The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

This article investigates the approaches to understanding human transformation in the underexplored works of Russian cosmist philosophers Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky. As disciples of cosmism’s founder; Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov; these scholars contributed original ideas to the development of philosophical thought amid the tumultuous early 20th century; marked by the First World War; the Great Russian Revolution; and a period of political repression. The paradigms established by Gorsky and Setnitsky hinge on the idea that human action can (...) not only strive towards and achieve an ideal but also engender change in the world and the universe. They perceive issues of individual subconsciousness as manifestations of an unknown and all-encompassing inner world within humans. Echoing Fedorov; they identify the theanthropic (God-human) aspects of Christianity and address questions of culture; creativity; and history through human participation in fulfilling both the moral and existential teachings of Christ. Despite their shared philosophical positions; each thinker emphasizes different aspects of human and world studies. Gorsky envisions the path to a new reality through human creativity and the transformation of one’s own flesh; while arguing that an exclusive focus on scientific and technological progress is insufficient. Setnitsky; on the other hand; posits that external technological forces must be transformed into internal human forces throughout global and cosmic evolution. Gorsky and Setnitsky’s philosophical concepts of human transformation revolve around the enhancement of the inner world and the recognition of potential that remains invisible and incomprehensible. The article concludes that; in the 21st century; when scientific and technological advancements are transforming not only the world but the very nature of human beings; the legacy of Gorsky and Setnitsky; with their boundless faith in both scientific progress and spiritual self-improvement; holds particular relevance. (shrink)

The Nikolais/Louis Dance Technique provides the definite resource for understanding and practicing the influential dance technique developed by two pioneers of modern dance, Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis. The Nikolais/Louis technique is presented in a week-to-week classroom manual, providing an indispensable tool for teachers and students of this widely studied movement practice. Theoretical background for further reading is set off from the manual for those interested in deeper study. Their philosophy and methodology span a broad readership and offer an important (...) addition to dance literature and American cultural history. (shrink)

Nikolai Zhinkin’s review of Ernst Cassirer is so far the earliest document of the discussion in Russia about Cassirer’s conception of myth and his theory of symbolic forms. The text is published from Zhinkin’s archive. Zhinkin here notes a reorientation of Neo-Kantianism that reveals its hidden relativism and stands as a symptom of its downfall.

Despite its short historical moment in the sun, behaviorism has become something akin to a theoria non grata, a position that dare not be explicitly endorsed. The reasons for this are complex, of course, and they include sociological factors which we cannot consider here, but to put it briefly: many have doubted the ambition to establish law-like relationships between mental states and behavior that dispense with any sort of mentalistic or intentional idiom, judging that explanations of intelligent behavior require reference (...) to qualia and/or mental events. Today, when behaviorism is discussed at all, it is usually in a negative manner, either as an attempt to discredit an opponent’s view via a reductio, or by enabling a position to distinguish its identity and positive claims by reference to what it is (allegedly) not. In this paper, however, we argue that the ghost of behaviorism is present in influential, contemporary work in the field of embodied and enactive cognition, and even in aspects of the phenomenological tradition that these theorists draw on. Rather than take this to be a problem for these views as some have, we argue that once the behaviorist dimensions are clarified and distinguished from the straw-man version of the view, it is in fact an asset, one which will help with task of setting forth a scientifically reputable version of enactivism and/or philosophical behaviorism that is nonetheless not brain-centric but behavior-centric. While this is a bit like “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” strategy, as Shaun Gallagher notes (2019), with the shared enemy of behaviorism and enactivism being classical Cartesian views and/or orthodox cognitivism in its various guises, the task of this paper is to render this alliance philosophically plausible. Doi: 10.1007/s11229-019-02432-1. (shrink)

The article highlights certain aspects of the obscured structure of the number, which occur irregularly in the teaching of numeracy in Preschool Education. Its absence, as an effect, leads to the child's misunderstanding of the concept of number. In the presymbolic stage, the number is taught through the word. Structural particularities are found in the semantics and phonetics of the number word and are substantial in the processes of speech and listening. The objectives are to make known the obscured structure (...) of the number and its elements and to analyze the nature of the name of the number. It is justified that the basis of the word "ONE" are the first sound manifestations of the infant. It states that there is the same and equal relationship between the acquisition of knowledge of language and speech with the acquisition of knowledge of number through the development of tonal auditory balance. Methodology: the theoretical analysis of the structural parts (semantics and phonosemantics) of the number and the identification of reciprocal correlation between the constructions of the knowledge of spoken numeral word in Preschool Education through the implemented technology. Contribution: the development of the method for learning the concept of number. (shrink)

. Moral innatism, connatural ideas, and impuissance in daily affairs: James Q. Wilson's acrobatic dive into an empty pool. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 77-82.

