Popper’s popular critics – Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos – replace his older, Wittgenstein-style critics, now defunct. His new critics played with the idea of criticism as beneficial, in vain search of variants of these that could better appeal to the public. Some of their criticism of Popper is valid but marginal for the dispute about rationality. He was Fallibilist; they hedged about it. He viewed learning from experience as learning from error; they were unclear about it. His view resembles Freud’s (...) reality principle; they hedged about this too, as they defended the stupid idea of constructive criticism. He stressed his criticism of the view of science as inductive; they endorsed it. They differed from him significantly regarding their intended readers: he had addressed those who readily admit criticism and his popular critics addressed those who find it hard to admit openly that criticism upsets them somewhat. Current popular criticism of Popper’s ideas shows yet again the logical relation between the critical attitude and liberalism: liberalism without critically mindedness is permissible, scarcely the other way around. Hence, we better read the objection that Popper’s popular critics have launched against him not as criticism proper, but as somewhat reasonable protest against his use of the highest standards in his relentless advocacy of liberalism and of criticism in his valuation of science and of democracy as joint. (shrink)

The article shows that Kuhn's concept of incommensurability emphasizes mainly the objective dimension of communication. To the thesis about the incommensurability of the meanings of scientific concepts in competing paradigms, we oppose the idea of a three-dimensional space of communicative dimensions. We supplement the objective dimension of communication, within which the environmental evolutionary selection of the best knowledge is carried out, with equal social and temporal horizons.

This reply draws attention to the importance of taking into account the results of the study of the phenomenon of reflexivity in scientific knowledge, which have been obtained in the domestic philosophical and methodological tradition. We believe that taking this kind of results into account could enrich the analysis of the strong programme in the STS. We touch the origins of reflexive tendencies, the reflexive and non-reflexive in scientific knowledge, personal and transpersonal forms, the types and levels of reflexion in (...) science, as well as denote the mechanisms that allows taking an external position in relation to the subject about which reflexive procedures are carried out. (shrink)

Inspired by the work of Kuhn, we might want to develop an account of science that explains how it is that while much of science involves the investigation of a world as articulated by a paradigm, the scientist is nevertheless an observer and rational interpreter of a mind-independent world that does not change its character over time. Kuhn himself recognizes that there is a challenge here that he does not know how to meet. I argue that progress can be made (...) on this challenge by carefully examining and criticizing Kuhn’s account of deliberation in science. Inspired by certain views about Gestalt psychology and examples such as the duck/rabbit picture, Kuhn takes deliberation in science to be a consequence of seeing things a certain way, rather than rational deliberation in science making new ways of seeing things possible. I argue that the most serious problems of Kuhn’s view of science stem from this fact, and that we can free ourselves from these problems by not following Kuhn here. In particular, I argue using material from Hanson and Peirce that we should think of the revolutionary scientist as being revolutionary not merely in virtue of seeing things in a new way, but rather for showing – typically through painstaking deliberation – that certain conjectures connected with new ways of seeing the world are reasonable This makes coming to see the world differently a deliberative process that is importantly unlike seeing a rabbit/duck picture differently. Such a way of thinking allows us to view the articulation of a new paradigm as a deliberative process that does not take some paradigm or other for granted, but rather as a deliberative process that interrogates existing orthodoxy for its suitability to survive into the next paradigm. The result is a view of science that maintains much of what is important to Kuhn, but departs from him where his view is least convincing. (shrink)

T. Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions has repeatedly been the subject of criticism. It is important to note that Kuhn pays very limited attention to the phenomenon of the scientific revolution itself, comparing the revolution either with a religious conversion or with a gestalt switch. Such comparisons, however, are very superficial. This paper outlines a new understanding of the scientific revolution as a result of the resonance of the intellectual trends of the early modern period. It was the quasi-simultaneous action (...) of various factors that led to revolutionary changes in natural philosophy, which, in turn, gave rise to the actual scientific revolution. In addition, the article shows that the Copernican Revolution cannot be described within the model of scientific revolution developed by T. Kuhn. Ptolemy’s theory was mathematically constructed so that it could not make inaccurate predictions of planetary motion, because – as we are now clear – the function characterizing the trajectory of planetary motion was actually represented as a Fourier series. The Copernican revolution was not a Kuhn-type scientific revolution, nor was it caused by the empirical failures of Ptolemaic astronomy. Events unfolded according to a different scheme. Copernicus set out to carry out the principle of the uniform circular motion of the planets more consistently than had been done in Ptolemy’s theory, at the same time presenting to this theory those requirements of an aesthetic and methodological order, which the cognitively fragmented system of Ptolemy, for all its flexibility, could not satisfy and, by the conditions of its creation, could not satisfy. In addition, the article shows that Copernicus, in constructing his heliocentric theory, was essentially seeking answers to the challenges that Alberti’s artificial perspective and Nicholas of Cusa’s theological speculation posed to the visual experience in the sixteenth century. (shrink)

In One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse followed Husserl in arguing that modern natural science translates concepts and practices from the Lebenswelt, the everyday lifeworld. Marcuse claimed that a socialist revolution would change that life-world and transform natural science. He anticipated a new concept of reason that would incorporate potentialities experienced in the lifeworld. Teleological aspects of everyday experience would be “materialized” by science. Marcuse’s critique of social science employs a similar concept of translation. The notion that changes in the lifeworld would (...) enable the social sciences to incorporate potentialities is more plausible than these speculations about a successor natural science. But Marcuse’s assumption that such changes would occur after a socialist revolution has been overtaken by the actual development of social movements challenging the socially embedded technosciences. The reciprocal interaction between science and society in the struggle for a liveable world is now a present phenomenon, no longer a distant revolutionary prospect. (shrink)

Kuhn’s talk of “world change through revolutions” has mostly been met with perplexity. What is it really that Kuhn wants to express in this strange way? I will first review what Kuhn exactly says on this topic. Next, I show that the world change talk is at least not inconsistent and has some initial plausibility. Then I will discuss whether “world change through revolutions” should be replaced by “change of world view”. This will show that “world change through revolutions” is (...) motivated by a strictly non-presentist historiographic stance. However, Kuhn’s intended message can also be expressed in a philosophically much less provocative way. (shrink)

The article explores the contemporary philosophy of science in the context of the idea of eternal return. The problematization of the intellectual field “after postpositivism” runs through the renewed questions “what?”, “how?”, “who?” and “for what?” of scientific research. This questioning is a search for bearings in the historical space and time that determines “after what?” or “back to whom?” the thinking about science unfolds. Such a reflexive appeal to the origins leads to the ideas of the philosophy of science (...) of the first half of the twentieth century. It is then that the main differences within the research of science were formed: between sociological and methodological approaches, between philosophy and disciplines that study science, between the goals of forming a worldview and managing science. The philosophy of science “after postpositivism” expresses itself in the controversial interpretation of the subject matter and method of the study of science, in the division of labor between disciplines and approaches that lose the possibility of constructive interaction and reach the point of “science wars”. In conclusion, it is argued that philosophy as the "hard core” of scientific research, a historical appeal to the origins of scientific activity and the interpretation of the scientific revolution as a renewal of tradition can make such modernity valuable for return. (shrink)

The citation index of Thomas Kuhn’s work may strike any imagination. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is undoubtedly a twentieth-century record-breaker in the field of philosophy of science in terms of such a scientometric parameter. But such fame has been bitter in many ways and placed a heavy burden on the author. For several decades he has been the target of the harshest and most severe criticism. Often the concept of “normal science” and the “scientific revolution” as a “Gestalt switch” (...) was declared ridiculous and absurd. The paper analyses three lines of criticism of Kuhn’s concept: the first came from practicing scientists, the second from specialists in the philosophy of science, and the third from the field of social epistemology. Reproaches about the political bias of Kuhn’s concept were taken to extremes, since his views were widely popular. In our opinion, Kuhn should be called a victim of spontaneous hypercriticism. This circumstance did not allow him to improve the original model of scientific revolutions. In this respect, replacing the concept of “paradigm” with the concept of “disciplinary matrix” was a step backwards, not forwards. However, it is impossible to deny that in the field of the historiography of science, he acted as a real reformer. With the courage of Don Quixote, he defended the rights of historical reconstruction, the preservation of the historical past of science, which should not be completely assimilated within the framework of the modern system of knowledge. His motto was – “penetrate the minds of other people who lived in the past.” He boldly argued that in the process of historical development, science changes not only ideas about the object of knowledge, but also the reference of its ideas and concepts. Such a formulation of the question has not yet been fully reflected in modern epistemological concepts. (shrink)

