The paper is aimed at providing general outlines of the more than two-century history of the theory of moral sanctions. It rests on a thesis about unity of all disciplines studying morality. The aim of the paper has been achieved trough an analysis of how some basic concepts were borrowed and basic ideas were transformed. The first tradition links moral sanctions with public condemnation. Some of its adherents simply identified public condemnation with moral sanction. This opinion prevailed until the middle (...) of the XXth century. Later it was suggested that a sanction becomes genuinely moral only when a transgressor herself is sensitive to condemnation because she recognizes that she deserves it and feels shame, guilt or remorse. It means that an external side of the sanction has to be complemented by an internal one. The first tradition presupposes a deep and thorough analysis of an external side of the moral sanction, i.e. various forms of sanctioning behavior (avoidance, censure, denunciation, reproach, scolding etc.) The second tradition was initiated by J.S. Mill and H. Sidgwick, it includes among moral sanctions the very negative emotions of self-appraisal. For adherents of this tradition, model and most important moral sanctions are internal: guilt and remorse. Characteristics of internal (autonomous) and external (heteronomous) sanctions were established in the XXth century anthropology. Later this distinction became current in the contemporary ethics. (shrink)

The consensus is that novels can be fully appreciated only through an experiential engagement with their well-formed instances. But what are the entities that serve as such instances? According to the orthodox view, these entities are primarily inscriptions—concrete texts written or printed on something or displayed on the screen of some electronic device. In this paper, I argue that this view is misguided, since well-formed instances of a novel must manifest certain sonic properties, but such properties cannot be manifested by (...) inscriptions. As an alternative, I put forward the view that the entities that serve as well-formed instances of novels are readings and sums of readings and graphic elements. (shrink)

There is widespread opinion that, notwithstanding deviations, the political life of humanity on a large scale is on the path of progress, and humans are becoming freer and more enlightened with time. I am going to contend with this opinion, namely, with a part of it telling that the prevailing mass of the people strives to achieve more freedom and enlightenment. On the opposite, freedom, individual independence, and political rights are of minor importance to the mass. The ideology of liberalism (...) in its classical form, as created by John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and others, yields to the pressure of the ideology of state paternalism. The pressure comes not only from above ; the people also welcome more paternalism. They appear not to value their individual freedom and independence, and they are inclined to give them up voluntarily to some mighty organization such as the state in exchange for care, protection and leadership. Liberalism has played an important role in the development of human civilization and the formation of the Western world, but new ideologies and political practices are pushing it out of people’s minds. For the author, as adherent of classical liberalism, this is unfortunate. However, I wish to treat this issue realistically, even if the facts conflict with my own convictions and desires. (shrink)

This article focuses on the general theoretical issue of realism versus constructivism in politics, with a case of the present-day Russia as the main and most telling example. We present four assertions that we are going to defend. First, we claim that in the sphere of international relations, political realism of the offensive type, after decades of more tempered USA–USSR relations, is again challenging its opponent: political constructivism. Second, political realism is winning in the sphere of domestic politics and policy (...) in the leading countries as well. Third, we touch upon theoretical issues and discuss the ontological nature of political realism in comparison with political constructivism and the kindred of the latter with normativism, legalism, constitutionalism and liberalism. Political constructivism as a concept is underestimated and rarely used. Our article explicates the concept of political constructivism, which is a novel contribution to political theory and political philosophy. Fourth, we show that political constructivism, being the most advanced achievement of political civilization compared to archaic realism, has not lost the game so far and should be upheld in its battle with the remnants of the wild political past. Sliding back to political realism would turn humankind into another degraded animal species instead of making it the pilot in continuing human progress. (shrink)