The Russian philosopher Nikolai Onufrievich Lossky considered himself a Leibnizian of sorts. He accepted parts of Leibniz’s doctrine of monads, although he preferred to call them ‘substantival agents’ and rejected the thesis that they have neither doors nor windows. In Lossky’s own doctrine, monads have existed since the beginning of time, they are immortal, and can evolve or devolve depending on the goodness or badness of their behavior. Such evolution requires the possibility for monads to reincarnate into the bodies of (...) creatures of a higher level on the scala perfectionis. According to this theory, a monad can evolve by being progressively reincarnated multiple times through a sort of process of metamorphosis from the level of the most elementary particles all the way up to the level of human beings or even higher. Lossky argues that the works of Leibniz contain scattered elements of such a systematic doctrine of reincarnation. He attempts to reconstitute this doctrine in an article that appeared both in Russian and German in 1931. The Russian version, ‘Ученiе Лейбница о перевоплощенiи какъ метаморфозѣ’, was published in the Сборникъ Русскаго института въ Прагѣ, vol. 2, 1931, pp. 77–88. The German version appeared under the title ‘Leibniz’ Lehre von der Reinkarnation als Metamorphose,’ in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 40, n. 2, 1931, pp. 214–226. The content of the Russian and German versions is roughly the same, except for the omission, in the German version, of a mention of David Hume in the second sentence and of one paragraph and a half at the end of the article. The following is a translation of this article. I translated the text from the Russian version, which was in all appearances written first, but I also took the German version into account. The original pagination is added in angle brackets. Angle brackets are used wherever the additions are mine. — Frédéric Tremblay. (shrink)

This is a translation from Russian to English of Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky’s “Tpaнcцeндeнтaльнo-фeнoмeнoлoгичecкiй идeaлизмъ Гyccepля”, published in the émigré journal Пyть in 1939. In this article, Lossky presents and criticizes Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Like many successors of Husserl’s “Göttingen School,” Lossky interprets Husserl’s transcendental idealism as a Neo-Kantian idealism and he criticizes it on the ground that it leads to a form of solipsism. In light of his own epistemology and his metaphysical system, he also claims that, although Husserl is (...) more radical than Descartes in his methodological doubt, he is not radical enough, because his abstention from existential judgment with regard to the external world is itself an existential judgment. In this regard, Lossky affirms that his own critically-informed defense of naive realism is in fact more radical than Husserl’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

The subject of this study is the problem of the failure of attempts by the scientific community to come to a common understanding of what exactly information can be as something encoded into material structures and moved along with them. At the same time, the following aspects of this problem are considered in detail: what is the immediate cause of the information problem; what are the objective and subjective prerequisites for its appearance; why the unresolved nature of this problem does (...) not interfere with the creation and development of communication systems, control and other "smart" devices; is there any general guideline for finding solutions to such problems, and what is it; what role did the philosophy of information play in turning the problem of information from a private scientific problem into a problem of the ideological level. The main results of the conducted research are as follows: the immediate cause of the information problem has been identified and a comprehensively substantiated solution to this problem has been given; it has been revealed that the incompleteness of the materialistic theory of cognition has become a fertile ground for the appearance of this problem; the circumstances that prevented its completion have been identified; the natural mechanism of control and cognition has been revealed, as a result of which the materialistic theory of cognition has been further developed the source of the ideal in the material world is revealed; it is shown that the mechanistic idea of information coding made the concept of information incompatible with the presence of any objective content; it is revealed what is actually hidden behind the words about information coding and its measurement; the nature of signals and signs is revealed; a kind of bias of the philosophy of information and a general error is revealed all known concepts of information. (shrink)

