In Minimal Rationality, Christopher Cherniak boldly challenges the myth of Man the the Rational Animal and the central role that the "perfectly rational...

We engage in an affirmative feminist reading of the recent, predominantly Western, philosophical movement called the new materialisms—that is, we problematize the “new” while still valuing its contributions toward justice. We put Sara Ahmed in conversation with María Lugones and Zoe Todd in order to recognize that not only have feminist scholars engaged in conversations around the material before publications of the “new”, but we also argue that the “new” creates a coloniality of non-modern knowledges that think and live some (...) of the so-called groundbreaking ideas of the “new.” The new materialisms, then, function systematically to deny and silence the multiple and varied ways in which the concepts it engages have a prolonged and deep scholarship of theorization in both feminisms and non-modern knowledges. The significance of this, we contend, is not merely a question of semantics as authors of the “new” purport—language matters. That is, language materializes the world; it affects. In engendering this philosophy as “new,” it acts, in effect, as a colonization that reinforces harmful and violent discourses of white, neoliberal, colonial capitalism that some feminist theories seek to dismantle. (shrink)

A tacit and highly idealized model of the agent's memory is presupposed in philosophy. The main features of a more psychologically realistic duplex (orn-plex) model are sketched here. It is argued that an adequate understanding of the rationality of an agent's actions is not possible without a satisfactory theory of the agent's memory and of the trade-offs involved in management of the memory, particularly involving compartmentalization of the belief set. The discussion identifies some basic constraints on the organization of knowledge (...) representations in general. (shrink)

Combinatorial network optimization appears to fit well as a model of brain structure: connections in the brain are a critically constrained resource, hence their deployment in a wide range of cases is finely optimized to “‘save wire". This review focuses on minimization of large-scale costs, such as total volume for mammal dendrite and axon arbors and total wirelength for positioning of connected neural components such as roundworm ganglia (and also mammal cortex areas). Phenomena of good optimization raise questions about mechanisms (...) for their achievement: the examples of optimized neuroanatomy here turn out to include candidates for some of the most complex biological structures known to be derivable purely from simple physical energy minimization processes. Part of the functional role of such fine-tuned wiring optimization may be as a compact strategy for generating self-organizing complex neuroanatomical.. (shrink)

Some are attracted to the view that repeatable artworks, such as films, novels, plays, symphonies, photographs, and the like, are a particular kind of abstracta—namely, types. This view, however, is not unproblematic. One of the most serious problems it faces is the so-called "creation problem." The core idea behind this problem is that, on the one hand, it seems reasonable to accept the claims that (1) repeatable artworks are types, (2) types cannot be created, and (3) repeatable artworks are created, (...) but, on the other hand, these claims form an inconsistent triad. A popular solution to the creation problem is that (2) can be rejected because the justification for (2) is based on a false assumption—that no type can stand in causal relations. Although this solution looks promising, it can be accepted only if its proponent can refute what might be called the "paraphrasability argument." On this argument, types are not to be regarded as capable of standing in causal relations because any discourse implying the causality of types should be paraphrased into discourse that does not imply this. My aim in this essay is to show that there is good reason to consider the paraphrasability argument sound and, hence, that the foregoing solution to the creation problem fails. (shrink)

A geometric approach to quantum mechanics with unitary evolution and non-unitary collapse processes is developed. In this approach the Schrödinger evolution of a quantum system is a geodesic motion on the space of states of the system furnished with an appropriate Riemannian metric. The measuring device is modeled by a perturbation of the metric. The process of measurement is identified with a geodesic motion of state of the system in the perturbed metric. Under the assumption of random fluctuations of the (...) perturbed metric, the Born rule for probabilities of collapse is derived. The approach is applied to a two-level quantum system to obtain a simple geometric interpretation of quantum commutators, the uncertainty principle and Planck’s constant. In light of this, a lucid analysis of the double-slit experiment with collapse and an experiment on a pair of entangled particles is presented. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have defended a novel, materialist view on the nature of musical works—musical perdurantism. According to this view, musical works are a peculiar kind of concreta, namely perduring mereological sums of performances and/or other concrete entities. One problem facing musical perdurantism stems from the thought that if this view is correct, then virtually no musical work can exist in a continuous, non-intermittent fashion. The aim of this paper is to expound this problem and show that it (...) cannot be plausibly solved by a musical perdurantist. (shrink)

