Cognitive science has always included multiple methodologies and theoretical commitments. The philosophy of cognitive science should embrace, or at least acknowledge, this diversity. Bechtel’s (2009a) proposed philosophy of cognitive science, however, applies only to representationalist and mechanist cognitive science, ignoring the substantial minority of dynamically oriented cognitive scientists. As an example of nonrepresentational, dynamical cognitive science, we describe strong anticipation as a model for circadian systems (Stepp & Turvey, 2009). We then propose a philosophy of science appropriate to nonrepresentational, dynamical (...) cognitive science. (shrink)

The fundamental assumption of compensation for visual delays states that, since delays are dealt with, there must be compensatory mechanisms. These mechanisms are taken to be internal models. Alternatives for delay compensation exist, suggesting that this assumption may not be fundamental, and nor should the existence of internal models be assumed. Delays may even be employed in their own compensation.

The purpose of the article is to research the specific using of the frontier paradigm in the study on Cossack history by contemporary Russian and Ukrainian historiography. There are examined views of Russian and Ukrainian historians on the following issues: the genesis of the views on the Cossack communities as a special ethno-social organisms at Europe’s Great Frontier, the characteristics of the inter-ethnic contact zone in the stretch of steppes from the Dnipro to the Terek, the views on the interaction (...) between Cossack communities and the non-Christian Cossack formations on the other side of the Christian-Muslim frontier, the emergence of the research approach based on the conception of the balance of confrontational and non-confrontational contacts and mutual impacts. (shrink)

Tombs of the kings of the Western Han dynasty often contain burial items that are related to the material culture of the Eastern Eurasian Steppe. These artifacts are usually interpreted in a general sense, for instance as a sign for the fascination of the Han elite with the exotic. A closer analysis of relevant finds, however, shows different strategies of dealing with foreign influences. While the exchange with the empire’s northern neighbors is evidenced through goods for which identical excavated (...) parallels from the steppe exist, the royal tombs of the Han also contained items that resemble and reference steppe motifs and objects but were clearly produced locally and for local consumers. Especially the latter type of artifacts can thus not simply be interpreted as the passive byproduct of exchange relations. Instead, we have to acknowledge that design, production, and usage of these objects were based on conscious decisions. Based on the insight that objects always have a social function, this article argues that the Han elite not only appropriated steppe influences and motifs but also strategically produced and integrated them into their world in order to redefine, enhance, and strengthen their position within their social framework. (shrink)

In the history of Lithuania during the period between the two world wars, the criminal law sources were received from Russia (Criminal Statute of 1903) and adapted for the requirements of those States, where the conditions of life were notably different from those in Lithuania. The Criminal Statute of 1903 was the main criminal law source in Lithuania until 1940. Prior to the second occupation—the return of the Soviets—tens of thousands of Lithuanian citizens fled to the West, including a very (...) large segment of the intelligentsia, university lecturers, professors and many lawyers. The lawyers in emigration were very socially active and founded a paper of law research—“Teisininkų žinios.” The article deals with the works and research of the emigration lawyers B. Nemickas, V. Vaitkevičius, P. Raulinaitis,V. Rastenis, D. Krivickas and others, in which they deal with the problem of Soviet criminal law. The lawyers analyse the sources of Soviet criminal law, which was the criminal law source in occupied Lithuania. (shrink)

As an intensive housing construction drive in the late 1950s began to provide separate apartments for millions of Soviet citizens, aesthetic experts envisioned the Soviet home as a potential site for the display of works of art and for amateur aesthetic production. In the context of de-Stalinization, reformist artists and aestheticians committed to the liberalization and modernization of Soviet artistic criteria, promoted the value of amateur art and even of home decorating in the formation of the new (...) person who would live under communism. They also pressed for affordable art and craft to be made available to ordinary people for their new homes. Thereby they would dwell in their new apartments surrounded by beauty in their everyday lives, and would thus, the experts argued, be brought closer to communist consciousness. Moreover sales of art to individual citizens would provide an alternative income stream to fund artists’ production. The possibility of private art consumption would therefore free artists to some extent from their reliance on state commissions and from the strict stylistic and thematic norms and hierarchies of Socialist Realism as established under Stalin. (shrink)

The collapse of the Soviet Union, all hope that Eastern European communism might somehow be transformed into a more attractive, less environmentally destructive social order than the liberal democratic societies of the West has been destroyed. The description of the modern predicament by Alvin W. Gouldner has become even more poignant: "The political uniqueness of our own era then is this; we have lived and still live through a desperate political and social malaise, while at the same time we (...) have outlived the desperate revolutionary remedies that had once been thought to solve them." If this is the case, there is reason to examine the failure of the Soviet Union more closely. Was it possible that things might have worked out differently; and if so, does this provide any orientation for the present? In this paper I will show how an alternative path for Soviet society had been charted, and partly implemented, in the 1920's by the radical wing of Bolshevism, a path which made environmental conservation a central issue. And I will suggest that this is the path which holds most hope for the future. (shrink)