The king therefore went down to the village, since the Wise Men's rule did not permit him to spend more than a day with them, but Iarchas said to the messenger, ‘Damis too we consider worthy of the secrets here, so tell him to come, while you look after the others in the village.’ When Damis had come, the Wise Men formed their usual circle and gave Apollonius permission to put questions. So he asked what they thought the universe consisted (...) of, to which they replied, ‘Elements.’ ‘Four, do you think?’ he said. ‘Not four’, said Iarchas, ‘but five.’ ‘What could a fifth one be’, said Apollonius, ‘besides water, air, earth, and fire?’ ‘Ether’, said Iarchas, ‘which we must consider to be the origin (γένεσιν) of the gods. All that breathes air is mortal, but what breathes ether is immortal and divine.’ Next Apollonius asked which of the elements came into existence first. ‘All came together’, said the other, ‘since a living being is not born one piece at a time.’ ‘Am I to consider the universe living?’, asked Apollonius. ‘Yes, if you reason correctly’, said Iarchas, ‘since itself it gives life to everything.’ ‘Should we then call it female’, asked Apollonius, ‘or of the contrary, male sex?’ ‘Of both’, was the answer, ‘since it has intercourse with itself, and performs both the mother's and the father's role with respect to generation. It feels a desire for itself more intense than that of any two other beings, and this joins and unites it, and there is nothing unreasonable about its coalescence. And just as the action of the hands and feet in a living creature comes from mobility and the intelligence (διὰ τὸν ἐκείνου νοῦν) that causes it, so also we must suppose that, because of the intelligence of the universe (κατὰ τὸν ἐκείνου ϕοιτᾷ νοῦν), its parts accommodate themselves to everything that undergoes birth and conception. For instance, the sufferings resulting from drought arise from the mind of the universe, when justice is banished from mankind and treated with dishonor. And this being guides itself not by one hand alone but by many unseen ones that it uses; though too large to be restrained, it moves obediently and tractably.’The doctrine contained in this extract – the only passage ofThe Life of Apollonius of Tyanatreating matters of ‘cosmogony’ – could be summarized in the six following propositions. First, the universe consists of five, not four elements, the fifth being the ether, the γένεσις θεῶν. Just as mortals breathe air, gods breathe ether. Secondly, there is no ‘primordial element’; all five came into being simultaneously. Thirdly, the universe is a living being. In the fourth place, the universe is both male and female at the same time. In the fifth place, as the universe is androgynous it feels desire (ἔρως) towards itself and it is this desire that makes it whole and united. And finally, the passion of the universe for itself is governed by Intelligence (ἐκείνου νοῦς). (shrink)

Some biblical texts suggest that man consists of two parts—body and soul—whereas others seem to indicate instead three parts—body, soul, and spirit. This paper examines how the Church Fathers dealt with this apparent contradiction. It finds that although they generally favor the body-soul dichotomy, they did not see it as contradicting a trichotomous view, for “spirit” can be interpreted in a number of ways: as another term for the soul, or as the lowest imaginative part of the soul, or as (...) its highest rational part, or as the grace of the Holy Spirit. Different approaches can be found in different patristic authors depending on their theological interests and the biblical passages at issue. (shrink)

The article stresses that Georgy P. Fedotov's systematic reference to the Bible enabled him in his historical monographs to reconstruct the spiritual reality of past eras and symbolically perceive the present. Fedotov intended to know The Gospel in History, Russian religiosity, exploring it on the material of hagiographies of saints, spiritual poems, folk faith, apocrypha, and prologues. Fedotov considered the history of Russian culture in terms of a "living chain," an integral phenomenon existing due to the Holy Scriptures and Holy (...) Tradition. However, "The sacred tradition of the Church is included in the general stream of historical tradition, all complex, always muddy, human weaving truth and falsehood." Fedotov raised the question of the relationship between scientific criticism and biblical exegetics: how can we reconcile exegetics of sacred texts, which assume that the Bible is an inspired book, and historical criticism, which by its very nature cannot share such a position, being aimed at comprehending objective historical reality? He solved it convincingly practically through hermeneutic religious analysis of hagiographic monuments and spiritual verses. In his Spiritual Poems Fedotov explores folklore material compared to biblical texts, hagiographies, and apocrypha, to comprehend the peculiarity of religious "Weltanschauung" and popular orthodoxy. In spiritual verses, there was a transformation of biblical images under the influence of folk faith with pagan features. In folklore texts, Fedotov reveals how Christ, from savior and redeemer, turns into a king and dreadful judge. The image of the Mother of God merges in the popular consciousness with the image of the mother earth, suffering from people. Eschatological prophecies are based on impressions from icons, frescoes, and lubok pictures. Fedotov's historical monographs illuminate various aspects of Russian religious consciousness regarding Holy Scripture, considering dogmatic biblical exegetics and historical criticism. All the mentioned facts allow us to assert that Fedotov was the leading secular biblical scholar of the Russian diaspora. (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.

