Книга посвящена теории и практике нравственной жизни человека - его человечности. Текст книги и послесловия приводятся в авторской редакции. И с научной, и с общечеловеческой точек зрения книга актуальна и может быть интересна широкому кругу читателей.

Как обретают историческую генеалогию феномены современной политики и идеологии? Чья память доминирует на многоуровневом имперском и постимперском пространстве и как обеспечивается это доминирование? Ответы на эти вопросы вы узнаете, прочитав книгу.

t. 1. Teksty geot︠s︡entricheskoĭ tradit︠s︡ii -- t. 2. Teksty ploskostno-komarnoĭ i drugikh kosmologicheskikh tradit︠s︡ii.

That form shall correspond to the content of a work is a law of realist art. Marxist-Leninist esthetics, on the basis of discovery of this law, does not prescribe an invented norm for the artist, but generalizes from the experience of art itself. Methodologically, it takes as its point of departure the dialectics of content and form. In so doing, Marxist-Leninist esthetics does not dissolve in philosophical concepts the distinctive features of content in art and the nature of form. It (...) examines the unity of content and form, and their development, in the context in which they manifest themselves specifically in art. In other words, it investigates the esthetic features of the relationship between content and form in art. (shrink)

From the Editors. November 1980 marked the seventieth birthday of the prominent Soviet estheticist, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, and Honored Scholar of the RSFSR Avner Iakovlevich Zis'. In publishing his article, the editors take the opportunity to congratulate the author on this occasion and to wish him health, good spirits, and further creative successes.

In joining a discussion of the subject, object, method, and other specifications of culturology, one should first define one's view of the correlation between culture and history, culturological and historical knowledge, the purposiveness of history as a social movement, and its certainty as a science. From the point of view of positivist philosophy and the social science based on it, history a priori lacks any teleology, goal-orientation, or inner meaning and is simply the sum of the collective life of people. (...) I would even risk defining the historical process as a dynamics of people's realization of the collective forms of their life activity and an accumulation of justified models of the corresponding social experience. In that case, historical knowledge can be defined as a special way of describing and systematizing the most socially significant processes and results of people's realization of their sociality, that is, technologies of collective existence. I draw attention to the fact that what we are talking about, first of all, is the way we-the interested people-have chosen to describe past events we had systematized in some way or another on some suitable basis. In itself, history is not a living entity and cannot have any independent goals, meanings, intentions, or other manifestations of free will, which are characteristic of a freely acting human individual. (shrink)

First of all, I would like to stress that the discussion covers at least three different culturologies. The first is a science with the relatively modest task of studying certain properties of culture that are not studied in other fields of knowledge. The second is an attempt at an enormous mystification, a substitution of concepts in which there is an attempt to smuggle in ordinary sociology under the popular word "culturology." Much of what has been said here under the heading (...) of "culturology" has, in my view, no relation to problems of culture, but is linked with the well-known sociological-political attempt to develop a system of technologies of direct social regulation of the consciousness and behavior of people, which would suit not so much cultural agencies as the Ministry of Internal Affairs . And finally, third, the issue is a certain intellectual tendency that formed in our country, partly as a protest, under conditions of a total ban on any attempts, other than official Marxist ones, to comprehend the world. Here, as always, everything began with a critique of Western theories , in the course of which the critic imperceptibly "crawled over" to the positions of the criticized. By the 1970s, the term "culturology" became more or less legitimate, but the attempt in the 1990s to create a "unified culturology" that would include the philosophy of culture , Anglo-Saxon sociocultural anthropology , French semiotics , and so on, unfortunately , failed. (shrink)