This is a translation from the Russian of Nikolai Lossky’s review of Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932). The review was published in the Parisian émigré journal Новый Град (Cité nouvelle) in 1932. In this review, Lossky criticizes Bergson for leaving some key problems of the philosophy of religion unresolved, namely that of God’s relation to the world (theism vs. pantheism), that of immortality, as well as that of evil. He also criticizes Bergson’s (...) “extreme biologism” in his explanation of morality, which, in his view, subjectivizes the objects of religion. For Lossky, the symbolic images of the Christian religion are not subjective “fabulations,” but real symbols through which God reveals himself to us. Likewise, according to Lossky, true morality cannot be explained in terms of biological adaptation, but must rely on the foundation of an objective, i.e., Platonic, axiological sphere. (Frédéric Tremblay). (shrink)

This is a translation from the Russian of Nikolai Lossky’s “Heдocтaтки гнoceoлoгiи Бepгcoнa и влiянie иxъ нa eгo мeтaфизикy” (The Defects of Bergson’s Epistemology and Their Consequences on His Metaphysics), which was published in the journal Boпpocы филocoфiи и пcиxoлoгiи (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology) in 1913. In this article, Lossky criticizes Bergson’s epistemological dualism, which completely separates intuition from reason, and which rejects reason in favor of intuition. For Bergson, reality is continuous, indivisible, fluid, etc., and reason distorts it (...) through its acts of division, abstraction, extraction, and so on. Lossky argues that this conclusion does not follow. Reason does not distort the living flow of reality; it rather provides a window unto aspects of the otherwise undivided seamless flowing organic whole. In fact, reason is itself a species of intuition in its own right, namely an intellectual intuition, the object of which is the atemporal facet of the world (the Platonic ideal realm), which is necessary for the existence of its temporal facet. Lossky thus challenges Bergson’s one-sided and self-defeating reduction of being to a flux of changes devoid of changing things. (Frédéric Tremblay). (shrink)

The subject of this study is the special theory of relativity (SRT) by A. Einstein, the debate about which has been going on for more than a hundred years. The aim of the study is to evaluate SRT from the side of whether everything that is discussed in this theory and thus in the new, relativistic physics is possible in nature itself. At the same time, the author pays special attention to three issues: the principle of relativity, the necessary condition (...) for the objectivity of the content of scientific theories and the Einstein style of scientific thinking, which predetermined the ideological component of SRT and all relativistic physics. But such issues as relativistic reductions of lengths and durations, the relativity of simultaneity and a single space-time do not remain without attention. The study revealed the fallacy of a long-standing and widespread opinion about the relativity of properties. The necessary condition for the objectivity of scientific theories is revealed. The natural form of expression of quantities is revealed and the non-relative nature of all natural quantities is shown. The hidden form of relativity inherent in the SRT postulate about the constancy of the speed of light in all inertial reference frames and extended in SRT to the magnitude of all lengths and durations considered in it is revealed. It is shown that such relativity is based on the dependence of the quantities on the choice of their reflection systems. It is shown that such dependence is impossible in nature itself. It is concluded that the SRT is erroneous. At the same time, the factors that served as favorable ground for the emergence and spread of this erroneous theory are listed. (shrink)

First published in English in 1935, this is a vital and stimulating critical appraisal of contemporary thought in the post-World War One era. Written by a selection of leading Marxist thinkers including Nikolai Bukharin, who would later become one of the most famous victims of Stalin's show trials, this work offers a Marxist critique of contemporary thought relating to philosophy, science and history. The authors all lean towards the view that the general tendency of modern thought is to abandon the (...) historical method and to deny progress, with the conclusion that Marxism was the only historical and progressive outlook in science, philosophy and history in the period following the First World War and the Communist revolution in Russia. A fascinating document of great historical and political interest which offers an invaluable insight into contemporary thought in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. (shrink)

This study examined the relation of altered states of consciousness to neuroticization, spiritual experience, and divergent thinking in a sample of women at late pregnancy and post-delivery. The results suggest that stress associated with imminent childbirth is linked to higher levels of ASCs and that neuroticization and spirituality seem to be implicated in the induction of ASCs.

