitajski filozofski tradiciji je racionalnost grobo vzeto razumljena kot sposobnost človeške »srčne zavesti« (xin) za modro razmišljanje, pametno razpravljanje in ravnanje, ki je v skladu z najvišjimi vrlinami plemenitega človeka. To je bolj podobno konceptu celostne razumnosti kot pa racionalnosti v zahodni filozofski tradiciji. Razumnost v kontekstu kitajske kulture, zlasti konfucijanstva, je močno vezana na specifične oblike argumentacije, predvsem na sklepanje po analogiji ter uporabo metafor in vzorčnih modelov vedenja, ki jih ni mogoče stlačiti v okvire logične (deduktivne ali induktivne) argumentacije. Ob naslonitvi na Mencijevo metodo »ekstenzije« vrojenih, potencialnih človeških vrlin (človečnosti, pravičnosti, dostojnosti in modrosti) od njihovih paradigmatskih primerov na podobne primere v vsakdanjem življenju lahko bolje razumemo gojenje in izvajanje razumnosti kot sinteze racionalnosti in človečnosti. Pri tem ne vidim nobenega notranjega nasprotja med samointeresi posameznika in njegovo moralnostjo. Dejansko moralnost in dejansko razumnost vidim prav v notranji povezanosti stremljenj posameznika po samouresničenju in moralične usmeritve posameznika.

I contrast briefly the Buddhist concept of Self as a process and a conditional reality with the concept of the substantial metaphysical concept of Self in Brahmanism and Hinduism. I present the criticism of the Buddhist thinkers, such as Nāgārjuna, who criticize any idea of the metaphysical Self. They deny the idea of the Self as its own being or as a possessor of its mental acts. However, they do not reject all sense of Self; they allow a pure process of knowledge (first of all, Self-knowledge) without a fixed subject or “owner” of knowledge. This idea is in a deep accord with some Chan stories and paradoxes of the Self and knowledge.

The following dialogue is an excerpt from a longer conversation in Piran (Slovenia) between Andrej Ule (University of Ljubljana) and Matthias Varga v. Kibed (LMU Munich) on April 19, 2015 regarding Ule’s concept of spirit.

The article elucidates three important concepts and realities that refer to cognitive phenomena and are often (mistakenly) used as synonyms: consciousness (slo. zavest), mind (slo. um), and spirit (slo. duh). They present three levels of human cognition: individual-experiential, individual-mental, and trans-individual-mental. Simply put: the concept of consciousness pertains to the waking mental life of a human being, while the concept of mind pertains to the ability and activity to consciously comprehend and understand contents and objects of human activity. I delineate three “types” of spirit: personal spirit, objective spirit, and the objectification of spirit in productions of human culture; I have doubts, however, about the existence of cosmic or super-cosmic dimensions of spirit, although some interpretations of quantum physics and modern cosmology suggest that such dimensions are possible.

The article examines whether it is possible to provide a coherent naturalist account of the emergence of the mind (spirit), construed as a plethora of mental abilities that are present in living beings. I analyze Bateson's information-system theory of mind, Peirce's theory of semiotics, and some biosemiotic proposals. All of these conceptions fail to provide a plausible theoretical explanation of the emergence of the mind, particularly (i) the emergence of the interpreters of signs, and (ii) the emergence of the experiential perspective out of the non-living nature. I argue for a hypothesis based on the idea of the trans-objective perspectivity dimension, i.e. the real possibility of acquiring a more or less distinctive experiential perspective in the form of like-to-be-X for all sufficiently developed natural entities. Taking on an experiential perspective also entails a greater sensitivity to not only actual, but also potential events, e.g. a greater sensitivity to everything that can be "useful" or "harmful" to the system in question.

The article provides an analysis of the confrontation with the limits of reason in Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard. For both thinkers such a confrontation denotes some sort of "running up against the paradox" that helps human beings to constitute themselves as ethical and/or religious subjects. In contrast with the so-called "austere" interpretation of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard (Conant and others), the seemingly futile running up against the absurdity is presented as a necessary ingredient of a certain view of language and life, i.e. a view that conceives life and language merely as a succession of events and a description of facts. However, the meaning of a certain subset of events and propositions shows itself only if these events are valued in terms of the totality of individual life or state of affairs and if these propositions are accompanied by a wholesome way of living and a wholesome attitude towards the world. For both authors the confrontation with the absurdity is also closely related to the confrontation with madness as a far limit of reasoning.

This paper presents some characteristics and dilemmas of collective decision making. Collective decision making could be presented as the process of successive crystallization of dominant alternatives under the influence of different decision contexts from primary given decision potentials. This process is presented as the many-phased process of the acting of contextually dependent "energizing factors" of the collective decision making on the "attractiveness matrix" of outcomes of collective decisions. The attractiveness matrix determines the attractiveness for each alternative of decision, and the most attractive alternative in the given situation presents the rational decision in the given situation. In the final phase of decision making holds a context which gets a simplified attractiveness matrix. It corresponds to the common decision for one of the alternatives.