Xenophanes claimed that God is a ball, which means that he is a perfect body. This idea is well developed in Jagannatha worship, who is a central Deity in Orissa, India. It’s a round form of Krishna, who is usually depicted in a human like form. Jagannatha, his brother Baladeva and sister Subhadra are justified as round forms because of their specific manifestation of ecstasy, that, according to aesthetical theory (rasa tattva) happened to them. Yet there are many other explanations (...) of the Jagannatha’s roundness. Round form personifies unity and diversity principle in Jagannatha worship, whose image was dear in Orissa duringlong historical period to different religious groups: Vaishnavas, Shaivaites, Jains, Buddhists and even some Muslims. Orissa also has a blending of different cultures, sub-cultures and traditions. Even now, it has 62 distinct tribal groups, that makes a largest collection of diverse tribes in a single state. As the legend goes, Jagannatha made His first appearance in the tribe of Savaras thousands of years ago. Up until now, there are cooks in the Jagannatha kitchen that are called sauviras. In worship of Jagannatha we find the model of axiological globalism, when the difference in the vision of the reality does not obscure the interior mood of wholeness, unity. (shrink)

Jean Hyppolite produced the first French translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. His major works--the translation, his commentary, and Logique et existence --coincided with an upsurge of interest in Hegel following World War II. Yet Hyppolite's influence was as much due to his role as a teacher as it was to his translation or commentary: Foucault and Deleuze were introduced to Hegel in Hyppolite's classes, and Derrida studied under him. More than fifty years after its original publication, Hyppolite's analysis of (...) Hegel continues to offer fresh insights to the reader. (shrink)

How things were a decade ago: The largest rain forest of our planet abides in the Amazon Basin, a tenth of the entire world biomass. It is one of the last great frontiers on earth; only the bottom of the sea presents terra incognita on so rich and grand a scale. Perhaps half the planet's species dwell in Amazonia, most of them still unknown to our own technological encampment. No mere ocean of green, this community is so intricately interwoven as (...) to constitute a single vast organism, the one true Leviathan, outweighing all the whales in all the oceans of the world that have ever lived. It is the last and greatest forest on earth, and now it is disappearing before it has been discovered: At nearly an acre a second, the TransAmazon highway system and the land clearing operations it has enabled are extinguishing the forest before it can be explored. From space, Landsat pictures show the burned-over patches spreading with the highway network year by year, magenta sores in the false-color images. We, the voracious Lilliputians now, antlike, are dismantling the greatest biochemical engine on earth at a scale so vast that the carbon dioxide economy of the entire planetary atmosphere suffers. In a century of genocides, perhaps the penultimate great extinction unfolds, prologue to the threatening self-immolation of our own species. (shrink)

This article investigates the idea that meanings of proper names are their references which is popular in the philosophy of language. The aim is to show, first, that there is no satisfactory answer to the question “How references as stable relations between words and objects appear, due to accomplishment of what conditions these properties of linguistic expressions may be produced?”, and, second, that we can still use the notion of reference in our explanations of some effects of communication if we (...) treat reference as pragmatic rather than semantic phenomenon. The actuality of this research is provided by the fact that the identification of meanings of certain types of terms, proper names first of all, with their references is still very influential account in the philosophy of language. The author uses the methods of historical exposition and philosophical analysis of the main theories of reference, such as theory of descriptions and causal theory of reference. It is shown that these theories in their different modifications fail to explain how references as semantic relations between proper names and their bearers may be produced in the course of communication and social interaction. But although there are alternative concepts of the nature meanings of proper names it is concluded that we still may apply the notion of reference in our explanations of natural language communication if we treat reference as pragmatic effect caused by mutual coordination of actions achieved by the participants of certain communicative situation. (shrink)