In the early 1960s, American philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn contributed to a “crisis of rationality” with his hypothesis that science develops by means of paradigm shifts. He challenged the positivist concept of cumulative and continuous scientific progress. According to Kuhn, the relation between two succeeding scientific traditions ‘separated by a scientific revolution’ is characterized by conceptual incommensurability that constrains the interpretation of science as a cumulative, steadily progressing enterprise. Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy was heavily criticized by German-American biologist Ernst Mayr (...) as unapplicable to the history of biology. Mayr, one of the most outstanding evolutionary biologists of the 20th century and a “co-architect” of the so-called Modern Synthesis (contemporary Darwinism), published extensively on the history and philosophy of biology as he thought that theoretical biology cannot progress without proper philosophy of science. Being convinced of the progressive development of Darwinism, Mayr pointed out that Kuhn’s concept of scientific revolutions does not reflect conceptual changes in evolutionary biology. Here we summarize Mayr’s critiques of Kuhn and, based on our own research, take Mayr’s side in the controversy between two great thinkers. (shrink)

The response to the article by O.E. Stolyarova the author shows why the proposed justification for the place of philosophy in the structure of science and technology studies does not work well in relation to the tasks of interdisciplinary communication. It is argued that it is more effective to refer to historical examples and analyze them than to use a purely theoretical explanation of why these examples arise. It is pointed out that, despite the results of postpositivist research of science, (...) the scientific community continues to rely on corporate “common sense”, in which science is seen as positive knowledge and on this basis is opposed to philosophy as a speculative discipline. The necessity of avoiding these ideas in the context of science policy tasks, primarily among scientific managers from among the scientists themselves, is substantiated. (shrink)

It is argued that O.E. Stoliarova’s analysis of the STS programs leads her to a conclusion that in them the principle of reflexivity is not carried out though this contradicts the orientation of these programs on a self-reflection of the scientific bases. Hence, a problem arises: whether we will apply the principle of empiricism to justification of metascientific reasonings. This, in turn, leads to a problem of universality of philosophy as a platform for metascientific criticism. The formulation and the solution (...) of such a problem assume the possibility of creation of metaphilosophical systems radicalizing the principle of reflexivity before its application to philosophy. Thereby the philosophy of science appears in the field of immanent paradoxes. An exit from similar paradoxes demands new prospect of philosophical researches. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to clarify the importance of questions about the nature of reality for understanding the basic ideas of Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science. For Kuhn, the topic of reality is not "too metaphysical" and therefore undesirable, as for the neo-positivists, although in a certain sense it is “premature” and will emerge later in the discussions of realists and anti-realists in full measure. The ontological meaning of the problem of the relationship between science and reality appears (...) in Kuhn’s works as a side topic of his epistemological research. The first part of the paper analyzes Kuhn’s statements about reality and determines his ontological position; the second part considers how the problematic of reality was clarified in his polemic with his critics, who either, like K. Hempel, turn Kuhn to clarify some points of his ideas about reality, or, like M. Masterman, give their interpretation of his ideas, with which he agrees. The third part of the paper shows how Kuhn’s anti-realism is reflected in his epistemological and methodological understanding of objectivity and truth in science. The conclusion of the paper is that Kuhn’s epistemological skepticism is becoming increasingly evident to himself and his critics, and his anti-realist ontological position becomes apparent against this background. (shrink)

The paper deals with Kuhn’s and Lakatos’s ideas related to the so-called “historical turn” and its application to the philosophy of mathematics. In the first part the meaning of the term “postpositivism” is specified. If we lack such a specification we can hardly discuss the philosophy of science that comes “after postpositivism”. With this end in view, the metaphor of “generations” in the philosophy of science is used. It is proposed that we restrict the use of the term “post-positivism” to (...) two and only two philosophical “generations”: the one to which Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend belong, and the previous “generation” to which Wittgenstein, Polanyi, Popper and Quine belong. From this point of view, Bloor, Latour, Pickering, Daston and Galison belong to the “third generation” which represents the philosophy of science “after post-positivism”. The characteristic feature of post-positivism is the combination of decisive impact of logical positivism and its severe criticism. This combination inevitably makes post-positivism a transitional form in the philosophy of science. In the second part the contribution of the “big four” of post-positivist philosophers to the radical change in the philosophy of mathematics in the second half of the 20th century is analyzed. Primarily, they shifted philosophical interest from the logical analysis of formal systems to the historical dynamics of informal mathematics. They also reconsidered the sharp opposition between mathematics and the physical sciences. However, the transitional character of their philosophy manifests itself both in their treatment of mathematics and their way of understanding history. On the one hand, their “heritage” is ambiguous, on the other hand, it opens new perspectives. Neither Kuhn, nor Lakatos, have eliminated completely the methodological barrier positing the fundamental heterogeneity of mathematics and natural science. Neither Lakatos, nor Kuhn, adhered to the viewpoint of relentless historicism. Nevertheless, it is their work that has made these options open for today’s historians and philosophers of science, even for philosophers of mathematics. (shrink)

The author replies and comments on the critical remarks and ideas expressed by her opponents concerning the principle of reflexivity and its philosophical realization. The general idea of the opponents that philosophical reflection, even if addressed to itself, cannot ignore the results of empirical sciences, is highlighted.

The article discusses the methodological principle of reflexivity as formulated within the strong program of the sociology of scientific knowledge. The applicability of this principle in science and technology studies is analyzed from empirical and theoretical points of view. The principle of reflexivity expresses the requirement of scientific universalism: it forbids the exclusion of one’s own cognitive activity and its results from the world totality of objectively observable things and processes, in this case – beliefs. In D. Bloor’s imperative formulation, (...) the principle prescribes applying the explanatory methodology of the strong program in relation to the strong program’s own fundamental theoretical and methodological concepts. The implementation of this principle in STS faces practical problems and theoretical paradoxes. In line with the methodology of the strong program, the author asks the question about the social conditions of the failure of the principle of reflexivity. The author shows that empirically cognizable social conditions for the realization of the principle of reflexivity can be fulfilled. However, their fulfillment does not lead to reflexive work, which presupposes an external position of the one who explains in relation to what is explained. In accordance with the postpositivist concept of the underdetermination of theory by facts, the external position is achieved through the speculative transition from the factual given to the hypothesis explaining this given. The author shows that the external position taken by internal critics of the STS research community becomes the position of speculative philosophy. (shrink)

The article is a reply to Ilya T. Kasavin’s “Creativity as a social phenomenon” and is devoted to the phenomenon of the scientific precariat. A systematic analysis of the relations between the scientific precariat and the academic community as a dialectical opposition of the individual and the collective is undertaken. The method of critical analysis is aimed at rethinking the stable ideas that have developed in science about the collectivity of scientific work. The concepts of labor and employment in science (...) are considered. It is concluded that the global development of digital technologies has led to the disappearance of the boundaries between physical and intellectual labor, against which there is an elevation of creative activity. The availability of information on the Internet, opening up incredible opportunities for research, destroys the monopoly of professional scientific communities on the possession of scientific knowledge. Scientific precarious loudly declare themselves in the public space, demonstrating the boldness and unusual nature of the ideas expressed. Inspired seekers of scientific truth embark on a free voyage through the vastness of the unknown. Traditional scientific communications, while retaining their significance, are enriched with new, non-standard ideas of precarious scientists who, ignoring rules and hierarchies, bring the creative spirit of freedom into modern science. However, the activities of such scientists may have an ambiguous assessment: a precarious scientist completely loses touch with the existing methods and approaches of classical science, and flight from work standards instead of expanding the horizons of scientific creativity turns into new problems caused by “multi-task” and instability of the labor activity of a “free” scientist. Despite the fact that in the conditions of the development of modern society and technology, the opposition of the pair of individual and collective is leveled, many scientists need common structures that determine the development of science, which at the present stage of the development of scientific knowledge are rather represented not by a social organization, but by an intellectual, linguistic and methodological unity focused on the creative development of the world. (shrink)