Coordinate formalism on Hilbert manifolds developed in \cite{Kryukov}, \cite{Kryukov1} is further analyzed. The main subject here is a comparison of the ordinary and the string bases of eigenvectors of a linear operator as introduced in \cite{Kryukov}. It is shown that the string basis of eigenvectors is a natural generalization of its classical counterpart. It is also shown that the developed formalism forces us to consider any Hermitian operator with continuous spectrum as a restriction to a space of square integrable functions (...) of a self-adjoint operator defined on a space of generalized functions. In the formalism functional coordinate transformations preserving the norm of strings are now linear isometries rather than the unitary transformations. (shrink)

Conformal group of Minkowski space-time M is considered as a group of bundle automorphisms of a vector bundle U over M. 4-component spin-vectors (4-spinors) are sections of a subbundle of the tangent bundle over U. Isotropic 4-vectors are images of 4-spinors under projection. This leads to a particularly clear interpretation of the spin properties of Nature.

We give an affirmative answer to the following question: Is any Borel subset of a Cantor set C a sum of a countable number of pairwise disjoint h-homogeneous subspaces that are closed in X? It follows that every Borel set \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${X \subset {\bf R}^n}$$\end{document} can be partitioned into countably many h-homogeneous subspaces that are Gδ-sets in X.

We study uncertainty relations for a general class of canonically conjugate observables. It is known that such variables can be approached within a limiting procedure of the Pegg–Barnett type. We show that uncertainty relations for conjugate observables in terms of generalized entropies can be obtained on the base of genuine finite-dimensional consideration. Due to the Riesz theorem, there exists an inequality between norm-like functionals of two probability distributions in finite dimensions. Using a limiting procedure of the Pegg–Barnett type, we take (...) the infinite-dimensional limit right for this inequality. Hence, uncertainty relations are derived in terms of generalized entropies. In particular, the case of measurements with a finite precision is addressed. It takes into account that in any experiment an accuracy of performed measurements is always limited. (shrink)

The article comprises three parts. Part I contains an overview of the areas in the analysis of modern French philosophy that have been of the greatest relevance to Russian researchers over the last years. We conclude that numerous aspects of the French philosophical thought of the twentieth century are well represented in the research of Russian authors, who also point out the emerging trends in its development. Part II deals with the development of analytic philosophy in Russia within the framework (...) of such areas as “critique of bourgeois philosophy”, a purely ideological stand only nominally related to philosophy, logic, and the history of philosophy and theoretical research. Part III contains a periodization of the history of phenomenology in Russia, pointing out the most important achievements of the contemporary Russian scholars of phenomenology as well as their understanding of the essence, the problems, and the aims of phenomenological philosophy. We also indicate the tendencies within the development of the discipline in the Russian Federation. (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 research identifies the amount of headline/article discrepancies in the corpora of western and Russian online articles on sensitive political topics. A quarter of the western headlines and nearly half of the Russian headlines distort the publications they introduce. Language means and manipulative strategies employed by different sides vary considerably. Extensive use of expressive language and style variation are seen as leading causes of distortions in the western corpus. The rich imagery used by the authors forms emotional implicatures that affect (...) the reader’s perception of the issue. In contrast, information substitution, subjective modality and selective citations are identified as major causes of distortions in the Russian corpus. Contributors to Russian news outlets rely on general rather than language manipulation strategies, including frequent use of logical fallacies and wrong generalizations. These techniques establish false logical sequences and wrong causative implicatures that compromise objective reporting. The underlying motives of the journalists’ creating false emotional and causative implicatures in the headlines lies beyond the scope of the study; however, it is assumed that intentional change of the information introduced by the headline could be viewed as a covert misinformation attempt. (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)

According to the orthodox view, photographic artworks are abstract objects. This view, however, has recently been challenged by Christy Mag Uidhir. In his article ‘Photographic Art: An Ontology Fit to Print’, he argues in favour of a nominalist construal of photographic artworks. My goal is to show that Mag Uidhir’s argument is unpersuasive.