Newtonian and Scr{\"o}dinger dynamics can be formulated in a physically meaningful way within the same Hilbert space framework. This fact was recently used to discover an unexpected relation between classical and quantum motions that goes beyond the results provided by the Ehrenfest theorem. A formula relating the normal probability distribution and the Born rule was also found. Here the dynamical mechanism responsible for the latter formula is proposed and applied to measurements of macroscopic and microscopic systems. A relationship between the (...) classical Brownian motion and the diffusion of state on the space of states is discovered. The role of measuring devices in quantum theory is investigated in the new framework. It is shown that the so-called collapse of the wave function is not measurement specific and does not require a ``concentration" near the eigenstates of the measured observable. Instead, it is explained by the common diffusion of state over the space of states under interaction with the apparatus and the environment. This in turn provides us with a basic reason for the definite position of macroscopic bodies in space. (shrink)

The study of the cultural activity of the Spiritual missions of the Russian Orthodox Church in various regions of Russia is one of the urgent tasks in the context of the problematic field of the theory of regionalism, cultural studies and socio-philosophical knowledge. Russian settlements on the territory of the Yenisei River basin and the entry of ethnic groups and territories of Yakutia and Buryatia into the Russian Empire has become one of the most important stages of the integration of (...) the ethnic groups of Siberia into a single statehood. The Irkutsk Spiritual Mission received a more perfect organization, institutionalized by increasing the number of missionary camps, which for successful Christian activities carried out among pagans allowed the formation of school educational institutions for the education and upbringing of a new Buryat generation of children in the doctrinal Orthodox canons, and Russian cultural traditions. In this regard, one of the key tasks of the missionaries was to establish a rational view of further life in new Christian-type formations, which was realized in socio-cultural activities: providing medical care to sick representatives of other ethnic groups, a friendly attitude to people of a different faith and a sincere desire to guide them on the path of righteousness, etc. It should be noted that the largest share of foreigners in this territory belonged to Buddhists, which was reflected in the influence of lamas on doctrinal issues, including economic ones. Since Buddhism in the Russian Empire belonged to the section of tolerant religions, direct (administrative) pressure on it was impossible. There remained funds of an exclusively spiritual nature, to which Orthodox missionary work was directed. Today in the Russian Federation, Buddhism, as well as Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, as well as some other faiths belong to the category of traditional religions, which organizationally operate within the framework of the modern Russian Constitution. (shrink)

In On the Genesis of Thought and Language, linguist Alexey Koshelev explores fundamental questions of how human concepts arise in a child, why concepts appear in a child before words, the genesis of language, and why there are so many languages. Chapter One introduces the fundamental dichotomy "visual (exogenous) vs. functional (endogenous)" cognitive units; these units are used to give non-verbal definitions of mental representations of various objects, actions, and situations. In particular, definitions of such concepts as GLASS, CHAIR, (...) BANANA, TREE, LAKE, RUN, and some others are given. Chapter Two discusses how children form concepts, hierarchical relationships, and propositions (conceptual 'utterances'). It is shown that the initial units of the child's representation of the world are pre-conceptual cognitive units--mental representations of whole situations. In the course of two consecutive cycles in the child's cognitive development, these units transform into (a) primary notions--object and motor concepts, and (b) binary role relationships. Together, they constitute the elementary language of thought which, in the process of thinking, is used to build conceptual structures--propositions. It is further demonstrated that, immediately after the formation of thought, the child begins to develop his native language in which concrete and motor concepts become initial meanings of nouns and verbs, while propositions become the meanings of the child's expressions. The chapter concludes with a contrastive analysis of the proposed approach and Aristotle's and Chomsky's views on thought and language. Chapter Three analyzes how a community's culture affects its language. It is demonstrated that the progress of a community, the main constituent of the civilizational component of its culture, enhances the development of the content component of language by extending the range of its lexical and grammatical meanings. In the context of this analysis, Daniel Everett's (2008) hypothesis that culture affects language structure is discussed. In the subsequent sections, models of the development of human and social activity are offered. These models comprise three components: Activity (main component), Thought, and Language (auxiliary components that ensure the successful realization of activities). The models are illustrated with examples of some concrete societies. (shrink)

Infinite-dimensional manifolds modelled on arbitrary Hilbert spaces of functions are considered. It is shown that changes in model rather than changes of charts within the same model make coordinate formalisms on finite and infinite-dimensional manifolds deeply similar. In this context the infinite-dimensional counterparts of simple notions such as basis, dual basis, orthogonal basis, etc. are shown to be closely related to the choice of a model. It is also shown that in this formalism a single tensor equation on an infinite-dimensional (...) manifold produces a family of functional equations on different spaces of functions. (shrink)