Niels Bohr was born on October 7, 1885. He was one of the great innovators in physical science in the twentieth century. It so happens that 1985 also marks fifty years since the long discussions, which had begun in the 1920s between Albert Einstein and Bohr on the philosophical problems of quantum physics, attained their apogee. An article co-authored by Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, "Can Quantum Mechanics Be Considered a Complete Description of Physical Reality?," was published in 1935 (...) in the journal Physical Review. According to Bohr, "by virtue of its clarity and, it would seem, flawless argumentation, the work of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen has created excitement among physicists and played a great role in the discussion of general philosophical questions of physics." Precisely as a result of the publication of this article, the critical position of Einstein concerning quantum mechanics became known to a broader circle of physicists. In the same year, Bohr responded to Einstein and his co-authors with an article under the same title. (shrink)

During the Covid-19 pandemic, a considerable amount of people seem to have been lured into believing in conspiracy theories. These people deliberately disregard expert advice by virologists and physicians concerning social behaviour that is aimed at reducing the number of new infections. Disregarding traditional experts and their advice is just one example of what, in the philosophy of science, is referred to as a crisis of expertise – the phenomenon whereby people seem to have lost their trust in traditional expert (...) advice and are looking for alternatives. In the following paper, the trend to use Internet technology as an epistemic alternative will be analysed in detail by investigating the question of whether the Internet really allows people to become epistemically more autonomous. The focus will be on the epistemic and moral vulnerability of people resorting to new media tools instead of relying on traditional expert opinion. It will be shown that some important presuppositions about the Internet and, in particular, social media tools as alternative ways to collect information and find emotional support in a group of like-minded people cannot be maintained. (shrink)

In November 1969, the USSR Academy of Sciences' Presidium held a discussion on the principal lines of work being engaged in by the Academy's Institute of Philosophy. A report on this matter was presented by the Institute's director, P. V. Kopnin, Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Participants in the discussion of the report were M. V. Keldysh, President of the USSR Academy, Academicians F. V. Konstantinov, M. B. Mitin, A. M. Rumiantsev and P. N. Fedoseev, and Corresponding Academician (...) Ts. A. Stepanian. (shrink)

An Arabic language summary of the history and principles of four key Hellenic schools of philosophy: Cynicism, Skepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism.

Conceptual spaces are a frequently applied framework for representing concepts. One of its central aims is to find criteria for what makes a concept natural. A prominent demand is that natural concepts cover convex regions in conceptual spaces. The first aim of this paper is to analyse the convexity thesis and the arguments that have been advanced in its favour or against it. Based on this, I argue that most supporting arguments focus on single-domain concepts (e.g., colours, smells, shapes). Unfortunately, (...) these concepts are not the primary examples of natural concepts. Building on this observation, the second aim of the paper is to develop criteria for natural multi-domain concepts. The representation of such concepts has two main aspects: features that are associated with the concept and the probabilistic correlation pattern which the concept captures. Conceptual spaces, together with probabilistic considerations, provide a helpful framework to approach these aspects. With respect to feature representation, the existence of characteristic features (i.e., that apples have a specific taste) is essential. Moreover, natural concepts capture peaks of a probabilistic distribution over complex spaces. They carve up nature at its joints, that is, at areas with no or low probabilistic density. This last aspect is shown to be closely related to the convexity demand. (shrink)

Photography: morally close or aesthetically removed? Can photographs make a contribution to the moral discourse? And, if so, what kind of contribution might that be? On the one hand, they are often used in morally laden contexts of communication such as media reports about wars etc. On the other, it is said that images are inherently ambiguous which seems to speak against the possibility to use them as a means to communicate focused moral judgements. The following article starts with a (...) critical analysis of Susan Sontag‘s theses regarding the above mentioned questions. Sontag claims that the “ethical content of photographs is fragile”. But what does this mean and is her claim justified? The discussion of her ideas will take us to a more basic question, namely what kind of information photographs can transfer in communicative contexts. Here, we will follow Patrick Maynard’s advice to think of photography as a “family of technologies” that can serve a variety of different purposes, amongst which depiction is but one possibility. (shrink)