The article analyzes an important concept of contemporary virtue epistemology – the concept of intellectual vice, that is a trait of intellectual character that hinders responsible research. The purpose of this article is to formulate a hypothesis that, today, in the modern culture, a significant part of epistemic vices are implicit attitudes. The first part of the article explores the concept of implicit attitude, examines examples of implicit attitudes that have become widespread in the research literature: implicit sexism and racism. (...) The second part of the article shows that in cases of implicitly biased behavior there is a manifestation of epistemic vice, and that the “motivational” theory based on Zagzebski’s ideas cannot explain the manifestation of intellectual vice in cases of implicit bias. In the third section of the article, it is demonstrated that implicit attitudes can be traits of the agent’s character : they can be acquired, rooted in the personality, and can be corrected. The fourth paragraph of the article analyses the conditions under which intellectual vices can be explicit attitudes. It is possible if the agent is a diabolical being, has egoistic vices, or is irrational. In the final section, it is shown that the spread of critical thinking in modern society should lead to the transition of intellectual vices from explicit attitudes to implicit ones. The conclusion is made about the theoretical and practical significance of the hypothesis under discussion. From a theoretical point of view, it allows us to explain why intellectual vices are widespread and difficult to eradicate, to place vices as character traits between the local and global levels, to apply to the concept of epistemic vice all the research concerning implicit attitudes, to develop a theory of epistemic responsibility. In practical terms, this hypothesis can be used to analyze the manifestations of implicit vices in various spheres. (shrink)

The article discusses the problems of constructing a scientific picture of the world in a technogenic civilization at the stage of its globalization. The interdependence of science, technology and society generates a number of issues of a socio-humanitarian and, in particular, ideological nature. Interdisciplinary forms of organization of sciences contribute to the development of borderline methodologies. These methodologies integrate the achievements and problems of specific disciplines into a certain overall picture. The ambitions of this worldview include space, planetary nature with (...) all geo – shells, as well as the biosphere, technosphere, sociosphere, anthroposphere. In the course of communicative interactions, scientists have developed methodological principles for constructing a picture of the world. These principles claim to be universal: integrity, consistency, coherence, structurality, evolution/involution, complexity, self-organization, human dimension. However, epistemic and communicative difficulties accompany the construction of a general scientific picture of the world. There are methodological, experimental, linguistic, cognitive barriers between disciplines. Also, the unevenness of their development is strong. Competition between disciplines and reductionist programs are often caused by social reasons – politicization, ideologization and commercialization of big science. Philosophy seeks to connect the idea of a scientific picture of the world with a change in self-consciousness and a person’s place in the world. The prospect of intellectual synthesis fluctuates between the transdisciplinary form of organization of collective scientific thinking and the ideological imperialism of individual philosophical and scientific programs. (shrink)

The article critically examines the project of the Hong Kong philosopher Yuk Hui to create organological and cosmotechnical epistemology. To open up the prospect of a “new epistemology” of this kind, Hui carries out a historical and rational reconstruction of the 250-year movement of European thought – from German idealism to second-order cybernetics. In all these theories and approaches, he reveals the key role of the recursive-contingent ligament. But what has happened in recent decades that prompted the author to reassemble (...) Wiener’s non-trivial cybernetic machines and propose a cosmotechnical strategy for moving towards a “new epistemology”? How justified is it that, in constructing his axiocosmotechnics, he turns to the philosophy of the East, ancient and modern? The author of the article attempts to provide answers to these and other questions. (shrink)

The philosophical understanding of scientific creativity cannot be limited to the analysis of cognitive abilities or ways of solving problems. It is always anthropologically-laden, based on a historically specific image image of a human being that acquires knowledge. The problem of creativity also articulates a well-known paradox of novelty: the new does not arise from the old, since it is significantly different from it, but it cannot arise from nothing, because then it remains incomprehensible. Paul Feyerabend criticizes such a “mysterianic” (...) concept of scientific creativity, which emphasizes its emergent character, i.e. its suddenness and inexplicability. The distance between subject and object, man and nature, knowledge and reality in this case remains insurmountable. To solve this problem, it is necessary to place creativity in the space between the uniqueness of the creative personality and the mechanisms of social recognition. This, in turn, requires rethinking of the ontological content of creativity, as well as the concept of “labor” with reference to its treatment by Karl Marx’ rethinking of it as the production of not only material goods, but also of the person itself. Moreover, creativity does not just form a person: it is a way of cultivating the entire social space. An unexpected move is provided by an appeal to a new social group – the precariat, which in science gives a lesson in openness to novelty and theoretical freedom. As a result, a deeper understanding of the social base of creativity arises, and a new strategy for the interaction of the scientific community with extra-paradigm groups and marginal individuals is being built. (shrink)

This article is a part of the discussion of Ilya Kasavin’s article “Creativity as a social phenomenon” and is devoted to the analysis of creativity in the era of digitalization. The author discusses creativity in computer programs and the actions of assistant robots. They can be creative because they are able to find new solutions to various problems. The Go program used new strategies that human players had never played before; another program predicted the crystal structure of various substances that (...) had not yet been studied experimentally. The concept of implicit knowledge is used to answer the question about the specifics of creativity. H. Collins singled out three types of tacit knowledge: relative, somatic and collective. The first is associated with the acquirement of various procedures – like cooking, the second – various skills related to body control, such as swimming or cycling, the third – social and cultural rules. Only the third type of tacit knowledge is associated with creativity. Programs and assistant robots can master relative and somatic implicit knowledge. They are not able to work with collective implicit knowledge. Creativity cannot be digitized. At the same time, digitalization forms important social prerequisites for the development of creativity. Currently, a new social group is being formed – the precariat. This is a marginal group; its representatives are not very firmly included in social structures. It is possible to single out the scientific precariat. With the help of digital technologies, it forms new ways, mechanisms, strategies and tools for solving various problems, form new ideas that expand our collective tacit knowledge. (shrink)

Epistemic authority, according to L. Zagzebski’s theory, is essentially based on deliberative or first-personal reasons, which originate from epistemic admiration. In what follows, I shortly reconstruct her theory and try to defend it against two critical arguments. The first argument calls attention to circular relation of epistemic autonomy and authority. In order to determine the authoritative person for me, I always have to possess epistemic autonomy, which is understood as knowledge in the given domain. Thus I myself have to have (...) authority in the given domain in order to invest authority. I try to show that the investment of trust is based upon autonomy interpreted as an ability to exercise epistemic actions, accompanied by normative foreknowledge, that allows us to assess epistemic abilities and invest our trust without having sufficient propositional knowledge. The second argument insists on theoretical control for authoritative evidence and testimony. That contradicts preemptive character and content-independence inherent to authoritative testimony. Hence, this argument entirely misses the point of epistemic authority. Instead, as I argue, one can control epistemic authority by future reflexion on its conscientiousness and epistemic exercise as well as on origins of my admiration for authority. As a consequence, the trust invested in authority can be withdrawn and redistributed. (shrink)