Gregory Savich Skovoroda (1724-1794) belongs both to the Russian and Ukrainian philosophy. His philosophical doctrine was only revivified at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, which was caused by the affinity of the philosophical searches of the Silver Age (beginning of the 1890s-1922) with the religious and philosophical doctrine by Gregory Skovoroda. In the history of philosophy, Gregory Skovoroda can be considered «boundary figure» marking transition from the Middle Ages to the culture of the Modernity. The article deals with the (...) thinker’s ethical doctrine, particularly, with two interpretations of nature: essential and voluntary. Moralizing was the main aim and content of the most works by Gregory Skovoroda. Practical philosophy by Gregory Skovoroda immediately sides with his understanding of nature. Volition, wish (desire), affinity, true man are its basic categories. The main aim of Skovoroda’s moralizing is to show the way to the happy life. The essential topic of the Skovoroda’s creative work are concentrated in his ethics: ontology, or doctrine of three worlds (microcosm, macrocosm, symbolic world – the Bible), exegetical method of cognition and symbolism, doctrine of nature and category of affinity, the principle of self-cognition and doctrine of the «true man», doctrine of heart and anthropology, eudemonism and problem of reality of the evil and the good in the world. According to the canons of the symbolism Skovoroda criticizes material, corporeal side of the world and gives preference to its spiritual meaning. Nevertheless, Skovoroda remains a religious thinker in his practical philosophy; he meditates per religious canons. For the 18th century Gregory Skovoroda’s doctrine had been as archaic as it became relevant at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. (shrink)

A philosophically important but largely overlooked cognitive theory is examined, one that provides information on which inferences an agent will make from his beliefs. Such a theory of feasible inferences is indispensable in a complete cognitive psychology, in particular, for predicting the agent's actions on the basis of rationality conditions and attributed beliefs and desires. However, very little of the feasibility theory which applies to a typical human being can be shown a priori to apply to all agents. The logical (...) competence required of a rational agent seems to have a cluster structure: it cannot be the case that an agent is able to make no inferences, but an agent can be unable to make any particular one. (shrink)

There is a widely shared belief in contemporary epistemology that propositional knowledge is incompatible with certain kinds of luck, most of all with so called veritic luck. A subject is veritically lucky in his or her belief that p if this belief is true not due to its foundations (for example, reasons which an agent has to believe that p) but by mere accident. The acceptance of the thesis of incompatibility of knowledge with this kind of luck led to significant (...) modifications of a popular modern epistemological tripartite analysis of propositional knowledge according to which subject knows that p if and only if he or she believes that p is true, p is actually true, and an agent’s belief that p is true is justified. In his famous paper “Is True Justified Belief Knowledge” E. Gettier demonstrated that true justified belief may not be knowledge. The core of the problem is that in the cases described by Gettier and the like an agent’s belief, though justified, is true by accident. This gave rise to a set of theories introducing additional conditions of knowledge which could exclude veritic luck. In this paper the author critically discusses main modifications of the tripartite concept of knowledge aimed at making it independent on veritic luck, and show that they are unable to solve this problem. He agrees with those who think that the very thesis of incompatibility of knowledge with veritic luck is wrong. But he disagrees that all kinds of veritic luck are compatible with knowledge: the author supposes that good veritic luck is compatible with knowledge only when it compensates some negative effect of antecedent bad epistemic luck. According to this view original Gettier examples are not cases of knowledge whereas broken-clocks case and fake-barns case are. This account allows treating many classic cases of dependence of knowledge on luck as cases of knowledge-acquirement, but in the same time it excludes the inclusion into the class of knowledge such intuitively irrelevant outcomes as lucky guess and wishful thinking. (shrink)

Cell interdivision periods (IDP) in homogenous cell populations vary stochastically. Another aspect of probabilistic cell behavior is randomness in cell differentiation. These features are suggested to result from competing stochastic events of assembly/disassembly of the transcription pre‐initiation complex (PIC) at gene promoters. The time needed to assemble a proper PIC from different proteins, which must be numerous enough to make their combination gene specific, may be comparable to the IDP. Nascent mRNA visualization at defined genes and inferences from protein level (...) fluctuations in single cells suggest that some genes do operate in this way. The onset of mRNA production by such genes may miss the time windows provided by the cell cycle, resulting in cells differentiating into those in which the respective mRNAs are either present or absent. This creates a way to generate cell phenotype diversity in multicellular organisms. (shrink)

Within the Hebbian paradigm the mechanism for integrating cell assemblies oscillating with different frequencies remains unclear. We hypothesize that such an integration may occur in cortical “interaction foci” that unite synchronously oscillated assemblies through hard-wired connections, synthesizing the information from various functional systems of the brain.

