In modern European culture the explication and the understanding of nature is determined by the specific traits of systemic objects investigated by science. The paper singles out three types of systemic objects, i.e. simple (mechanical) objects, complex self-regulating, and complex self-developing systems. Categorical structures accounting for each of these types are analyzed.The paper shows that the investigation of every new type of systems changes the type of scientific rationality (classical, nonclassical, post-nonclassical).

In the existing philosophical interpretations of mystical experience (constructivism, essentialism, etc.), its essence is usually seen in the features of "mystical knowledge". At the same time, the value-semantic foundations of mystical experience and its existential aspect remain in the shadows. In this article, the mystical experience is analyzed from the standpoint of the theories of the subject's objective activity - the theory of activity (developed in Russian psychology), enactivism, and the concept of the "life world". It is shown that the (...) essence of mystical experience is manifested not in cognitive, but in value-semantic, existential attitude to the world, which is represented by two groups of value-semantic viewpoints. In the first, the dependence of the subject on the sacred object of mystical experience is expressed, in the second - the volitional focus of the subject on overcoming such dependence, "mastering", "acquiring" the sacred object. These attitudes reflect the duality of the need-motivational sphere of consciousness, which gives the activity of the subject, on the one hand, activity, energy, and on the other, meaning. In mystical experience, the subject of active "development", "acquisition" (which can be both real and virtual) is an imaginative "otherworldly reality". The analysis allows us to conclude that mystical experience is one of the forms of motivational states of consciousness. Its peculiarity is that it is aimed at realizing the need for the harmonization of the subject's relations with the natural and social environment, the subject's finding the meaning of the "existence of his self" in an always open to the future, incomplete life world. It is the motivational basis that gives the mystical experience an improvisational character, as well as a creative, renewing potential (within the boundaries of the sensory-emotional experience of the world by the subject). The article also analyzes the concept of semantic reality. It is shown that the semantic foundations of mystical experience reflect the individually unique aspects of human life, are the result of the interactions of many factors of socio-cultural, individual-personal nature (psychological, medical, pharmacological, gender, psychiatric, etc.). (shrink)

The conceptual basis of Hellenic theology was theoretical reflection on the essence of myth, the philosophy of mythology. Several stages can be distinguished in the history of Hellenic theology. The subject of this article is the Hellenic theology of the epoch of the high classics (Vt. half of the V century BC). The cultural roots of the High Classics go back to the ancient Enlightenment, which formed the rational attitude of the ancient consciousness to the world. The main event of (...) the era of High Classics is the Peloponnesian War, which accelerated the crisis of the polis system, its way of life, and cultural ideals. The war led to the rupture of social ties, accelerated the individualization of the consciousness of the individual, forced to seek new social and spiritual supports. Serious shifts have taken place in the existential foundations of Hellenic religion, the understanding of man's dependence on the will of the Olympian gods and the measure of human influence on them has changed. If at the beginning of the epoch of the High Classics there was a semantic harmony of the relations between the human and the divine, then by the end of the epoch it was replaced by the confrontation and alienation of the sacred and profane. Ideas about the dependence of man on the world of the gods and the possible influence on the sacred have "blurred", have become extremely uncertain. This tendency manifested itself in various forms - in the strengthening of the influence of sophistry with its skepticism, the opposition of Chthonic and Olympic mythologies, the actualization of the motive of the birth of new gods (while the old ones do not die at all), stories about the deification of bright personalities, etc. Including in the theology of the Hellenic religion, concentrated expressed by the plots and images of the ancient drama (Sophocles, Euripides). The juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane made Hellenic religion meaningless, led it to self-denial. Under these conditions, Hellenic theology was faced with the need to transform the image of the sacred world. Firstly, by giving the otherworldly reality an abstract-conceptual transcendence. Secondly, through the ultimate generalization of mythological images of the gods, up to monotheism. These tasks were solved by the next epoch - the late classics. (shrink)

