The paper is devoted to applications of algebraic logic to databases. In databases a query is represented by a formula of first order logic. The same query can be associated with different formulas. Thus, a query is a class of equivalent formulae: equivalence here being similar to that in the transition to the Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra. An algebra of queries is identified with the corresponding algebra of logic. An algebra of replies to the queries is also associated with algebraic logic. These (...) relations lie at the core of the applications.In this paper it is shown how the theory of Halmos (polyadic) algebras (a notion introduced by Halmos as a tool in the algebraization of the first order predicate calculus) is used to create the algebraic model of a relational data base. The model allows us, in particular, to solve the problem of databases equivalence as well as develop a formal algebraic definition of a database's state description. In this paper we use the term "state description" for the logical description of the model. This description is based on the notion of filters in Halmos algebras. When speaking of a state description, we mean the description of a function which realizes the symbols of relations as real relations in the given system of data. (shrink)

It is not by chance that the title of this article paraphrases Gustav Gustavovich Shpet’s article “The Skeptic and His Soul”. Is Stavrogin a skeptic? Yes, and the novel Demons is a narrative...

The existing variants of the classification of sciences differentiate and correlate the types of cognitive practices on various grounds. At the same time, the attention of epistemologists is usually concentrated on the instrumental logical and methodological functions of the proposed classifications, which guide scientists in the holistic cognitive space of rational cognition. As for the sociocultural dimensions of scientific and cognitive activity, they mostly correlate with the typological features of research practices only slightly. Meanwhile, science as a whole is undergoing (...) significant changes today, affecting, among other things, the status and methodological functions of its socio-cultural parameters, which significantly change the configuration of the cognitive space of scientific and cognitive activity. The article attempts to demonstrate the features of the problematization of contemporary science’s philosophical and methodological foundations. When discussing these issues, it is fundamentally important to consider how a scientist realizes his methodological tools and the socio-cultural status of scientific and cognitive activity. According to the author, these problematics are stepping into the center of today’s philosophical and methodological reflection on science, forcing us to take a fresh look at the meaning of science as a holistic cognitive phenomenon, accordingly, the typological features of its cognitive practices. (shrink)

Modern epistemology adopted the idea of historicism, of the historicity of knowledge and the self-consciousness of the cognizer. The research, undertaken within cultural–historical epistemology, also spread in the context of the prevailing tendencies in the sphere of modern epistemology. The specificity of this type of epistemology is related to a special interpretation of the history of cognition. On this interpretation knowledge represents a cultural phenomenon that has an existentially-symbolical meaning for the cognizer. Therefore this type of epistemology returns us to (...) the dimension of knowledge, which has in fact been lost today. It returns us to the original antique notion of knowledge as “good,” as something that changes the person who acquires it. And here in this context comes forth such a feature of knowledge as its integrity. At the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Russian philosophers turned to the problem field of “integral knowledge,” the core of which lies in the unity of the integral and cognitive, which is reflected in the concreteness of knowledge. Such an understanding of knowledge enabled the articulation of a number of ideas that enriched European traditions of socio-humanitarian research and influenced the development of semiotics and structuralism both in Europe and in Russia. The ideas of R. Jakobson that stimulated the structure-semiotic research in the first half of the twentieth century are very well-known to world humanity science. Yet their epistemological potential is related to the idea of the integral knowledge. The epistemological turn towards historicism in semiotics in Russia was accomplished by G. Shpet. Jakobson communicated with Shpet at the Moscow linguistic circle in the 1920s. They both referred to the ideas of Husserl, and, as Jakobson acknowledged himself, he borrowed many ideas from Shpet—in particular, the idea of semiotics. Shpet’s helped implement the idea of “integral knowledge” that opened a perspective of the analysis of knowledge as an open symbolic sign system. This methodological approach appears to be especially topical nowadays in the sphere of humanities, which scientific character does not exclude historicism. The ideas of Russian philosophers, then, provide a productive context immediately as well as long-term prospects for developing the methodology of the humanities. The concepts that prevail in modern methodology accentuate the historical relativity and the outer social determinacy of scientific knowledge. Meanwhile the problem of the cultural–historical status of the humanities and the problem of addressing the idea of “integral knowledge” become increasingly topical and allow the transfer of the epistemological search for the conditions and the landmarks of scientificity. (shrink)

When we discuss skepticism, we generally mean a certain philosophical movement with a fundamental basis in doubt. At the same time, the history of philosophy gives us another highly productive, met...

This article demonstrates the unique role of the Russian philosophical tradition in the formation of an individual’s self-consciousness and attempts to overcome the limitati...

The authors discuss two interpretations of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology: by Lev Shestov and by Gustav Shpet. While each of these thinkers followed his own path, they shared an idea of historicism typical of Russian philosophy, a historicism related to the existential dimension of the human being. This article suggests that the interpretation of historicism in the tradition of “positive philosophy on Russian soil” was fruitful for the development of phenomenological topics in Shpet’s and Shestov’s hermeneutics.