The state, by V.I. Lenin.--The revolutionary part played by law and the state; a general doctrine of law, by P.I. Stuchka.--The theory of Petrazhitskii: Marxism and social ideology. Law, our law, foreign law, general law, by M.A. Reisner.--The general theory of law and Marxism, by E.B. Pashukanis.--The right deviation in the Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Political report of the Central (Party) Committee to the XVI Congress, 1930, by J.V. Stalin.-- The Soviet state and the revolution in law, by E.B. (...) Pashukanis.--Socialism and law, by P. Yudin.--The fundamental tasks of the science of Soviet socialist law, by A.Y. Vyshinsky.--Report to the XVIII Party Congress, by J.V. Stalin.--The theory of the state and law, by S.A. Golunskii and M.S. Strogovich.--The Soviet state in the war for the fatherland, by A.Y. Vyshinsky.--The relationship between state and law, by I.P. Trainin. (shrink)

Following the October Revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks embarked upon a series of initiatives in order to bring about a socialist economic order. Traditional accounts of these events?"War Communism?; and the New Economic Policy?are deficient in two respects. First, they do not consider the policy implications of early twentieth?century Marxism. Second, they do not appreciate the economic coordination problems such policies would, and did, encounter. As a result, the standard account of early Soviet socialism is distorted. This paper attempts (...) to rectify these deficiencies by discussing the Bolshevisks? own assessments of their purposes and exploring the consequences of their policies in the period 1918?1921. (shrink)

The article describes the course of the Soviet-Vatican negotiations, analyzes from the point of view of the differences of value orientations of its subjects.

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the (...) socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism. (shrink)

In their criticism of Maoism, contemporary Soviet philosophers follow the basic structure of the orthodox presentation of Marxism — Leninism and use the whole panoply of polemical tools which the Leninist heritage offers them. Thus far, this anti — Maoism is generally maladroit and often self-contradictory.

Philosophical analysis of the Soviet Union as a phenomenon is relevant in light of the approaching centennial of its formation. The significance of this event derives from the Soviet Union’s enormous scale and historically, qualitatively unique formation that included many dozens of nations and nationalities. This formation replaced the equally enormous Russian Empire but arose not due to natural development but on its ruins, by the means of a European Marxism adapted to domestic conditions. Nowhere in the world (...) have societies and states like the Soviet Union arisen spontaneously, while the Eastern European “people’s democracy” countries created after the Second World War repeatedly attempted to free themselves from the kinship and dominance of the Soviet Union and would disappear immediate with its collapse.In this article, the question of what the Soviet Union was in its project and reality is discussed in the following contexts: Marxist solutions to Russia’s agrarian question and their subsequent internationalization to create a “world union of workers and peasants” (V.I. Lenin); analysis of the principle of forced labor as the primary means of creating the “socialist working man”; the formation of the Soviet Union as a “quasi-federal” community of peoples “national in form, socialist in content”; and the forced inclusion of Eastern European peoples in the emerging “world Soviet Union” as “payment” for their liberation from fascism. This article justifies the claim that without analysis of the essential role of these ideas and phenomena, one could hardly expect to gain a holistic understanding of the nature of the Soviet Union. (shrink)

This 1991 book is a critical study of the philosophical culture of the USSR, and the first substantial treatment of a Soviet philosopher's work by a Western author. The book identifies a tradition within Soviet Marxism that has produced significant theories of the nature of the self and human activity, of the origins of value and meaning, and of the relation of thought and language. The tradition is presented through the work of Evald Ilyenkov, the man who did (...) most to rejuvenate Soviet philosophy after its suppression under Stalin. Professor Bakhurst sets Ilyenkov's contribution against the background of the bitter debates that divided Soviet philosophers in the 1920s, of Vygotsky's 'socio-historical psychology', of the controversies over Lenin's legacy, and of the philosophy of Stalinism. He traces Ilyenkov's tense relationship with the Soviet philosophical establishment and his passionate polemics with Soviet opponents. This book offers a unique insight into the world of Soviet philosophy, the place of politics within it, and its prospects in the age of glasnost and perestroika. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 1 Seiten: 148-160.