The article deals with three patterns for interpretation of language in its relation to the cultural hegemony, i.e. Gramscian, Voloshinian, and Pasolinian. As was shown, the analysis of the language problem is the necessary precondition for justifying the unity of theoretical and practical elements within Marxist philosophy. A common feature for the aforementioned patterns was an attempt to answer a fundamental question: how it is possible to make explicit the relationship between ideology and relations of production by means of the (...) materialist dialectics. A refusal to fetishize language as a particular essence, a revealing that any sign systems are mediated by ideologies, and elaboration of a nonSaussurian structure of language are the core results of the proposed analysis. The starting point for the reflections of the mentioned thinkers was a tenet that communication in the state is determined by how much the institutions of power are able to bring the interests of society under control without disturbing the balance between the political body and the existing social forces. Thus, an ideology plays in two guises: as a symbolic order of legitimation on the society’s part and as a framing the growth of cultural forms. A distinction between the written and the spoken language becomes a politically significant tool to undermine the hegemony, for a balance between the political and the social, between the coercion and the approval, is widely open to fluctuations. Hence is the problem Marxist theorists have tried to solve: how can it be found out, with an examination of statements in non-political contexts, what someone talks of is a part of her political interest. The Marxist thinkers solved it in various ways. For instance, Gramsci focused himself on the reasons of making of the Italian literary canon; Voloshinov considered the proposition that in linguistics a formalism, as well as psychologism, following from a claim that semantics and means of expression are politically independent; and Pasolini sketched the difference between the spoken language, the spoken-written language, and the purely oral language, with unequal subjects of them. (shrink)

The subject of this research is, first of all, the ontological and phenomenological aspects of the prototype as a category and a kind of phenomenon in the field of art and poetic imagination. The research is carried out mainly on the material of the phenomenological-dialectical concept of A. F. Losev and the phenomenology of the poetic imagination of G. Bashlyar. The historical, philosophical and theological contexts of the concept of the prototype of Losev are revealed. The emphasis is made on (...) the ontological meaning of expression and the prototype, on the ontology of aesthetic and art. Losev's concept, as well as the "direct ontology" of the poetic image in the concept of Baschlyar, are applied to the artistic material that organically meets them. These are the texts of N. Gogol: "Sorochinskaya Fair", "The Night before Christmas", "Terrible Revenge", "Old World landowners", "Viy". The theme of the prototype as an archetype revealing the deep semantics of art has been sufficiently developed, in particular, based on the material of K. Jung's analytical psychology. The novelty of this study includes several aspects. Firstly, based on Z. Freud's approach to the close connection of the infantile-personal and the archaic in the psyche in the interpretation of this artistic material, Freud and Jung's approaches are combined, it is concluded that archaic and eroticism in the primordial element are merged into one whole, therefore it is not necessary to categorically oppose these two approaches to each other, at least when referring to archetypal material. Secondly, this study focuses on the ontological and phenomenological aspects of the prototype, which are not given enough attention in various studies. Thirdly, the study combines concepts such as phenomenological-dialectical, phenomenology of poetic imagination, intertextual analysis in relation to the subject of the prototype, which in their interaction allow us to more fully reveal the primitive element of art. All this can contribute to the creation of a holistic concept of the prototype in art and in the sphere of poetic imagination. (shrink)

