KARL NIEBYL

Karl Niebyl was a professor of economics who escaped from Nazi Germany and taught for the rest of his life in various North American universities. His last post was at San Jose State. Professor Niebyl died on April 4th, 1985. We will present here some of his papers in a variety of topics, including philosophy and economics.

On Karl Niebyls’ Thoughts on the Material basis of Consciousness

Although this work was written in the sixties and much has been written on the subject since, I believe it is important enough to edit and present publicly for a discussion. There are two reasons for this:

It is the work of a thinker who was knowledgeable in a variety of fields in sufficient depth to make the connection between them quite interesting and exciting
It is thoroughly materialist in its exposition, a perspective that is out of vogue presently.

I have done some extensive editing to make Karl’s work as readable as possible but have run up against a lack of information of some references, which I noted in the bibliography.

Although I have done the editing I have checked it out with two of Karl’s students of more than 40 years each: Elaine Allen and Norman Goldberg. I, Gus Bagakis, was Karl’s last student, from 1978 until his death. I am currently a philosophy instructor at San Francisco State University. I have been anxious to get to Karl’s work and present it to the world because of the respect I have for his formidable knowledge. I am now in a situation where I can begin the long process of finding the most important of his works and editing them and publishing them. This consciousness paper is the first attempt.

Gus Bagakis
Philosophy Professor
California State San Francisco

Thoughts on the Material basis of Consciousness, Karl Niebyl, Part I and Part II.

Other papers: Methodology, Karl Niebyl.