The collection provides an analysis of the concept of beauty in the evaluation of experiments. What properties do practicing experimenters value? How have the aesthetic properties of scientific experiments changed over the years? Secondly, the volume looks at the role that aesthetic factors, including negative values such as ugliness, as well as experiences of the sublime and the profound, play in the construction of an experiment and its reception. Thirdly, the chapters provide in-depth historical case studies from the Royal Society, (...) which also allows for a study of the depiction of scientific experiment in artworks, as well as contemporary examples from the LHC and cases of AI-designed experiments. Finally, it offers a exploration of the commonalities between how we learn from experiments on the one hand, and the cognitive value of artworks on the other. (shrink)

The terms “contemplation” and “standpoint,” as used by Lukács, have almost disappeared from the vocabulary of scholars studying the contemporary world of work. This paper aims to rehabilitate these terms by arguing that, despite its shortcomings, a Lukácsian approach offers a valuable perspective for examining labor experiences. I first outline the foundations of Lukács's reification theory by focusing on objective reification. Then, I reconstruct the concepts of contemplation and having a standpoint of experience by surveying Lukác's analysis of how different (...) actors in capitalism experience reality. I conclude by exploring the implications of reification theory for analyzing market-centered regimes of control. The article can be read as an invitation for researchers investigating the world of labor to reengage with reification theory. (shrink)

The performative representation of the Spanish Roma woman reveals a historical journey that brings her closer to many symbolic elaborations of the feminine, giving her a special affinity with the imaginary concerning the colonized woman, particularly with the Orientalist vision. Developed initially by the travelling intellectuals in Spain who sought a fusion of the topics of sexualized exoticism, the myth was reworked by local artists and thinkers without undermining their power to silence and make invisible the reality of the most (...) vulnerable and most represented members of the ethnic group, their women. Today, a growing awareness of the importance of collective action directs Roma women to initiatives such as the revision of their historical memory, at the intersection between the external gaze and self-perception. These searches lead to the pioneering creation of community museum institutions, which have arisen around feminine Roma associations and are a symptom of an emerging desire to be heard. Based on the terminological tools shared by women and memory studies, this article seeks the personal dimension of this invitation to listen. The authors analyse a series of interviews with Roma women that investigate the social agents of representation, self-representation and their conceptual and experiential foundations. (shrink)

In today's conditions of postmodern space the most significant resource of the modern economy, which is being formed in the leading countries of economic development, is human capital. The main goal of the article is to study the process of managing the formation of human capital in the functioning postmodern society as the basis of the national economy and ensuring the economic security of the enterprise. The basic components of human capital are determined on the basis of the analysis. It (...) is established that the basic component is knowledge that affects others and in postmodern conditions of development of the national economy and determines the process of development of human capital. At the same time, the process of forming knowledge, in accordance with the principles of the functioning of the knowledge economy, is associated with the availability and possibility of obtaining information. The object of study is the enterprises of Eastern Europe. The subject of the study is human capital, the economic security system of the enterprise The results of the study allowed us to develop a model for the formation of human capital and to form a mechanism for ensuring the economic security of the enterprise through management of the formation of human capital under the conditions of the postmodern society. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans Диалог со временем, Dialogue with time. Intellectual history review, Issue 49, 2014, p. 14-27. Nous remercions Zinaida Tchekantseva de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Историческое событие и время в контексте « ритмической парадигмы » В последние десятилетия концепт ритм чрезвычайно популярен в науке и искусстве. Известно, что ритм как одно из организующих начал жизни не только порождает вопросы, связанные с темпоральными и пространственными характеристиками происходящего, но и вплетен в - Histoire – (...) Nouvel article. (shrink)

This text was presented at the 12th International Seminar in Budva – Montenegro (May 31 - June 7, 2014) – Zinaida Chekantseva is Dr. of Science (History), Professor and Chief Researcher at the Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science – [email protected]. Summary : “There is an inextricable link between power and rhythm. What power imposes in the first place is a rhythm (rhythm of everything – life, time, thought, discourse)” Roland Barthes wrote. In light of “the rhythmic (...) (...) - Comment penser le pouvoir dans le monde contemporain ? – Nouvel article. (shrink)