Монографію присвячено теоретичним дослідженням менеджменту науки. Розглянуто сутність управління науковим пошуком як окремого виду діяльності. Досліджено шляхи вирішення фундаментальних та прикладних питань, які виникають під час проведення наукових досліджень та впровадження їх результатів. Визначено категорії культури наукового пошуку. Окрему увагу приділено питанням захисту інтелектуальної власності, а також презентації та комерціалізації результатів наукових розробок. Монографія буде корисною для магістрів, аспірантів, молодих науковців та усіх, хто займається науковими дослідженнями.

1. On the contradictory nature of contemporary linguistic theories and how to change it for the better -- 2. A reference-based approach to describing notional words -- 3. Basic-level concepts as the neurobiological codes for memory -- 4. Elements of a sensory grammar -- 5. On the single structure of lexical meanings of nouns and verbs -- References -- Index.

The paradoxes of the double-slit experiment with an electron are shown to originate in the implicit assumption that the electron is always located in the classical space. It is demonstrated that there exists a natural substitute for this assumption that provides a method of resolving the paradoxes.

The paradoxes of the EPR experiment with two particles are shown to originate in the implicit assumption that the particles are always located in the classical space. There exists a substitute for this assumption that yields a new definition of reality and offers a resolution of the paradoxes.

This article gives a general characteristic of the publications of the Russian philosophers in the oldest Kantian Journal “Kant-Studien”. The study embraces the entire period of the existence of this magazine, from the very beginning down to our days. In general, after compiling all materials related to Russia published in “Kant-Studien”, I became aware of get a picture of a significant presence of Russian philosophers in this periodical. This gives me a good reason to conclude that even if the impact (...) of the Russian philosophical thought on the international Kant studies was not decisive, then, at least, it was tangible. This influence was due to the phenomenon which was later called the “Silver Age of Russian philosophy”, as well as the phenomenon of Russian emigration, arising as a result of wars and revolutions in Russia and the exodus of the Russian philosophers of the West, where one of their main initial shelters was Germany. (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)

The study deals with the content and transformations of Jeremy Bentham’s theory of sanctions and its role in the development of the contemporary understanding of how moral regulation works. In An Introduction to the principles of morals and legislation, Bentham defines sanction as a type of pleasure and pain that gives the binding force to some law or rule and mentions four sanctions: physical, political, popular, or moral, and religious. The popular, or moral, sanction rests on such a motive as (...) ‘the love of reputation’. Unlike the motive of ‘good-will’, ‘the love of reputation’ has some drawbacks that lessen its general efficiency and its contribution to the fulfillment of the principle of utility. Though the development of civilization makes them less dangerous. In the Deontology, two more sanctions were added: sympathetic (the pain generated by the contemplation of the pain suffered by a fellow creature) and retributive (the pain caused to a perpetrator by retaliatory actions of his/her immediate victim). The renewed typology of sanctions is discussed by Bentham in the context of the activity of a moralist, or a deontologist. There are two main interpretations of moral sanctions in the contemporary ethics: ‘the moral sanction as a public condemnation of a perpetrator’ and ‘the moral sanction as a self-condemnation of a perpetrator (his/her feeling of guilt, pricks of conscience)’. Bentham was a major figure in the development of the first interpretation. However, his extended typology contributed to the development of the second. Bentham’s sympathetic sanction in the case of ‘pains of sympathy’ that experienced by a perpetrator and caused him/her by pains of his/her victims is not identical to a guilt-feeling but can work without a public condemnation. (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)

