In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It is difficult to do justice to a monumental study such as PJDS in a short review: only time will determine its real significance. We can only offer some preliminary comments, and in spite of anything we have to say, the mere fact that the book contains such a wealth of information justifies for it a permanent place on a bookshelf of a student of medieval thought.The title of (...) PJDS deserves special attention. While we have books on Scotus's theology or particular topics of his thought, there has been no comprehensive study of his "philosophy," seemingly for a good reason: Scotus is clearly a "fundamental" and systematic theologian who simply uses some classic tools of ancient philosophers and some of their texts and ideas as material for his own discussions. So first of all one needs to determine what constitutes "philosophy" in such a case. V. devotes considerable attention to this question, but unfortunately only at the very end of the study, in Part III, which constitutes almost a separate monograph on the historiography of the debate about "medieval philosophy" and Scotus's role in it. Dichotomizing medieval thought into "philosophy" and theology in recent debates comes from the post-Enlightenment habit of seeing "philosophy" , as opposed to "theology," as something positive in itself. In Chapter 14 V. makes a good observation that "philosophy" and "theology" in ancient and medieval thought are simply two systems that can be coherent in themselves but differ fundamentally as far as their premises are concerned. Using the terminology of contemporary hermeneutical-postcritical analysis, one could say that both disciplines are intratextual systems, with their own internal logic but with different "starting points," opened to a conversation ad extra to various degrees. The classification "intratextual system" based on a solid theoretical foundation in the hermeneutical-postcritical tradition would eliminate the unnecessary dichotomy in ancient and medieval thought. Indeed, it is difficult to see why some of Plato's, Aristotle's or Stoic texts should be classified as "philosophy," not to mention those of Plotinus and Proclus that are often clearly "theology." As a whole, V.'s verdict is that Scotus has his own coherent system of thought based on contingency, as opposed to the "necessitarianism" of ancient philosophers. As for the role of "philosophy," V.'s analysis of recent scholarship shows that "medieval philosophy" is often understood as the logical tools in the service of theology: the interpretation that explains the recent interest in the fourteenth-century thought where those tools were best developed.The book in general is quite readable, despite occasional infelicities in the English and some typos. V. employs a variety of styles, from purely scholarly, which includes a straightforward exposition of relevant texts, with some analysis of the diachronic development of issues, to more literary, ornate and emotional. Similarly varied is his presentation of issues: from dry exposition to creating prolonged "mystery plots" that lead to "discoveries." Unfortunately there is also some unevenness in the text flow: from very smooth to abrupt transitions from one statement to another .Although the book will definitely benefit a variety of readers, the exact readership is difficult to pinpoint. Some sections, such as the extended discussion of distinctions and relations in the section on logic, presuppose a very basic audience; often much of the material from previous sections is repeated . Yet other sections presuppose a rather sophisticated reader who is familiar with the context of the discussion and is able not only to follow but also anticipate the author's train of thought.PJDS provides an excellent coverage of Scotus's work, with one notable exception: the Reportatio tradition. Even though the Wolter/Bychkov edition-translation of Rep. I-A appeared perhaps.. (shrink)

The phrase combining the terms κάλλ0ς and ἀπoρρoή to my knowledge does not occur anywhere else in the Greek Corpus in the context of contemplating a beautiful beloved. Achilles Tatius (second centurya.d.) therefore must be making an allusion to Plato. This can hardly come as a surprise considering thatPhaedr.251, which describes the influence of the appearance of beauty on the soul of the lover, is one of the most famous and widely known Platonic passages. However, the context within which these (...) two allusions to Plato are introduced deserves attention. Adding a certain learned touch to the description of erotic episodes in his novel, Achilles Tatius presents a ‘scientific’ explanation of the mechanism of visual perception. The consistency of both accounts suggests that he draws on some scholarly theory of vision which was part of his general educational background. But, unlike the above mentioned allusions, this theory is hardly Platonic. (shrink)

The phrase combining the terms κάλλ0ς and ἀπoρρoή to my knowledge does not occur anywhere else in the Greek Corpus in the context of contemplating a beautiful beloved. Achilles Tatius therefore must be making an allusion to Plato. This can hardly come as a surprise considering that Phaedr. 251, which describes the influence of the appearance of beauty on the soul of the lover, is one of the most famous and widely known Platonic passages. However, the context within which these (...) two allusions to Plato are introduced deserves attention. Adding a certain learned touch to the description of erotic episodes in his novel, Achilles Tatius presents a ‘scientific’ explanation of the mechanism of visual perception. The consistency of both accounts suggests that he draws on some scholarly theory of vision which was part of his general educational background. But, unlike the above mentioned allusions, this theory is hardly Platonic. (shrink)