The role intellectual virtues play in scientific inquiry has raised significant discussions in the recent literature. A number of authors have recently explored the link between virtue epistemology and philosophy of science with the aim to show whether epistemic virtues can contribute to the resolution of the problem of theory choice. This paper analyses how intellectual virtues can be beneficial for successful resolution of theory choice. We explore the role of virtues as well as vices in scientific inquiry and their (...) beneficial effects in the context of theory choice. We argue that vices can play a role in widening the set of potential candidate theories and support our claim with historical examples and normative arguments from formal social epistemology. We argue that even though virtues appear to be neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific success, they have a positive effect because they accelerate successful convergence amongst scientists in theory choice situations. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen, as it is well known, criticised the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself. And before him the Kantian thing-in-itself was criticised by Fichte and other German idealists. Probably for this reason, Hermann Cohen is sometimes regarded as a person who said things similar to Fichte. This gives a completely wrong perspective, making it impossible to understand the philosopher's ideas. The basis for his critique of the Kantian thing-in-itself is quite different from the motives, determining the criticism of Kant in (...) the classical German Idealism. Such interpretation does not allow to see close connection of Cohen's theoretical philosophy with revolution in physics which took place at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article explains how Cohen's demand that pure thinking must form its own content is connected with transformations taking place in physics and mathematics, and the peculiarity of Cohen's understanding of idealism is demonstrated: for him, correct idealism must realize that autonomous, free thinking should work seriously with sense data. The closeness of Cohen's ideas to the postpositivist thesis of the theory-ladenness of observation is explained. For Cohen, serious work with sense data is opposite to uncritical acceptance of them as given. The origin of scientific thinking is thinking itself. It responds to the challenge of sensory material by creating its own constructs. Mathematized natural science becomes for Cohen both an example and a confirmation of this thesis. For him, what is real is what is described in the language of mathematical analysis, i.e. continuous processes, in spite of the fact that any data are discrete. It is shown that the source of Cohen's assertions on this issue is in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, namely in the doctrine of the Principles of pure natural science and, more specifically, in the Anticipations of Perception. Cohen's conviction of the constructive character of the theories of mathematized natural science is confirmed in the article by references to the authority of A. Einstein. (shrink)

In public and political practice, argumentation involves verbal manipulations, which have not been sufficiently studied in modern argumentation theory. This paper proposes to analyse such manipulations as speech acts, by means of the pragmadialectical theory of argumentation.

In topological spaces, the relation of extended contact is a ternary relation that holds between regular closed subsets A, B and D if the intersection of A and B is included in D. The algebraic counterpart of this mereotopological relation is the notion of extended contact algebra which is a Boolean algebra extended with a ternary relation. In this paper, we are interested in the relational representation theory for extended contact algebras. In this respect, we study the correspondences between point-free (...) and point-based models of space in terms of extended contact. More precisely, we prove new representation theorems for extended contact algebras. (shrink)

It is proved that the basic framework of the premises and reasoning of Wittgenstein's “Tractatus Logico-philosophicus” corresponds quite well to the transcendental method (as formulated by H. Cohen). Whereas Kant’s philosophy proceeds from the fact of existence of mathematics and mathematised natural science and investigates their conditions of possibility, Wittgenstein proceeds from the fact that propositions of language describe reality and reveals the conditions of possibility of such descriptions. Kant, answering the question about the conditions of possibility of the named (...) sciences, comes to the idea of the transcendental subject and the distinction between the world of phenomena and the thing in itself. Wittgenstein's investigation of the conditions of possibility that the world is described by propositions leads to the assertion that both the world and language are together in logical space. The latter constitutes the a priori and transcendental condition of the possibility that language “reaches out” to reality. For both the theories - in the “Critique of Pure Reason” and in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” - the idea of the boundary is important. In the “Critique of Pure Reason” it is the boundary of possible experience and cognition, while in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” it is the boundary of what can be thought and expressed by meaningful propositions. Related to the different definitions of the boundary is the difference in the treatment of mathematised natural science. For “The Critique of Pure Reason” was created in the era of unconditional acceptance of Newtonian mechanics. And the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” was created at the time of the crisis of the Newtonian paradigm and its replacement by other notions of time and space. However, the idea of boundary, which is present in both doctrines, determines closeness in the attitude towards metaphysics between the author of “The Critique of Pure Reason” and the author of “The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”. The study also shows that Wittgenstein did not follow logicism in his philosophy of mathematics. For him, both mathematical objects and propositions of logic are constructions. The conviction about the constructive character of mathematical and logical objects shows an affinity with the Kantian tradition in the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Interest in Slavophilism has undergone a notable resuscitation in recent decades in the Soviet literature. In the seventies and eighties, collections of works of some of the Slavophiles were published for the first time since the October Revolution. Books and articles on Slavophilism have appeared. Archival materials have been put into scholarly circulation, scholars find their attention being drawn to works of modern foreign authors on Slavophilism, and certain aspects of Slavophile views are often touched upon in current literary criticism. (...) We can agree with the conclusion drawn by I. A. Dudzinskaia in 1983 and shared by N. I. Tsimbaev, namely, that a review of the literature in the recent period "evidences a new stage in the study of Slavophilism." However, various aspects of Slavophilism have by no means been dealt with equally, and there are quite a number of disagreements among scholars in their assessments. (shrink)