Among the principal manifestations of glasnost' in Soviet intellectual life today is the publication of writers who earlier were denied a broad forum for the expression of their views. In the sphere of philosophy, one such writer is Iakov Mil'ner-Irinin, with whose article on the concept of human nature in ethics the present issue begins. Mil'ner-Irinin, a philosopher who has worked as an editor at the publishing house of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, has long advocated an approach (...) to ethics that is heretical by orthodox Marxist-Leninist standards—a Kantian treatment of the field as a purely normative science that elaborates the universally necessary, prescriptive laws of conscience. In 1963 the Academy considered publishing a book on the subject by Mil 'ner-Irinin, but the project was dropped after heated debate, and when some of Mil 'ner-Irinin's views did find an outlet in an article he published in the Georgian republic, they were criticized severely by the Soviet philosophical establishment. (shrink)

In recent decades, the logical study of rational belief dynamics has played an increasingly important role in philosophy. However, the dynamics of concepts such as conceptual learning received comparatively little attention within this debate. This is problematic insofar as the occurrence of conceptual change (especially in the sciences) has been an influential argument against a merely logical analysis of beliefs. Especially Kuhn’s ideas about the incommensurability, i.e., untranslatability, of succeeding theories seem to stand in the way of logical reconstruction. This (...) paper investigates conceptual change as model-changing operations similar to belief revision and relates it to the notion of incommensurability. I consider several versions of conceptual change and discuss their influences on the expressive power, translatability and the potential arising of incommensurability. The paper concludes with a discussion of animal taxonomy in Aristotle’s and Linnaeus’s work. (shrink)

The principle of compositionality claims that the content of a complex concept is determined by its constituent concepts and the way in which they are composed. However, for prototype concepts this principle is often too rigid. Blurring the division between conceptual composition and belief update has therefore been suggested. Inspired by this idea, we develop a normative account of how belief revision and meaning composition should interact in modifications such as “red apple” or “pet hamster”. We do this by combining (...) the well-known selective modification model :485–527 1988) with the rules of Bayesian belief update. Moreover, we relate this model to systems of defeasible reasoning as discussed in the field of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Normality judgements are frequently used in everyday communication as well as in biological and social science. Moreover they became increasingly relevant to formal logic as part of defeasible reasoning. This paper distinguishes different kinds of normality statements. It is argued that normality laws like “Birds can normally fly” should be understood essentially in a statistical way. The argument has basically two parts: firstly, a statistical semantic core is mandatory for a descriptive reading of normality in order to explain the logical (...) features of normality laws. Secondly, a statistical justification of normality statements can be derived by game theoretic considerations if the normality law is understood as communication convention. (shrink)

Like belief revision, conceptual change has rational aspects. The paper discusses this for predicate change. We determine the meaning of predicates by a set of imaginable instances, i.e., conceptually consistent entities that fall under the predicate. Predicate change is then an alteration of which possible entities are instances of a concept. The recent exclusion of Pluto from the category of planets is an example of such a predicate change. In order to discuss predicate change, we define a monadic predicate logic (...) with three different kinds of lawful belief: analytic laws, which hold for all possible instances; doxastic laws, which hold for the most plausible instances; and typicality laws, which hold for typical instances. We introduce predicate changing operations that alter the analytic laws of the language and show that the expressive power is not affected by the predicate change. One can translate the new laws into old laws and vice versa. Moreover, we discuss rational restrictions of predicate change. These limit its possible influence on doxastic and typicality laws. Based on the results, we argue that predicate change can be quite conservative and sometimes even hardly recognisable. (shrink)

The modifier effect refers to the fact that the perceived likelihood of a property in a noun category is diminished if the noun is modified. For example, “Pigs live on farms” is rated as more likely than “Dirty pigs live on farms.” The modifier effect has been demonstrated in many studies, but the underlying cognitive mechanisms are still unclear. This paper reports two series of experiments that jointly point to the conclusion that the modifier effect is the result of a (...) superposition of three cognitive mechanisms: (a) probabilistically softened default inheritance, (b) pragmatic implicatures due to Gricean relevance assumptions, and (c) inference based on world knowledge. We present evidence that the pragmatic effects operate largely on an unconscious level and that their influence can be reduced by changing the presentation format of the cognitive task. (shrink)