This is a translation from Bulgarian into English of Nikolai Lossky’s “Razlichniiat smisul na dumata intuitsiia” (“The Different Senses of the Word Intuition”), published in the Sofianite journal Filosofski pregled (Philosophical Review), 1931, year III, book 1, pp. 1–9. In this article, solicited by the journal’s editor-in-chief, the Bulgarian philosopher Dimitar Mihalchev, Lossky surveys the different ways in which the word “intuition” (intuitsiia) has been used throughout the history of philosophy: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Friedrich Jacobi, Ivan Kireevski, Alexei Khomyakov, (...) Vladimir Solovyov, Bergson, Husserl, and Hans Driesch. Lossky then situates his own use of the word within this philosophical tradition and compares his intuitivism with gnoseologies similar to his own, namely, those of Semyon Frank, Johannes Rehmke, Max Scheler, Paul Linke, Dimitar Mihalchev, the English realists (Samuel Alexander and John Laird), the American realists (Edwin Holt, Walter Marvin, William Montague, Ralph Perry, Walter Pitkin, and Edward Spaulding), and the Neo-Scholastic Josef Gredt. As such, the article makes a valuable addendum to his Obosnovanie intuitivizma (The Foundation of Intuitivism) (1906) and provides a helpful synopsis of his theory of knowledge, which, in accordance with the Russian terminological tradition, he calls “gnoseology”. (shrink)

There is a view in the literature around beliefs that evidence responsiveness is a necessary feature of beliefs. The reasoning is that because beliefs are governed by truth they must be evidence responsive. A mental state that fails to be evidence responsive, therefore, could not be a belief as it could not be governed by truth. The implication is that even those evidence-resistant mental states that appear to be beliefs are in fact something else. I argue that evidence resistance is (...) a feature of at least some beliefs, so evidence responsiveness cannot be a necessary feature of belief. (shrink)

This is a translation from Russian to English of Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky’s review of the first Russian translation of volume one of Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen, which was translated by E. A. Berstein and published in 1909 by a Petersburgian editor. The review appeared in the Muscovite philosophical journal Pyccкaя мыcль in 1909. In this short text, Lossky expresses his agreement with Husserl’s early anti-psychologism in logic. He also manifests his stance against logical and axiological relativism and naturalism. As an ontological (...) realist, Lossky thought he had found in the author of the Logische Untersuchungen an ally against the subjectivistic trends then still prevalent in Germany. The review is significant in intellectual history for its vanguard role in the Rezeptionsgeschichte of Husserl’s thought in Russia. (shrink)

In their update to Intentionality All-Stars, Hutto and Satne claim that there is currently no satisfactory account for a naturalised conception of content. From this the pair suggest that we need to consider whether content is present in all aspects of intelligence, that is, whether it is content all the way down. Yet if we do not have an acceptable theory of content such a question seems out of place. It seems more appropriate to question whether content itself is the (...) problematic assumption. This paper will explore this question, with the analysis hinging on whether those trying to naturalise content are facing a tough challenge as Haugeland has suggested, or whether it is a genuine dilemma as Hutto has suggested elsewhere. If those attempting to naturalise content are facing a genuine dilemma, a dilemma in which the non-existence of content is one of the horns, then it would seem that the issue is not at what stage you posit content, but whether you should posit content at all. This also has the added benefit of shifting the debate to a more global discussion, that is, the best way to explain intelligence, period. (shrink)

Karl Popper's critique of theoretical history remains formidable but contains serious flaws. Popper held erroneous views about the practice of the natural sciences and created overly severe strictures for theoretical statements in the social sciences. General theory and general theoretical statements play a legitimate role in the social sciences. Merton has promoted middle-range theories and models and Lakatos multiple ontologies. One can answer Popper's criticisms of either the impossibility or triviality of long-term historical laws by searching for stable constellations of (...) local or middle-range laws rather than a universal law. Moreover, the successful use in the social sciences of various types of scales of measurement rather than an absolute scale shows that quantitative analysis is possible in history. Investigators need to find the boundaries, the frameworks of feasibility, in which historical trends and laws operate. Popper's maximalism plays into the irrationalist trends that he himself deplored. If historical investigators and theoreticians set appropriate goals for theoretical history, they can practice their discipline responsibly and find meanings, if not a single meaning, in history. (shrink)

