Beliefs are commonly attributed to groups or collective entities. But what is the nature of group belief? Summativism and nonsummativism are two main rival views regarding the nature of group belief. On the one hand, summativism holds that, necessarily, a group g has a belief B only if at least one individual i is both a member of g and has B. On the other hand, non-summativism holds that it is possible for a group g to have a belief B (...) even if no member of g has B. My aim in this paper is to consider whether divergence arguments for non-summativism and against summativism about group belief are sound. Such divergence arguments aim to show that there can be a divergence between belief at the group level and the corresponding belief at the individual level. I will argue that these divergence arguments do not decisively defeat a minimal version of summativism. In order to accomplish this goal, I have the following plan: In section 2, I will analyze the structure of two important counterexamples against the summativist view, which are based on divergence arguments. Such counterexamples are based on the idea that a group decides to adopt a particular group belief, even if none of its members holds the belief in question. However, in section 3, I will show that these counterexamples fail, because they can be explained without the need to posit group beliefs. More specifically, I argue that in these apparent counterexamples, we have only a ‘group acceptance’ phenomenon and not a ‘group belief’ phenomenon. For this conclusion, I advance two arguments: in subsection 3.1, I formulate an argument from doxastic involuntarism, and in subsection 3.2, I develop an argument from truth connection. Thus, summativism is not defeated by divergence arguments. Lastly, in section 4, I will conclude with some advantages of summativism. (shrink)

The article discusses the problem of complex relationships between the two leading areas of scientific, technical and socio-cultural development – modernization and greening. The emergence of new general scientific methodologies and interdisciplinary types of knowledge is largely due to the release of human demiurgic activity to the planetary level. A new interdisciplinary area of research is gaining momentum – geoecology. Natural and socio-humanitarian sciences are involved in the study of geoecological problems. In social epistemology, the problem of interaction between science, (...) technology and society goes to the global level. Philosophical concepts of nature constitute the prerequisites for scientific paradigms, which in the era of global crisis and transformations of public consciousness are multiple and compete with each other. The ideas of scientific vitalism find expression in the life sciences and environmental sciences. Scientific and public discussions on the problems of the new climate regime, pandemic and other global challenges actively influence the formation of new modes of “collective thinking”, involving science, engineering, geopolitics, business, society and culture. Author makes a conclusion about the formation of the methodologies of the ecogeosystem approach, in which living beings, humans, natural environments, the planet as a whole and the surrounding space are considered as open, interacting systems. The common interests of the people of the Earth form a new type of community – geosociality. Humanity is facing a radical value choice – unlimited modernization or reasonable greening? Ideal of a common world or egoism of elites? A turn to an effective ecological worldview is possible only in the context of transformations of public consciousness, restoration of the rights of humanitarian culture and the advanced development o fenvironmentally friendly design. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to analysis of P. Benacerraf’s argument against set-theoretic reductionist realism which is a fragment of a broader argument, know as the “identification problem”. The analyzed fragment of P. Benacerraf’s argument concerns the possibility of reducing of mathematical notions to set-theoretic notions. The paper presents a reconstruction of P. Benacerraf’s original argumentation, its analysis and also several possible objections proposed by P. Benacerraf himself about 30 years later after the original publication. Namely, he claimed that a set-theoretic (...) definition of natural numbers in G. Frege’s fashion can serve as a proper and unique set-theoretic definition, that his argument doesn’t undermine eliminative reductionsts’ position, that even if there are no argument possible in favor of some particular set-theoretic definition of natural numbers one may take set-theoretic realism for granted. An analysis of the mentioned possible objections shows their dependence on a number of additional premises. The paper demonstrates that P. Benacerraf’s objections on his own argument against set-theoretic realism either have a pragmatic character themselves or essentially rely on additional arguments that are justified pragmatically or require additional argumentation. For example, his possible objections require that set theory is considered as the only true foundational theory in mathematics, and that it has several important pragmatic virtues, like convenience of use to formalize other mathematical theories. In some cases, P. Benacerraf’s objections on their own, or the indicated additional principles may well be called into question, which demonstrates the insufficiency of P. Benacerraf’s objections against his original argument. Without the mentioned pragmatic arguments P. Benacerraf’s objections become a kind of belief in mysticism. Accordingly, his doubts about his own argument against set-theoretical realism seem insufficient to reject the problem of identification and save the position of set-theoretical realism from collapse. (shrink)