The article presents the results of the study of young scientists and their role in the functioning of research teams and the academic system. It shows why this topic has not only applied relevance connected with the theoretical justification of science policy but also concerns fundamental issues of philosophy of science. The nature of the structural organization of scientific teams and the scientific community as a whole is discussed. It is argued that science shares with other social institutions a socio-epistemic (...) hierarchy, involving the division of participants into more and less experienced ones, performing certain functions in accordance with the available amount of knowledge and skills. It is shown that this hierarchy is supported by the system of division of labor in science, but does not lead to the formation of a rigid structure, which is reflected in the mismatch of social and cognitive hierarchies of research teams. It is also shown that the contribution of young scientists to the overall scientific result can not only be great due to the appearance of young geniuses. Scientific youth performs a number of cognitive and social functions that are system-forming and are not duplicated at other levels of the scientific hierarchy. These functions may undergo changes depending on the general state of both a separate research area and the scientific system as a whole. This makes the research of scientific youth promising for studying the transformations of science as a social institution and a cultural and historical phenomenon, in particular, for analyzing scientific communications that constitute the scientific community as a collective subject of scientific knowledge, and changes in scientific ethos. (shrink)

The existing variants of the classification of sciences differentiate and correlate the types of cognitive practices on various grounds. At the same time, the attention of epistemologists is usually concentrated on the instrumental logical and methodological functions of the proposed classifications, which guide scientists in the holistic cognitive space of rational cognition. As for the sociocultural dimensions of scientific and cognitive activity, they mostly correlate with the typological features of research practices only slightly. Meanwhile, science as a whole is undergoing (...) significant changes today, affecting, among other things, the status and methodological functions of its socio-cultural parameters, which significantly change the configuration of the cognitive space of scientific and cognitive activity. The article attempts to demonstrate the features of the problematization of contemporary science’s philosophical and methodological foundations. When discussing these issues, it is fundamentally important to consider how a scientist realizes his methodological tools and the socio-cultural status of scientific and cognitive activity. According to the author, these problematics are stepping into the center of today’s philosophical and methodological reflection on science, forcing us to take a fresh look at the meaning of science as a holistic cognitive phenomenon, accordingly, the typological features of its cognitive practices. (shrink)

Within the framework of a new interdisciplinary scientific scientific field – epistemological urbanism – the authors develop the idea of the human right to their city and show the epistemological nature of this right, which is explained by the fact that it is conditioned by the processes of cognition and scientific communication. Three main provisions are substantiated. Firstly, the city is an intelligent system. “The right to your city” is a specific right to scientific and intellectual production and consumption. Such (...) a right is not realized in every locality designated as a city, but only where there are conditions for intellectual dynamics – where art, education and science are developing. Secondly, the intellectual system of the city has autonomy. Each city has its own intellectual resource. Realizing the right to their city, citizens are involved in the activity of the city's scientific and intellectual autonomy. In other words, a city where there are opportunities to realize the “right to the city” generates an autonomous scientific school or a set of scientific schools. Thirdly, cities how research centers form a scientific network. Not a scientific consortium with common ideas and goals, but a network based on the principles of proliferation. The authors insist on the decentralization of science not for the purpose of its enclavization, but for the purpose of developing the potential, multi-vector and intellectual self-realization of urban communities themselves. It is shown that the development of science as a whole can be ensured by the heterogeneity of science itself : integration and differentiation give rise to an integration scientific and communicative process. (shrink)

This paper is a part of the discussion about creativity and the scientific precariat, initiated by I.T. Kasavin’s article. Proceeding from his proposal to revise the ideology of creativity in science through the desire of certain precariat groups for independence and freedom, the author questions the nowadays perspectives for the scientific precariat. This paper discusses the varieties of the precariat, such as freelancing and digital nomadism. The author considers a number of advantages and disadvantages of precarization. The author questions whether (...) scientists can be seriously considered as candidates for the precariat and how widespread the scientific precariat is in contemporary society. It is pointed out that the collective nature of modern science and its institutionalization impose certain obligations on scientists, which sometimes confront their individual internal aspirations, including the desire for freedom. The tension between the institutional conditions for the existence of science and the personal motives of scientists, noted once by M. Weber, lead to a decrease in personal autonomy, the emergence of a “world of specialists” and make it difficult to realize scientists’ aspirations for independence and freedom. On the one hand, a number of current trends can be viewed as a kind of precarization in science. On the other hand, the status of an independent researcher without research and educational affiliation hinders scientists’ social recognition and financial returns. The author admits that representatives of “garage science”, some public intellectuals, science, communicators, etc. can be attributed to the scientific precariat; however, in general, the scientific precariat is not a common trend. At the same time, modern postscience and post-normal science potentially make this phenomenon quite legitimate. (shrink)

The author starts from the contemporary image of “post-normal science”, which implies the openness of science to policy. She considers the idea of post-normal science as a normative basis for the scientists’ demand for the politicization of science, as a conceptual condition for grasping crises and the role of scientific expertise in their resolution, and as a designation of a special phenomenon of contemporary science with the ambiguous status of a scientist-expert. Based on the analysis of the concept, the author (...) emphasizes the problem of combining scientific validity and political relevance, inherent in post-normal science. The elements of this problem are the danger of including science in politics, the violation of objectivity and the lack of demarcating scientific and non-scientific knowledge. The author argues that the solution of the problem becomes possible if the political relevance of science is interpreted as interaction, and scientific validity as objectivity are revealed through attention to the concept of “knowing-how”. (shrink)

This article examines the fundamental ontological significance that the category of perception has in philosophy of G.W. Leibniz, and establishes the connection between the category of perception and modern panpsychism. There is a problem of definition of protopsychic properties in modern panpsychism. The problem is expressed not only in the absence of such a definition, but also in the absence of a good strategy for finding possible candidates for the role of protopsychic property. To solve this problem, the author considers (...) the status of the monad as the center of perception in Leibniz’s monadology, as well as the question of the relation of different monads to each other. Based on Leibniz’s ideas, the following modifications for modern panpsychism have been proposed, among others. First, it was proposed that protopsychic properties be viewed as properties that represent all reality in some vague way, preventing the emergence of high-level psychic properties. Second, it was proposed that mental properties be viewed not as a combination of protopsychic properties, but as state of protopsychic properties. This means that to form high-level mental properties, protopsychic properties must not only form some system, but must also be partially blocked. The author also considers the question of whether it is possible to borrow the proposed ideas in modern panpsychism. The problem for this is the ontological differences between modern naturalistic panpsychism and Leibniz’s classical panpsychism. The article proposes three different strategies for dealing with this problem related to three interpretations of Leibniz’s philosophy. First, it is possible to limit ourselves to considering physics as a set of structural phenomena derived from the activity of monads. Second, it is possible to try to show that there is some other, non-causal, type of relationship between the monads. Third, it is possible to consider this system as naturalistic pantheism and assume that God is a mediator and a common non-spatial coordinate system through which the monads agree with each other. (shrink)

The focus of the paper is a discussion around one of the versions of scientific realism – ontic structural realism, which has gained popularity due to the development of quantum field theory. According to OSR, individual objects do not exist as ontological primitives. The ontology of objects and their properties is replaced by the ontology of structures and relations. The paper discusses the arguments of the proponents of OSR, describing it as the only way to preserve scientific realism in general (...) relativity and in quantum physics, which are reduced to mathematical structures with different symmetries. Five possible variants of the ontological relationship between structures and objects are analyzed in detail. Particular attention is paid to the eliminative and non-eliminative versions of OSR. If the former in principle excludes any existence of objects, then in the latter, objects receive their secondary existence due to relations, and their identity is reduced to nodes in the structures of relations. The main objections to OSR and the answers of its proponents are analyzed. It is shown that references to quantum physics are both its strengths and weaknesses of OSR, since they often superficially refer to the formalism of the theory, not accepting one or another of its interpretation. The paper argues the thesis that the extreme eliminative OSR, despite all its advantages, has several serious limitations. The best way out of the situation may be the development of the non-eliminative versions of OSR. In conclusion, it provides a critical analysis of one of these versions – moderate OSR of M. Esfeld and V. Lam, who believe that structures should have causal properties, something resembling a disposition. (shrink)