Within a physicalist-mechanistic worldview, in which we cannot be more than intelligent, self-reproducing biomachines or biobots, fundamentals of a new approach to the science of human self-explanation are outlined. Some a priori logical necessities, or determinants, of any biobot’s control system design are recognized. Evolution had to satisfy them, but neuroscience and cognitive science so far do not clearly see these basics. It is concluded that the old part of the brain still contains the genetically fixed drives, responses, and the (...) physiological control. Here is the seat of an ancient somatic self that is not intelligent but is still the active center of our life. The neocortex has evolved to serve the somatic self with intelligence by individually building a virtual model of the external material and social world. This model is used by the somatic self to “pre-play” intended actions and responses to see whether they would satisfy its needs. This schema of global brain function provides the neurological foundation for the ego-id dichotomy in analytic psychology, as well as some critique of it. Following the groundbreaking experiments by Benjamin Libet and John-Dylan Haynes et al. , consciousness is taken as a “theater” that presents what the neural networks already have worked out, and freedom of the will is limited. The explosive growth of culture and civilization began when neocortical power exceeded a certain threshold. This can be taken as a quasi-mutation that projected us into a supra-biological space of existence that is new to natural history. It is not clear whether this event will lead to a positive future for humanity or to doom. Functional religion is seen as a neurosystemic attempt to bring back the earlier natural state. Thus, it can be valuable when cleared of mythological ballast. (shrink)

The cultural-historical approach provides the deep theoretical grounds for the analysis of children’s play. Vygotsky suggested three critical features of play: switching to an imaginary situation, taking on a play role, and acting according to a set of rules defined by the role. Collaboration, finding ideas and materials for creating an imaginary situation, defining play roles, and planning the plot are complex tasks for children. However, the question is, do children need educator’s support during the play to develop their executive (...) functions, and to what extent? This experimental study was aimed at answering this inquiry. The four modes of sociodramatic play were created which differed in the adult intervention, from non-involvement in the play to its entire organization. The play could be child-led, adult-led, or free ; and there was also a control group where the children heard the same stimulus stories as the other groups but then followed them up with a drawing activity instead of a play activity. The study revealed that, firstly, the ways of educator’s involvement in the play differed in their potential in respect to the development of executive functions, and, secondly, this influence was not equal for different components of executive functions. Free play in the experiment was not a beneficial condition for the development of any of the studied components of executive functions, compared to the conditions involving the participation of an adult in the play. Furthermore, the type of adult intervention stimulated the development of various executive functions. The entire organization of the play by the adult had a positive impact of their general development. In contrast, the adult’s assistance in the organization of the children’s play had a positive effect on the development of inhibitory control. The study results can be helpful when considering educational practices within a cultural-historical approach to engaging the potential of play in children’s learning and development around the world. (shrink)

Nature as the source of moral ordinance in Aristotle received doubt with the publication of J. Donald Monan’s Moral Knowledge and Its Methodology in Aristotle. Arguing for an earlier versus later Aristotle, he opined for the φρόνιμος as Aristotle’s final word on the criterion for ethical right. “Normative Nature and the Moral Good in the Aristotelian Ethics” argues exegetically and on Aristotelian grounds the inaccuracy of such a view. As early as the Protrepticus, Nature as the guide to proper conduct (...) appears, a view unchanged in the later, mature Ethics. (shrink)

The famous triad of ‘rational proofs’ of God’s existence may, if their underlying intuitions are taken at face value, be reversed to prove the contrary, namely the non-existence of God. The ontological argument, for example, proceeds from the notion of God as the ‘real most’ or ‘absolutely real’ being. However, the existence of an entity thus defined must be beyond doubt, for if distinguishing between ‘levels of reality’ makes any sense at all, ‘more real’ must also mean ‘more manifest’. And (...) since a being whose existence is beyond doubt is greater than that whose existence is in doubt, God, to fit the definition provided by St. Anselm, must be a being the existence of which cannot be doubted or, more strictly, the existence of which can only come to be doubted if He did not exist to dispel all doubts. Hence it follows that God does not exist, because it is an undeniable fact that His existence is subject to doubt. This paper is not, however, about theexistence of God, it is about the inherent dialectic of theological reason that seeks non-natural or supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. (shrink)