The culture beeing in the geographical space is one of the important problem fields of ontology. The process of understanding the environment has many levels and characteristics. Culture is an universal object of semiotics, in this case it is considered as a subject of the semioticization of geographical space, the formation of the image of the world. Culture inherits and constantly renews the main discourses associated with this ongoing process, the origins of which lie in the deep archaic. As a (...) result, stable representations of geographical objects and/or permanent culturally significant symbols with different degrees of spatial connotations are formed. Much more interesting than the already formed images and symbols is the process of their creation and the patterns and frames that can be traced in it. The meanings created by culture are involved in the process of secondary interpretation. The most common are several areas of interpretation that play an active role in structuring our ideas about the geocultural space. They can be conventionally referred to as “games with space”, because they have a certain amount of arbitrariness, but also have established rules. This article discusses a few of them – games of range, games of geographical modeling, games of structures, of time, of significations, of emotions and institutionalization. (shrink)

The article examines the question of whether L. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus had any influence on the formation and development of logical positivism. It is shown that the members of the Vienna Circle were familiar with the Tractatus, but practically did not accept anything from its content. Wittgenstein's reasoning about the world, about facts, about the structure of fact were rejected by them as a bad metaphysics, with which they fought. The denial of causality and the deprivation of the meaning of (...) scientific laws could not be accepted by representatives of logical positivism, whose main task was the logical analysis of the language of science in order to cleanse it of metaphysical concepts and build a unified science on a solid empirical foundation. If the members of the Vienna Circle were even familiar with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, then representatives of the Berlin Group, the Lvov-Warsaw School, the Uppsala School and supporters of logical positivism in other countries hardly heard of it. This leads to the conclusion that Wittgenstein's Tractatus did not have any impact on the logical positivism. (shrink)

During its hundred-year history, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has undergone a variety of interpretations and explanations. But the significance of this work cannot be limited to an assessment of whether it had an impact on the development of logical positivism or not. Similarly, the reading of Tractatus cannot be reduced to just an ethical or some other readings. This article proposes to study a possible reading of “Tractatus” in terms of legal philosophy, which is based on the relation between facts, (...) values and norms, as well as on how interesting it could be for legal philosophy. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to study the influence of Nazi experiments on the formation of ideas about the ethos of science in the field of biomedicine. It is shown that the idea of discrediting a value-neutral science was often confronted with the resistance of the scientists themselves, who, in different contexts of condemning Nazi crimes, appealed to the fact that they acted for the good of science, and even of all mankind. The article discusses the strategy of American (...) lawyers adopted at the Nuremberg Trials aimed at demonstrating the perversity of Nazi crimes in the field of biomedicine both ethically and scientifically. In addition, an analysis of individual materials of the Nuremberg process was carried out, which made it possible to give an idea of the scientific and linguistic design of the human body as a “correct” scientific object with desired properties. The article considers the influence of the data obtained on Nazi crimes on the formation of the content of the Nuremberg Code and the design of the principle of informed consent in biomedicine. Ethical aspects related to the further use of Nazi scientific data are also considered. In conclusion, the problem of the formation of scientific knowledge in non-violence mode is articulated. (shrink)

In recent decades, scientists and philosophers have developed several naturalistic theories of consciousness, in which they try to work out some theoretical foundations for a satisfactory solution to the problem of voluntary acts, in particular the genesis of voluntary bodily movements. From the author’s point of view, depending on which concept of consciousness scientists rely on in their empirical studies of voluntary movements, volition can be understood either as a generative act or as a perceptual act. The first part of (...) the article shows that nowadays there are two competing philosophical and scientific models of volition: the generative model and the perceptual model. The second part of the article deals with some experimental data from cognitive psychology and neuroscience related to the study of voluntary movements and concludes that they are in favor of the perceptive model of volition. (shrink)