The phrase combining the terms κάλλ0ς and ἀπoρρoή to my knowledge does not occur anywhere else in the Greek Corpus in the context of contemplating a beautiful beloved. Achilles Tatius (second centurya.d.) therefore must be making an allusion to Plato. This can hardly come as a surprise considering thatPhaedr.251, which describes the influence of the appearance of beauty on the soul of the lover, is one of the most famous and widely known Platonic passages. However, the context within which these (...) two allusions to Plato are introduced deserves attention. Adding a certain learned touch to the description of erotic episodes in his novel, Achilles Tatius presents a ‘scientific’ explanation of the mechanism of visual perception. The consistency of both accounts suggests that he draws on some scholarly theory of vision which was part of his general educational background. But, unlike the above mentioned allusions, this theory is hardly Platonic. (shrink)

A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology presents for the first time in English key passages from the Summa Halensis, one of the first major installments in the summa genre for which scholasticism became famous. This systematic work of philosophy and theology was collaboratively written mostly between 1236 and 1245 by the founding members of the Franciscan school, such as Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle, who worked at the recently founded University of Paris. Modern scholarship has often dismissed (...) this early Franciscan intellectual tradition as unoriginal, merely systematizing the Augustinian tradition in light of the rediscovery of Aristotle, paving the way for truly revolutionary figures like John Duns Scotus. But as the selections in this reader show, it was this earlier generation that initiated this break with precedent. The compilers of the Summa Halensis first articulated many positions that eventually become closely associated with the Franciscan tradition on issues like the nature of God, the proof for God’s existence, free will, the transcendentals, and Christology. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the ways in which medieval thinkers employed philosophical concepts in a theological context as well as the evolution of Franciscan thought and its legacy to modernity. A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology is available from the publisher on an open-access basis. (shrink)

One of the important theological issues for ancient and medieval thought was to account for the existence of evil. Augustine provided an aesthetic explanation: evil exists for contrast, to let the good stand out more prominently. Thus, just as a painting that uses both dark and bright colors, the universe that contains both good and evil is beautiful as a whole. The argument was debated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Alexander of Hales, as well as the Franciscan tradition in (...) general, strongly supported the Augustinian position. The article discusses a previously unknown debate between Albert the Great and Bonaventure about this issue and suggests that Bonaventure is defending his fellow-Franciscan Alexander. (shrink)

R. Pasnau once commented that the present-day academic area of cognitive theory suits medieval thought better than epistemology. The comment seems to the point, and the focus of R. Cross’s book is thus appropriately placed. Scotus’s theory of cognition is worth a new treatment both because Scotus represents a new stage in medieval cognitive theory and because his positions are “sometimes rather fluid” and “not always as clear”. This lack of clarity extends to the most important subject in this book, (...) such as various aspects of the issue of intentionality, where Scotus’s discussion is... (shrink)

This anthology of philosophical texts by Greek and Roman authors brings together works from the late fifth century BC to the sixth century AD that comment on major aesthetic issues such as the perception of beauty and harmony in music and the visual arts, structure and style in literature, and aesthetic judgement. It includes important texts by Plato and Aristotle on the status and the role of the arts in society and in education, and Longinus' reflections on the sublime in (...) literature, in addition to less well-known writings by Philodemus, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, Augustine and Proclus. Most of the texts have been newly translated for this volume, and some are available in English for the first time. A detailed introduction traces the development of classical aesthetics from its roots in Platonism and Aristotelianism to its ultimate form in late Antiquity. (shrink)

Intentionality, mental representation, sensory perception and its reliability, sensory illusions, and the concomitant issue of epistemological skepticism are becoming an important cluster of related topics in research on medieval cognitive psychology. It is no wonder, because these topics are much more relevant to present-day discussions of cognition and sensory perception, as many of these issues remain unexplained to this date, and therefore any observations in these areas could still be of interest, while many other topics traditionally discussed in studies on (...) medieval philosophy have only historical value and gradually fade into oblivion. Although the two publications included in this review are not... (shrink)

Franciscan thought in the 1300's, starting with Duns Scotus, is quite a revolution in terms of a shift to relying on sensory and phenomenal experience in the construction of cognitive theories.1 However, we do not yet understand the full extent of its convergence with modern and contemporary thought. In what follows, we intend to advance this understanding. The experiential tendency in early fourteenth-century thought is undermined by a Cartesian-style doubt about the reliability of sensory perception and phenomenal experience that stems (...) from the 63rd proposition of the Condemnations of 1277, which rejects the thesis that "God cannot produce the effect of a secondary cause without the secondary cause itself":2 a... (shrink)

The issue of why God, the Trinity and Christ in Christianity can be called "beautiful" has been muddled in literature on theological aesthetics. John Duns Scotus’s detailed discussion of relations within the Trinity helps resolve this issue. The Trinity can be called "beautiful" in at least three senses, depending on whether one considers Trinitarian relations at all, whether one looks at the relation of equality, or whether one analyzes relations of origin.

