The semiosphere is arguably the most influential concept developed by Juri Lotman, which has been reinterpreted in a variety of ways. This paper returns to Lotman’s original “anthropocentric” understanding of semiosphere as a collective intellect/consciousness and revisits the main arguments of Lotman’s discussion of human vs. nonhuman semiosis in order to position it in the modern context of cognitive semiotics and the question of human uniqueness in particular. In contrast to the majority of works that focus on symbolic consciousness and (...) multimodal communication as specifically human traits, Lotman accentuates polyglottism and dialogicity as the unique features of human culture. Formulated in this manner, the concept of semiosphere is used as a conceptual framework for the study of human cognition as well as human cognitive evolution. (shrink)

This is an introductory survey of the emerging theory of two new classes of (discrete, countable) groups, called hyperlinear and sofic groups. They can be characterized as subgroups of metric ultraproducts of families of, respectively, unitary groups U (n) and symmetric groups $S_{n},\ n\in {\Bbb N}$ . Hyperlinear groups come from theory of operator algebras (Connes' Embedding Problem), while sofic groups, introduced by Gromov, are motivated by a problem of symbolic dynamics (Gottschalk's Surjunctivity Conjecture). Open questions are numerous, in particular (...) it is still unknown if every group is hyperlinear and/or sofic. (shrink)

This article examines the innovations introduced to phenomenological philosophy by the Russian philosopher Gustav Gustavovich Shpet. We identify the motifs and results of Shpet's problematization of the Husserlian concept of constitution, and we develop Shpet's treatment of the source of semantic genesis as a generative experience.

The article deals with Heidegger’s interpretation of antique ontology, in which Being was conceptualized in terms of production. What is this interpretation and why is it so important? Until recently, it has been difficult to answer these questions, since the texts in question have only in recent years become publicly available, and therefore have not yet been fully absorbed in Heideggerian-studies. Consequently, even the very useful works that cover the subject of production-theme in Heidegger focus more on the question of (...) technique and do not consider the formation of this problematic, and therefore do not deal with it substantively. In the years 1921-1924, Heidegger was closely involved with Aristotle and lectured on his favorite philosopher for four years. It was during this period that he began to interpret Being in Aristotle as being-made, being-produced (das Hergestelltsein), and then extended this interpretation to the whole of ancient and medieval philosophy. This is a very remarkable moment in terms of methodology that characterizes Heidegger as a historian of philosophy. In this article, the author examines Heidegger’s interpretation of ancient ontology, revealing its weaknesses. (shrink)

Only now can we consider that the question of genuine mythical detachment has been fully clarified. We remember how difficult it was to find the true root of this detachment. We compared mythical detachment with general material detachment and poetic detachment but could not find a satisfactory answer anywhere. All the time we have faced a difficult task: to synthesize the sensuousness, extreme con-creteness, and purely material corporeality of myth with its otherworldly, fabulous, and generally acknowledged "unreal" character. After many (...) attempts we have only now finally found this genuine synthesis in the concept of miracle. Miracle is thus an absolutely necessary dialectical synthesis by which mythical consciousness lives and without which myth itself would not exist. From this point of view, myth's relation to other areas of human creativity also appears in a new light. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to identify early and recent Pentecostal studies in the West and to highlight the main difference between them. Today there are more than 250 million Pentecostals in the world, and together with the charismatic movement there are more than 500 million. Having begun to spread in the 20th century, the movement claims to be the fastest growing religious phenomenon in human history. In attempts to interpret the phenomenon of the movement's growth, there have been (...) several gradually emerging approaches: explaining the origin of the movement as supernaturally "coming from heaven"; searching for the origins of Pentecostalism in other Christian movements; presenting the emergence of the movement as the result of social and psychological factors such as poverty, marginalization, and the desire to escape from modern society; and the multicultural approach. The paper analyzes the works of Western historians and theologians of Pentecostalism since the second half of the 20th century. The result shows a turning point between early and late studies, namely that late studies aim to revise the history and include participants in the movement around the world, not just in North America, explore the contribution to the development of the movement of local ministers who have long remained in the shadow of Western missionaries, emphasize the diversity of ideologies and social influences that have shaped the movement. It also highlights three major contemporary areas of research: historical, characterized by studies of Pentecostalism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; theological, focusing on the development and shaping of theoretical theology as a result of the movement's institutionalization; and religious studies, practiced primarily from the perspective of the sociology of religion. (shrink)