The article questions the concept of post-normal science and emphasizes that despite the declarative detachment from social practice and freedom from politics, de facto science has always been social. On the one hand, the scientific community has always been aristocratic. The “classical ethos” of science presupposes openness and equality on conditions that require enormous efforts and self-sacrifice, this equality is beyond the norm, because a “normal” scientist is, as K. Popper noted, mediocrity. On the other hand, scientists at all times (...) have taken an active social position, and the development of science has always been closely intertwined with social practices and the political process, as is well shown by T. Porter, L. Pinto, S. Shapin and S. Schaffer. From this point of view, science has always been post-normal – the “solutions” are always “urgent”, and the corresponding “stakes” are invariably “high”. However, the aristocracy of the scientific ethos and the declarative isolation of the scientific community from policy and politics are of fundamental importance for the reproduction of science, which practically cannot, but is morally obliged to remain outside of them. To help practice, the scientist must be impractical; to create a norm, a scientist must be abnormal. (shrink)

In this reply to the article by I.T. Kasavin “Creativity as a social phenomenon” the authors discuss the possibilities of the scientific precariat as a free creative class, which having entered the scientific community, will give it a new creative potential. The authors express some doubts that such a merger will preserve precariat's special creative spirit. The article draws attention to the diversity in understanding the nature, goals and values of creativity. The specificity of understanding creativity in the scientific community (...) is due to its rational and methodological guidelines, while the precariat is part of postmodern society, and its creative potential stems from a break with traditional rationalistic methodology. However, as long as peer review remains in the hands of the exclusively institutionalized scientific community, there is a high probability that the creativity of the precariat will be marginalized, and becoming part of the scientific community, the precariat will be forced to accept its epistemic values and lose the creative potential that is expected from them. The authors refer to P. Feyerabend’s theory of creativity, in which he rejects the subject-centered model of scientific creativity. According to Feyerabend, creativity is intersubjective in nature and grows organically from the sociocultural environment of the subject. The scientist creates following a cultural instinct, but the subject does not disappear from the creative process, since the cultural instinct is refracted through his individual style. If creativity is a reflection of the spirit of times, the precariat is the best way to embody it. In conclusion, a way for overcoming the social is outlined and, in a broad sense, the methodological problematic nature of the unification of the scientific community and the precariat, which the authors see in the general democratization and pluralism of society. (shrink)

The paper considers three main models of temporal consciousness proposed in grappling with the “paradox of temporal awareness”. They are based on the notion that there is a basic element of perception in the form of some “mental frame” or “apparent present” which, while effective for describing some perceptual features, does not fully reflect our phenomenal experience. It is argued that a two-level model based on the separation of the “specious present” and “current present” is best correlated with higher-order theories (...) of consciousness and should act as a basis for further development of the temporal model of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper comments on Emar Maier’s “Unreliability and point of view in filmic narration”. It is suggested that, without having discourse representations that include embedding operators, films can be unreliable in the broad sense of having propositional contents that depart from inferable, realistic scenarios. Second, films and embedded shots in film can convey agent-centered information without being composed of point-of-view shots. The reason is that the discourse representation can include information about discourse referents that identifies a depicted individual as a (...) counterpart of the experiencer. (shrink)

The linguistic representation of interoceptive sensations is valuable not only for the study of cognitive processes, but also for conceptual analysis within the framework of the phenomenal approach in the philosophy of mind. This article focuses on the deep linguistic mechanisms of metaphorical conceptualization of corporeality and their relationship with various classes of judgments expressing awareness of internal bodily experience. Interoceptive sensations are associated with the representation of the image of the inner-body space and the processes occurring in it. The (...) content of these representations is extracted simultaneously from mental beliefs about the properties of one's own physicality and, at the same time, from both real and imaginary causes of internal states. The main purpose of the article is to reveal the relationship of the semantics of these judgments with the principles of forming a conceptual dictionary of interoceptive sensations coming from a variety of pragmatic contexts. Some results of clinical and semantic studies of psychopathology deserve special attention. Semantic intersections of metaphors in idiomatic expressions of emotional states and judgments describing an abnormal inner-body experience are found. The paper substantiates the thesis that body, in addition to the functions of the organismic “interface” device, also has deep representative properties. While attempting to formulate utterances expressing abnormal inner-body experience, a conceptually conditioned metaphorical dictionary is automatically used. Along with the formation of conceptual schemes, the formation of judgments of awareness about the qualities of one's own conscious experience takes place. (shrink)

The transition from the exclusive use of words to the predominant use of symbols in mathematics continued for centuries, but by the seventeenth century it turned out to be explosive. This phenomenon became known as the “symbolic revolution” in mathematics. One of its main outcomes was the discovery of mathematical analysis almost simultaneously and independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. To both scientists their discovery served as the basis for far-reaching philosophical generalizations. For Leibniz, it led to the (...) concept of suppositive cognition, the opposite of the prevailing notions at that time. He was the first to argue that the criterion of clarity and distinctness in cognition is impossible, because it relies on intuition about primary concepts, but these are in fact confuse and undistinct, and the foundation of such cognition is shaky. Using the successful use of symbols in mathematics as a model, Leibniz arrives at the concept of blind or symbolic cognition, cognitio caeca, which makes it possible to achieve validity and verifiability of results without reliance on intuition or primary concepts. The truthfulness of the result is found to depend more on grammar, which determines the substitution rules of some signs, or characters, for others, than on the connection between signs and the signified. Leibniz’s opening debate served as a prologue to the fundamental modernization of scientific discourse in the early Modern Time. Although he failed to achieve entirely his philosophical goals, the concept itself turned out to be extremely productive and modern, effectively decoupling the progress of natural science from its philosophical foundations. This innovative cognitive ideology opened up enormous prospects for the formation and accumulation of new knowledge, closed by the rigid requirements of the Cartesian paradigm of science still dominant in Leibniz’s time. (shrink)

This paper discusses knowledge of opposites. In particular, attention is given to the linguistic notion of antonymy and how it represents oppositional relations that are commonly found in perception. The paper draws upon the long history of work on the formalisation of antonymy in linguistics and formal semantics, and also upon work on the perception of opposites in psychology, and an assessment is made of the main approaches. Treatments of these phenomena in linguistics and psychology posit that the principles of (...) minimal difference and invariance are centrally important. It will be suggested that the standard approach employing meaning postulates fails to capture the relevant notion of antonymy, in part because it is not informed by these principles, and in part due to a number of other problems with this kind of approach, many of which may be overcome by building in the central principles from the beginning. The paper also discusses the issue of whether we can know that opposites necessarily exclude each other and, if so, how. This issue is intertwined with what is known as the colour incompatibility problem that Wittgenstein wrangled with at various times during his life. The paper assesses various solutions to these problems including an approach that was first put forward by Jerrold J. Katz. The relation between this approach and the theory of determinables and determinates is also examined. A further development upon this approach is proposed and then applied to the case of the formalisation of antonymy. It is argued that this approach avoids the problems suffered by the main approaches discussed earlier in the paper. (shrink)

A typical device in film is to have a character narrating what is going on, but this narration is not always a reliable guide to the events. According to Maier, distortions may be caused by the narrator’s intent, naivety, use of drugs, and/or cognitive disorder/illness. What is common to these various causes, he argues, is the presence of a point of view, which appears in a movie as shots. While this perspective-based account of unreliability covers most cases, I unpack its (...) methodological consequences and gesture at a possibility that Maier’s analysis overlooks. A narration, I suggest, can be unreliable simply because it is ill-timed with the events shown on screen. In such a case, the distortion is not due to any character’s point of view; rather, it comes from the film medium’s ability to divorce what is seen and what is heard. As a consequence of this mismatch, it is possible to have a reliable narrator but an unreliable narration. Since voice and context of utterance usually match in ordinary speech, I conclude that philosophy of language may be ill-suited to properly understand this particular phenomenon. (shrink)