This article is a book review. I provide a detailed summary and critical assessment of the anthology by Bychkov and Sheppard.

A structure (M, $ ,...) is called quasi-o-minimal if in any structure elementarily equivalent to it the definable subsets are exactly the Boolean combinations of 0-definable subsets and intervals. We give a series of natural examples of quasi-o-minimal structures which are not o-minimal; one of them is the ordered group of integers. We develop a technique to investigate quasi-o-minimality and use it to study quasi-o-minimal ordered groups (possibly with extra structure). Main results: any quasi-o-minimal ordered group is abelian; any quasi-o-minimal (...) ordered ring is a real closed field, or has zero multiplication; every quasi-o-minimal divisible ordered group is o-minimal; every quasi-o-minimal archimedian densely ordered group is divisible. We show that a counterpart of quasi-o-minimality in stability theory is the notion of theory of U-rank 1. (shrink)

Modern Ukraine is a post-colonial, post-totalitarian state in which decolonization, decommunization, and de-Russification have not yet been fully implemented. This article sets itself the goal of reviewing the agenda of the processes of civilizational transit of Ukraine and developing theoretically grounded vectors of the said process. The important fact that the current stage of development of the “worldview gravity” of Ukrainian society is characterized by an eclectic system of stereotypes is also of significant importance: here coexist both old stereotypes of (...) consciousness and behavior, which have largely ceased to fulfill their functions, and new ones that are unstable and ambiguous. The series of ideas regarding the Ukrainian civilizational choice was already discovered in a monograph, “Civilizational crossroads of modern society,” and presented for Ukrainian readers a few years ago. The current article offers a revision of the previously presented ideas for the international audience of the journal readers, taking into account the current Ukrainian sociocultural situation, at the center of which are the challenges produced by the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The policy of new realism can become an effective tool for social modernization. The given word combination is not accidental: the realism of this type of politics insists on the need for the adequate perception of reality in all its essential aspects, and the novelty emphasizes the need to operate not with the laws and features of the socio-political status quo “in general,” but taking into account the latest dynamics, trends, threats, and problematic challenges. The people and the country need not only (and sometimes not so much) a thorough understanding of their cultural-civilizational, geopolitical, and economic-economic prospects but an indomitable character that guarantees the realization of their potential in spite of anything and against anything. On the difficult path of establishing a civilizational choice, Ukrainians will need not only the awareness of the incomplete state of political modernization, the limited, post-totalitarian (post-colonial, etc.) status, but also to work at the individual level to accelerate evolutionary processes. These processes can catalyze political decisions, not at the declarative level but at the practical level, to fill the steps for the approval of the civilizational choice with content. Step-by-step changes in favor of a new worldview horizon will require significant changes at the personal level through the rejection of destructive post-colonial (post-totalitarian, etc.) narratives in social practice in favor of the development of Ukrainian national identity, which will be preceded by the rational assimilation of the perspectives of civilizational choice, which is a fruitful combination of the European civilizational project and heritage of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

У статті висвітлюються та досліджуються процеси становлення й розвитку законодавства про створення й діяльність політичних партій у сучасній Україні. Автор аналізує чинне законодавство України та формулює необхідність його вдосконалення, зауважуючи, що головною запорукою успіху законотворчої діяльності держави в царині розбудови законодавства щодо політичних партій є активна участь громадян у суспільно-політичному житті країни, залучення громадськості до обговорення стану й перспектив розвитку законодавства, принаймні того, що безпосередньо регулює реалізацію громадянських прав і свобод.

Statistical physics cannot explain why a thermodynamic arrow of time exists, unless one postulates very special and unnatural initial conditions. Yet, we argue that statistical physics can explain why the thermodynamic arrow of time is universal, i.e., why the arrow points in the same direction everywhere. Namely, if two subsystems have opposite arrow-directions at a particular time, the interaction between them makes the configuration statistically unstable and causes a decay towards a system with a universal direction of the arrow of (...) time. We present general qualitative arguments for that claim and support them by a detailed analysis of a toy model based on the baker’s map. (shrink)

In many films, story is presented in an order different from chronological. Deviations from the chronological order in a narrative are called anachronies. Narratological theory and the evidence from psychological experiments indicate that anachronies allow stories to be more interesting, as the non-chronological order evokes curiosity in viewers. In this paper we investigate the historical dynamics in the use of anachronies in film. Particularly, we follow the cultural attraction theory that suggests that, given certain conditions, cultural evolution should conform to (...) our cognitive preferences. We study this on a corpus of 80 most popular mystery films released in 1970–2009. We observe that anachronies have become used more frequently, and in a greater proportion of films. We also find that films that made substantial use of anachronies, on average, distributed the anachronies evenly along film length, while the films that made little use of anachronies placed them near the beginning and end. We argue that this can reflect a functional difference between these two types of using anachronies. The paper adds further support to the argument that popular culture may be influenced to a significant degree by our cognitive biases. (shrink)