This article examines the views of Latin American philosophers on the process of formation of the Latin American subject of history, its characteristic features, as well as the role of the intellectual in this process. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the position of the prominent Argentine philosopher A. A. Roig, and to compare his position with the position of another well-known representative of the philosophy of liberation (E. Dussel). In this paper therefore, Roig's works devoted to (...) the philosophical interpretation of the process of formation and development of Latin American national thought are analyzed. It is established that in the writings of this thinker the activity of Latin American people appears as the activity of a single collective subject of history. During the study, we conclude that both philosophers (Roig and Dussel), come to the same idea in different ways: the intellectual identity of the Latin American collective subject of history is based on the history of interaction between the people of Latin America and Europe, unique in its dramatic nature and same for the entire continent. The work uses mainly the historical and bibliographic method, as well as the method of comparative analysis. (shrink)

An analogy between the evolution of organisms and some complex computational problems (cryptosystem cracking, determination of the shortest path in a graph) is considered. It is shown that in the absence of a priori information about possible species of organisms such a problem is complex (is rated in the class NP) and cannot be solved in a polynomial number of steps. This conclusion suggests the need for re-examination of evolution mechanisms. Ideas of a deterministic approach to the evolution are discussed.

The article traces origins of the contradiction that calls into being the polemics on the moral status of duties to close persons. Special obligations are created by the unique life narrative of an actor that makes different recipients of her actions more or less distant. Those who are less distant are “close ones.” Those who are more distant are “strangers.” The basis of this distance can be different: individual sympathy, consanguinity, belonging to cultural, territorial and political communities. Special obligations presuppose (...) that the preferential treatment of “close ones” is not only permissible but obligatory. This feature of moral duties to close persons makes moral philosophers suspicious because they are prone to endow moral requirements with two interrelated properties: universality and the high level of generality. The main reason for this is that the typical moral duty is a duty of every human being to another human being without any further qualifications. Against the background of such duties, any preference to close persons looks like the breach of moral equality and manifestation of impermissible partiality. Though, common moral beliefs persistently include special obligations in the whole system of moral duty. R. Goodin thinks that they have a priority over positive general duties and yield to negative general duties. The empirical researches of moral evaluations which reviewed in this article in general confirm this conclusion. The ethical theory cannot ignore fundamental features of common moral beliefs. That is why it is doomed to look for ways of reconciling the moral equality and impartiality with the preferential treatment of close persons embedded into special obligations. (shrink)

When discussing the French Revolution and Napoleon in his lectures from 1933 to 1939, Alexandre Kojève had in mind events in Russia. The clash between the “old order,” with its Masters, and the worker Slaves corresponded for him more with the images of pre-revolutionary Russian journalism than with the wigged aristocrats and French bourgeoisie of the end of the eighteenth century. In his lectures, behind Napoleon, as a revolutionary emperor, there exists, however secretly or openly, the figure of Stalin, with (...) his plans for the “building of socialism in one country,” his five-year plans, collectivization, and terror. Kojève’s ontology and anthropology diverge both from Hegel’s version of the two as well as with Marxism, incorporating different theses from Nietzsche and Heidegger’s Daseinanalytik. Just as in The Phenomenology of Spirit, terror plays a central role in interpreting revolution, yet it is conceived in the spirit of a Heideggerian “being-toward-death.” The relation between Master and Slave begins with fear of death, and it is destroyed by fear of death in the face of revolutionary terror. In this article, Kojève’s philosophy converges with the various versions of “left Nietzscheanism,” which were particularly widespread in prerevolutionary Russia. (shrink)

A classification of the global catastrophic risks of AI is presented, along with a comprehensive list of previously identified risks. This classification allows the identification of several new risks. We show that at each level of AI’s intelligence power, separate types of possible catastrophes dominate. Our classification demonstrates that the field of AI risks is diverse, and includes many scenarios beyond the commonly discussed cases of a paperclip maximizer or robot-caused unemployment. Global catastrophic failure could happen at various levels of (...) AI development, namely, before it starts self-improvement, during its takeoff, when it uses various instruments to escape its initial confinement, or after it successfully takes over the world and starts to implement its goal system, which could be plainly unaligned, or feature-flawed friendliness. AI could also halt at later stages of its development either due to technical glitches or ontological problems. Overall, we identified around several dozen scenarios of AI-driven global catastrophe. The extent of this list illustrates that there is no one simple solution to the problem of AI safety, and that AI safety theory is complex and must be customized for each AI development level. (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)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 3 Seiten: 418-420.