Theory of reference is a mainstream theory of meanings of certain types of linguistic expressions in contemporary philosophy of language. It assigns corresponding expressions capability to refer to what people are talking or thinking about by using them. Meanwhile it is widely recognized that there are two kinds of reference. One is conceived as a relation between an agent and an entity which he or she applies the term to in particular communicative act ; this is roughly called “speaker’s reference”. (...) Another one characterizes linguistic terms as referring to particular entities relative to particular languages. This is normally identified as semantic reference. The popular hypothesis based on this distinction assumes that if a name is used in communication in a right way then it refers to its semantic referent even when the speaker uses it to refer to something else. On the other hand, some belief that the reference of a particular use of a proper name is fully determined by the speaker’s communicative intentions. In the proposed study both these hypotheses are criticized. Different senses of such words as “designate” or “refer to” in their application to the functioning of linguistic expressions in communication are analyzed, and it is shown that linguistic conventions allegedly responsible for names’ semantic references cannot make names refer to their semantic referents independently on what particular participants of communication are believing or doing. On the other hand, the reduction of the reference of a token of a proper name to its speaker’s reference fails to explain this phenomenon as well. Neither theory explains how tokens of proper names could refer to particular entities. From this at least two conclusions may be made: the radical one would claim that any talk about tokens’ references is most likely meaningless. And the moderate one is that explanations of this phenomenon based on the distinction between semantic and speaker’s references don’t work. The author favors the first conclusion, but does not insist on it. (shrink)

Highlighting the, as called by Emar Maier, blended perspective shots in cinematic narrative with an unreliable narrator allows us to escape the dilemma of the omniscient cinema-eye and of the false narrator’s paper eyes. The following commentary on Maier’s paper detects the performative nature of the contradictions generated by using blended perspective in cinema narration with an unreliable storyteller. It also demonstrates the heuristicity of the concept of blended perspective to Cartesian philosophical narrative analysis.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the influence of linguistic concepts of an agent on the qualitative aspects of her perception. We examine conceptualist and non-conceptualist approaches to the problem of what the content of perceptions is. The conceptualist approach asserts that the content of perception is similar to the content of beliefs: both types of content are assumed to be expressible in language. The non-conceptualist approach to the content of perception assumes that the content of perception cannot (...) be conceptualized due to too much information available to the agent through visual perception. However, the assumption about non-conceptual content of perception leads to some serious difficulties with explaining the phenomenon of cognitive penetration of perception. This is an empirically established fact that some cognitive states may influence on the qualitative aspects of agent’s perception. We show that cognitive penetration of perception implies that perception and those cognitive states which affect it should have comparable content and this mechanism is based on the influence of expectations on perception. (shrink)

In this paper I defend two claims regarding complex demonstratives. On the one hand I argue that, when one of these expressions misdescribes the referred object, the right semantic analysis is to treat the expression as uninterpretable. On the other, I claim that the uninterpretability thesis finds itself in trouble when it comes to dealing with non-deictic uses of complex demonstratives, i.e., uses of “that F” in which the speaker has no acquaintance or direct perception of any object that could (...) satisfy the predicative material. In order to make these two claims compatible, I set out to modify the way the uninterpretability thesis has been traditionally formulated. (shrink)

In this paper, we would like to argue in support of the productiveness of epistemological investigations at the interface of the semantics and pragmatics of natural language and the analysis of perception. We begin with a short overview the history of convergence of these two areas of research. Leibniz is the center of this historical discussion. We identify the general problems that arise when language meets perception and discuss some recent research in the semantics of pictures. We arrive at the (...) following conclusions. First, the reference of a singular term and the perception of its denotation involve the same relation between the conceptual and what is immediately given in perception. The specifics of perception make up a part of a singular term’s pragmatics determining the conditions of a semantic interpretation. Secondly, phenomena with minimal conceptual content arise whenever the update of the conceptual content of linguistic expressions is faster than the update of the sensory material of perception. In the realm of language, these phenomena are related to the appearance of singular terms that become the result of acts of naming singular objects. The semantic and the pragmatic analysis of language identifies the relevant phenomena by revealing the universal formal structures and mechanism within language and its use. The result is an isolation of sensory data from conceptual schemes. Their place is taken by the empirical conditions of perception. (shrink)

The article analyzes a connection between empiricism and the Strong Program in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. I use Strong Program’s theories of perception and observation in science as cases to demonstrate this link. The main points of my argument are the following. First, characteristic problems of the empiricist tradition are at the focus of the Strong Program. Second, relations between the Strong Program and empiricist tradition are complex. While proponents of the Strong Program criticize classical empiricism of Bacon and (...) logical empiricism, they employ new empiricism of Mary Hesse’s network model as a crucial theoretical resource for their social theory of knowledge. Third, The Strong Program uses Hesse’s theory as a model for the renewal of the sociology of knowledge. A key point of the analysis is that it is reasonable to add to the Mannheimian and Wittgensteinian traditions in the sociology of knowledge another empiricist one as exemplified in the Strong Program. I conclude the article by stressing interdisciplinary tendencies in this empiricist sociology of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This comment discusses Emar Maier’s argument against the characterization of unreliable filmic narration as personal narration. My comment focuses on two assumptions of Maier’s argument, viz. that the narrating character’s mental states can be described independently of other mental states/experiences and that personal filmic narration can only proceed from a de se perspective. I contend that the majority of movies with unreliable narration represents an experientially parasitic mental state. Since these states are well-known to involve perspective-shifting and various kinds of (...) semantic enrichment, unreliable filmic representation is perfectly compatible with the presence of a personal narrator. (shrink)

Novels like Fight Club or American Psycho are said to be instances of unreliable narration: the first person narrator presents an evidently distorted picture of the fictional world. The film adaptations of these novels are likewise said to involve unreliable narration. I resist this extension of the term ‘unreliable narration’ to film. My argument for this rests on the observation that unreliable narration requires a personal narrator while film typically involves an impersonal narrator. The kind of ambiguous story-telling that we (...) find in literary fiction with unreliable narrators, where for certain descriptions it is unclear whether what we’re told is an accurate account of what’s happening in the story world or not, can instead be achieved by conventionalized filmmaking techniques for reporting the contents of mental states, like the point of view shot, but especially the more ambiguous blended perspective shot. (shrink)

This paper proposes some guidelines for the undeveloped discussion of auditory epistemology. Auditory epistemology is an approach concerned with the perceptual basis for knowledge and belief, specifically around audition. The article pursues two goals. Firstly, it claims that addressing auditory perception from the viewpoint of epistemology is more fruitful than the discussion on phenomenology which has thus far dominated the debates in the literature on sound. Secondly, it elaborates a concrete proposal pertaining to the cooperation of sense-modalities. In so doing, (...) a model for “Perceptual Coherence” is suggested. The first section of the paper critically reviews the problem of perception as it is usually understood in traditional epistemology. An ensuing section outlines the model of perceptual coherence. (shrink)

In the article we argue that Descartes while considering sign version of cogito does use some hidden premises in spite of well-known declaration there are none. They are:1) there’s such a length of time Δt over which I cannot be wrong on the matter of what happened over Δt ; 2) there’s such time extent Δt upon which I cannot be wrong. We investigate the advantages the evil demon can take from that. This is a sign manipulation we propose. Cogito (...) as a sign object has to have a) a sense-data component and b) can be built only through time by consecutive generation one elementary sign after another. Then an sign manipulation is the following: I is [not am] building the sign si, I thinks wrongly that the previous signs just built are s1, …, si-1, I is [not am] going to built signs si+1, …, sn. For example, one thinks of self as thinking cogito, while in fact the real event is building “t” ). We investigate the source which makes the manipulation possible and the gravity of the destruction of such sort. The crucial reason for the possibility of such misconception turns out to be the sense-data component in any linguistic constructions. (shrink)