The paper discusses Norman Malcolm’s interpretation of Anselm’s ontological argument. Since Malcolm had shown no interest in religious or theological issues prior to publishing his article on that subject in 1960, the analysis takes clue from Malcolm’s earlier writings. By doing so, I revisit the assessment of the ontological argument as fallacious and the tendency to assess Anselm from the traditional framework initiated by Kant. As I demonstrate, Malcolm interpreted Anselm based on the method elaborated during the 1950s. That method (...) involved a synthesis between ordinary language philosophy and common sense philosophy, associated with the late Wittgenstein and Moore respectively. As I further argue, the usual objections to Malcolm’s approach ignore the main line of his reasoning: that Anselm’s ontological argument does not violate ordinary language. Indeed, the two concepts of God as “the greatest of all beings” and of the necessity of God’s existence both perfectly fit in how language works. The “God-talk” is therefore logical only in accordance with Malcoms definition of logical: an explication of the rules of ordinary language, whereas each and every argument against Anselm’s ontological proof violates ordinary language drastically. In his late works on the subject, Malcolm suggested that multiple proofs of God’s existence should be viewed as expressions of a specific philosophic pathology whose underlying drive is a justification of various forms of life. Instead of regarding this idea as “fideistic” (e.g., in K. Nielsen’s work), I propose that the very concept of ordinary language, as Malcolm developed it, makes a treatment of language games along the lines of dependence or independence obsolete. Rather, a crucial issue that Malcolm pushes to investigate is how religious statements correlate with ordinary language. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the reasoning of the „Ereignis“ phenomenon in the philosophy of M. Heidegger. It is worth to emphasize that one of the main trends in contemporary philosophy is an attempt of creation of new–non-substantial–ontology. The very specificity of such ontology lies in the fact that classical substance is replaced by the dynamical configuration of sense, which is not “purely theoretical” but “ontological” in its core. “Ontological” means, in fact, that it is impossible to separate the mode (...) of Being of phenomena from the process of thinking about them. Heidegger’s philosophy was one of the first attempts to create such ontology. It is worth to point out the three steps of the Heidegger’s studies of Being. The first, “fundamental-ontological” step is characterized primarily through the “ontological difference” between Being and entity, when the phenomenon of time represents by itself their hidden basis. During the second, “radical-ontological” period, Heidegger has already carried out his famous “turn.” In compliance with this “turn,” the truth of Being, die Lichtung, substitutes time as the “pre-ontological” basement of Being. In this case, Being itself transforms into the Event, „Ereignis“. On the third, “post-ontological” stage of studies the focal point of Heidegger’s thought is “post-ontological difference” between the Being of entity and Being itself. On this stage both Being and time are rooted in the phenomenon of „Ereignis“. The latter has been now transformed from being a “simple Event” into a “matter of fact” as the alternation of the “disclosedness” and “concealness” of Being and time. In this case, „Ereignis“ is not quasi-substantial basement of Being, time or entity but it shows itself as its “Beginning” “), when the Truth of Being is replaced by the dynamical sense configuration of the event, i.e., a “matter of fact.” Thus, Heidegger has conceptually created a new type of thnon-substantial ontology, the core of which is the phenomenon of „Ereignis“ as the dynamical singular configuration of the temporal-ontological sense of the Event itself. (shrink)

The article considers the connection between ethics, in particular Kant’s practical philosophy, and economics. The author examines historical reasons for Kant’s ethic not to have become part of the economic discourse and interprets modern business processes from Kant’s perspective. The article aims to demonstrate the possibilities of applying the philosophical instruments of Kant’s morals to concrete economic issues.