Heidegger and Badiou are not likely to be received as philosophical figures inheriting much in common. The only obvious ground which backs both thinkers is that of ontology as primary focus of their intellectual endeavors. However, this is divergence between their philosophies what makes an attempt to reveal some other conceptual foundations their doctrines have in common so important for a historian of the recent transformations in philosophy. The concept of subject looks as an indicator of differences between Heidegger and (...) Badiou, since Heideggerian destruction of the metaphysics of subject is opposed by positive and affirmative indoctrination of subject developed by Badiou. Affirmative concept of the subject implies certain references to Heidegger's negative hermeneutics of the Modern subjectivity where it says about reactionary subject or dark subject. As we see Badiou skillfully attunes his conception to the profound destructivity of Heidegger's negation of subject. What these two thinkers share is certainly the need for a middle term between totality and unifying force of being and particularity and contingency of the individual human life, which would be efficient in denoting the very transition of the particular into the common. The early Heidegger of decisive Dasein can be regarded as a forerunner of the Maoist revolutionary subject of Badiou, with its prophecy of becoming a historical driving force and gathering the strength of the particular around a traumatic Event. For both Heidegger and Badiou the "movement" of truth proceeds trough a series of choices which cannot be governed by a law or "an algorithm." The indiscernible truth forces a subject to permanently find him/herself amid the "undecidable." The procedure of fidelity traverses the existent knowledge. One can scarcely know whether an event has taken place, one can rather bet upon its truth. For both philosophers the concept of truth is indissolubly connected with the problems of ethics. Heidegger points to the "most primordial truth," which is the "truth of existence." Abiding in this truth, Dasein discloses itself to itself and discovers its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. (shrink)

The article is related to the revealing of the intent of Hegel’s “Science of Logic”. As authors take it, there is an attempt to imagine the fundamental level of reasoning, where there is no opposition between cognition and its object. In this dimension there is no need to substantiate compatibility between them — it is a level of primary foundation of knowledge. Consequently, any knowledge at this level may be characterized as “Ultimate”. That being said, place of such knowledge is (...) not taken by several specific statements, but by the certain way of organizing those “mental definitions” that are already used by common human sense. To organize these definitions, to arrange them into consistently deployed sequence of logical notions, there is need to abort the search for the primary foundation for knowledge inherent in philosophy from its very origins. This attempt was reflected in Kant's theory of knowledge, where the problem of the reliability of knowledge was solved due to self-limitation in the process of cognition — it was necessary to stop before a certain line, beyond which thought leaves “the limits of possible experience” and falls into the area of insoluble contradictions (antinomies). Hegel's Logic, which, according to the authors, is in a kind of “symbiosis” with the Kantian program, consists in considering these insoluble contradictions precisely as a “symptom” of achieving the primary foundation of knowledge. It is in the collision with an insoluble contradiction that the definitions are organized in the necessary logical sequence, and that fundamental level is reached where there is no opposition between cognition and its object. (shrink)

The article proposes to consider Hegel's “Science of Logic” as a project, where the most important thing is not to describe the “laws of thinking”, but rather to propose a more precise definition of the theoretical level at which thinking itself becomes the subject of its own description. Thus, on the one hand, Hegel reveals the paradox that lies at the basis of the logic as a philosophical discipline, and on the other, seeks to show the possibility of the existence (...) of the logic in the extreme conditions of this paradox. Within the framework of this approach, logic is inseparable from the theory of knowledge — it is assumed that the configuration or “form” of thinking cannot be “neutral” with respect to its content. Therefore, according to Hegel, in reality there is not the logic of isolated operations occurring in the mind, but the logic of “the object itself”, which shows and directly embodies itself in these operations. At this level, there is no gap between the thinking consciousness and objects of the external world separated from it. We are talking about a special — “pre-ontological” — dimension, where the subject's sensory experience is not yet launched and distinguished, and a subject of the thinking process and thinking itself form a single whole. Such a dimension is developed in the historical experience of philosophical thought, starting from Antiquity, and is captured by Hegel under the name of “Ultimate knowledge”. The article raises the question of why this dimension repeatedly eludes us, acquiring a “semi-mystical” status in the minds of Hegel's interpreters, and yet how it is still possible to infiltrate into it. (shrink)

Viacheslav Ivanov's concept of person underwent significant development in the course of his career. In his earliest works the person is a transient form that is to be superseded by union with the supra-personal, transcendent self. In works of his middle period Ivanov posits the person as an image of the transcendent self. Lastly, in the 1910s Ivanov integrated these two concepts into a hermeneutic view of the person as an agent of transcendence.