The centrally-planned Soviet command economy was one of the twentieth century’s most radical and complex economic, political and social experiments. Its establishment did not coincide with the onset of Soviet power across the former Russian Empire in 1917-1918, but instead resulted from fifteen years of shifts, readjustments and breaks, and through experiments with both quasi-socialist market economics and centralised administrative command practices. The present article surveys the conflictual relationship between Soviet planning and Marxism in this period. It (...) demonstrates how the Stalinist command economy contradicted much of the theory and practice that the Bolsheviks themselves had thought ought to characterise the new economic system. (shrink)

In my view, Soviet philosophy must be judged not by the number of books and articles written, but by the works that won recognition in the professional milieu both in our country and, of course, abroad. There are such works and, furthermore, they are found in various areas of philosophical knowledge: the history of philosophy, social philosophy, esthetics, ethics, religious studies, logic, the methodology of scientific knowledge, and so on. Of course, one can accuse philosophers for writing during the (...) years of the existence of the Soviet Union many fewer good works than weak or mediocre ones, but this applies no more to philosophy than to science, art, or any other sphere of human activity. (shrink)

Originally published in 1961. Russian Marxist philosophy of science originated among men and women who gave their whole lives to rebellion against established authority. The original tension within Marxist philosophy between positivism and metaphysics was repressed but not resolved in this first phase of Soviet Marxism. In this volume the author correlates the development of ideas with trends in the Cultural Revolution and against this background it is possible to understand why debates over general philosophy gave way to conflicts (...) over specific sciences in the aftermath of the first Five Year Plan and why there was a genuine crisis in Soviet biology. (shrink)

The present work is a study of the method of contemporary Soviet philosophy. By "Soviet philosophy" we mean philosophy as published in the Soviet Union. For practical purposes we have limited our attention to Soviet sources in Russian in spite of the fact that Soviet philosophical works are also published in other languages (see B 2029(21)(38». The term "method" is taken in the sense usual in Western books on methodology .1 In view of the content (...) of the first chapter it will be useful to explain the last term a little more fully. By method we mean a procedure and it is obvious that the principles according to which a procedure is carried out are rules, i.e. imperatives, which tell us not what is but what should be done. Such imperatives mayor may not be connected with and founded on certain descriptive statements (the fact that every rule of formal logic is based on a corresponding law has been well-known since Husserl's "Logische Unter suchungen" and is generally accepted in contemporary logic), but such a foundation is irrelevant to a methodological study. The object of such a study is to find out what these rules are, why they are accepted and how they are inter-connected and applied. This is how methodology - the science of method - is conceived in Western treatises on the subject and this is also the standpoint assumed here. (shrink)

Interview of Vsevolod Khoma with Professor Tamara Yashchuk within the framework of the research program “Ukrainian Philosophy of the 60s-80s of the 20th Century” of the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy.

Over the last few years a growing body of literature on Soviet-Third World relations has become available. The two books under discussion here represent valuable contributions to the understanding of East-South relations. Both books deal with changing Soviet approaches to the Third World. They trace Soviet interest in the developing countries and associate it with the post-Stalin leadership. Both books challenge prevailing views on Soviet behavior in the Third World and provide an excellent overview of (...) class='Hi'>Soviet scholarly works on development issues. Of the two, Valkenier's book is the more interesting because it is more concise and rich. It offers a thorough review of the Soviet literature on academic research and policy decisions regarding their position with the Third World over the last 30 years. (shrink)

This review-essay explores approaches to the thought of the creative Soviet Marxist thinker Evald Ilyenkov as discussed in a recent book edited by Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen, Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism. The book consists of a series of commentaries and contextual essays which centre on the translated text of Ilyenkov’s Dialectics of the Ideal. The approach the authors take to Ilyenkov’s work differs from previous ones of exploring the totality of Ilyenkov’s (...) thought or eclectic aspects of it. By commenting on and contextualising Ilyenkov’s major text on the Ideal they locate the contribution of Ilyenkov in dialogue with traditions of classical European philosophy, and Western and Soviet Marxism, and in his importance to contemporary issues in philosophy and other disciplines. A deep analysis of Ilyenkov’s dense and often complex text is also given. By doing so the authors highlight the immense contribution of Ilyenkov to contemporary thought. (shrink)

Josef Bocheski, pioneer of the discipline ofphilosophical sovietology and one of the firstto criticize Eurocentric attitudes, emphasizedthe central role of logic and sound argument inacademic philosophy. This helped him todemonstrate both the general flaws of and thedifferences in quality within Sovietphilosophy. His endeavors and results areindispensable for the yet-to-be-written historyof Soviet philosophy. By the same token, itmade him less perceptive of the centralpolitical, not just philosophical, role of thepartijnost'-principle. More recent developmentshave shown both Soviet philosophy andBocheski's own, Neo-Thomist (...) position to bepart of a fundamentally outdated idea ofscientific philosophy. However, the criteria oflogical scrutiny and sound argument have notlost their force within globalizingphilosophical culture. (shrink)

-- Douglas Kellner, University of Texas, Austin.