The connection of Hermann Сohen’s “The Logic of Pure Knowledge” with the revolutionary transformations in physics and mathematics at the end of the 19th century is shown. Сohen criticised Kant’s answer to the question “How is mathematics possible”? If Kant refers to a priori forms of pure intuition, Сohen sees in it a restriction of freedom of mathematical thinking by limits of intuition. It has been shown that Cohen's position is in accordance with the main development of mathematics in the (...) last decades of the 19th century, in particular, with K. Weierstrass’ striving to get rid of geometrical or mechanical images and intuitions in the mathematical analysis. Cohen was also well informed about the latest ideas in physics of his time. They are also discussed in “The Logic of Pure Knowledge.” The revolutionary spirit of physics and mathematics was appealing to Cohen, and he felt a corresponding enthusiasm for it. The ongoing scientific revolution is consonant with Cohen’s assertion that the foundations of science are hypotheses. The purity of pure thinking does not guarantee the correctness of any of its constructions. Each step in the development of science requires a critique of existing notions. The development of knowledge from the naive to the critical one shows a movement from a picture of the world as a set of stable things to a picture of continuous movement and change, where change is more important than what changes. Cohen sees such a development in an evolution of the concept of substance in modern physics and he welcomes the replacement of material substance by energy, seeing this movement as a confirmation of critical idealism. Finally, it is discussed whether we can speak of the actuality of Cohen’s logic of pure knowledge. (shrink)

The author clarifies the thesis of the social constructivists and shows how it is overlapping with some ideas of its critics. Based on established agreement between social constructivism and evolutionary epistemology, she argues that the conceptual elements of mathematical knowledge are social constructs.

Levinas aborde les questions de la chose et de la possession surtout dans le Carnet 4 dans sa théorie du besoin comme dans ses ébauches de romans. On voit dans ses ébauches un attachement humain aux choses qui semble absurde. La philosophie a désapprouvé presque toujours un tel attachement au nom de la liberté et de l’autonomie humaines. Quant à Levinas, il refuse le concept classique du sujet et commence dans les Carnets l’élaboration du sujet charnel. C’est dans un camp (...) de prisonniers qu’il développe sa théorie du besoin grâce à laquelle il crée la doctrine du sujet, qui n’est ni autosuffisance, ni le centre de lui-même. Son attitude principale envers le monde extérieur est de « manger ». Connaître et voir, c’est aussi « manger ». Dans ce contexte, les notions de l’il y a, d’intervalle et de lumière sont envisagées. Le sujet de la théorie du besoin transforme en « mangeant » l’extériorité en intériorité, et c’est pourquoi la solitude est son destin. Mais la théorie du besoin est suppléée dans les Carnets par la théorie de l’eros. Levinas écrit parfois l’eros, parfois l’amour. C’est dans sa théorie de l’amour qu’il parle du plaisir du plaisir de l’Autre et de la douleur de la douleur de l’Autre. On voit que dans une première ébauche de la philosophie lévinassienne Autrui est une personne aimée. (shrink)

The collective monograph "Ontology of Stative Situations - Linguistic Modeling. A Contrastive Bulgarian-Russian Study" includes research carried out within the project of the same name "Ontology of stative situations – linguistic modeling. A contrastive Bulgarian-Russian study", supported by the "Scientific Research" Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science in Bulgaria (№ КП-06-РУСИЯ / 23) and from the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research (No. 20-512-18005).

Word co‐occurrence patterns in language corpora contain a surprising amount of conceptual knowledge. Large language models (LLMs), trained to predict words in context, leverage these patterns to achieve impressive performance on diverse semantic tasks requiring world knowledge. An important but understudied question about LLMs’ semantic abilities is whether they acquire generalized knowledge of common events. Here, we test whether five pretrained LLMs (from 2018's BERT to 2023's MPT) assign a higher likelihood to plausible descriptions of agent−patient interactions than to minimally (...) different implausible versions of the same event. Using three curated sets of minimal sentence pairs (total n = 1215), we found that pretrained LLMs possess substantial event knowledge, outperforming other distributional language models. In particular, they almost always assign a higher likelihood to possible versus impossible events (The teacher bought the laptop vs. The laptop bought the teacher). However, LLMs show less consistent preferences for likely versus unlikely events (The nanny tutored the boy vs. The boy tutored the nanny). In follow‐up analyses, we show that (i) LLM scores are driven by both plausibility and surface‐level sentence features, (ii) LLM scores generalize well across syntactic variants (active vs. passive constructions) but less well across semantic variants (synonymous sentences), (iii) some LLM errors mirror human judgment ambiguity, and (iv) sentence plausibility serves as an organizing dimension in internal LLM representations. Overall, our results show that important aspects of event knowledge naturally emerge from distributional linguistic patterns, but also highlight a gap between representations of possible/impossible and likely/unlikely events. (shrink)