Viacheslav Ivanov, the central intellectual force in Russian modernism, achieved through his work an original synthesis of Christianity, Platonism, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His powerful intellect exerted an immeasurable influence in modernist Russia and the early Soviet Union, and after emigrating to Italy in 1924 he played an important role in intellectual debates in Western Europe between the wars. In recent years, Ivanov's manifold contributions have been recognized in all major aspects of Russian culture, including poetry, literary (...) theory, philosophy, and theology. In _The Russian Prospero_, Robert Bird uncovers the foundations of Ivanov's poetic and theoretical universe, traces its evolution, and explores its connections to cultural and intellectual currents in international modernism. Blending a close reading of Ivanov's work with a thoughtful analysis of his place within twentieth-century thought, Bird finds that Ivanov's ecstatic creative psychology leads directly to a consideration of history as a continuum of human interpretive activity, and to a conception of art as a historical force. He emphasizes and dramatizes Ivanov's quest to harness the power of art and apply it to concrete life-situations. It is the dilemma of Prospero, who must liberate his attendant spirit Ariel in order to restore full sovereignty over his own creative self and to regain ethical agency. The productive tension that resulted from Ivanov's struggle was a remarkable force in Russian modernism and remains a powerful spur for our own reflections on modernity. Outstanding Academic Title, _Choice_ Magazine “[Bird’s] clear explanations of Ivanov’s ideas and his informed, insightful, astute readings of the poetic works make this book required reading for anyone interested in modern poetry, intellectual history, cultural studies, and philosophy of early 20th century Russian and European thought.... Essential.”—_Choice_ “[Bird] makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of Russian modernism in its broader European context.... In this undertaking he has not only succeeded admirably, but will undoubtedly inspire others to follow him.”—Pamela Davidson, _The Russian Review_ “The most comprehensive overall treatment of Ivanov’s work to date.”—David N. Wells, _The Slavic and East European Journal_. (shrink)

Viacheslav Ivanov sought a religious account of art and being that would avoid the dangers of pantheism and agnostic immanentism. Ivanov's efforts to meet this challenge can be viewed as an "overcoming of Romanticism" insofar as his initial position resembles that of the German and English Romantics. Our analyses of Ivanov's artistic and theoretical texts elucidate his Romantic dilemma and its resolution. ;Between 1903 and 1919 Ivanov's thought presents three phases. First, Ivanov promoted an ecstatic creativity rooted in the (...) "non-acceptance" of the world of forms. This "theomachy" was followed by a "theurgical" aesthetics that, while affirming a transcendent world of forms, either negated the immanent world or else conflated the two in pantheism. Finally, by placing man as a palpable and autotelic reality at the center of his worldview, Ivanov achieved a positive vision of finitude without encroaching on the integrity of the infinite. ;In Ivanov's poetry this final stage is represented by the image of the "tender mystery." This image is also key to understanding Ivanov's longer artistic works. Prometheus expresses the tension between ecstatic creativity and the need for continuity in spiritual labors. Infancy relates Ivanov's sense of ancestral culpability. The Tale of Svetomir-Tsarevich reinterprets and redirects Russian culture by reprising the past and elucidating its moral imperative. The Roman Diary surveys all of the major themes of Ivanov's oeuvre in a many-layered historical chronology. In his longer works Ivanov reads his own life in the universal spiritual-historical continuum, turning autobiography into an epic narrative. ;Ivanov's anthropological vision is personalist, existentialist, and hermeneutic. Reconceiving Ivanov's aesthetics as a hermeneutic illuminates Ivanov's "overcoming" of Romanticism and also Ivanov's relevance. First, Ivanov's hermeneutic, distinguished by a religious-tragic understanding of all cultural events, points to particular similarities and differences between modern intellectual trends in Russia and the West. Second, Ivanov creates a new field---Russian cultural hermeneutics, which articulates the moral imperative of living tradition, understood as a mediated representation of transcendent reality. Third, his hermeneutic theory provides a creative solution for the problems engendered by theomachic and theurgical aesthetics in Orthodox theology. (shrink)

