How Is Collective Identity Possible in Democracies? Political Integration and the Leitkultur Debate in Germany

The quest for a common collective identity has become a challenge for modern democracy: Liberal demands for greater inclusion and individual freedom, aspirations for a strong and solidaric political community, as well as nationalist or right-wing populist calls for exclusion and a preservation of hegemonic national identities are creating tensions that cannot be overlooked. This article therefore formulates the central question of how collective identity can be possible in a liberal democracy. Based on a case study on Germany, it will therefore be examined whether Leitkultur as a model of political integration can serve in generating a functional democratic collective identity. The necessary benchmarks guiding the analysis will be defined beforehand from a systems-theoretical perspective, balancing inclusion and exclusion within three crucial dimensions: normative basics, historic continuity, and affirmative bindings. The results show that a static definition of a German Leitkultur would in the long run neither achieve functional inclusion nor be able to generate the necessary cohesion of a political community, especially regarding the second and third identity dimensions.

Whether the general brain theory is already existing, or How does the phenomenon of information explain mind-body

Since Descartes “separation” of the Soul from the Body, we observe a complete confusion in their causal, functional, and semiotic relationships. However, in modern knowledge (about the informational activity of the human brain, the functional and causal properties of its neural networks, the functions of psychic phenomena during the processing of information in it, about the causal “ability” of information) it is time to put an end to this problem. Here, in order to explain what I am talking about, I will use the notion of “information” (which had been unknown by Descartes) regarding the “dispute” between Mind & Body (the Physicality and the Mentality) for “the right” to be a more fundamental ontology of Reality. I will do this by introducing an “arbitrator” — the Objective Reality. This goal is achieved through the study of information activity of the human brain. In the process of this study, it turns out that the information activity of the brain in principle cannot be carried out without mental phenomena. That is, it turns out that the classical physical causality, which operates in the neural networks of the brain, is not able, by itself, without mental phenomena, to implement the information operations that the human brain actually performs. It also turns out that the functional inclusion of mental phenomena (at least, the phenomena of subjective evaluation and mental images) in the neurophysiologic (by and large, physical) activity of the brain explains the possibility and necessity of functional inclusion in this information processing the phenomenon of freedom of choice. After all, the processing information in the brain through mental phenomena allows more than one degree of freedom than it is “allowed” by any physical process.

Set-valued problems under bounded variation assumptions involving the Hausdorff excess

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In the very general framework of a (possibly infinite dimensional) Banach space <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ X $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, we are concerned with the existence of bounded variation solutions for measure differential inclusions</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'><disp-formula> <label/> <tex-math id="FE100"> \begin{document}$ \begin{equation} \begin{split} &amp;dx(t) \in G(t, x(t)) dg(t),\\ &amp;x(0) = x_0, \end{split} \end{equation}\;\;\;\;\;\;(1) $\end{document} </tex-math></disp-formula></p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>where <inline-formula><tex-math id="M2">\begin{document}$ dg $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> is the Stieltjes measure generated by a nondecreasing left-continuous function.</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>This class of differential problems covers a wide variety of problems occuring when studying the behaviour of dynamical systems, such as: differential and difference inclusions, dynamic inclusions on time scales and impulsive differential problems. The connection between the solution set associated to a given measure <inline-formula><tex-math id="M3">\begin{document}$ dg $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> and the solution sets associated to some sequence of measures <inline-formula><tex-math id="M4">\begin{document}$ dg_n $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> strongly convergent to <inline-formula><tex-math id="M5">\begin{document}$ dg $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> is also investigated.</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>The multifunction <inline-formula><tex-math id="M6">\begin{document}$ G : [0,1] \times X \to \mathcal{P}(X) $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> with compact values is assumed to satisfy excess bounded variation conditions, which are less restrictive comparing to bounded variation with respect to the Hausdorff-Pompeiu metric, thus the presented theory generalizes already known existence and continuous dependence results. The generalization is two-fold, since this is the first study in the setting of infinite dimensional spaces.</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>Next, by using a set-valued selection principle under excess bounded variation hypotheses, we obtain solutions for a functional inclusion</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'><disp-formula> <label/> <tex-math id="FE102"> \begin{document}$ \begin{equation} \begin{split} &amp;Y(t)\subset F(t,Y(t)),\\ &amp;Y(0) = Y_0. \end{split} \end{equation}\;\;\;\;(2) $\end{document} </tex-math></disp-formula></p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>It is shown that a recent parametrized version of Banach's Contraction Theorem given by V.V. Chistyakov follows from our result.</p>

Stability of intuitionistic fuzzy set-valued maps and solutions of integral inclusions

<abstract><p>In this paper, new intuitionistic fuzzy fixed point results for sequence of intuitionistic fuzzy set-valued maps in the structure of $ b $-metric spaces are examined. A few nontrivial comparative examples are constructed to keep up the hypotheses and generality of our obtained results. Following the fact that most existing concepts of Ulam-Hyers type stabilities are concerned with crisp mappings, we introduce the notion of stability and well-posedness of functional inclusions involving intuitionistic fuzzy set-valued maps. It is a familiar fact that solution of every functional inclusion is a subset of an appropriate space. In this direction, intuitionistic fuzzy fixed point problem involving $ (\alpha, \beta) $-level set of an intuitionistic fuzzy set-valued map is initiated. Moreover, novel sufficient criteria for existence of solutions to an integral inclusion are investigated to indicate a possible application of the ideas presented herein.</p></abstract>

Reading RP Anand in the Post-Colony

Professor RP Anand analysed the birth of new states and their theoretical and functional inclusion in the post-UN world. The 1947 Indian independence afforded Indian lawyers a choice between Nehruvian internationalism and Judge Pal’s Tokyo dissent. Essentially, Anand preferred state interest over cultural differences as the currency of international law while celebrating the UN Charter, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Convention of the Law of Sea as the achievements of the mankind. Anand saw the rejection of international law as synonymous with power politics. While optimistic, his universalism engendered a Western anti-thesis that an Asian approach to international law, if any, was otiose. Subsequently, post-colonial scholars responded with a synthesis that brought colonialism from periphery to the centre of international legal theory.

On the solvability of causal functional inclusions with infinite delay

In the present article we develop the results of works devoted to the study of problems for functional differential equations and inclusions with causal operators, in case of infinite delay. In the introduction of the article we substantiates the relevance of the research topic and provides links to relevant works A. N. Tikhonov, C. Corduneanu, A. I. Bulgakov, E. S. Zhukovskii, V. V. Obukhovskii and P. Zecca. In section two we present the necessary information from the theory of condensing multivalued maps and measures of noncompactness, also introduced the concept of a multivalued causal operator with infinite delay and illustrated it by examples. In the next section we formulate the Cauchy problem for functional inclusion, containing the composition of multivalued and single-valued causal operators; we study the properties of the multiopera-tor whose fixed points are solutions of the problem. In particular, sufficient conditions under which this multioperator is condensing on the respective measures of noncompacness. On this basis, in section four we prove local and global results and continuous dependence of the solution set on initial data. Next the case of inclusions with lower semicontinuous causal multioperators is considered. In the last section we generalize some results for semilinear differential inclusions and Volterra integrodifferential inclusions with infinite delay.