In Unreliability and Point of View in Filmic Narration, Emar Maier makes a distinction between reliable and unreliable narrators. The latter, Maier claims, must be a first-person narrator, as an impersonal, third-person narrator lacks an individual perspective that can be unreliable. He concludes that most film adaptations of unreliably narrated novels are not themselves unreliably narrated, for they feature third person perspectives. I take Maier’s major claims to be that there is a strict distinction between reliable and unreliable narration; and (...) that film shots displaying both a character and that character's hallucinations are not unreliable narration. I will challenge both. (shrink)

As Maier’s aim is to extend the notion of unreliable narration onto film, this reply focuses on the consequences of the difference between textual and filmic narration. Textual fiction imitates, or at least uses the resources typical of, a true textual description of events, which is itself highly conventional in that it uses arbitrary linguistic signs and chooses to describe those properties of objects and events that matter to the author, leaving the remainder unspecified. On the contrary, filmic narration imitates (...) the perception of real events of which the watcher is supposed to be witness. Even if the arrangement of frames is conventional, the content of a particular frame is presented to the observer as if the latter happened to be at the scene, thus in the totality of its detail; and the connection between the object filmed and its depiction in film is causal rather than conventional. Moreover, it is natural even for non-fictional texts to describe the scene in some rhetorically plausible order, whereas a real-life scene presented to our sight by pure chance need not follow any coherent plot. (shrink)

Maier’s article recalls the idea of finding common ground between different points of view on the truth in fiction and the problem of reliability that it generates. However, the criteria by which it is possible to determine the characteristics of the reliability or unreliability in the artistic narrative are unclear. A naive-realistic approach leads to contradictions. We propose to proceed from the already established approaches to the problem of “truth in fiction”, and consider as determining for the modal pragmasemantics of (...) narrative the concept of narrator bifurcated between the actual and fictional worlds. (shrink)

The article presents the standpoint that naturalistic tendencies in modern science, which are especially expressed in neuroscience, push up social knowledge toward the need to revise its attitudes and norms, which consist in consistent sociocentrism and biophobia, and, hence, a simplified understanding of the phenomenon of “genetic reductionism”. We show that the application of the methods of natural science to social disciplines often marked visible progress and even conceptual breakthroughs in their development. Achievements of modern neuroscience affect a traditional area (...) of social and humanitarian knowledge as political science, which leads to the formation of an independent area of research – political neuroscience. Through the optics of this research, cognitive styles characteristic of individuals and social groups with different value orientations imply the dominance of certain ideological sympathies and antipathies, which attributed to the opposite poles of the ideological scale – liberalism and conservatism. Considerable empirical material allows us to conclude that these ideological positions are exist due to differences in their ontogenetic “foundations”, which allows us to develop I. Kant's ideas about a priorism and transcendentalism in the context of the Kantian research program in contemporary neuroscience. The result of the implementation of this program to the political sphere was the discovery of the genesis of political views, and the demonstration of the peculiarities of their dynamics. They are based on the difference in the activity of certain neural sets, which in their turn are influenced by culture and society, forming an integral system “brain – culture – society”, where each component of which affects other components. Features and changes in the socio-cultural context of the development of an individual or a group of people may have an effect upon the architectonics of the brain and shift, due to its plasticity, of the political views along the scale of ideologies “liberalism – conservatism”. At the same time, carriers of different cognitive styles and, therefore, with a sufficient degree of probability of ideological views, percept the world in which they live in differently, and evaluate its past and possible future in diverse ways. (shrink)

The term “neuroethics” emerged in the 1970s denoting medical ethics in neuroscience. The development of neuro-turn in philosophical studies, beginning of wide empirical research in neurobiology and cognitive science and rise of public interest in brain studies in the first decade of the 21st century caused the emergence of neuroethics as an independent research field. The questions of definition the subject area, methodology, priority directions and conceptual foundations of neuroethics still remain as the subjects of discussions nowadays. The main modern (...) approaches to understanding the subject of neuroethics are reported in the article. The authors of the article propose to interpret neuroethics as a metadiscipline and highlight four approaches of it. A. Roskies divides neuroethics into two fields of study: the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics. This approach is refined in modern research. The article reveals that neuroethics can be understood as a description of the neural correlates of moral action; as an assessment of the ethics of research and therapeutic interventions in the brain; as a critical understanding of social practices based on knowledge of brain functioning or the usage of neurotechnology; as an analysis of the social consequences of the neurotechnologies development. The authors note that neuroethics still has a status of an “emerging field”, which makes the analysis of its development an independent research task. (shrink)

Space is a cross-cutting philosophical theme: an unattainable dream coming from the depths of centuries, and at the same time a source of religious faith and high science. Therefore, space is not limited to specific space projects and the conquest of celestial space. In contrast to this, space is a starting point for a global problematization of politics, economics and culture. It demonstrates its archetypal significance for the history of all human culture. At the same time, space as a project (...) and a subject matter of imagination needs today a new humanistic definition, in which the role of philosophy cannot be underestimated. It is necessary to find and theoretically justify a balance between the task of economic efficiency of space research and the results of space exploration, on the one hand, and their use for creative human development, designing a safe and fair society and forming a scientific picture of the world. (shrink)

The main claim of the study is that technocratic public administration based on knowledge as a key element of power, significantly affects the idea of what is objective and what is objectivity. I explore how scientific objectivity as part of a scientific ethos has been evolving on the example of economic knowledge. A key institutional feature of economic knowledge is that it includes in fact two relatively autonomous epistemic cultures: academic one, connected to the production of knowledge in academia and (...) expert-administrative one developing in public and corporate governance systems. The peculiarity of knowledge demanded and functioning in public administration is instrumentality and an exeptional focus on quantification. As a result ‘governing by number’ becomes a key social technology and at the same time numbers seem to embody objectivity. I show that economic knowledge in public administration involves an inevitable and deepening ontological gap with ‘objective reality’. The state needs not true but effective knowledge: the task of administrating does not presuppose a realistic representation of the administrated object, but rather seeks to simplify it, to plan it, or even to construct. Thus, unlike scientific knowledge, the objectivity of knowledge in administrative practices has almost nothing to do with the object. Meanwhile, ongoing need for academic economic knowledge to be used into the state administration and its further development in a fundamentally alien sphere leads to a significant deformation of scientific ethos, which is a crucial regulatory element in the scientific knowledge production. Erosion affects both aspects of objectivity as an ontological principle and as an ‘epistemic virtue’. Against this background, objectivity as an ‘epistemic virtue’ has been transformed into the ‘technique of distancing’ and the principle of technical impersonality, which imply eventually the replacement of the ‘knowledge self’ by a technical system. (shrink)

The article presents an overview of the main strategies of criticizing the Cartesian account of self-knowledge in English-speaking analytic philosophy. First, I distinguish four basic aspects of the Cartesian account of self-knowledge: metaphysical, methodological, semantic, and epistemic ones. The first aspect deals with the justification of distinctive features of self-knowledge; the second aspect concerns the way the agent gains self-knowledge; the third aspect is about the content of mental states, and the last one is about formal principles of self-knowledge. Second, (...) I examine four critical strategies. The criticism on the metaphysical aspect consists in denying the privacy of mental states thesis; the criticism on the methodological aspect refutes the perceptual model for introspection; the criticism on the semantic aspect rejects the internalism, i.e., the external factors do not determine the content of mental states; the criticism on the epistemic aspect involves the KK-principle failure. Finally, I briefly assess the efficiency of these critical strategies. (shrink)

In his response, D. Maslov presents a sketch of a comparative analysis of the notion of ‘will’ in Wittgenstein and Hegel as a response to the initial article by K. Rodin. Despite apparent differences, both philosophers show similar anti-metaphysical attitude in their respective analysis. Both regard will not as a metaphysical entity, but in its concrete expression in actions and intentions and conclude that acts of will and intentions can be understood by other people. On this ground and the argument (...) of universality of language, we argue, against K. Rodin, against anti-universalist and contextualist readings of Wittgenstein’s texts. (shrink)

