Understanding the differences between scientific approaches to cybernetics is difficult because of the very different histories and intellectual traditions in Russia and the West, i.e. the U.S. and Europe. This paper, firstly, describes the peculiarities of the Russian style of scientific thinking, considering as an example Alexander Bogdanov’s theory in context of the Russian intellectual tradition. Secondly, the paper compares Vladimir E. Lepskiy’s and Stuart A. Umpleby’s theories of cybernetics looking at them through the prism of Russian and American intellectual (...) traditions. Western cybernetics of the second order includes biological and social versions. It arose from “experimental epistemology.” The goal was to understand the processes of cognition on the basis of neurophysiological experiments, as a result of which cyberneticians came to the conclusion that the observer cannot be excluded from science. Biological cybernetics is concerned with how the brain creates descriptions of the world. Little attention is paid to the world since it already is included in the perceptions of the observer. Social cybernetics is concerned with how people act in the world. Theories or descriptions are thought to be less important than appropriate actions. The Russian interpretation of second-order cybernetics develops its social version. The paper concludes that the differences described demonstrate the great potential for ideas from Russian and Western scientists to enrich further development of cybernetics and science in East and West. (shrink)

When courts started publishing judgements, big data analysis within the legal domain became possible. By taking data from the European Court of Human Rights as an example, we investigate how natural language processing tools can be used to analyse texts of the court proceedings in order to automatically predict judicial decisions. With an average accuracy of 75% in predicting the violation of 9 articles of the European Convention on Human Rights our approach highlights the potential of machine learning approaches in (...) the legal domain. We show, however, that predicting decisions for future cases based on the cases from the past negatively impacts performance. Furthermore, we demonstrate that we can achieve a relatively high classification performance when predicting outcomes based only on the surnames of the judges that try the case. (shrink)

When courts started publishing judgements, big data analysis within the legal domain became possible. By taking data from the European Court of Human Rights as an example, we investigate how natural language processing tools can be used to analyse texts of the court proceedings in order to automatically predict judicial decisions. With an average accuracy of 75% in predicting the violation of 9 articles of the European Convention on Human Rights our approach highlights the potential of machine learning approaches in (...) the legal domain. We show, however, that predicting decisions for future cases based on the cases from the past negatively impacts performance. Furthermore, we demonstrate that we can achieve a relatively high classification performance when predicting outcomes based only on the surnames of the judges that try the case. (shrink)

Group process methods for problem solving and planning are now widely used in organizations in the United States. Such methods, which involve active participation by employees, are not often used in Russia. We believe these methods would help Russia move from a centrally planned, authoritarian style of management to a more participatory, information-sharing style of management. Accordingly, two training sessions were held with faculty members at universities in Irkutsk and Novosibirsk. This article describes how these meetings were arranged, the results (...) of the planning activities, and the implications of participatory methods of decision making for organizations in Russia and in other transitional economies. (shrink)

The Russian people are struggling to learn how to create a democracy and a market economy. This paper reviews the results of reform efforts to date and what the Russian people are learning as indicated by changes in answers to public opinion surveys. As a way to continue the social learning process in Russia we suggest the widespread use of process improvement methods in organizations. This paper describes some Russian experiences in using process improvement methods and proposes a strategy for (...) spreading the use of these methods through universities and then through businesses and government agencies. As people use process improvement methods, they gain confidence in their ability to improve the functioning of organizations and society. (shrink)

With the ever-growing accessibility of case law online, it has become challenging to manually identify case law relevant to one’s legal issue. In the Netherlands, the planned increase in the online publication of case law is expected to exacerbate this challenge. In this paper, we tried to predict whether court decisions are cited by other courts or not after being published, thus in a way distinguishing between more and less authoritative cases. This type of system may be used to process (...) the large amounts of available data by filtering out large quantities of non-authoritative decisions, thus helping legal practitioners and scholars to find relevant decisions more easily, and drastically reducing the time spent on preparation and analysis. For the Dutch Supreme Court, the match between our prediction and the actual data was relatively strong (with a Matthews Correlation Coefficient of 0.60). Our results were less successful for the Council of State and the district courts (MCC scores of 0.26 and 0.17, relatively). We also attempted to identify the most informative characteristics of a decision. We found that a completely explainable model, consisting only of handcrafted metadata features, performs almost as well as a less well-explainable system based on all text of the decision. (shrink)

Dmitry Astrakhan is a director who immensely "feels the time." His films of the 1990s are documentary films of their era, which are reflected in the works of modern directors. All this underlines and undoubtedly confirms the relevance of this study. Based on this, the author sets a goal to identify the features of Dmitry Astrakhan's creative unions. The set goal is solved by the following tasks: 1) to analyze the creative team of director Dmitry Astrakhan; 2) to identify the (...) members of the creative team with whom the director worked more than with others; 3) to substantiate the role of the creative tandem in the filmmaking work of Dmitry Astrakhan. The object of the study is a creative tandem, and the subject of the study is the main creative tandems in the directorial filmmaking of Dmitry Astrakhan. Cultural-historical and art-historical research methods were chosen as the key methods of the current research. The theoretical and methodological basis for writing this work was the works of Russian researchers Z. Lissa, A.O. Kozyreva, M.A. Novoselova, S.V. Lavrova, Li Jian and N.V. Medvedeva. It is impossible not to mention the author's previous publications on the research topic, which served as material for the work. Also, journalistic articles were used in the arsenal of sources to reflect the opinions of film critics and moviegoers on research issues. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the actualization of the role of the creative tandem in relation to the work of domestic film directors and the justification of a clear analytical approach to identifying participants in the main creative team of film director Dmitry Astrakhan. As a result of the study, it was revealed that Dmitry Astrakhan collaborated most of all with screenwriter Oleg Danilov during the entire creative period (1991-2020) – 24 joint films and composer Alexander Pantykin – 11 joint films. This served as the formation of common stylistic features and relationships that allow you to create films with a unique author's handwriting. (shrink)