The archive of Gustav Shpet contains scattered preparatory materials for his works. Some of these handwritten rough drafts are devoted to Immanuel Kant. These jottings enable us to take a new look at possible trajectories of philosophical anthropology. The main goal of this article is to show, on the one hand, the modern relevance of Kant’s reflections on the essence of the human being and, on the other hand, the productiveness of their critical reinterpretation by Shpet. In effect, Kant’s reflections (...) give us an insight into the sources of the current anthropological crisis when “the free man”, capable of creating himself, has finally detached himself from his nature (i.e. accomplished what Kant believed to be the foundation of anthropology). Shpet’s critique enables us to outline the contours of a positive way out of today’s critical situation. To implement this task, the authors carry out a historical-philosophical analysis of Shpet’s treatment of the question of philosophical anthropology. This is a new approach both for Shpet scholarship and for the Russian philosophical tradition, an approach that opens up a new path to overcome the crisis and, what is more, a path that is ecologically significant. This gives us all the more reason to try to find the critical points of anthropologism (easy enough if we turn to Shpet’s article “The Anthropologism of Lavrov in Light of the History of Philosophy”). It also encourages us to reinterpret in an anthropological context Shpet’s reflections on the human being and humanness (see the article “Wisdom or Reason?”). The Supplement contains the first ever publication of a historical document, a letter Shpet received from the German embassy in 1924, inviting him to Königsberg for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Kant’s birth and a programm of the event with the names of speakers and the topics of their presentations. (shrink)

Russian philosophy is “a sphere of conversation” in which thought is “divined”. It is a realm of search for “universal meaning” and “cultivation” of historical reality. Such a “conversation” around the work of Dostoyevsky took place in the 1920s among philosophers (including members of the Free Philosophical Association or Volfila in its abbreviated form). The theme takes on added significance at the hands of Ya. E. Golosovker and S. L. Frank whose intellectual affinity manifests itself today in the way they (...) interpret Kantian motives in the work of Dostoyevsky. Reflecting on “the logic of imagination” Golosovker draws attention to the fact that the concrete-metaphysical method of seeing the world is not identical to the amphiboly of Kant’s reflexive concepts. He made it the central theme of his book, Dostoyevsky and Kant, immersing the philosophical component of the novel The Brothers Karamazov in the context of Kant’s antinomies. The later Frank took up the subject of Dostoyevsky’s worldview in response, as it were, to the discussion of the problem of cultural crisis at Volfila (including at meetings “In Memory of Dostoyevsky”). Following Yakov Golosovker, Andrey Bely, Aron Steinberg, Semyon Lurie and others, he continued the discussion of the crisis in its organised forms. In this context, too, Kant is a significant presence. For Frank, as for Golosovker, Dostoyevsky’s world view has a “concrete-metaphysical character”. They come to this conclusion reflecting on the problem of freedom as seen by Dostoyevsky who sought to overcome Kant’s antinomies. (shrink)

Three experiments investigated level of processing effects on a variety of direct and indirect memory tasks, in the context of a processing theory of dissociations. Subjects studied words in five encoding conditions and received one of ten memory tests. In Experiment 1, four tests previously classified as conceptual showed a robust LOP effect, as did a direct perceptual test of graphemic cued recall. An indirect perceptual word fragment completion test was unaffected by LOP. Experiment 2 showed that a new indirect (...) version of a graphemic cued test was not affected by LOP. In Experiment 3, guided by a generation/recognition model, we constructed three new direct tests in which subjects identified words that were graphemically, phonologically, or semantically similar to studied words. The three tests differed in their sensitivity to study conditions, but LOP had no effect in any case, despite the involvement of deliberate conscious recollection. Contemporary explanatory frameworks couched as dichotomies do not provide an adequate account of the results. It seems necessary instead to specify the types of information activated by each encoding condition, the types of information required by each test, and how encoding and retrieval processes are modified by task instructions. (shrink)

Starting from the idea that functions are formally similar to actions in that they are described and explained in a similar way, so that both admit of an accordion effect, I turn to Anscombe’s insight that the point of practical reasoning is to render explicit the relation between the different descriptions of an action generated by the accordion effect. The upshot is, roughly, that an item has a function if what it does can be accounted for by functional reasoning. Put (...) differently, a part of a system has a function if what it does is a functional part of what the system does. (shrink)

H. Arendt developed largely her hermeneutical interpretation of understanding in line with the rethinking of I. Kant’s philosophical heritage. Although she was able to offer a rather original interpretation of the theoretical views of the great German philosopher, her hermeneutic strategy was also influenced by the approaches to their understanding that were proposed by her teachers M. Heidegger and K. Jaspers. Arendt’s hermeneutical teaching proceeds from the need to realize the close unity of practical action and spiritual activity of the (...) human subject - Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa. Accepting the initial position of Heidegger’s metaphysics of finiteness about the “abandonment” of man in the flow of time, Arendt simultaneously follows Jaspers’ call for the need for an existential-hermeneutic interpretation of practical action and the abilities of the spirit by their understanding on the basis of Kant’s legacy. Singling out thinking, will and judgement among the main vectors of self-realization of the spirit, she demonstrates their close relationship with the main types of practical human activity - work, work and action. Analyzing the abilities of the spirit, Arendt emphasizes the major role of thinking, which brings together the processes of knowledge acquisition and meaning creation. It highlights the primacy of the meaning-producing function of the reason in relation to the ability of the intellect to generate true knowledge on the basis of generalization of the data of contemplation. Describing thinking after Kant as a “thing in itself”, Arendt speaks of its involvement in eternity and time in the moment of the present, the ability to generalize the past and design the future. Thinking forms the core of practical reason, which Kant identified with the will, and opens a new horizon of meaning generation in its aspiration to the future. The ability to judge also turns out to be a product of thinking, referring to the past while relying on common sense and imagination. Arendt rightly argues that the “paralysis” of the faculty of judgement, indicating the significance of Kant’s categorical imperative, threatens not only to produce a distorted vision of history, but also the triumph of the “banality of evil” in the sphere of politics. (shrink)

The Russell-Myhill paradox puts pressure on the Russellian structured view of propositions by showing that it conflicts with certain prima facie attractive ontological and logical principles. I describe several versions of RMP and argue that structurists can appeal to natural assumptions about metaphysical grounding to provide independent reasons for rejecting the ontological principles used in these paradoxes. It remains a task for future work to extend this grounding-based approach to all variants of RMP.