P. Ia. Chaadaev continues to attract the attention of researchers of Russian thought. Some recent publications in our press justify the assertion that scholars are interested not only in this or that side of the views of "the philosopher of Basmannaia Street" but also in the very character of his mentality and its place in the history of Russian philosophical thought. Thus, Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov writes in his article "Chaadaev-Our Contemporary" [Chaadaev-nash sovremennik] : "There are several reasons why Chaadaev (...) is not at home in Russia and in the history of Russian thought. One of them is his extreme rationalism and logical orientation. He is the follower of Western European rationalism, mainly, I think, of the French rationalist tradition. For him the chief achievement of civilization is the syllogism, the deduction of logical conclusions from some kind of premises and he takes history to be a unified whole." The same problem of Chaadaevan mentality is raised by P.V. Kuznetsov in his article "The Metaphysical Narcissus: P. Ia. Chaadaev and the Fate of Philosophy in Russia" [Metafizicheskii nartsiss. P. Ia. Chaadaev i sud'ba filosofii v Rossii] , which contrasts Chaadaev's thought with the Eastern "apophatic consciousness.". (shrink)

In this paper Russian Symbolist philosophy is represented primarily by Viacheslav Ivanov (1866--1949), but its conclusions are intended to be valid for other philosophers we classify as Symbolist, including Nikolai Berdiaev and S. L. Frank. It is posited that, by comparing Ivanov''s cosmology, aesthetics, and anthropology to those of Martin Heidegger, one can reconceive of Symbolist philosophy as an existential hermeneutic. This, it is claimed, can help to identify a common basis among the Symbolist philosophers, and also to place (...) Russian thought in the context of modern European philosophy and vice versa. (shrink)