The article addresses the issue of using English songs to assist students of non-language departments master basic linguistic skills and communicative abilities. The authors offer a systematic and flexible approach to dealing with educational songs, demonstrate advantages of implementing numerous tasks to be varied and adapted to the needs of particular target audiences. The considered approach is intended to raise students’ motivation in learning foreign language.

In this manuscript we discuss different aspects and applications of algal biotechnology and how they are seen through the prism of bioethics. We review how algae have been considered to solve problems on Earth and to ease human suffering. We also take a look at the current state of the production of algal biomass and we offer our suggestions and considerations based on the fact that the biomass is an expensive product and yet its quality is very good.

This article starts an engagement on the aesthetics of experiments and offers an account for analysing how aesthetics features in the design, evaluation and reception of experiments. I identify two dimensions of aesthetic evaluation of experiments: design and significance. When it comes to design, a number of qualities, such as simplicity, economy and aptness, are analysed and illustrated with the famous Meselson-Stahl experiment. Beautiful experiments are also regarded to make significant discoveries, but I argue against a narrow construal of experimental (...) aims. By drawing on the plurality of goals experimenters have and diversity of aesthetic responses, I argue that experiments are aesthetically appreciated both when they discover and when they produce disruptive results. (shrink)

Scientists often use aesthetic values in the evaluation and choice of theories. Aesthetic values are not only regarded as leading to practically more useful theories but are often taken to stand in a special epistemic relation to the truth of a theory such that the aesthetic merit of a theory is evidence of its truth. This paper explores what aesthetic considerations influence scientists' reasoning, how such aesthetic values relate to the utility of a scientific theory, and how one can justify (...) the epistemic role for such values. The paper examines ways in which the link between beauty and truth can be defended, the challenges facing such accounts, and explores alternative epistemic roles for aesthetic values in scientific practice. (shrink)

This study focuses on issues of elder abuse in residential settings. Violation of ethical principles is shown in the results of this quantitative study aimed at defining the extent, nature and causes of such abuse by employees’ unethical conduct towards clients in senior homes (i.e. residential nursing homes) in the Moravian-Silesian region of the Czech Republic. The research sample comprised 454 employees and 488 clients from 12 residential homes for older people. The data were collected from interviews with clients, who (...) also received a questionnaire concerning their satisfaction with the institution. Two questionnaires were administered to the employees, one based on a pilot qualitative study and a second to investigate burnout. Outcomes were assessed according to the extent and form of elder abuse, the causes of elder abuse and the violation of basic ethical principles. The responses, in particular those of employees, revealed both psychological and physical abuse of older clients, and thus violation of two basic principles: respect for the person and non-maleficence. The group at risk of elder abuse comprised aggressive and dissatisfied clients, as well as those with mental problems and dementia. The employees most at risk of being abusers were those who had been employed in institutional care for more than five years, had inadequate knowledge about social services and suffered from burnout. The prevention of elder abuse is recommended to be through education focused on ethical principles, increasing employees’ satisfaction by promoting a friendly and safe organizational culture, and providing adequate working conditions. (shrink)

Older people living in a residential setting have the right to respectful care based on professional ethics. The aim of this study was to describe employees' and clients' lived experiences of elder abuse. A qualitative phenomenological method was used with 26 employees and 20 residents from four homes for elderly people in the town of Ostrava, Czech Republic, and two managers from outside these institutions. All complaints about elder abuse (n 5 11) received by Ostrava Municipal Authority during the period (...) 2003 to 2007 were examined. Two main dimensions of the examined phenomenon were identified: forms of elder abuse and causes of elder abuse. Established forms of elder abuse were summarized as rights violation, financial abuse, psychological abuse, physical abuse and neglect. Causes of elder abuse included institution, employee and client characteristics. It is necessary in residential settings to create preventive policies that will focus on supervision regarding elderly people's rights violation and psychological and physical abuse, as well as on building organizational cultures that will respect ethical principles. (shrink)