The article examines some aspects of Brentano's ontology, starting with his 1862 dissertation "On the ambiguity of Being according to Aristotle", as well as its influence on the philosophy of M. Heidegger. The author shows that the ontology of the early Brentano is not limited to ousiology, since it includes a discussion of the field of mental being (ens rationis, ὂν ὡς ἀληθές) and it is in this aspect that he influences the young Heidegger. Following Aristotle, Brentano assigns a central (...) role to the ontology of essence, which in the late period leads him to the position of reism, but in the lectures of the middle period Brentano discusses the problems of intentional inexistence, thanks to which projects of "new types of ontology" by Husserl and Mainong appear. The author believes that Heidegger was also influenced by these ideas. Of course, there are fundamental differences between the positions of Brentano and Heidegger, but the similarities are quite large. In particular, if Brentano, highlighting the real and true areas, gives preference in favor of the former, then Heidegger's ontology is built on the second member of this opposition. In particular, everything that can be given is called being by Heidegger, because we are talking about intentional being, about ens rationis, or ὂν ὡς ἀληθές. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the process of many aspects of audiovisual creativity that must be taken into account when creating a video. The object of the work is to create a movie trailer through the use of design elements and graphics in the video sequence. The study examines the trailer of a post-apocalyptic fantasy genre called "Genesis", in which the two main characters are depicted as opposites. The work examines and describes in detail all the stages of creating (...) a video trailer for the film, including visual representation, audio accompaniment of the video sequence. The paper notes that the main goal of all the stages of trailer development considered in the article is to create an audiovisual project of professional quality. The main methods used in the study are visual effects modeling and 3D modeling in Houdini, creating realistic matte paintings in Photoshop and video compositing in Nuke. The main conclusions of the study are those specialized programs that allow you to create a high-quality author's product. This software will become the core of the project, since it is in it that all the elements will be combined into one final clip due to the high-quality integration of various objects of the scene. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that within the framework of the work, the characteristics of the possibilities of working with various video editors and graphic programs were carried out, which together help the creators of movie trailers and other similar products to realize the tasks of entertainment and quality of the projects produced. (shrink)

RESUMO Absurdo e falta de sentido são geralmente estudados como categorias filosóficas e/ou lógicas. Este artigo examina o absurdo como um fenômeno semiótico e como parte dos mecanismos de geração de significado. Argumenta que o problema do absurdo e do significado como um todo é, acima de tudo, um problema textual. Esta abordagem se fundamenta no legado do semioticista e estudioso da literatura Iúri Lótman, especialmente em seus conceitos de explosão e nas noções de “não-texto” e “menos- dispositivo”. O conceito (...) de absurdo destaca o inerente paradoxo informacional da cultura humana e de seus sistemas de comunicação, nos quais ruído, erros e contratempos não impedem a comunicação, pelo contrário, estimulam-na. Em uma escala maior, o exemplo de como as culturas humanas lidam com o “não-sentido” na comunicação tem implicações para o estudo da evolução da cultura e da linguagem humanas e também traz luz adicional ao problema metodológico da relação texto/signo. ABSTRACT Absurdity and nonsense are usually studied as philosophical and/or logical categories. This paper examines nonsense as a semiotic phenomenon and as part of the mechanisms of meaning generation, and argues that the problem of nonsense and meaning as a whole is foremost a textual problem. This approach is based on the legacy of the semiotician and literary scholar Iurii Lotman, and especially his concepts of explosion and the notions of “non-text” and “minus-device.” The concept of nonsense thus highlights the inherent informational paradox of human culture and human communication systems, in which noise, errors and mishaps do not impede communication but on the contrary, stimulate it. On a larger scale the example of how human cultures deal with ‘non-sense’ in communication has implications for the study of the evolution of human culture and language and also draws additional light to the methodological problem of the text/sign relation. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of the demarcation of social sciences from social philosophy. The author proposes to model the relations between these two disciplines as a continuum instead of binary opposition - a continuum in which certain authors and concepts are located depending on the nature of their statements and the amount of empirical data involved. To illustrate a number of this continuum’s positions and features, the concept of the sacred is brought: emerging in Modern history as (...) a cultural idea, in the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in the works of French sociologists it becomes an empirical model that describes both the effect of social solidarity and the particular forms of religious existence. However, later, in the College of Sociology and in the works of such thinkers as G. Bataille, R. Caillois, etc., the concept acquires value meanings and becomes socio-philosophical. The absence of a clear boundary between the two statement formats, it makes possible both the “drifting” from one to another over time and the ambiguity of any critics of social science from social philosophy’s position and vice versa. At the same time, the historical “load” of the concept could be discarded in order to use it within the framework of “pure” social science or philosophy. (shrink)

The article considers the conceptual pair of violence and the sacred as a commonplace ("topos”) of French scientific, philosophical, and religious thought of the 20th-21th centuries and explains why this pair was so relevant and attracted many dissimilar thinkers. Six authors are taken as the main examples: G. Bataille, R. Caillois, R. Girard, E. Levinas, M. Eliade, and J. Kristeva. For analytic purposes, the author identifies three "common factors” that unite them. Firstly, the influence of the French sociological school (Durkheim, (...) Hubert and Moss, Dumezil, Hertz etc.). Among other things, these scholars studied the religious meaning of blood, violent ascetics and sacrifice, conceptualizing violence as a pledge of social cohesion (Durkheim) or as a factor of transition from the profane to the sacred world (Hubert and Moss). Secondly, the ideas of these six thinkers were inspired by real violence, which they tried to comprehend via the concept of the sacred. In particular, their reflection was influenced by the cultural and personal experience of world wars. Third, this conceptual pair is value-charged and used to create a new religion or interpret the existing ones in heterodox way. As starting point for this creative process, Catholic or Orthodox Christianity, Christian atheism, and Judaism are taken. The author concludes that even if this topos is forgotten today, it undoubtedly remains significant for the history of sociology and philosophy, as well as for cultural history. (shrink)