This text represents a part of a wider project that concerns the role of prenotional complexes in creating paradigmatic theories, especially in the history of physics.After analyzing certain texts; Aristotle’s, Galileo’s, Newton’s and others, the existence of so called general complexes, which have the role of regulation of the theory, was noticed. General complexes function by the same mechanism as paradigms that Kuhn described in his works. This work has an assignment to show that his concept of paradigm is closely connected to general complex and complex thinking. Also, one deeper analysis of the idea of paradigm itself that Kuhn determines in his works has been done. We have come to the conclusion that he did not understand the essence of paradigm, i. e. general complex, which led to wandering both in defining of the concept and in application of the idea. Kuhn had tried to define paradigm as a general notion or a matrix, which is in fact impossible because of its nature, and as a consequence of that concept of paradigm in his theory appears as a meta-complex. Misunderstanding of the essence of paradigm will imply wrong interpretation of the mechanism of general complex itself which, at the end, leads to wrong conclusions which affect close concepts like revolutionary change of paradigm, incommensurability of theories etc.

The author discusses Godel cosmological proposals that seemingly allow time-loops and time-travel, and particularly Godel thesis that the objectivity of time-lapse is not guaranteed a priori but depends on the physical conditions in a cosmos. We could not 'define' a uniform world time-line regarding the mean state of motion of matter but some relative and partial time lapses which would appear as simultaneous for other observers. The author believes that consciousness may posses many time-modalities, and the 'annihilation' of lapse of time is one of them. It could be that already the momentary recollection of the past events in our mind might indicate such a possibility. However it is an open question what this possibility means for the physical reality, or for the 'cosmos itself'?

The paper is on the role of complex thought in the development of thought and scientific knowledge. According to Vigotsky, the complex thought is the first phase in the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of human thought. It is in this sense pre-conceptual. Also, according to Vigotsky, the complex thought has its internal genesis which begins with associative complexes and ends in pseudo-concepts. Complex also an explanatory role in scientific thought. Complex thought ppears on all levels and stages of the development of scientific knowledge. Metaphors may appear in the complex thought as a dominant mode of thought or in the conceptual structure as the auxiliary in the explanation. Analogies present a certain structuration of the complex thought, which contributes to the creation of conceptual structure. The place of analogy is thus between a complex thought and conceptual thought.

In this essay 1 analyse Wittgenstein's criticism of several assumptions that are crucial for a large part of cognitive science. These involve the concepts of computational processes in the brain which cause mental states and processes, the algorithmic processing of information in the brain (neural system), the brain as a machine, psychophysical parallelism, the thinking machine, as well as the confusion of rule following with behaviour in accordance with the rule. In my opinion, the theorists of cognitive science have not yet seriously considered Wittgenstein's criticism so they, quite surprisingly, frequently confuse the question,how does it work?,, with,what does it do?,, But their most deleterious mistake is their confusion of the internal computational (or parallel) processes taking place in the brain (which possibly cause mental states) with socially-based, everyday criteria of recognition and classification of, and knowledge about, the content of mental states.

We discuss the role of the pre-conceptual complex thought in scientific knowledge and in the development of science. The heterogeneity and imagination of complex thought enables the preservation of the conceptual structure and helps reshape entire theoretical nets, however, its downside is reflected in its latent contradiction and inconsistency. This paper is a continuation of our analysis of the relationship between complex and conceptual thought in Aristotle’s Physics. If Aristotle’s central complex is the notion of “place”, then Galileo’s basic complex is the notion of “(mechanical) movement”. Since Galileo didn’t have an elaborated conceptual structure of mechanics, we can say that his theoretical basis is “steeped” in the level of complex thought, yet it relies on the mathematical structure and experiment, thereby creating a stable theoretical organization which serves as a basis for the new theoretical systematization and for the shaping of a conceptual structure as Newton’s. Thus, we may claim that, in a certain way, this change raised complex thought in science to a higher level, and brought it to a pre-paradigmatic period.

I analyze some classical solutions of the skeptical argument and some of their week points (especially the contextualist solution). First I have proposed some possible improvement of the contextualist solution (the introduction of the explicit-implicit belief and knowledge distinction beside the differences in the relevance of some counter-factual alternatives). However, this solution does not block too fast jumps of the everyday context (where empirical knowledge is possible) into skeptical context (where empirical knowledge is impossible). Then I analyze some formal analogies between some modal arguments on the contingency of empirical facts (and the world as whole) and the skeptical arguments against empirical knowledge. I try to show that the skeptical conclusion “Empirical knowledge does not exist” is logically coherent with the thesis that they are empirical facts and that we have true belief on them. In order to do that without contradictions I have to accept a non-classical definition of knowledge: S knows that p:= S is not justified to allow that non-p. Knowledge and justified allowance function here as some pseudo-theoretical concepts which allow only some partial and conditional definitions by some “empirical” terms and logical conditions.