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In Book III, Chapter 5 of his De Anima, in the midst of his account of the faculty of thought, Aristotle concludes that there are, in some sense, two minds required for thinking, one which 'becomes all things', and another which 'makes all things'. The second of these --commonly called the "active intellect" has always been a source of puzzlement for interpreters, on two fronts: (1) How does this entity 'make' things, i.e. what does it do, in relation to the potential or "passive" intellect, by way of producing the ideas in the latter?; and (2) What is the metaphysical status of the active intellect? In particular, can Aristotle's description of this mind as "eternal and immortal" be reconciled with his accounts, elsewhere, of the nature and function of eternal beings? In this dissertation, with the help of related passages in other works, I unravel the details and implications of Aristotle's remarkably terse and economical discussion of the active intellect. Further, I show how we can, and why we must, re-interpret the most important aspect of Aristotle's metaphysics --his theory of the divine beings, the "unmoved movers" in light of what we learn from De Anima III.5. Aristotle is seen to have solved an essential epistemological problem, namely how we initially form the ideas or 'concepts' about which we think, in a manner which brings his psychology into direct contact with his theory of being. In the process, he implies a view of the power of human reason that is both ennobling and humbling. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The focus of this thesis is mainly on the area of human decision making. During the decision process we are subjected to several influences, which bias our judgement. Therefore, we may be misguided towards wrong decisions. In addition, it is important that the display of distorted influence is regularly repeated with the same persons. Thus, we may assume that we are talking about a universal apparatus of the human mind. The aim of this thesis is also to identify the above-mentioned influences, and mainly to understand the nature of their origin. The knowledge resulting from the research could become important and useful tool for the reader, since the knowledge may be used for the improvement of our own decisions in both private and professional life. The research is based on interdisciplinary approaches to cognitive science. On one hand we use the functional model of mind, on the other hand we utilize a wide range of empirical data from several fields, such as psychology, behavioral economics and the sciences concerned with the brain. Using these tools, we analyze specific influences, which are considered to be important from the point of view of decision making. They are for example feelings, emotions, social influences, language, self, experience, expectations and prior forms of judgement. Based on the analysis of the influences, hypotheses about their interconnectedness are deduced. Finally, we suggest several practical methods, which should help us to improve our own decision making and help us to avoid wrong conclusions.

It is no secret that 'managerial' solutions are not, on average, nearly as reliable as 'technical' solutions. The focus of this work is to clarify the reasons why this is so, and to seek ways to increase the reliability of managerial solutions. The causes of this situation are both subjective (human factor failure), which can be influenced, and objective (complexity of the problem, the specifics of human behaviour, etc.) that can be only minimally influenced. Significant subjective causes at work were identified as: a. cognitive distortions at the mental level of thinking of the problem solvers; b. deficiencies in making inference and drawing conclusions; c. incorrect argumentation. There are two ways to reduce these causes: 1. cultivation of managerial thinking of the problem solvers; 2. the use of reserves in the implementation of approaches and tools of theoretical disciplines that already operate successfully elsewhere and are beneficial for managerial solutions. The first way deals with procedures for managerial solutions formulated in the language of the relevant discipline (the language of management), expressed by natural language and the chain of formulas (calculations) and visual (graphic) tools in the form of managerial decision trees, diagrams and charts with the rules of 'managerial logic'. This is generally defined as a set of approaches, tools, methods and skills needed for credible justification when solving managerial problems. Specifically it deals with: - the 'case-based reasoning' approach, which aims at finding the best point of view on a given problem and analysing all considered aspects within its context step-by-step in detail; - translating the tools and methods of modern logic (especially its intuitionistic version) from the language of logic into the language of management taking into account the factual content of expressive means of the language of management including the ability of their effective application; - respecting the principles of rational and ethical argumentation within managerial solutions. The second way circumvents managerial solution procedures by recasting the managerial task to the task of a scientific discipline (logic, game theory, etc.) and derives the correct result therein. In this context we talk about the use of knowledge of theoretical disciplines in management. Both of these ways are demonstrated in the work in a number of illustrative examples and the annexed case studies addressing the specific tasks of managerial practice.