The historic or traditional Christian view of pain (suffering) and death, especially as preserved by the Christian East (i.e., the Orthodox), is radically opposed to the modern secular obsession with avoidance of pain. Everything about this life has its goal or aim in a mystical reality, the Kingdom of Heaven, for which earthly life is a preparation. While neither illness nor health are seen as ends in themselves, both are viewed as proceeding from the will of God for our benefit (...) and have no ultimate meaning or purpose outside of eternal life. Death may be a relief or an ending of suffering, but in itself it is not “good” but evil.Because they are the embodiment of lived theology, saints' lives can be a sure guide to understanding how to die as a traditional Christian. To illustrate this, I have chosen some examples from the lives of relatively recent saints. I myself am from the Russian Orthodox spiritual tradition, so all but one of my examples come from pre-Revolutionary Russia.The question is not so much whether or not a traditional Christian can countenance physician-assisted suicide, but rather, what is the meaning or purpose of pain and suffering in general. Is it part of the “work of perfection” required of those who wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and therefore not to be completely denied? (shrink)

Qumran Hebrew: An Overview of Orthography, Phonology, and Morphology. By Eric D. Reymond. Resources for Biblical Study, vol. 76. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014. Pp. xvii + 309. $37.95.

Obwohl es in der bisherigen Nietzscheforschung detaillierte Untersuchungen separater Aspekte von Nietzsches Homerdeutung während der Leipziger und Baseler Periode gibt, fehlt ein Überblick über die gesamte Perspektive von Nietzsches philologischen und philosophischen Beschäftigungen mit Homer. In diesem Buch wird der gesamte Entwicklungsprozess von Nietzsches Homerinterpretation von den frühen philologischen Schriften und Vorlesungen bis hin zu den spätesten Erwähnungen Homers in den Werken und Nachlassfragmenten von 1888 rekonstruiert. Zugleich widmet der Autor den philosophischen Ansätzen Nietzsches besondere Aufmerksamkeit, u.a. seiner Interpretation der (...) Figur des homerischen Odysseus, seiner Deutung des homerischen Polytheismus sowie dem Gegensatz Homer/Platon. Durch die Untersuchung der philosophischen Dimension der philologischen Kontexte schließt das Buch eine wesentliche Forschungslücke und bereitet die Grundlagen für weitere Interpretationen von Nietzsches Bild der griechischen Archaik. (shrink)

The Riemannian manifold structure of the classical (i.e., Einsteinian) space-time is derived from the structure of an abstract infinite-dimensional separable Hilbert space S. For this S is first realized as a Hilbert space H of functions of abstract parameters. The space H is associated with the space of states of a macroscopic test-particle in the universe. The spatial localization of state of the particle through its interaction with the environment is associated with the selection of a submanifold M of realization (...) H. The submanifold M is then identified with the classical space (i.e., a space–like hypersurface in space-time). The mathematical formalism is developed which allows recovering of the usual Riemannian geometry on the classical space and, more generally, on space and time from the Hilbert structure on S. The specific functional realizations of S are capable of generating spacetimes of different geometry and topology. Variation of the length-type action functional on S is shown to produce both the equation of geodesics on M for macroscopic particles and the Schrödinger equation for microscopic particles. (shrink)

The expression ‘an instance of an artwork’ is often used in philosophical discourse about art. Yet there is no clear account of what exactly this expression means. My goal in this essay is to provide such an account. I begin by expounding and defending a particular definition of the concept of ‘an instance of an artwork’. Next, I elaborate this definition – by providing definitions of the main derivatives of the concept of ‘an instance of an artwork’, namely the concepts (...) of ‘a well-formed instance of an artwork’ and ‘a non-wellformed instance of an artwork’. Finally, I examine the relation of the foregoing definitions to the existence and identity conditions of artworks and make some additional remarks concerning these definitions. (shrink)

The view that abstracta cannot exert causal power is pretty common in metaphysics. According to Friedell (2020), however, this view is mistaken. In a recent paper in this journal, he has argued that at least some abstracta are causally efficacious. My goal in what follows is to demonstrate that, given certain plausible methodological assumptions, Friedell 2020’s argument is not as strong as it might at first seem.

A considerable number of philosophers are attracted to what might be called ‘causal type-abstractionism’ – the view that photographs, symphonies, models of cars, novels, flags, and other multiply i...