The hundred-year history of interpretations of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus we examine in the article through a gradual approach to an ethical reading of the work. The latter explains Wittgenstein’s unambiguous indication of ethical meaning as the main meaning of the Tractatus and consistently reconciles various parts of the work with the latest so-called ethical and mystical statements of the Tractatus and with demanding silence. An ethical reading explains the continuing influence and relevance of the Tractatus and is presented in the (...) article as a necessary condition for understanding the continuity between the works of early and late Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Uncertainty can’t be understood without taking into account both properties of the problem situation and agent’s knowledge about it. The correspondence of knowledge and situation of decision-making is crucial for understanding the onto-epistemological nature of uncertainty. At the same time, this correspondence is the key topic in virtue epistemology, especially in its ‘non-classical’, regulatory, branch, related to works of R. Roberts and W.J. Wood. In this article, genetic consultation is chosen as an example of such a problematic situation since a (...) doctor and a patient explicitly deal with the uncertainty of genetic risks. The problems of communication and joint decision-making in the context of medical-genetic consultation are comprehensively described in bioethics. At the same time, its social dimension is limited to the direct interaction of two individual agents, that allows us to use it as a model for constructing the ethics of uncertainty. In this article, four forms of uncertainty are identified: descriptive, normative and radical uncertainties, and translation uncertainty. Referring to the approaches of virtue epistemology, the author brings each of these forms into conformity with the proposed regulatory principle. The regulations assume that generating or disseminating knowledge under conditions of uncertainty require taking into account the incompleteness of the presented model of reality in its four aspects. A modelled fragment of reality could change in a predictable or unexpected way. The goals and values of a model’s user can not be hierarchically ordered, and may also change in the future. User’s interpretations of the model may be diverse, and can never be strictly defined by the intentions of the model’s author. (shrink)

The problem of interconnection of L. Wittgenstein and logical positivism is considered. It is proved that mutual influence did not exist and could not exist due to dissimilarities between the tasks proposed in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” and the goals that are basic for the representatives of the Vienna Circle. But the difference between the tasks and the goals does not diminish the value of the philosophy of early Wittgenstein, if even his philosophy cannot be interpreted from the point of view (...) of the Unified Science. But the ethical value of the “Tractatus” is problematic too. It does not contain any positive decisions for the humanities. (shrink)

The author argues that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus owes much to Russell’s early philosophy. This point of view is demonstrated in the article by referring to G. Landini’s recent research on Russell’s Substitution Theory, as well as by the evaluations of the Tractatus of the prominent researchers: L. Goldstein, J. Hintikka, and J. Hacking. A skeptical view on the influence of the Tractatus and Wittgenstein personally on the doctrines of the Vienna Circle is presented by A. Koffa. The author proposes to (...) reject extreme judgments about the Tractatus outside the context of Principia Mathematica. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the influence of the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and above all the ideas of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on the philosophy of logical positivism. Agreeing that the question of such an influence is not a self-evident one, I clarify at first the concept of logical positivism and then turn to the evidence of the leading logical positivists about the influence of Wittgenstein upon them. An analysis of recollections of Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann, (...) and Alfred Ayer suggests that at least these thinkers themselves considered such an influence as very significant. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to offer a general outline of my views on the origin and evolution of language. I do not pretend in any way to a completely new conception of language evolution. It seems to me that all the most important and productive hypotheses about the origin of language have already been made before, and it is only a matter of putting the pieces of the puzzle together correctly. As far as I can see it, the evolution (...) of language is directly related to the embedded and embodied emotional types, which served as the basis for the subsequent categorization of perceived objects, and thus laid the ground for the formation of first an internal language, and then an external verbal language. Consistent with this, the paper is organized as follows. In the Introduction I briefly describe the problem I am facing in this article and outline a plan for solving it. Next section comprises a survey of relevant empirical findings related primarily to the processing and understanding of abstract terms and concepts. In my view, it supports the idea of the close connection of abstract terms proceeding, and thus language comprehension, with emotional states. The third section provides relevant theoretical considerations of the relationship between emotions, cognition, and language. Consistently considering various theories of emotions and concepts of language formation, I pay attention to the connection between affective states and language as a sign system. In the fourth section, my views are presented directly. In so doing, I illustrate my approach with a telling example that shows how, in the course of evolution, embedded and embodied emotional responses and reactions could become the building blocks first for the internal language of thought, and then for the external natural language. (shrink)