This article explores the characteristics of research sites that scientists have called “natural experiments” to understand and develop usable distinctions for the social sciences between “Nature’s or Society’s experiments” and “natural experiments.” In this analysis, natural experiments emerge as the retro-fitting by social scientists of events that have happened in the social world into the traditional forms of field or randomized trial experiments. By contrast, “Society’s experiments” figure as events in the world that happen in circumstances that are already sufficiently (...) “controlled” to be open for direct analysis without reconstruction work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian ModernismJohn GoodliffeCreating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism, edited by Irina Paperno and Joan Delaney Grossman; x & 288 pp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, $39.95.In describing the history of a country’s literature, one may well be tempted to divide it into separate compartments and so lose sight of the continuity which is, in the final analysis, more worthy of (...) attention. Historians of Russian literature have often succumbed to this temptation and it became almost commonplace to read that in Russia the Realism of the nineteenth century gave way to the Symbolism which began in the twentieth; that Symbolism gave way to Futurism; and that in due course all the earlier “-isms” were swept aside by the Socialist Realism of the Soviet period. For Marxist-oriented Soviet [End Page 371] historians such preoccupation with compartmentalization was obsessive. This makes more than welcome a series of essays which is at pains to emphasize the essential connections and kinship between these various “-isms.”Four of the seven essays are intended to demonstrate how the Symbolists, while ostensibly breaking with the earlier tradition of positivism (the idea that art’s essential purpose is to help build a better world), were, in a number of important respects, continuing and even reinforcing what they claimed to despise. Thus, regarding art and life as indissolubly linked, they attempted to turn life into art and art into life. Their endeavors frequently led them into behavior that now appears “eccentric, at times even ridiculous” (p. 166). Olga Matich describes how Blok, Bely, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and Zinaida Gippius attempted to model their sexual relationships on the pattern of the “erotic utopia” described by Vladimir Solov’ev in his seminal The Meaning of Love (1892–94). Joan Delaney Grossman discusses Nina Petrovskaia’s relationships with Bely and Valery Briusov. Michael Wachtel shows how Viacheslav Ivanov attempted to overcome his grief at the death of his first wife by using his creative powers to make contact with her “beyond the grave.”Irene Masing-Delic traces the Pygmalion myth through Pushkin, Baratynsky, Turgenev, and Chernyshevsky to the Symbolists who were especially attracted by a myth which showed how an artist could create life and even conquer death. In “Andrei Bely and the Argonauts’ mythmaking,” Alexander Lavrov considers the role of the “Argonaut” circle in establishing a Russian Symbolist culture in the first years of the twentieth century. The Argonauts’ credo was “life-creation” rather than “art-creation,” and they claimed to make no distinction between “talent for living” and “talent for writing.” Lavrov argues that the failure of the relationship between Bely and Nina Petrovskaia marked the disintegration of “Argonautism” and the culture they sought to create. It is left to Irina Gutkin in the concluding essay to guide us through the grotesqueries of Futurism into the apparently diametrically opposed, sanitized world of Socialist Realism, by way of Constructivism, Marxism, and Meyerholdian bio-mechanics, leaving us in little doubt that, appearances to the contrary, each of these movements was concerned with turning art into life and using it to create a better world. So ultimately, as she neatly sums up the thesis of the whole collection, “The aesthetic utopian ideal of art creating life, which took shape at the beginning of the twentieth century, was fused with the utilitarian tradition of the 1860s” (p. 181).I have deliberately reserved for the end comment on Irina Paperno’s introduction and opening article (“The Meaning of Art: Symbolist Theories”) in order to emphasize the manifest contribution she and her co-editor, Joan Delaney Grossman, have made to ensuring the coherence of this admirable collection. Professor Paperno’s clear and concise coverage of her topics makes it evident that she was determined that the book should not turn into the kind of bits-and-pieces patchwork that too many publications of this sort tend to [End Page 372] become without a firm editorial hand at the helm. Her earlier book on Chernyshevsky (Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism, 1988) and Irene Masing-Delic’s Abolishing Death; a Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth-Century Literature (1992), form the first two parts of... (shrink)

Although deeply committed to the model of nondirective counseling, most genetic counselors enter the profession with certain assumptions about health and disability—for example, that it is preferable to be a hearing person than a deaf person. Thus, most genetic counselors are deeply troubled when parents with certain disabilities ask for assistance in having a child who shares their disability. This ethical challenge benefits little from viewing it as a conflict between beneficence and autonomy. The challenge is better recast as a (...) conflict between parental autonomy and the child's future autonomy. (shrink)

The globalization in business and tourism becomes crucial more and more for the economical sustainability of local communities. In the presence of an epidemic outbreak, there must be such a decision on the policy by the host community as whether to accept visitors or not, the number of acceptable visitors, or the condition for acceptable visitors. Making use of an SIRI type of mathematical model, we consider the influence of visitors on the spread of a reinfectious disease in a community, (...) especially assuming that a certain proportion of accepted visitors are immune. The reinfectivity of disease here means that the immunity gained by either vaccination or recovery is imperfect. With the mathematical results obtained by our analysis on the model for such an epidemic dynamics of resident and visitor populations, we find that the acceptance of visitors could have a significant influence on the disease’s endemicity in the community, either suppressive or supportive. (shrink)

Sociology has largely followed Durkheim’s lead in ignoring the question: why do people die by suicide? This negation prioritizes a positivist, structuralist approach and stymies sociology’s contribution by closing off a wide range of tools sociologists might employ. An interpretivist turn in suicide studies accompanied by the growing adoption of qualitative methodology has opened up an array of opportunities to produce insights lost in a Durkheimian approach, but has yet to confront their own weaknesses. This paper shows we need not (...) abandon either tradition, advocating for a third path that integrates the strengths of both approaches. (shrink)

In this article on archival sources, deals with the activity of individual members of the public industrial areas of Ukraine in 1917-1920. to ensure that vital material goods. The factors impeding such activity, formulated two main types of behavior in extreme circumstances, attempt to analyze the social composition of the population depending on the model behavior.