Filtration combustion is described by Laplacian growth without surface tension. These equations have elegant analytical solutions that replace the complex integro-differential motion equations by simple differential equations of pole motion in a complex plane. The main problem with such a solution is the existence of finite time singularities. To prevent such singularities, nonzero surface tension is usually used. However, nonzero surface tension does not exist in filtration combustion, and this destroys the analytical solutions. However, a more elegant approach exists for (...) solving the problem. First, we can introduce a small amount of pole noise to the system. Second, for regularisation of the problem, we throw out all new poles that can produce a finite time singularity. It can be strictly proved that the asymptotic solution for such a system is a single finger. Moreover, the qualitative consideration demonstrates that a finger with 1 2 of the channel width is statistically stable. Therefore, all properties of such a solution are exactly the same as those of the solution with nonzero surface tension under numerical noise. The solution of the ST problem without surface tension is similar to the solution for the equation of cellular flames in the case of the combustion of gas mixtures. (shrink)

This article is dedicated to Nikolai O. Lossky’s intuitivism and personalism and their significance in the context of Russian philosophy. The author demonstrates how Lossky’s study of Russian philosophy influenced his work and allowed him to take a second look at a number of philosophical issues, indicating ways to develop them further. As a result of his research, Lossky discovered ideas close to his own in the works of various other Russian philosophers. Lossky became especially interested in two authors, Vladimir (...) S. Solovyov and Fyodor M. Dostoevsky. He created interpretations that examined Solovyov’s philosophy and Dostoevsky’s works from the positions of intuitivism and personalism. The study of Russian thought Lossky undertook in his book History of Russian Philosophy gave him a strong impetus for developing his own philosophical views, which were aimed at bringing philosophy and religion into closer proximity. (shrink)

This article addresses the famous 1910 debate between Vladimir F. Ern and Semyon L. Frank centered around the problem of identifying the distinguishing features of Russian philosophy. The debate was a continuation of Ern’s debates with Russian philosophers associated with the international journal Logos (Sergei I. Hessen, Fyodor A. Stepun, Boris V. Yakovenko, and others). The author shows that Ern’s understanding of an original Russian philosophy is organically related to his overall philosophical doctrine. As for Frank, his views during the (...) 1910s on the distinguishing features of Russian philosophy were different in nature. It is worth noting that in the 1920s articles written during his émigré period, Frank’s views on the distinguishing features of Russian philosophy undergo a decisive change. Frank’s new ideas about Russian philosophy turn out to be extremely close to those of his late opponent, both on the whole and in the details. At the same time, Frank’s overall philosophical views do not undergo as dramatic a change and develop in a fully evolutionary mode. The author attempts to identify the reason for these changes. (shrink)

The Crimea Conference is by all means an extremely complex historical event. Any attempt to estimate its role and significance without analyzing its ethical components would unavoidably result in unduly simplifying the historical reality of the time, as well as in forming erroneous assumptions that would necessarily be used in the analysis of the causes of Cold War. A thorough examination will show that as far as the ‘ethical’ issues are concerned, there are significant developments with regard to general methodology, (...) as well as its application to the sources. Generations of historians who have addressed the issue of Yalta Conference, although they have not been able to form a scientific, distinct ‘ethical’ tradition so far, have developed all the necessary prerequisites for its establishment. This is evident in the possibility of segmenting the issue in two parts on the one hand, and on the other in the availability of sufficient sources, structured databases, and selected outstanding works. Still, there are no studies about the Yalta Conference so far that address exclusively ethical issues concerning ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ ‘morality,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘honor.’ Although historiographical approaches are to a large extent dependent upon ethical viewpoints, in the case of Yalta agreements so far there have been no techniques available, so as to connect historical accounts with ideology, and historical facts with their philosophical background. In a sense, the situation is quite the same as it is with the study of prehistory: although there is an abundance of data and facts that can be primarily processed, there are no methodological guidelines, nor any devices to classify and explain them. This is also typical for any question raised about the ethics of the Yalta agreements in February 1945. (shrink)

This article presents a study of coping behavior regarding Orthodox religious students in Russia. The paper analyzes the investigation results concerning psychological features of modern Orthodox students from two universities in Russia. The data collection methods are: Folkman and Lazarus’s coping-test, Smirnov’s psychometric techniques "Questionnaire of religious activity" and Shcherbatykh’s "Test for revealing of the level of individual religiosity". The study suggests that coping behavior is connected with the level of religiosity.

For any countable transitive complete theory T with infinite models and the finite model property, we construct a minimal structure M such that the theory of M is small if and only if T is small, and is λ-stable if and only if T is λ-stable. This gives a series of new examples of minimal structures.