The immunoglobulin molecule is a perfect template for the de novo generation of biocatalytic functions. Catalytic antibodies, or abzymes, obtained by the structural mimicking of enzyme active sites have been shown to catalyze numerous chemical reactions. Natural enzyme analogs for some of these reactions have not yet been found or possibly do not exist at all. Nowadays, the dramatic breakthrough in antibody engineering and expression technologies has promoted a considerable expansion of immunoglobulin's medical applications and is offering abzymes a unique (...) chance to become a promising source of high‐precision “catalytic vaccines.” At the same time, the discovery of natural abzymes on the background of autoimmune disease revealed their beneficial and pathogenic roles in the disease progression. Thus, the conflicting Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde protective and destructive essences of catalytic antibodies should be carefully considered in the development of therapeutic abzyme applications. (shrink)

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 consensus is that repeatable artworks cannot be identified with particular material individuals. A perennial temptation is to identify them with types, broadly construed. Such identification, however, faces the so-called “Creation Problem.” This problem stems from the fact 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 are mutually inconsistent. A possible solution to (...) the Creation Problem is to argue that claim (2) can be rejected because (a) the only motivation for it is that a type, being abstract, cannot stand in causal relations, but (b) this motivation is ungrounded, since types can, in fact, stand in such relations. Clearly, in order for this solution to be successful, it is necessary to substantiate the possibility of types to be causally efficacious. In this essay, I examine an attempt to do this with the help of Yablo’s principle of proportionality, which has been undertaken by Walters (2013) and, more recently, Juvshik (2018). Although the argument they advance may seem to provide strong support for the causal efficacy of types, I think it actually fails to do this. To explain why this is so, I first show that this argument commits us to the existence of widespread causal overdetermination involving types and then argue that this commitment is both epistemically and ontologically problematic. (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)

My goal is to conceive how the reality would look like for hypothetical creatures that supposedly perceive on time scales much faster or much slower than that of us humans. To attain the goal, I propose modelling in two steps. At step one, we have to single out a unified parameter that sets time scale of perception. Changing substantially the value of the parameter would mean changing scale. I argue that the required parameter is duration of discrete perceptive frames, or (...) snapshots, whose sequencing constitutes perceptive process. I show that different standard durations of perceptive frames is the ground for differences in perceptive time scales of various animals. Abnormally changed duration of perceptive frames is the cause of the effect of distorted subjective time observed by humans under some conditions. Now comes step two of the modelling. By inserting some arbitrary duration of a perceptive frame, we set a hypothetical scale and thus emulate a viewpoint for virtual observation of the reality in a wider or narrower angle of embracing events in time. Like changing lenses of a microscope, viewing reality in different temporal scales makes certain features of reality manifested, others veiled. These are, in particular, features of life. If we observe an object in an inappropriate interval, we may not notice the very essence of a process it is undergoing. (shrink)

This article explores theoretical conditions necessary for “quantum immortality” as well as its possible practical implications. It is demonstrated that QI is a particular case of “multiverse immortality”, which is based on two main assumptions: the very large size of the universe ; and a copy-friendly theory of personal identity. It is shown that a popular objection about lowering of the world-share of an observer in the case of QI does not succeed, as the world-share decline could be compensated by (...) merging timelines for the simpler minds, and because some types of personal preferences are not dependent on such changes. Despite large uncertainty about the truth of MI, it has appreciable practical consequences for some important outcomes like suicide and aging. The article demonstrates that MI could be used to significantly increase the expected subjective probability of success of risky life extension technologies, such as cryonics, but that it makes euthanasia impractical because of the risk of eternal suffering. Euthanasia should be replaced with cryothanasia, i.e. cryopreservation after voluntary death. Another possible application of MI is as a last chance to survive a global catastrophe. MI could be considered a Plan D for reaching immortality, where Plan A consists of survival until the development of beneficial Artificial Intelligence capable of fighting aging, Plan B employs cryonics, and Plan C is digital immortality. (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)

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.