This is an investigation of Aristotle's conception of accidental compounds (or "kooky objects," as Gareth Matthews has called them)—entities such as the pale man and the musical man. I begin with Matthews's pioneering work into kooky objects, and argue that they are not so far removed from our ordinary thinking as is commonly supposed. I go on to assess their utility in solving some familiar puzzles involving substitutivity in epistemic contexts, and compare the kooky object approach to more modern approaches (...) involving the notion of referential opacity. I conclude by proposing that Aristotle provides an implicit role for kooky objects in such metaphysical contexts as the Categories and Metaphysics. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 March 2017 Source: Author: Viacheslav Oleksenko In a highly technological post-industrial society the quality of education is an important factor in providing such a level of life and professional competency of a person that would satisfy both the demands of an individual and the state. The quality of the whole higher education is influenced by the quality of students' knowledge which is acquired at educational classes. Development of studactive classes has brought forward the problem of research (...) of their efficiency, in particular in the aspect of potential quality of knowledge. The results of the experiment are outlined, the main aim of which was to identify the effect of studactive classes on knowledge quality of university students. Monitoring of quality of students' knowledge at studactive classes is realized. It is revealed that students who were taught in a studactive way have better features of knowledge quality comparing with those who were taught in a traditional way. It is proved that knowledge quality of university students can be improved through implementing studactive classes into the pedagogical process. The study was conducted in Ukraine. (shrink)

In the first part of the article I show how Descartes employs the sceptical theist strategy as part of his response to the problem of evil in Meditation Four. However, Descartes's use of this strategy seems to raise a serious challenge to his whole project: if Descartes is ignorant of God's purposes, then how can he be sure that God doesn't have some morally sufficient reason for creating him with unreliable clear and distinct perceptions? Drawing on related objections from Mersenne (...) and Hobbes, I show in the second half of the article how Descartes can sidestep this objection. (shrink)

This article continues a discussion the authors have had with Mats Wahlberg on evolutionary theodicies. We have previously suggested a theodicy where there are token unique goods that could only have been actualized through indeterministic evolution. Wahlberg objects that we cannot appeal to such goods, since given indeterminism, God cannot know that such goods will appear. In this article we respond by arguing that God can know well enough that certain kinds of token goods will appear, without knowing in detail (...) their specific character, or when they will happen. (shrink)

In the Ukrainian-Russian relations, especially in pre-revolutionary times, the religious component played an important role. The attitude of the Russian authorities toward Southwest Russia was shaped by the influence of several conceptions made in the church circles, which also significantly influenced the formation of Russian national identity.

Yaffe's handling of two general questions is assessed in this review. The first question is why mere attempts (as opposed to successful wrongdoing) should be made punishable in a well-conceived criminal code. The second question is how attempt liability should be conceived in such a code. As to the first question, Yaffe's nonsubstantive mode of answering it (in terms of his ) is contrasted to answers based on some more substantive desert-bases; Yaffe's own more substantive kind of answer (in terms (...) of a desert-base of ) is examined in light of the implication that the traditional requirements of trying and intending are mere proxies for faulty reason recognition and response as the basis for blaming and punishing attempts. As to the second question, Yaffe's analysis of trying in terms of a is examined in some detail. Canvassed here are the subquestions of: (1) whether appropriate assessibility by certain norms of rationality can give the nature of intending and thus of trying; (2) whether the externally de dicto intent requirements of criminal law statutes can easily be interpreted and applied by standard, extensional methods; (3) whether the distinctions between various kinds of elements within the content of intentions, can be justified ontologically or only practically; (4) whether actors necessarily intend results of their actions that are to other results that clearly are intended, and if not, whether such actors are nonetheless just as blameworthy for those results as if they did intend them; and (5) whether intention with respect to circumstance-elements differ (in either their psychology or in their moral effect) from beliefs with respect to such circumstance-elements. (shrink)

Solves Vann McGee's counterexample to Modus Ponens within classical logic by disclosing the suppressed premises and bringing them /within/ the argument.