At first glance there seem to be many similarities between Thomas S. Kuhn’s and Ludwik Fleck’s accounts of the development of scientific knowledge. Notably, both pay attention to the role played by the scientific community in the development of scientific knowledge. But putting first impressions aside, one can criticise some philosophers for being too hasty in their attempt to find supposed similarities in the works of the two men. Having acknowledged that Fleck anticipated some of Kuhn’s later theses, there seems (...) to be a temptation in more recent research to equate both theories in important respects. Because of this approach, one has to deal with the problem of comparing the most notable technical terms of both philosophers, namely ‘‘thought style’’ and ‘‘paradigm’’. This paper aims at a more thorough comparison between Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought style and Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm. Although some philosophers suggest that these two concepts are essentially equal in content, a closer examination reveals that this is not the case. This thesis of inequality will be defended in detail, also taking into account some of the alleged similarities which may be responsible for losing sight of the differences between these theories. (shrink)

The slight recognition that the idea of obligation to society has received in modern morality has Greek and Roman rather than Christian roots. So, even in the morals of private life - everything in it from generosity, nobility, personal dignity, even a sense of honor - has its origin purely a humanitarian, not a religious part of our education, and these qualities could never evolve from those ethical standards where the only explicitly recognized value is humility.

It is a fact that human subjects rate sentences about typical properties such as “Ravens are black” as very likely to be true. In comparison, modified sentences such as “Feathered ravens are black” receive lower ratings, especially if the modifier is atypical for the noun, as in “Jungle ravens are black”. This is called the modifier effect. However, the likelihood of the unmodified statement influences the perceived likelihood of the modified statement: the higher the rated likelihood of the unmodified sentence, (...) the higher the rated likelihood of the modified one. That means the modifier effect does not fully block default inheritance of typical properties from nouns to modified nouns. This paper discusses this inheritance effect. In particular, I ask whether it is the direct result of composing concepts from nouns, that is, a bias toward “black” when processing “raven”. I report a series of experiments in which I find no evidence for a direct inheritance from composition. This supports the view that default inheritance is rather an inference than a bias. (shrink)

The paper uses the theory of generalized quantifiers to discuss existential import and its implications for Aristotelian logic, namely the square of opposition, conversions and the assertoric syllogistic, as well as for more recent generalizations to intermediate quantifiers like “most”. While this is a systematic discussion of the semantic background one should assume in order to obtain the inferences and oppositions Aristotle proposed, it also sheds some light on the interpretation of his writings. Moreover by applying tools from modern formal (...) semantics to the investigation of classical Aristotelian logic and its extensions, we combine different approaches to the logic of quantification. We will present variants of quantifiers that are associated to the four corners of the square of opposition with and without existential import and discuss their role for the logical square, conversions and the syllogistic. It will turn out that there is no way to ascribe existential import that validates all inferences and relations which one is willing to hold in Aristotelian logic. Two options, however, provide reasonable results. Existential import should either be ascribed only to affirmative statements or only be ascribed to universal quantification. The former option is preferable for a mere reconstruction of the classical Aristotelian logic while the latter option is more attractive if Aristotelian logic is generalized to intermediate quantifiers. (shrink)

The circadian clock is a cell autonomous oscillator that controls many aspects of physiology through generating rhythmic gene expression in a time of day dependent manner. In addition, in endothermic mammals body temperature cycles contribute to rhythmic gene expression. These body temperature‐controlled rhythms are hard to distinguish from classic circadian rhythms if analyzed in vivo in endothermic organisms. However, they do not fulfill all criteria of being circadian if analyzed in cell culture or in conditions where body temperature of an (...) endothermic organism can be manipulated. Here we review and compare these characteristics, discuss the core clock independent mechanism of temperature‐controlled alternative splicing and highlight the requirement of double‐checking rhythms that appear circadian within an endothermic organism in a system that allows temperature manipulation. (shrink)