The article examines K.A. Rodin’s thesis on the possibility of including Wittgenstein’s remarks on intention and action in the context of legal philosophy research. It is shown that although the concepts of intention and intentional action are relevant to the philosophy of law, Wittgenstein’s own ideas did not have a significant impact on their relevance. This influence is confined to the fact that, like Wittgenstein, many jurists and legal theorists, mainly those who were influenced by the ideas of H.L.A. Hart, (...) also objected to the causal theory of action. However, the influence is limited to this approach. (shrink)

The article presents the results of a study of the interaction between tDCS-users and scientists on reddit.com. The forum observation and interviewing of the most active members of the Internet community were conducted during 2020–2021 by the methods of digital ethnography. The obtained results are intended to deepen the understanding both the exchange processes between scientists and non-professional, and the space in which such coordination takes place. A suitable tool for such work is the “trading zone” concept, which is defined (...) by the lack of consensus on a scientific fact; the presence of local subcultures separated by disciplinary or practice boundaries; pidginization or creolization of language occurring on the basis of non-monetary exchange forms, without mutual values insight. TDCS is a technology with unproven effectiveness, and therefore scientific discussions are still being held around it. Unlike scientists, users present an alternative approach to the effectiveness of these devices, which analysis allows considering tDCS-technology as a “boundary object”. The central element of interaction at the “trading zone” is the exchange of “anecdotal data”, which determines the features of the emerging pidgin, aimed at describing the individual perception of a user’s experience. The forum interaction, involving the exchange of anecdotal data, leads to the formation of skill to discriminate a variety of tDCS-types, as well as types of scientific expertise. The ability for discrimination becomes the basis of interactional expertise. The user’s right to undertake expertise arise not from the basis of formal membership in scientific institutions, or personal contribution to the development of a scientific discipline, but on the property of “interactional experience”. The article notes that the attempts of users to extend interactional expertise beyond the boundaries of the trading zones, as well as the participation of academic scientists in the activities of the forum, may be associated with risks for scientific research. (shrink)

A sequential reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s notes on action and intention aims to stimulate a further discussion of the productivity of using Wittgenstein’s notes on action theory within social theory. It provides as an illustration of Wittgenstein’s consistent commitment to the principle of contextualism. In terms of the principle of contextualism, the article examines numerous attempts to incorporate the philosophy of the late Wittgenstein into social and related research.

The article attempts to criticize the concept of language games, as well as the hypothesis of K.A. Rodin on Wittgenstein’s influence on social science through the introduction of “contextualism”. Wittgenstein proposed to place language games in the first place in relation to the feelings and inner experience of individuals participating in common practices. The author of the article puts forward the following argument against it: indirect awareness of the rules and norms in which the individual does not participate or to (...) which s/he does not obey suggests that the meaningfulness of actions stems not only from the context, but also from internal reflective understanding. In the final part of the article, the author refers to the work of E. Durkheim “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” in order to show that contextualism, as K. Rodin understands it, may have its own roots in sociology. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the concept of a priori and a priori knowledge within the framework of the classical model of science proposed for conducting research on the history of concepts, and in particular, the concept of “science” by digital humanities [de Jong, Betti, 2010]. In the first part of the article, I refer to the concept of model and consider the classical model of science in terms of its heuristic potential for philosophical research, and define the main structural (...) parts of the model for studying the concept a priori. In the second part, I consider the theoretical aspects of the classical model science in the context of a priori functional and historical concepts and the possibility of its adaptation to the analysis of the a priori in the history of science In the third part I propose a possible model for research of a priori in the classical model of science in two aspects: a priori as universal principles underlying all sciences and a priori as a set of propositions for a specific scientific discipline. (shrink)

The article contains some considerations on K.A. Rodin’s reconstruction of the theory of action in works of later L. Wittgenstein. His apophatic approach to descriptions of will, volition, subject of will is analyzed. This approach is compared with approaches to Husserl’s definition of a transcendental subject. It is argued that the apophatic approach to the description of volition as a foundation of social theory is doubtful.

The article deals with the problem of scholastic sources of Brentano’s concept of intentionality. The subject matter of the discussion is the so-called thesis on intentionality as formulated by Brentano in his 1874 book “Psychology from an Empirical Point of View”. The search for Brentano's specific scholastic sources has been going on for decades, but even today the problem is still relevant. The objectives of the article are, firstly, to identify the main positions on the issue and to reveal the (...) reasons for their failure, and, secondly, to suggest our own hypothesis providing arguments in its favor. On the basis of the existing publications the following positions are briefly formulated: 1) hypothesis of borrowing from Thomas Aquinas; 2) hypothesis of borrowing from Aristotle; 3) hypothesis of borrowing from the 14th century scholastics. The inconsistency of these hypotheses, each on its own grounds, is shown. The first hypothesis proceeds from false assumptions, the second one is obviously reductionist, the third one correctly identifies the points of similarity between Brentano and the scholastics, but underestimates the differences between them. The author’s hypothesis is that the most precise parallel to Brentano’s doctrine of intentionality is found in the early modern scholasticism. It is supported from two sides. First, on the basis of Brentano’s biographical and reading history, arguments are formulated in favor of the validity of this assumption. It is shown that Brentano was able to reach the scholastics of Descartes’ epoch through his reading of the works of German neoscholastics of the mid-nineteenth century. Brentano’s and baroque scholasticism’s main points about intentionality are then formulated: 1) distinction between intentional and physical phenomena as a core of intentional philosophy; 2) intentionality as a property of all, not only intellectual, mental acts; 3) notion of intentional object and its variations; 4) objective being; 5) reality of mental acts and irreality of their contents. The comparison shows that they are similar in both traditions not only substantively, but also functionally. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present a variant of epistemic relativism that is compatible with a language practice especially popular among scientists. We argue that in science, but also in philosophy, propositions are naturally ‘relativized’ to sets of hypotheses or theories, and that a similar language practice allows one to interpret canonical problems of epistemology. We apply the model to Gettier’s problem, and derive a condition under which counterexamples à la Gettier to Plato’s account of knowledge do not (...) arise. We argue that these findings give further content to a well-known result by Zagzebski. Our interpretation points to a type of epistemic relativism having links with contextualism in epistemology, and perspectivism in philosophy of science. (shrink)

This article is a reflection on some conceptual ideas of the book “Humanity and Technos: the philosophy of coevolution” related to negative assessments of the socio-anthropological consequences of the development of technoscience. It is noted that the author’s criticism of novationist interpretations of scientific and technological progress is subordinated to the main idea of the book about the incompatibility of the principles of convergence and coevolution in the relationship between man and technology. It is shown that the book examines not (...) only the external challenges of technoscience, but also the areas of scientific research that threatens the world of traditional man. Based on the results of the analysis of the book's content the following main conclusions are made. 1. Despite the presence of a large group of social problems generated by the fourth technological order the authors of the book are most concerned about the consequences of the development of digital technologies that can change the man's generic nature. 2. Rhetorical theory of number considering in the book as a worldview paradigm of the digital revolution actually has a narrower subject specificity. 3. The assumption that exist a parallel evolution of technology independent of human is contradicting the original premise about the artificial nature of artifacts. 4. Conclusion about the presence of animal traits in humans that were lost during technological revolution is requires specification. 5. The problem of an existential crisis caused by the appearance of a new class of technical artifacts and also the theme of the deficit of freedom in the virtual space has not been its developed. 6. The project of the ideology of left conservatism positioned as the most consistent variant of the philosophy of resistance to the “technogenic degradation of mankind” seems to contradict the dialectical-revolutionary essence of classical Marxism. In conclusion the ideological sense of the main goal for humanity proposed by the authors and the relativity of the ideology of conservatism are shown. (shrink)