This is a comment to Graham Harman’s 2019 response to an article by Þóra Pétursdóttir and Bjørnar Olsen (2018) in which they propose that a materially grounded, archaeological perspective might complement Harman’s historical approach in Immaterialism (2016). Harman responds that his book is indeed already more archaeological than historical, stipulating that history is the study of media with a high density of information, whereas archaeology studies media with a low density of information. History, Harman holds, ends up in too much (...) detail, while archaeology has the advantage of lending itself to the imagination. Hence, his reading of history had the aim of tempering the historical information overload, in effect making the book a work of archaeology. In this comment, I want to do three things: (1) critique the idea that archaeological and historical media are inherently different with regard to their densities of information, (2) discuss how archaeology and history approach their media, and (3) reflect on conceptualisations of “archaeology” outside the discipline itself. (shrink)

In this paper I systematically reconstruct Hegel’s concept of “free mechanism” as developed in the Science of Logic. The term “free mechanism” appears absurd since each of the terms constituting it appears mutually exclusive. I argue that we may grasp it only on (1) the assumption of self-reference and (2) via a triad of syllogisms, which altogether constitute a process of alternating middle terms. On the whole, I employ Hegel’s account of “free mechanism” to illuminate the activity of objectivity, whereby (...) the self-determining concept resurrects itself from its dormancy in an indifferent totality. (shrink)

This paper discusses Wittgenstein's take on the problem of other minds. In opposition to certain widespread views that I collect under the heading of the “No Problem Interpretation,” I argue that Wittgenstein does address some problem of other minds. However, Wittgenstein's problem is not the traditional epistemological problem of other minds; rather, it is more reminiscent of the issue of intersubjectivity as it emerges in the writings of phenomenologists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. This is one sense in which (...) Wittgenstein's perspective on other minds might be called “phenomenological.” Yet there is another sense as well, in that Wittgenstein's positive views on this issue resemble the views defended by phenomenologists. The key to a proper philosophical grasp of intersubjectivity, on both views, lies in rethinking the mind. If we conceive of minds as essentially embodied we can understand how intersubjectivity is possible. (shrink)

Celem proponowanej pracy jest analiza statusu zbioru _Nea-lit_ (1993–1994) w białoruskim procesie literackim lat dziewięćdziesiątych. Materiałem badawczym jest makieta tej książki z prywatnego archiwum poety Wiktara Żybula. Taki dokument literacki nie został jeszcze upubliczniony ani wprowadzony do obiegu nau­kowego. Właściwości _Nea-litu_ są wyjaśnione w aspektach ogólnokonceptualnym, tekstologicznym i gatunkowo-stylistycznym. Między innymi rzeczami antologia manifestowała krystalizację nowej literatury. Ponadto w zbiorze znalazły się odmienne od późniejszych publikacji warianty wierszy Sierża Minskiewicza, Illi Sina, Aliesia Turowicza. W końcu _Nea-lit_ został platformą do poszukiwania (...) aktualnego języka artystycznego. W ramach projektu książki zarysowano radykalne eksperymenty translogiczne i niezwykły gatunek „panfilu”, zaprezentowano dominowanie obrazów przestrzeni miejskiej z zaakcentowanymi motywami cielesności. (shrink)

У статті досліджується містична рефлексія мовлення у творі Мехтільди Магдебурзької "Струменіюче світло Божества". Позиція мовця в містичному дискурсі твору є позицією суб'єкта містичного союзу, який завжди тримає феноменологічну дистанцію між власним ''Я'', оточуючим світом та Богом. Встановлено, що містична релігійна література поєднує філософську рефлексію з ліричним натхненням.

The first English-language collection devoted to Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit.

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if (...) ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)