I. Mathematical logic has long since come into use in the solution of individual problems of interest in the methodology of science. In this connection the question arises as to how effective this use is, and what its prospects are. Before formulating any general and categorical judgments on that score, it would be useful to discuss special cases of the application of mathematical logic to the methodology of science. In the present article we shall deal with one case of this (...) order, to wit, the utilization of mathematical logic in investigating the problem of possibility and necessity. (shrink)

This book is a clear, comprehensive guide to the philosophic and religious concepts of the world's outstanding philosophers. Here are the great thoughts and ideas of the Western mind, selected and explained with magnificent precision by an eminent scholar. It is an illuminating portrait of man's intellectual and moral struggle to understand the world and the meaning of human life and destiny. Plato Aristotle Augustine Aquinas Luther Descartes Kant Rousseau Marx Nietzsche.

La admirable riqueza cultural y artística del Renacimiento esconde una desoladora miseria y aquella "edad de la abundancia" contrasta con una inmensa pobreza. Lejos de ser una broma o una pesadilla, la celebrada Utopía de Tomás Moro fue antes que nada un desafío insoslayable, pues proponía que ninguna sociedad merece tal nombre si tolera la miseria de un solo pobre. Rico y pobre explora la cuestión en ese libro de 1516 y en otros del escritor londinense para concluir con un (...) esbozo de su vida a la luz de la pobreza como virtud indispensable y libertadora. He aquí un hombre afortunado que no fue indiferente ante el infortunio de tantos y que vio en la humanitas la virtud por excelencia que lleva a una constante atención y cuidado del prójimo. Inspirado por un cambio de actitud en su época, así como por su fe cristiana y la mejor tradición estoica, mostró una robusta preocupación sobre el tema subrayando el valor social que debe tener toda riqueza, tanto a nivel estatal como individual, destacando la grave obligación cívica de los ricos y la necesidad que tienen todos, ricos y pobres, de empeñarse en la práctica de cierto desprendimiento y generosidad si no quieren mermar su propia humanidad y fallecer en su avaricia. La percepción de la miseria había cambiado de tal manera que su remedio ya no podía estar en una u otra limosna en plazas e iglesias, sino en la acción bien pensada y perentoria de todo gobierno que se tenga por justo. Sir Tomás Moro, privilegiado desde la cuna y seguro en su trabajo profesional, vio la pobreza de tantos como un desastre social, pero uno que, al mismo tiempo, debería llevar a todo ser humano a ver en el desprendimiento y generosidad una excelencia o virtud que alumbra la "otra" libertad, y tan íntima y valiosa que en su caso brilló aun en la prisión y ante el horror de una muerte injusta y atroz." -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Here we shall employ the term "classical" to denote situations in science in which all propositions satisfy all the laws of classical logic, including that of excluded middle. This means that if x is a proposition of a given field of science, then the following statements will be true in regard to it: "either x or non-x," "either x is true or non-x is true," "x is either true or false." The emphasis here upon the law of excluded middle is (...) associated with the fact that criticism of this law is the basic content of nonclassical criticism of classical logic. (shrink)

Various interrelationships between two-valued and many-valued logics are examined in . In the present article we propose to discuss questions bearing on these interrelations which have either not been clearly identified as philosophical in that book, were not given sufficiently detailed explanation, or were not touched upon at all.

This volume sets the agenda for future work on time and chance, which are central to theemerging sub-field of metaphysics of science.

Environmental ethics has to deal with the challenge of reconciling contrasting ecocentric and animal-centric perspectives. Two classic attempts at this reconciliation, which both adopted the metaphor of concentric circles, are discussed. It is concluded that the relationship between the animal and its environment, whether the latter is human or natural, should be a pivotal element of such reconciliation. An alternative approach is presented, inspired by care ethics, which proposes that caring for wild animals implies caring for their relationship to the (...) natural environment and thus taking action to maintain wildlife habitat. This type of care is labelled non-specific care because it is not directed towards the individual wild animal and its specific individual needs. In contrast, caring for domestic animals is called specific care because it is much more directed towards the individual animal's needs. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to find out to what demand of philosophical and scientific thinking is culturology a response, treating culturology from two aspects: as a set of approaches to culture and as a school subject in the system of education. The task is not to define the subject boundaries of some science . I am interested in the "metaphysical location" of the interest in culture, in the lacuna of man's understanding of the world and of himself it (...) seeks to fill. (shrink)

Developing an intellectualist account of skill, Stanley and Williamson define skill as a kind of disposition to action-guiding knowledge. The present paper challenges their definition of skill. While we don’t dispute that skill may consist of a cognitive, a dispositional, and an action-guiding component, we argue that Stanley and Williamson’s account of each component is problematic. In the first section, we argue, against Stanley and Williamson, that the cognitive component of skill is not a case of propositional knowledge-wh, which is (...) typically indexical. In the second section, we seek to show that Stanley and Williamson face difficulties in arguing for a generic claim about skill as a kind of disposition, and they fail to defend intellectualism about skill based on the dispositional account. In the third section we argue that Stanley and Williamson need a more detailed account of the action-guiding aspect of skill to avoid several difficulties, including a threat of a regress. We close with some lessons for the debate over intellectualism and anti-intellectualism about skill. (shrink)